“Nathaniel Hopson from London bids you a good afternoon. I believe a Mrs. Hester Cummings expects my arrival. Is that good lady here?” I bellowed as loudly as politeness and my frozen jaw permitted.
The cleaning of vegetables, grinding of loaf sugar, buffing of wineglasses, and counting of spoons and plates continued without interruption. Mrs. Cummings, the woman I was soon to discover to be the unquestionable ruler of this domain, was weighing currants on the brass scales, scolding the kitchenmaid for her galling inattention. The girl’s distraction was the only result of my speech. She now stood staring at me, eyes as round as shillings, pretty mouth gaping like an open flower.
Mrs. Cummings dusted her hands this way and that over a large pudding basin, clouding her torso with a mist of flour. “What’s with you today, Connie? How do you expect to learn if you stare like a half-wit everywhere but at what you’re doing? Stop fidgeting and weigh me a quarter peck of flour, put in half a pint of ale yeast, make it to a paste with warm milk, then set it to rise while you wash these raisins. When you’ve done, there’s butter and rose water to add, loaf sugar to sift, cinnamon, cloves, mace to grind—no pinching raisins, mind…”
As these complex instructions rolled off Mrs. Cummings’s tongue, the girl was gazing at the succulent fruit tumbling into the scales. She licked her lips hungrily but couldn’t help glancing back at the doorway where I stood. “It was him. I was looking at him, ma’am. I was asking myself what he was doing.”
“Him? What him?” Wrenching themselves away from the sugary mass, Mrs. Cummings’s currant eyes followed the maid’s gaze and at last registered my presence. She advanced towards me, black dress and starched apron pulled tight over a capacious bosom, skirts rustling, as majestic as a duchess.
I smiled and bowed respectfully. “Madam, I have been sent by Mr. Chippendale of London to install the new library for Lord Montfort. I was told to make myself known to Mrs. Hester Cummings, who would find a bed for me here.” I paused, watching as she took in every detail of my features and traveling garb. “I take it you are that lady.”
It seemed she was not entirely displeased with what she saw, for I was granted a brief nod and a floury handshake as welcome before she turned back to the kitchenmaid, whose eyes were still fixed on me. “Constance Lovatt, what are you gawping at? Haven’t you seen a Londoner before? They are no different from any other. Take him to the servants’ hall, hang up his coat, stir up the fire—no delaying, mind. Mr. Hopson does not want his head filled with your gossip, do you, sir? But I fancy he wouldn’t say no to a bit of something to eat.”
Constance was not at all put out by the severity of her tone. Indeed, I fancy she stifled a giggle as she said, “This way, sir,” and led me down a narrow servants’ corridor to the appointed room, allowing me ample opportunity to admire the neat waist around which her apron was secured by a plump bow.
I settled myself gratefully into a beech Windsor chair that reminded me of the one in which my father sat at home. Constance crouched to goad the embers to new life. “Will you be staying with us long, Mr. Hopson?” she said.
“I cannot be sure. A few days perhaps.”
“I fancy Lord Montfort will want the library finished in time for New Year?”
“I believe so.”
“He has guests invited for dinner and will take pride in displaying his newest improvements.”
“Hmm.”
“Mrs. Cummings is in a frenzy about the dinner ‘cos the French chef up and left saying he was going home for Christmas and hasn’t been seen since.”
“Indeed.”
“He’s the one who’s meant to do the pastries and such fancies as were ordered. Now it will all be left to her.”
“Is that so?” I replied without a trace of interest.
Perhaps fearing Mrs. Cummings’s wrath, or disappointed by my dullness, she made no further attempt to engage me in conversation. When her duties were done, she left with a bobbed curtsy and a promise to return with refreshments presently.
Had I been in my usual good humor I would not have responded to her overtures with such coolness. You will know by now I have a sociable nature and well realize that pretty girls with such merry eyes as Miss Constance offer all manner of enjoyable distraction. But this day I had no appetite for such flirtation as Constance promised.
