Page 11 of The Mistress of Ashmore Castle (Ashmore Castle #3)
He wanted to lash out – he wanted to hurt someone.
He needed a scheme to occupy him. He needed to get one over on somebody to restore his faith in himself.
He started up a card school in the hayloft, through which he could fleece the grooms and some other local idiots of their pay, but that was not enough.
He tried to seduce the new maids, but they didn’t respond to him.
The only maid who would ‘let him’ was Mabel, and he’d had her long ago.
It took care of his carnal needs, but it wasn’t a challenge.
‘I’m going to break out,’ he warned his reflection, as he shaved in the morning. ‘Something’s coming. I can feel it.’ His reflection looked back through slitted eyes, darkly glittering and dangerous. Pretty good , he thought admiringly. Sinister, even .
Nobody got the better of Sid Hook for long.
Moss was standing on a painted and gilded royal barge floating down the Nile.
The little housemaid, Ada, was gazing up at him in adoration as he pointed out the wonders of the scenery and explained everything to her.
The flooding of the Nile, the building of the Pyramids, the making of papyrus, the working of the Archimedes Screw – words flowed from him in a stream of dazzling eloquence, and the more he spoke, the more she adored him.
Her face turned up to him like a flower on the delicate stem of her long, white neck, and he stooped, slowly, slowly, to place a kiss upon the sweet rosebud of her lips—
His forehead gently struck the open book on his table, and he straightened up hastily, to hear the unwelcome voice of James saying sarcastically, ‘Your eyes hurting, Mr Moss? You don’t need to look at the book that close, do you? P’raps you need a magnifying-glass.’
James was lounging in the doorway surveying him with a sneering smile. The A to Z of Universal Knowledge lay open at Cleopatra, one of Moss’s favourite topics, and he had evidently dozed off while reading. Little Ada was not in the room with him, alas. She had only been part of the dream.
He pulled on dignity like a mantle. ‘I was just resting my eyes for a moment,’ he said sternly. ‘I wasn’t asleep.’
‘Course not,’ James said, with what sounded like a snigger.
Moss drew towards him the other open book on the table, which happened to be the cellar book – pulled it over the top of the A to Z and pored over it with a magisterial forefinger.
‘What is it you want?’ he demanded, not looking at James.
‘I’m busy. Some of these older vintages need drinking up and new laid in.
I wish his lordship would come back. What do you want ?
’ he concluded irritably, as James seemed to be whistling under his breath.
‘I was thinking I could help you, Mr Moss,’ James said. ‘Seeing as there’s not much on at the moment, till the snow clears and we start entertaining again.’
‘Help me with what?’
‘Well, rearrange the cellar, and check everything against the cellar book, maybe,’ said James. ‘You just said some old stuff needs drinking up. And there’ll be gaps that need filling. Do a thorough check. Make lists. You could have it all ready for his lordship when he gets here.’
Moss was indignant. ‘What do you think I do all the time, every day? Keeping the cellar book is one of the butler’s most important responsibilities. In fact, the word “butler” comes from—’
‘Oh, give it a rest!’ James muttered.
Moss turned red. ‘ What did you say?’
‘I said, maybe I could give you a rest. If you give me the keys I could do it for you.’ If he had the keys, he could re-arrange things so as to liberate some bottles, which he could then sell, and alter the cellar book to cover the disappearances.
Or, better still, make it look as though Moss hadn’t kept the book properly.
‘You’re looking tired these days, Mr Moss, if you don’t mind my saying so. ’
‘I do mind, thank you very much! I am not tired, and no-one but me will touch the cellar. The cellar keys never leave my person.’
James shifted his weight to the other side.
‘Well, the silver, then. It’s a long time since there was an inventory took, and I noticed last time that some pieces were in the wrong place.
Those new young boys put things away careless.
Now, we could take everything out, make an inventory, clean it all, and put it all back in a better order, so the things that are used a lot are easy to get at. ’
And if he didn’t manage to snaffle something pocket-sized and valuable in the process, his name wasn’t Sid Hook.
And the best of it would be, if he did the writing down as well (and trust him for that!
“You call it out, Mr Moss, and I’ll write it down – you’re the one who knows what everything is!
”), he could miss it off the list so it would never be officially missing.
He smiled ingratiatingly at Moss. ‘That’d be a good use of our time, wouldn’t it? Better than having me standing around doing nothing.’
Moss found James’s smile unnerving. It was probably only because he had just been dreaming about the Nile, but it put him in mind of a crocodile. But Moss did love turning out cupboards and taking inventories. It was a way of imposing order on an imperfect world.
‘Very well,’ he said. ‘We’ll start tomorrow. You can get young Wilfrid to help.’
That wouldn’t suit James’s plans. ‘Oh, I don’t think so, do you, Mr Moss?
Those greasy fingers all over everything?
And he’s a real dropper. Dropped the sugar bowl only yesterday, sugar all over everywhere, and you know how that attracts the ants.
He’d drop some fine bit of plate and put a dent in it.
Much better it’s just you and me, men who are trained to handling good stuff. ’
‘Yes, you’re right,’ Moss said. ‘Some of the older pieces are worn quite thin. They’re delicate. Very well, we’ll do it ourselves. Thank you, James.’
He said it as a dismissal, but James chose to interpret it otherwise. ‘No, thank you , Mr Moss,’ he said, with a bow that was not entirely ironic.