Three maids toiled in the adjacent scullery, washing up all the plates, cups, and flatware from the servants’ afternoon tea. One of Verity’s apprentices stuffed tiny eggplants at the central work table, the other three stood at their respective stations about the room, attending to the rigors of dinner for the staff as well as for the master of the house.
The soup course had just been carried out, trailing behind it a murmur of the sweetness of caramelized onion. From the stove billowed the steam of a white wine broth, in the last stages of reduction before being made into a sauce for a filet of brill that had been earlier poached in it. Over the great hearth a quartet of teals roasted on a spit turned by a kitchen maid. She also looked after the civet of hare slowly stewing in the coals, which emitted a powerful, gamy smell every time it was stirred.
The odors of her kitchen were as beautiful to Verity as the sounds of an orchestra. This kitchen was her fiefdom, her sanctuary. She cooked with an absolute, almost nerveless concentration, her awareness extending to the subtlest stimulation of the senses and the least movement on the part of her underlings.
The sound of her favorite apprentice not stirring the hazelnut butter made her turn her head slightly. “Mademoiselle Porter, the butter,” she said, her voice stern. Her voice was always stern in the kitchen.
“Yes, Madame. Sorry, Madame,” said Becky Porter. The girl would be purple with embarrassment now—she knew very well that it took only a few seconds of inattention before hazelnut butter became black butter.
Verity gave Tim Cartwright, the apprentice standing before the white wine reduction, a hard stare. The young man blanched. He cooked like a dream, his sauces as velvety and breathtaking as a starry night, his soufflés taller than chefs’ toques. But Verity would not hesitate to let him go without a letter of character if he made an improper advance toward Becky—Becky who’d been with Verity since joining her staff as a thirteen-year-old child.
Most of the hazelnut butter would be consumed at dinner. But a portion of it was to be saved for the midnight repast her employer had requested: one steak au poivre, a dozen oysters in sauce Mornay, potato croquettes à la Dauphine, a small lemon tart, still warm, and half a dozen dessert crepes spread with, mais bien sur, hazelnut butter.
Crepes with hazelnut butter—Mrs. Danner tonight. Three days ago it had been Mrs. Childs. Bertie was becoming promiscuous in his middle age. Verity removed the cassoulet from the oven and grinned a little to herself, imagining the scenes that would ensue should Mrs. Danner and Mrs. Childs find out that they shared Bertie’s less-than-undying devotion.
The service hatch burst open. The door slammed into a dresser, rattling the rows of copper lids hanging on pin rails, startling one of them off its anchor. The lid hit the floor hard, bounced and wobbled, its metallic bangs and scrapes echoing in the steam and smolder of the kitchen. Verity looked up sharply. The footmen in this house knew better than to throw open doors like that.
“Madame!” Dickie, the first footman, gasped from the doorway, sweat dampening his hair despite the November chill. “Mr. Somerset—Mr. Somerset, he be not right!”
Something about Dickie’s wild expression suggested that Bertie was far worse than “not right.” Verity motioned Letty Briggs, her lead apprentice, to take over her spot before the stove. She wiped her hands on a clean towel and went to the door.
“Carry on,” she instructed her crew before closing the door behind Dickie and herself. Dickie was already scrambling in the direction of the house.
“What’s the matter?” she said, lengthening her strides to keep up with the footman.
“He be out cold, Madame.”
“Has someone sent for Dr. Sergeant?”
“Mick from the stables just rode out.”
She’d forgotten her shawl. The air in the unheated passage between kitchen and manor chilled the sheen of perspiration on her face and neck. Dickie pushed open doors: doors to the warming kitchen, doors to another passage, doors to the butler’s pantry. Her heart thumped as they entered the dining room. But it was empty, save for an ominously overturned chair. On the floor by the chair were a puddle of water and, a little away, a miraculously unbroken crystal goblet, glinting in the light of the candelabra. A forlorn, half-finished bowl of onion soup still sat at the head of the table, waiting for dinner to resume.
Dickie led her to a drawing room deeper inside the house. A gaggle of housemaids stood by the door, clutching one another’s sleeves and peering in cautiously. They fell back at Verity’s approach and bobbed unnecessary curtsies.
Her erstwhile lover reclined, supine, on a settee of dark blue. He wore a disconcertingly peaceful expression. Someone had loosened his necktie and opened his shirt at the collar. This state of undress contrasted sharply against his stiff positioning: his hands folded together above his breastbone like those of an effigy atop a stone sarcophagus.
Mr. Prior, the butler, stood guard over Bertie’s inert body. At her entrance, he hurried to her side and whispered, “He’s not breathing.”