It wasn’t just the rigors of my journey that made me melancholy. Even with the fire to warm me, my mood remained dark, and if anything I grew more restless. At the root of this agitation lay my reluctance to come here at all. The truth was that I still heartily wished myself back in London, not simply on account of Alice but because of a graver preoccupation. I felt I was here under a false pretext, a second-rate substitute for the ailing Partridge, my dearest friend, who had been responsible for creating the furnishings I was due to install.
As I’d frequently done over the past days, I cast my thoughts back to the last occasion I had seen him, trying to recall any sign of the illness that Chippendale said was now troubling him. My efforts were in vain; nothing came to mind. Of course, I told myself halfheartedly, this didn’t mean he might not have had some secret plan brewing. Was he really unwell? I cannot pretend my dear friend was without guile. Partridge was gifted in many respects, particularly in his capacity for conceiving pranks. Etched upon my memory is a skulling race on the river when he fixed my boat to sink in full view of the White Hart at Richmond. I well recall our competition for a place in the bed of the handsome widow at the Fox and Grapes, when he usurped my lead by pouring gin in my ale and leaving me on the floor in a drunken stupor. Nor will I forget the time he set fireworks alight in the courtyard, while I was engaged with Molly Bullock. He cried “Fire!” through the keyhole, and I tumbled out in an unseemly rush with my breeches about my ankles, to the merriment of the craftsmen he’d assembled outside.
Thus when I fretted over my friend, I knew unpredictable behavior was not out of character. But, as a small voice in my head reminded me incessantly, his schemes were usually spur-of-the-moment adventures. He’d never left me out of one for so long before. And in none of his schemes had he ever gone missing.
It was now more than a week since I had seen him at the workshop. By last Sunday I’d become so concerned that I’d called at his lodgings. The landlady hadn’t seen him. His belongings had been moved. No, she could not tell me where I might find him. His sweetheart, Dorothy, had unexpectedly returned to Yorkshire. When I questioned Chippendale, he appeared indifferent to the absence of his most talented employee. Indeed, whenever I raised the subject he seemed irked by my curiosity. The day I learned of my journey to Cambridge was the first he deigned to volunteer any information on the subject. Partridge, he told me, had sent a letter explaining that his sudden absence was due to his being stricken by a contagious distemper. Not wishing to infect his workmates, he had exiled himself to a friend’s house in Shoreditch, where he was presently recuperating.
My natural inclination was to believe this story. I held my master in the greatest respect; he had no reason that I knew to lie to me. But while I dared not question him for fear of rousing his anger, I could not help but find this explanation implausible. Last time I set eyes on Partridge he was in good health, talking rashly about Dorothy, hinting at their betrothal. I now began to question the reason for Dorothy’s precipitate departure as well as Partridge’s absence. I asked myself how, if Partridge were ill, had he vanished so rapidly from his lodgings? And as for the friend in Shoreditch, I was convinced it was nonsense. I was close as a brother to him and never heard mention of this person. The illness, I decided, was most probably a yarn spun by Partridge, for some reason of his own. Only I couldn’t fathom what that reason might be.
Perhaps it was fortunate that over the days that followed I did not have long to dwell on my worries. It was impressed upon me almost every hour that the library must be finished in time for the dinner Lord Montfort was holding on New Year’s Day. Since this involved assembling a vast bookcase and the dat
e was now only four days hence, my time passed in a frenzy of activity. I supervised the transportation of crates to the library. I ensured the packing mats and battens, paper and lay cord were removed without damage to the carvings on which Partridge had labored so painstakingly. Piece by piece I watched each segment emerge, marveling as I did so at the brilliance of the craftsman who conceived and so dexterously executed it.
It is a commonly held misbelief, among those who have never commissioned furniture, that the proprietor of a great workshop must himself draw and cut and carve every object produced under his name. In truth the great London cabinetmakers—John Channon, William Hallet, William Vile, Giles Grendey, and of course, Thomas Chippendale, all of whom do flourishing trade in this golden age of cabinetmaking—have long since put down their tools. Proprietors are transformed by success into administrators and salesmen, their craftsmen’s skills forgotten. Their talent must be diverted into lavishing attentions upon patrons in place of tabletops. Thus, in order to supply the fabric of his trade, Chippendale relied upon a host of journeymen in his employ. Without workers such as Partridge, Molly Bullock, and I, scarcely a stick of furniture would have been made in his name.
