“Oh, yeah,” said Abe. “Haven’t you ever noticed how many of our educational TV shows are brought to you courtesy of the Daniel and Francine Langfeld Fund?”
“Hell,” Mike said, “of course. That’s why the name was familiar. But Daniel and Francine? Not Gwendolyn?”
“Daniel senior,” Amy pointed out. “It has to be. And Gwen’s husband is junior.”
“Sounds like it,” Abe said. “No billions, the Langfelds, but nevertheless formidable.”
“Jewish?” said Mike.
“When they emigrated here from Germany around the Civil War, yes. Converted long ago. Why? You got a whiff of anti-Semitism up there in Durieville?”
“The merest,” Mike said. “By way of Mrs. McEye who wanted it known that the Langfelds are distinctly not Jewish. And that Gwen’s separation from Daniel is all good clean nonscandalous fun.”
“Although,” Amy said, “why there should be any family reaction to any religion when Gwen comes on like a Hare Krishna—”
“You see?” Mike said to her. “You’re catching it too. Questions, questions, intriguing questions.”
“Uh-huh. And what I’m to do is go around and help dig up answers, answers, intriguing answers.”
“Yep. If you can stay awake along the way. Right now, if you let your eyes close completely I’ll lead you to the bedroom where you’ll take a necessary nap.”
Amy closed her eyes. “I can stay right here and listen.”
Audrey stood up. “The guest room,” she said. “The bedroom’s a mess. Come along, honey.”
“I am really not that sleepy,” Amy said as Audrey nudged her through the door.
She rejoined the party two hours later looking, Mike saw, much more her fresh-faced self. On the way downstairs for a paella orgy at Julio’s Restaurant around the corner, when they passed the door of the old apartment Abe, the irrepressible, asked, “Miss the old homestead?”
“Abe,” said Audrey.
“Just curious, dear.”
“It’s all right,” said Amy, “because I really don’t feel any pangs about it.”
“No streak of sentimentality at all?” Abe said.
“No,” said Amy. “Almost none at all.”
“Live and learn,” said Abe.
The party adjourned at ten o’clock, but early as this seemed to be, only a pallid night-light showed through the curtains of the kitchen door at the foot of the service entrance. Mike rang the bell, and the man who eventually opened the door wore a shoulder holster, gun butt displayed, over a T-shirt. “You’re Lloyd?” he said. “And Mrs. Lloyd? Right?”
“Yep,” said Mike.
“I’m Krebs. Security. I have to ask for ID first time out, you understand.” He looked over the driver’s license Mike proffered and handed it back. “You ought to get a change of address on that,” he said as he bolted and chained the door behind the new help. “You folks know your way upstairs? Straight up, no sight-seeing.”
“We’ve been told,” Amy said.
“Figures. Oh, yeah, and Mrs. Mac said to make sure you check the board before you turn in.”
“I know where it is,” Mike said. “Staff hall.”
“Right. See you around, folks,” said Krebs, and moved off, friendly as a guard dog to its keepers.
The staff hall was in darkness. Mike located the switch inside the doorway and under the light the large cork-faced triptych on the coffee table looked grotesquely out of place. Too businesslike somehow. Slips of paper were pinned to each panel here and there.
“Alphabetical order,” Amy reported, squinting closely at them. “And models of brevity. Here’s you. And me.”
Mike peered over her shoulder. The slip of paper headed Lloyd read 9 A.M.: Hale & Hale, clothiers. The one headed Mrs. Lloyd read 8 A.M.: Miss Margaret D. When Amy pulled the papers free of the pushpins he said, “Sabotage?”
“No, this had to be what you do with them to show you’ve seen them. There’s only a few left. Those could be staff who haven’t checked in yet.”
“Or out,” Mike said. “Here’s O’Dowd. Off duty, it says. Same for Mabry. Which leaves us short one cook tomorrow. Maybe Bernius drops in from Domestique Plus to whip up breakfast and lunch.”
“Domestique Plus?”
