The Secret Guests by Benjamin Black

Author:Benjamin Black
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Henry Holt and Co.

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AFTER HIS FIRST FEW DAYS at the Hall, Strafford had quietly given up the taking of afternoon tea. It was this one in particular among the numerous observances by which the day at Clonmillis Hall was portioned out that he found the most tedious. After his encounter with Ellen, therefore, instead of repairing to the first-floor drawing room, where the tea ceremony was celebrated, he instead returned to the library.

The fire he had relit had caught, and the logs were blazing away in their self-absorbed, arabesque fashion. He took up his book and dipped again into the story of vengeful Eustacia, who was preparing her plan to wreak havoc on the School at the Chalet. After a quarter of an hour in the armchair, lulled by the warmth of the fire and the placid cadences of Miss Brent-Dyer’s prose, he grew heavy-lidded, and presently fell into a half sleep.

He had not been dozing for long when he was woken by the sound of a throat being noisily and pointedly cleared.

The Duke was standing over him with a reprehending scowl. Oh Lord, Strafford thought, asleep on guard duty!

“Sorry to disturb you,” the Duke said, with ponderous irony. “Wanted to have a word.”

“Yes, of course,” Strafford said, putting his book away hastily and pulling himself more or less upright in the chair. “Won’t you sit down?”

“Prefer to stand.”

Strafford by now, despite his forebodings, was agog to know what the matter could be. Had he violated one of the unwritten protocols of the house? Was it his disdaining of the tea ceremony that had piqued the old boy? No: something more serious.

“Thing is,” the Duke said, shifting his glare to the fire in the grate, “the girls have been complaining—well, the older one has, on behalf of both of them.”

It was time for Strafford to stand up. He had the advantage of being almost a head taller than the Duke.

“Complaining about what?” he asked, in the mildest of mild tones.

“Perhaps ‘complaining’ is too strong a word.”

The old man fished his pipe out of his pocket, along with an old leather tobacco pouch and a small steel implement bristling with prongs and blades and scrapers, and commenced the pipe man’s ritual of reaming, tapping, filling, tamping, lighting. Life, Strafford reflected, is essentially a succession of small and for the most part unacknowledged diversionary tactics.

“What they say, what she says”—the pipe emitted a billow of transparent, light blue smoke, and a horrible gurgling sound like a death rattle came out of the bowl—“is that they are subjected to altogether too much supervision.”

Strafford had been hoping for something much more exciting.

“Supervision?” he said.

“Yes. You and Miss Nashe, she says, are forever fussing over them, and watching, and listening, and so on.”

“I see.” Strafford felt as if he were being tickled, and had a strong urge to laugh, which he knew he must resist at all costs. “But then, of course, it is our job,” he said, “to watch, and listen, and generally—well, generally keep an eye on things.

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