Page 10 of Falling for a Footman

Six

“Had you heard aboutthe investigator?” William asked as they were clearing the table in the dining room after the family had left.

James gently stacked the plates on his left arm as he gathered the silver cutlery with his right. There was plenty of leftovers he noticed. The whole house had been humming with anticipation of the family’s return, since it for one meant better meals at night, as they were allowed to eat the leftovers. James had not known that servant’s meals when the family was not in residence were so bland. Gruel, bread, and cold ham seemed to be the order of the day.

“No, I had no idea about the investigator,” he answered William while watching the other man’s expression closely. William’s chubby face was turned towards the table where he was handling the glasses with an extreme care that seemed almost counterintuitive to his size. But no sign on William’s face displayed whether it was good or bad news that an investigator had been put to the task of recovering the stolen candlesticks.

“I wonder whether he will come here and question us,” William seemed to be thinking out loud and looked up briefly. “It was here after all that the candlesticks were stolen and not in London.”

“I suppose he will want to track down the candlesticks first to be certain that he will be able to give them back to the duke.” Harrowby was already taking care of that part of the investigation as well as looking into who had handed the candlesticks over to the auctioning house. So far, he had not come up with anything.

“If the thief really is someone from the duke’s household, he or she has not left yet,” James continued, trying to pressure William a bit.

William looked up. There was a furrow between his brows but otherwise no indication of what he was thinking.

“Do you think the thief is someone among the staff?” he asked as if the thought was inconceivable.

Damnation, James had given away too much by his statement. He had assumed that everyone among the staff figured that it was one of them. But of course, of the people that he had talked to so far all of them had their own theories.

This really was more difficult than he had thought. An investigation where you could just show up and ask the questions you needed to was one thing, but another was pretending to be someone else, someone without authority while doing it. James understood why Harrowby had given him this task as his first: There would be no bodily harm if he was not correct, but it was still important and difficult to solve the case.

“Well, do you not think that it is someone from within the staff?” James countered as he placed the dirty dishes on the large tray and started collecting the bowls.

“I... I really haven’t spent a lot of time thinking about it,” William stated.

James was uncertain how that was possible. Ever since he had started as a Bow Street Runner a year ago, his mind was trying to make those kinds of connections. On the stagecoach here he had studied the other passengers and tried to figure out whether any of them could be criminals based on their demeanor, what they said and what they did. He was fairly certain that the portly man sitting opposite him drank smuggled brandy, although many did these days. As for the other passengers he had not been able to pin any crimes on them.

They carried the trays of dirty dishes and half-filled bowls to the kitchen where Cook had prepared additional food for them. They all gathered around the large table in the servant’s hall and ate their fill with food that resembled the one that James was used to eating, except more bread and cabbage had been added.

As they ate, James looked at the servants around the table. William was the one that he knew the best. They were sharing a room and would often work together as a team as well when required. The four other footmen he did not know as well. One of them, Jeremy, had seemed a bit hostile towards him at first. The first days James had been anxious that Jeremy had seen right through who he was but had soon settled on Jeremy merely being jealous that the maid he was clearly infatuated with seemed more interested in James.

It was a shame that he had not acquired a gnarling scar in the peninsular to ward of the women. Although that would probably have put a stop to him posing as a footman in the first place. Perhaps if he had inherited other qualities from his parents than being tall and having wavy dark brown hair that seemed to make the ladies swoon, he might have been fine. He could have inherited the light brown color that his father’s hair had had before it went gray and his mother’s more robust figure instead. Perhaps that would have made him less noticeable like Harrowby.

James was woken by his musings as William poked him with an elbow.

“Miss Walker asked for the salt,” he told James, when he looked at him.

James hurriedly handed the ceramic salt cellar that was painted a cheery blue to the dark-haired maid across the table. Her lips lifted as in the mock of a smile, but there was no warmth in her eyes. This was clearly not one of the maids that he had won over.

