Alfred mumbled his apologies.

“Lord Castlereagh asked you to bring him partridges with truffles. I heard him most distinctly! Yet you brought him a strawberry jelly! What were you thinking of?”

Alfred said something rather indistinct in which only the word “fright” was distinguishable.

“You had a fright? What fright?”

“I thought I saw a queer figure standing behind her ladyship’s chair.”

“Alfred, what are you talking about?”

“A tall person with a head of shining silver hair and a green coat. He was leaning down to look at her ladyship. But the next moment there was no one at all.”

“Alfred, look to that end of the room.”

“Yes, Mr Black.”

“What do you see?”

“A curtain, Mr Black.”

“And what else?”

“A chandelier.”

“A green velvet curtain and a chandelier ablaze with candles. That is your green-coated, silver-headed person, Alfred. Now go and help Cissie put away the china and do not be so foolish in future.” Stephen Black turned to the next footman. “Geoffrey! Your behaviour was every bit as bad as Alfred’s. I swear your thoughts were somewhere else entirely. What have you to say for yourself?”

Poor Geoffrey did not answer immediately. He was blinking his eyes and pressing his lips together and generally doing all those things that a man will do when he is trying not to cry. “I am sorry, Mr Black, but it was the music that distracted me.”

“What music?” asked Stephen. “There was no music. There! Listen! That is the string quartet just starting up in the drawing-room. They have not played until now.”

“Oh, no, Mr Black! I mean the pipe and fiddle that were playing in the next room all the time the ladies and gentlemen were at dinner. Oh, Mr Black! It was the saddest music that I ever heard. I thought it would break my heart!”

Stephen stared at him in perplexity. “I do not understand you,” he said. “There was no pipe and fiddle.” He turned to the last footman, a solid-looking, dark-haired man of forty or so. “And Robert! I scarcely know what to say to you! Did we not talk yesterday?”

“We did, Mr Black.”

“Did I not tell you how much I relied upon you to set an example to the others?”

“Yes, Mr Black.”

“Yet half a dozen times this evening you went to the window! What were you thinking of? Lady Winsell was looking round for someone to bring her a clean glass. Your business was at the table, attending to her ladyship’s guests, not at the window.”

“I am sorry, Mr Black, but I heard a knocking at the window.”

“A knocking? What knocking?”

“Branches beating against the glass, Mr Black.”

Stephen Black made a little gesture of impatience. “But, Robert, there is no tree near the house! You know very well there is not.”

“I thought a wood had grown up around the house,” said Robert.

“What?” cried Stephen.

16
Lost-hope

January 1808

The servants in Harley-street continued to believe that they were haunted by eerie sights and mournful sounds. The cook, John Longridge, and the kitchenmaids were troubled by a sad bell. The effect of the bell, explained John Longridge to Stephen Black, was to bring vividly to mind everyone they had ever known who had died, all the good things they had ever lost and every bad thing which had ever happened to them. Consequently, they had become dejected and low and their lives were not worth living.