Page 36 of Infamous

‘Er .?.?.’ said Henry, nonplussed. ‘Eggs?’

‘I shall have whatever you’ve been having,’ said Nash. ‘Tell your grandmother.’

Liza was clearly impatient to get inside, and touched Nash firmly on the arm.

‘Stop torturing the poor boy.’

‘It’s not torture!’ Nash said, raising his hands to demonstrate his innocence. ‘It’s eggs!’

‘Yes. Eggs, sir. Well .?.?. I will, sir,’ said Henry, before hurrying away, clearly far more keen on dragging mountains of very heavy luggage uphill than having to continue this conversation about the particulars of his diet.

‘Come in, everybody,’ Liza said, and they all trooped obligingly after her.

The hall they entered was clad in floor-to-ceiling dark wood panelling, with a dramatic bronze chandelier presiding over faded portraits and a hunting tapestry in which a deer was coming to an unfortunate and sticky end. Everything had clearly been recently cleaned, but polish and elbow grease weren’t enough to disguise the fact that nothing in the room had been updated since the Stuarts. Eddie could smell something promising roasting in the far reaches of the house, and pressed an admonishing hand to her abdomen when her stomach betrayed her and started gurgling ostentatiously. Nash was speaking to the austerely dressed woman who appeared to be the housekeeper, the other staff having already deposited some bags and turned around to go and fetch the rest, but he clapped his hands together to call them all to attention.

‘We shall have an early dinner shortly, I know everybody is starving. Rooms .?.?. Well, there is something I need to tell you about the rooms, but you must all put on your bravest faces.’ Nobody did. ‘Excellent. Now, the house has suffered some .?.?. water damage in the past couple of years. There was an absolute rager of a storm, and then a much smaller and more pathetic one, but the two of them compounded to sort of .?.?. wipe out the top floor.’

‘Wiped out?’ said Valentine. ‘It looked thoroughly unwiped from out there.’

‘Do not tempt me into ribaldry with your phrasing,’ said Nash. ‘It is stillstanding, but there is quite a large .?.?. hole. In the roof. I am told.’

‘You are told or you’ve seen it?’ asked Dayo.

‘It is impossible to miss,’ said Liza. Her tone indicated that she had perhaps raised, many times, that it was unwise to leave an unmissable hole in the roof of one’s home.

‘Regardless of the size of the hole –watchit – we are now in a very peculiar position. Mrs Hall tells me that some of the rooms on the first floor have been repurposed as additional bedrooms. Liza and I sleep in the Gold Chamber, but there are three more, as long as nobody takes issue with sleeping in the billiard room.’

‘Has it still got a billiard table?’ Mr Akerele enquired.

‘No, we’ve had it moved to the long gallery,’ said Liza.

Valentine raised a hand. ‘How long is the long gallery?’

‘Long,’ said Nash. ‘Dash it all, now I’ve lost count.’

‘Five on the first floor, yourself and Mrs Nicholson included,’ Albert supplied.

‘Ah! Yes. Now on the second floor, I’m afraid the plot thickens. The majority of the bedrooms are not in use due to water damage, but there are three still mostly intact on the north side. Two are just damp around the edges, and one is .?.?.’

‘Birthing new life,’ Liza said drily.

‘Well. Yes. We could squeeze three of you into the two drier rooms. I think that would do.’

‘I’ll take the billiard room,’ Valentine said.

‘Very good. I thought that perhaps Dayo could take the room next to it, and then the room next to ours .?.?. Miss Miller?’

‘Miss Miller and Miss Li can share the larger second-floor room,’ Liza said immediately. ‘They have been close friends since childhood, have they not? I think there is no pair more suited to share. Besides, Miss Stuart is their senior and should certainly not be subjected to the damp air on that floor.’

‘I will happily share with Mr Akerele, if he’ll have me,’ said Albert. ‘And I certainly do not mind taking one of the wetter rooms.’

‘You and Mr Akerele are grown men,’ said Liza. She had the beginnings of a tic starting up at her temple. ‘Anyway, ladies like to share rooms. It gives them the chance to be in each other’s confidences away from unfriendly ears.’

‘We don’t mind,’ said Rose. She rarely spoke for Eddie unless committing her to being nicer than Eddie ever would have been herself. ‘Honestly. You are right, of course, Mrs Nicholson. We are the best suited.’

‘Excellent,’ said Nash, now seeming a little bored of the whole thing. ‘In that case, we shall have Kitty in the Yew Room next to us, then Mr Akerele. Valentine has already bagsed the billiards. Edie and Miss Li in the Ivy Chamber on the damp floor, and Albert, you can take the Naval Room down the hall. It features the most upsettingly vivid painting of a ship going down in the Channel I have ever beheld, so that ought to give you something bracing to think about as you fall asleep.’

The second half of their luggage was brought into the hall and, after a brief recess to divvy it up and a near-scuffle when Kitty and Valentine both insisted that a trunk was theirs, the party were led along a narrow passageway to the east stairs, which creaked and groaned at regular and almost musical intervals as they ascended.