‘No! No!’ she said, ‘there was just a cup, only a cup, nothing more, and that cup was wild and clinking here and there. Until Mrs Piggott came a-roaring, ‘What are you all doing?’ and then in that parting of the Iremongers to let her through, the cup took its chance and rolled and clinked and slammed itself along the way, had a direct hit with the fire extinguisher there, and clattered away from it out of the corridor towards the kitchens. And then Mrs Piggott was so white! And then the screaming, “Catch it! Catch it!” ’

‘You should have seen all the rushing about,’ chimed in another. ‘Some Iremongers on chairs and tables screaming, as the cup rushed hither and thither in a terrible state, until at last Mr Groom the cook, holding a copper saucepan upside down, managed to trap the thing beneath it. And Groom sat there then, on top of the pan, but you could still hear the cup beneath clanking against the sides making a terrible din. Desperate to get out.’

The train drowned her out a moment, off to London.

‘Where it is now?’ I asked.

‘Still just there, under the saucepan, only Mr Groom’s moved now and in his place has been put a great kitchen weight.’

‘Twelve pounds!’ added another Iremonger with considerable excitement, stepping forward and then stepping back again.

‘And there it stays, clinking now and then, but much quieter than before, almost, you might say, sorrowfully.’

‘I should very much like to see it,’ I said.

‘It’s being guarded, round the clock, there’s always at least four of Groom’s kitchen lads there, and each armed with something blunt and heavy – a rolling pin, a thick wooden paddle, a spit pan – just in case the cup gets free again.’

‘I’d like to see that all right,’ I said.

‘Well you can’t, Iremonger!’ said Mrs Piggott, standing in the doorway. ‘Line up everyone! At the foot of your beds. General inspection!’

Mrs Piggott was gripping a tea strainer. It was my friend’s tea strainer, the Iremonger who had scratched and lost her name, I felt certain of it. And her bed was empty, she wasn’t in the dormitory. Where was she?

We were to stand before our beds, and wait to be called. It was happening in all the dormitories downstairs, there was such a flap on, a general inspection, all the servants were going to be questioned. One by one we should be summoned into Mr Sturridge’s office where the interviews took place. The roll call was taken, numbers of servants reported and added up and marked down in the register.