“Oh, I forgot to tell you. It’s an adjunct service that provides total housecleaning here every other week. I bet you’ve been wondering how the folks could get along with only sixteen live-in help. That’s the answer. I got it from Mabry. You know, he might be a veritable mine of information.”
“Like me,” said Amy.
“Hey, baby, are you heating up again about my little revelation? About this place as a book?”
“These people, don’t you mean?”
“Naturally.”
Amy took her time working it out. “I don’t know,” she said at last. “One way I’m all for it. I can see what a milieu like this offers a writer. For that matter, I can even see the pleasure in a literary sense of vivisecting somebody like that Camilla.”
“Pretty little thing though,” Mike couldn’t resist saying.
“I’m serious,” Amy said.
“Well,” Mike said, “I suppose I’m trying to fend off what I suspect is coming. Miss Margaret is pitiable. You like her. You don’t want to be two-faced with her.”
“I suppose not.”
“But what makes you think she won’t have a sympathetic role? A beautiful and talented girl of eighteen tragically blinded, spending the next fifty years in morbid and self-isolated darkness, now suddenly determined to make the rest of her life worth living. And that’s the way it really is, mind you. It’s not soap opera.”
“Even so, Mike. When I told you she’s also an arrogant, sharp-tongued bully I saw how you reacted. Not that I didn’t somehow like it. I mean the feeling that if anyone comes down on me you’re ready to commit mayhem. But in this case it could be literary mayhem where I’m an accomplice. After all, you do have a way of—who said it?—writing with a quill dipped in venom. Not that it isn’t fine writing.”
“Waldo Lydecker. Out of Laura, by Vera Caspary.”
“Oh? I thought it was somebody more eighteenth century.”
“Twentieth. But Lydecker was eighteenth in spirit all right. Matter of fact, I think he said goose quill. But your mistake was natural. Because, dear Amy, we ourselves are right back in the eighteenth century now, aren’t we? While out there beyond these walls ghostly Duries and Cheathams are buying land and distilling rum and waiting for a War of Independence that will—”
“Mike, you are somehow changing the subject.”
“Well, it is a pretty unlikely subject, isn’t it? Almost as unlikely as our situation. That coffee machine is winking at us, by the way. Want a cup of coffee while we hash out the subject?”
“No. I should have realized that with all you had to drink—”
“After all, dear, I have to drink for two. If you’d reform your Puritan ways—”
“—that you’re high and getting steadily higher. You will now catch up on your sleep, Michael, while I finish unpacking and laundry sorting. And I have to be up before seven to bring Ma’am her breakfast.”
“An hour’s allowance?” Mike said.
“I know, but I have the feeling that if I’m one minute late—”
“God help you,” Mike said. “A flogging in the public square at the very least.”
“There you go again,” said Amy.
PART TWO
Ma’am
Mike never stirred when the alarm went off at seven, and when she tiptoed out of the room he was still sound asleep. There were no signs of life along the corridor on the way to East Hall elevator, but at the junction near the elevator could be heard the rhythmic grumble of hard rock from one of the maid’s rooms. O’Dowd’s kind of music, Amy surmised, certainly not the prim Nugent’s. But of course there were a couple of still unseen housemaids on the premises. For that matter, and a little spookily, nobody was to be seen along the
whole route to the staff hall by way of the basement. The explanation came when she pushed open the door to the staff hall and found quite a company gathered around the table dining in style. There was a buffet breakfast on a sideboard and, instead of last night’s bulletin board, on the coffee table were now a toaster and basket of sliced bread. The most welcome sight, however, was the cheery face of Nugent.
It was Nugent who made the introductions. Walsh and Plunkett were obviously from their uniforms the hitherto unmet housemaids, met at last. Both were fresh-faced colleens who could have passed for a buxom sixteen but were more likely just closing out their teens. Borglund, custodian, looked as ancient and forbidding as the Old Man of the Mountain; Swanson, assistant custodian, was a middle-aged version of Borglund. Peters and Brooks, housemen, were neat, trim, and fortyish in vest and black bowtie, and yes, Amy recalled, that had to be the Peters recruited yesterday for Gwen Langfeld’s meditation circle. And finally there was Krebs, security, the one who had let her and Mike in last night, and among this silent, unresponsive company, thank God at least for his nod of recognition. The others couldn’t exactly be called unfriendly, but they certainly weren’t warm and welcoming. Not surprising really, Amy assured herself, because for better or worse she rated administration, whatever that meant, and on early acquaintance they’d naturally regard administration with a wary eye.
