“Well, I trust we’ll give you a good enough time that you’ll encourage them to visit. And how are you, my dear fellow? I was so very sorry to hear about your injury.” That was no platitude, Sir Hubert’s eyes were full of concern. “That was a bad business, a dreadful mistake. It shouldn’t have happened to you.”
Lady Armstrong broke in with a rippling laugh. “My dear, Mr. Curtis has had a terribly long journey. We’ll be dining in an hour. Wesley will take you up. The east corridor, Wesley,” she told a well-built servant in Peakholme’s dark green livery.
Curtis followed the man up the wide stairs, leaning a little on the banister rail and admiring the house as he went. Sir Hubert, a wealthy industrialist, had had Peakholme built to his own specification some fifteen years ago. It had been an extraordinarily modern creation at that time, equipped with the very latest innovations, with running water in all the bathrooms, heated by hot-water radiators and illuminated throughout by electricity from his own hydroelectric generator. These luxuries were becoming quite familiar in London hotels, but to find them in such measure in a private house so far from the centre of things was still a surprise.
The long hallways on which the electric lamps shed their bright yellow light, reliable and clean but so much more glaring than gaslight, seemed conventional enough otherwise. Sir Hubert’s son was well known to be hunting mad, and it seemed to be a family trait, since the passageways were hung with oils of fox-chasing scenes and lined with stuffed birds of prey in glass cases, all in dramatic poses. An owl stooped, wings sharply bent, in the act of catching a mouse; a hawk leaned off a branch, ready to launch into the attack; an eagle glared with glassy eyes. Curtis registered them as landmarks in a house that wasn’t altogether easy to negotiate.
“This is a rather unusual arrangement,” he remarked to the servant.
“Yes, sir,” Wesley agreed. “The house is laid out to permit a service corridor running behind the bedrooms here. That’s to allow for the electrical wiring, and the centralised heating.” He spoke the technical words with pride. “Marvellous thing, the electrical. I don’t know if you’re familiar with its operation, sir?” he asked hopefully, opening the door to a room at the end of the corridor.
“Please, demonstrate.” Curtis, a practical man, was quite familiar with electricity, but this tour was obviously the highlight of the servant’s day, so he let Wesley show him the miracles of buttons that summoned servants, and switches that brought illumination or operated an overhead fan. Given the chill in the outside air this cold October, let alone the house’s position in the north of England, he doubted he would require the latter.
There was a large gilt-framed mirror on the inner wall of the room, opposite the bed. Curtis glanced at himself, assessing his travel-stained state, and caught Wesley’s eye in the glass.
“Welcome to Peakholme, sir, if I may be so bold.” The servant was watching his reflected face, without dropping his eyes. “If there’s anything I can do for you during your stay, sir, please ring. You don’t have a man, I believe?”
“No.” Curtis turned from the mirror.
“Then may I assist you now, sir?”
“No. Thank you. Unpack for me later, please. Otherwise I’ll ring if I need you.”
“I hope you will, sir.” Wesley accepted the shilling Curtis gave him, but hesitated a moment. “If there’s anything else…?”
Curtis wondered what the man was hanging around for; the tip had been generous enough. “That’ll be all.”
“Yes, Mr. Curtis.”
Wesley left the room, and Curtis sat heavily on the bed, giving himself a moment before he had to change and get ready to face his fellow guests.
He didn’t know if he could do this. What was he playing at, coming here? What did he think he could achieve?
He had used to enjoy house parties, in the days when they were rare oases of entertainment and relaxation between military postings. He had attended three since he had retired from the war a year and a half ago, jollied along by all the people who told him that he had to come out of his shell, rejoin society, be a good fellow. Each visit had felt more arid than the last, its activity more pointless, the frenetic self-indulgence of people whose lives held nothing but the pursuit of pleasure.
At least he was at this party with some sort of purpose, even if, now, his purpose seemed so unlikely as to be absurd.
He stripped the black leather glove off his right hand and flexed his thumb and forefinger. The scar tissue that covered his knuckles, where the other fingers used to be, was tight. He rubbed it with the softening ointment for a few minutes, thinking about the work ahead, then pulled the disguising glove back over the gnarled mess of mutilated flesh and began to dress for dinner.