Unlike her mistress who had had a hard time not looking at him at dinner tonight. Even though he had kept his eyes trained on a spot on the wall opposite him, he had felt her gaze on him more than once despite her weirdly stiff posture and her reluctance to look in his direction.

James looked at his mostly empty plate, drove a cooked carrot around in a circle to gather the last gravy and distract himself from sighing. A doe-eyed duke’s daughter was just what he needed on top of the attention from the female staff. No, he needed to do this thoroughly and right and once and for all show Harrowby his worth.

His eyes strayed to the female staff: There were several new members now that the duchess’s and Lady Charlotte’s ladies’ maids had arrived along with a couple of maids and the nanny and governess. The last two however ate in the nursery. None of them could have stolen the candlesticks, since they had been in London at the time of the theft, but he should nevertheless talk to them. They could have important information about who was the thief after all.

A perfect opportunity presented itself when Miss Walker, Lady Charlotte’s lady’s maid, needed help with carrying a bucket of water as well as a hat box and a pelisse she had been mending. Miss Walker carried the hat box with two hands as if it contained a living creature and she needed to keep it steady at all times while James walked behind her with the bucket and the light pelisse draped over one arm.

“How long have you been at Great Farleigh Hall, Miss Walker?” he asked jovially as they started ascending the servant’s staircase and was out of earshot from the others.

“Five years. I started as a house maid and then when Lady Charlotte was embarking on her first season this spring, I was made her lady’s maid.” James could hear the pride in her voice. For a woman in service, it was not possible to reach much higher rungs than a lady’s maid. Unless of course Miss Walker could read and write in which case she might aspire to become housekeeper someday.

“And are you happy with your position?” James continued the conversation.

One of the first lessons that Harrowby had taught him was that just chatting to people and asking them about their everyday lives got you a long way. Instead of leaping straight to the questions you wanted answered, you should put whomever you were questioning at ease first. James knew that many of the other Bow Street Runners scoffed at this point of view, but during the year he had been working closely with Harrowby he had come to learn that it was true. Smalltalk and chitchat were often far more powerful tools than fists and threats.

“Very happy. Lady Charlotte is a very kind mistress,” Miss Walker answered. She sounded a bit curt, James’s thought, but he could be imagining it, or it could be because of something entirely different than the topic. Him for all he knew.

James wanted to ask her how Lady Charlotte was kind to her, but before he had a chance, she turned the conversation around.

“How are you finding Great Farleigh Hall, James? I understand that you have only been here a week.”

James cursed himself for not speaking quickly enough. He clearly still had a lot to learn from Harrowby who always seemed to avoid these situations where he had to answer questions of a personal nature – or just about any questions for that matter.

“I like it very much,” James blurted immediately and hoped that the answer did not sound too rehearsed. To be frank he was hoping that he could leave as soon as possible – having solved the case and apprehended the culprit first, of course.

“And where was it you were employed before? I think one of the other footmen mentioned that you came from quite far away,” Miss Walker asked as they reached the landing with the door to the family bedrooms.

“Yes, Suffolk. I was working at the Marquis of Riplingham’s estate,” James offered without her having to ask.

“It’s a long way to move. Why would you move all the way to Somerset?” Miss Walker asked.

James tried to read her face in the poor light on the servant’s stairs. He felt quite certain that it was merely a question to get to know him and not her trying to pick his story apart.

“My sister moved her with her family, and I wanted to be close to her,” he once again lied and then deliberately opened the door onto the hallway, meaning that the conversation had to stop. Mr. Curtis had very strict rules about where the servants could and could not speak.

Lady Charlotte was not in the room when they entered, but James caught sight of her in her dressing room where she peeked out and then immediately retreated out of sight. Her movements reminded him of a scared deer.

James placed the pelisse over a chair, poured the water into the wash basin and retreated back to the hallway without having cast a single glance at the doe-eyed duke’s daughter. Although could she really be called doe-eyed when her eyes were grey?