Not that Nugent mentioned administration during introductions. But what she did say certainly took care of that. Mrs. Lloyd. The formal touch, the protocol at work. And this is Mrs. Lloyd. Ridiculous, this medieval codifying of the pecking order. And yet—and yet—just the least bit gratifying. Enter this strange new school, and because you bear the imprimatur of your wedded title you start right off as blackboard monitor.
Confide that to Mike and see what he makes of it.
Nugent solicitously followed the new hand into the kitchen. “Breakfast, ma’am? There’s almost everything you’d be wanting in those hot plates out there.”
“Thank you, but I’m supposed to bring Miss Margaret her breakfast. Mine can wait.”
Nugent glanced at the wall clock. “Right now, ma’am, she’ll be getting her exercises from Hegnauer, and then there’s the bath and the settling down and all. You’d best have your own breakfast while you can.”
“You’re very kind, Nugent.”
Nugent turned pink. “Well, it does take a bit of time to learn the way around. So all you do right now is help yourself to breakfast out there and then put the dishes into that washer. I’ll attend to the washer.”
It was, Amy found, not the most convivial kind of breakfasting. She had the feeling that before her appearance the gathering must have been sharing some conversation. Now whatever of it there had been was restricted to an occasional whispered remark, a nod, a shrug. It was a growing relief when one by one the staff departed, the youthful maids trundling along carts with covered dishes, and finally only Nugent was left.
Amy said to her worriedly, “About preparing Miss Margaret’s breakfast. If Mabry is off duty today—”
“Yes, ma’am. But when he’s off I do breakfast and lunch.”
“Isn’t there another cook? Golightly?”
“Chef, ma’am. Only does dinners and special lunches. He’s blue ribbon.”
“That’s very impressive.”
Nugent appeared to be evaluating this and, for that matter, evaluating Mrs. Lloyd. Then, after glancing around the empty room, she leaned forward to offer her judgment in confidence. “I’ll tell you, ma’am, him being that, and serving here from the time Miss Margaret and the gentlemen were young people, well, it does make him hard to get along with. You don’t mind me saying so?”
“Not a bit. He doesn’t make things hard for you, does he? You really are so efficient and helpful.”
Nugent turned pink again. “Thank you, ma’am. But he is a prejudiced one, forgive me for saying so. Does not take to the Irish at all. For all he’s a blackie he’s old-fashioned Jamaica-British, and he does see everything the British way.”
“Oh. And you and the maids are all Irish.”
“Of course, ma’am.” Nugent seemed surprised. “Couldn’t very well pass for anything else, could we?”
Not very likely, Amy thought, feeling a little foolish. “What I meant,” she amended, “is that it’s not altogether coincidence.”
“Oh, no, ma’am. Mrs. McEye didn’t much like the kind of maids starting to show up from the agency—blackies and Spanish, you see—so that Mrs. Bernius at the agency made this arrangement with the Dependents’ Society in Belfast. Girls whose fathers were killed in the trouble there could be brought to the States for training in good houses. And have part of their wages sent back home.”
“And that happened to you?” Amy said. “Your father was killed?”
“Oh, yes, ma’am. Done in by the Orangemen. Same for the others, except I was the first here and I chose to stay on, while the others so far keep coming and going. Get a bit homesick, I daresay, much as they like it here in the States. But all of them are in training really, and that’s what Golightly won’t allow for. He’s so long in the tooth he’s a bit dotty at times. And Mabry’s no help either with his nasty talk about Hibernians.”
“That’s really too bad,” Amy said. Which, she realized was a pallid way of communicating the depression she suddenly felt.