In this instance it was Partridge who’d created the finished sketches, Partridge who’d carved the most intricate parts and overseen the completion of the whole. Partridge, my friend and ally. I didn’t doubt that, if he could see me fretting over his whereabouts while I assembled his great masterpiece, he would have laughed and called me an idiot. But therein lay my concern: I hadn’t seen him.
Yet have I learned how distance and time can shift our perception of almost anything. Over the days of frenetic work that followed, when I was removed from London and all that was familiar to me, I began to feel my fears were unfounded. Working in this great room, piecing together Partridge’s creation from the fragments laid before me, my worry diminished. There was nothing I could do about Partridge here. I would carry out my instructions to the best of my ability. By the time I returned to London, Partridge would surely have reappeared, doubtless rolling with laughter at some clever scheme he’d carried off.
The library was a long narrow room that spanned the western limits of the house and had recently been redecorated in readiness for the new furnishings. The walls were freshly hung in crimson silk damask; a sumptuous flower-filled Axminster carpet, its pattern reflecting the stuccoed ceiling, lay ready to be unrolled. The ceiling alone had taken a dozen local craftsmen six months to complete. The long outer wall was centered upon a Carrara marble chimneypiece. To either side four sash windows gave onto a formal Italian garden. The view was generally considered delightful, one of the marvels of Horseheath, and in the summer season—according to Constance—numerous visitors came specially to walk in the gardens. To me, however, the marriage of Art and Nature seemed profoundly discordant. Walls of oppressive privet terminated in stifling niches; urns were filled with skeletal plants; and in the center a huge fountain formed the hub of an immense circular ornamental pond. And betwixt every path, white marble statues of nymphs, now frosted by winter, stood frozen in various stages of undress.
Partridge’s gargantuan bookcase faced this garden and, appropriately enough, resembled a Roman temple. Ancient architecture had recently become his obsession—how often he lauded its symmetry, its precision, its order. For in the ancient past, he claimed, were proportions and details that had never been improved upon, and therein the fashionable future lay. This notion had been the cause of some dissension within the workshop. Chippendale, though fond enough of meticulous design and classical architecture, preferred a multiplicity of decoration whenever possible. If patrons could be persuaded to festoon their commissions with chinoiserie knickknacks in the shape of hoho birds, dragons, and pagodas, or with ribbons and roses and watery cascades, extra might be charged and the piece would appear suitably sumptuous. Urns and pilasters didn’t compare visually or commercially.
Partridge’s fondness for antiquity was shared by Lord Montfort, who had spent some months in Italy as a young man. In Rome, like every other youth of his generation and rank, he had studied ancient architecture, acquiring much of the statuary visible from the window as well as the collections within the house. He agreed with Partridge’s classical theme—a room devoted to learning demanded some reference to ancient civilization. Yet he was equally obsessed by the need to impress his acquaintances, and fretted that scholarly restraint would be too subtle to be remarked. Thus to Partridge’s austere pilasters, urns, and pediment he added Chippendale’s suggestions for sundry swags of trailing foliage and flowers. The resulting structure resembled nothing so much as some classical temple relic overgrown with Arcadian vegetation.
It was New Year’s Eve, my fifth day at Horseheath, before I made Lord Montfort’s acquaintance. He exploded into the room, swirling his hunting cape, a mangy lurcher skulking by his side.
“Hopson, where are you, man, you rascal, you idler?” he thundered. “I come to remind you I expect company tomorrow. Unless they can admire this room and its fittings to my satisfaction I shall be pleased to inform Mr. Chippendale of your tardiness and detain my payments accordingly.”