“Yes, ma’am. Like the priest put it when my father was laid away, we must believe God created the Orangemen but we will never understand why.” Nugent looked alarmed. “Ma’am—Mrs. Lloyd—if you don’t see the politics of it that way—”
Mrs. Lloyd? Oh, the name, Amy thought, the name. “Lloyd’s my husband’s name,” she said. “Welsh. A long time ago. Not British.”
Nugent looked relieved. “A very good people, the Welsh. And it is getting on time for Miss Margaret’s tray, isn’t it? Brioche and coffee is no matter at all. I’ll fix it up.”
“Oh, please. I can do it myself.”
“My pleasure, ma’am. You don’t mind me saying it, it’s good to have you here.”
“I don’t mind in the least, Nugent. In fact, I need it.”
“I had a feeling you did, ma’am. Now all you do is fetch Miss Margaret’s service in here, and I’ll make everything ready. It’s the Spode for her.”
“The Spode. Nugent, I’m not sure I’d know Spode from Tupperware.”
Nugent giggled. “You do have a way of putting things, ma’am. The Spode’s in that third cabinet down the line there. Cup, saucer, small plate, very small plate for butter. Cutlery’s in the first big drawer below, and napkins are bottom drawer.”
“Spode,” Amy said with apprehension. “What happens if I break one?”
“Well, ma’am, I can’t say there’s rejoicing over it, but they do break. Just tell Mrs. McEye about it frank and open, and she’ll make a bit of fuss and hope it won’t happen again. But most likely it will.”
“You have a way of putting things yourself, Nugent,” said Amy.
There had to be, she discovered, some trick to turning doorknobs while gripping that damn tray with both hands and with the morning’s Times—the blessed Nugent had remembered it at the last moment—under an arm. This discovery came at the end of the basement corridor—Xanadu—when after passing Borglund and Swanson leaning over something on the worktable in their screened-in shop she came up against the door to the foyer of the East Hall elevator. The door of the staff hall had offered no problems; it was just a case of shoving it open with a hip. This one, however, was a real stinker. A shove of the hip didn’t move it, and an attempt to grasp the knob while juggling the tray with a few hundred dollars worth of fragile china on it made everything on the tray shift alarmingly.
The realization struck Amy that she should never have tucked away that full breakfast herself, what with the way her stomach now seemed bent on rejecting it.
“Hell and damnation,” she said to the door.
A response came from the workshop. “Yah?” said the anc
ient Borglund.
Amy carefully made a half turn and saw that he and Swanson were regarding her with puzzlement.
“I’m stuck,” Amy told them. “I can’t open the door.”
“Just turn the knob,” Borglund said. It came out yoost toorn. “It works good.”
“Yes, but while I’m holding this tray?”
A flicker of amusement passed over those otherwise stolid Scandinavian faces. Then Swanson came forward. He removed the tray from Amy’s deathlike grip, pivoted her hand palm up, and planted the tray on her outspread fingers. “Like this, lady.”
“With one hand?”
“Sure. You think they do like this in the restaurant for fun? Easier this way.”
And, in fact, it was easier, even if more terrifying. Holding her breath, Amy turned the doorknob and pushed open the door. “I do thank you.”
“You’re welcome—Mrs. Lord?”
“Lloyd.”
“Any time, Mrs. Lloyd.”
After that, there was no trouble dealing with the elevator, and so pleasing was the image of one-handed authority presented Amy by her reflection in the glass wall along East Hall that she passed right by The Door and had to reverse course to get back to it. She knocked twice according to prescription and what was surely the burly Hegnauer’s deep growl commanded, “Come in, come in.”
Amy came in. The sitting room was empty, and with its drapes wide open everything in it was tinted gold by the morning sunlight. Hegnauer stood in the open door to the right motioning for more speed, please. Amy walked by her, tray held daringly high, and here was a spacious Art Deco bedroom also golden with sunlight. Ma’am, in negligee, was propped up against several pillows in the bed. And, Amy took note, not yet made up. Even more strikingly beautiful without those bisquedoll dabs of rouge on her cheeks and the blood-red lipstick. Amy also took note that Hegnauer was silently mouthing something at her. She suddenly realized that what those writhing lips were communicating was Good-morning. Good-morning.
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