The fact he could not see me, for I was presently perched on top of a ladder ensuring that the plinth of an urn was precisely square to the column beneath, further infuriated him. Like a freak tide with no sandbags to halt it, the onslaught surged forth unabated. “And you may tell Mr. Chippendale when you see him that, under the circumstances, he need not trouble himself to demand the return of his folio. I shall keep hold of it for as long as it pleases me.”
I had no comprehension of this reference to a folio, but in any case his fury had thrown me into such red-faced confusion I would scarcely have recognized my own mother.
“Lord Montfort,” I exclaimed, hastily folding my two-foot rule into my pocket, descending to his level and bowing. “I am Nathaniel Hopson.”
Montfort peered at me through small bloodshot eyes. The lurcher thrust forward, growling, the hair on its back standing up like a thistle. I tried to ignore the dog and fix on the man. He was stout-figured, aged perhaps fifty and five years, wigless, with lank hair and a belly that strained at his breeches. He was sweating profusely, and from his incessant twitching and blinking I judged him to be in a state of high agitation.
“I trust when your lordship examines the progress thus far you will not be displeased. The bulk of the work is already completed. It remains only for me to make minor adjustments that will be accomplished in the next hours.” The lurcher sniffed my breeches, its ears pressed back close to its head, its snout pushing insistently at my groin. It was still growling. Ignoring his dog, Montfort took in for the first time the work I had virtually completed.
The scale and magnificence of the room could hardly fail to inspire his awe. He drew short grunting breaths, while registering the extraordinary metamorphoses of mere wood into towering bookcase, library table, steps, globes, and chairs.
“Looks the part, don’t it, Hopson? Finest library in the county, I’ll wager.”
“Yes, my lord.”
“A grand setting for a spectacle?”
“Indeed.”
The dog retreated beside his master. I breathed more easily. It was weeks before I recalled those words and comprehended their true significance.
Chapter Three
Thus to Lord Montfort’s dinner and the dreadful discovery with which this strange tale began. Eight people, in addition to the host himself, took their seats that afternoon at the fine mahogany dining table. Three were family members and residents of the household—Elizabeth, Montfort’s fragile young wife, I have already remarked; Robert, his nineteen-year-old son by a previous marriage, was heir to the estate, a handsome, strongly boned man, grandly dressed that evening as befitted the occasion; Margaret Alleyn, Lord Montfort’s spinster sister, had run the household for the past two decades. The five remaining guests comprised a pair of neighboring landowners, Lord Foley and Lord Bradfield and
their respective wives, and a last-minute addition to the party—Montfort’s attorney, a man by the name of Wallace, who had been called in to attend on his lordship earlier in the day and had yet to be dismissed.
My previous description of this assembly, its strange atmosphere and awkward guests, might perhaps have conveyed the impression that the event was from the start ill-fated, that the signs of the impending tragedy were all too evident to anyone with an ounce of sensibility. In truth I must confess that such a view, though easy enough in hindsight, does not give a true appraisal of the situation. I am no different from any man in that conclusions I draw are fashioned from the raw materials of experience and event. If I possess any special talent, it is that my profession has taught me to employ those materials more carefully than most men, for my skill depends upon my capacity for meticulous precision. In this case, however, my materials were sparse. I was unfamiliar with the household. The strained atmosphere did not unnerve me because I presumed it to be the usual state of affairs. In any case how could I judge the household accurately, being so unaccustomed to such grandeur? Devoid of any similar experience, I knew only what I saw.
My encounter with Lord Montfort the previous day had shown me he was a man prone to outbursts of choleric ill-humor, who frequently evoked uneasiness in those surrounding him. Thus it did not seem unusual that his temper, far from improving, showed signs of further deterioration. Yet, as the evening drew on, the extremes of Montfort’s moroseness threw a shadow over the proceedings that appeared to surprise his guests and family. Dinner was under way when the first of them remarked it. His neighbor Lord Bradfield, a man of large girth and matching appetite, had interrupted his imbibing of turtle soup to recount a prized fragment of gossip. “The bishop was actually pleased when he found himself to have the itch. Said it was of no concern where he caught it, for it would help him keep his mistress to himself.”
The Grenadillo Box: A Novel Page 4
