Page 87 of Storm of Bells
‘Look, Miss! There!’
I looked.
‘Err… Mr Ambrose?’ Pulling Vinnie back intothe carriage with me, I glanced at my dear employer. ‘What did yousay again is the name of the village where your house isbuilt?’
Mr Ambrose sacrificed a precious moment ofhis time to glance up from the business documents he was studying.‘I didn’t say.’
My eyes narrowed. ‘And if youweretosay?’And be careful with your answer if you don’t want to spendyour wedding night reading all three volumes of ‘The Hunchback ofNotre Dame’!
A moment of silence.
‘Then, it would be Collundale.’
‘Ah.’ I nodded. In my chest, my heart wasdoing a fast tap-dance. ‘That’s what I thought.’
Swallowing, I glanced out of the window atthe sign again.
Collundale – 10 Miles
Ten miles. Just ten miles. So close.
‘And, um…this estate of yours…’
‘Yes?’
‘What state of repair would you say it is in,exactly?’
He considered the question for a moment.
‘Adequate.’
I closed my eyes, resisting the urge to punchhis nose in. ‘Bloody hell!’
‘What did you say, Miss Linton?’
‘Nothing, nothing.’
Adequate. That was Mr Ambrose’s word foreverything from stupendous to horrendous. But, let’s think aboutwho we are dealing with here, for a moment. This was the kind ofman who was so stingy even the rats in the cellar of Empire Househad gone on strike and left in protest. What state would his housebe in?
I’ll give you three guesses.
Follow me up the stairs, Miss, please. Don’tmind the holes in the floor. That’s how the bats find their way outof the flooded cellar. We wouldn’t want the little darlings to belocked in, now would we? Now, this is your room. That charminglittle compost heap in the corner is your bed. You’ll just have toconvince the rooster to move.
I cleared my throat. ‘How often have youstayed there during recent years, exactly?’
‘I stay there quite often, Miss Linton.’
‘Ah. And, um…have you ever had to entertainguests there?’
A moment of silence. Then…
‘No.’
‘Ah.’
And just look at those curtains, will you?Beautiful! Admittedly, the old ones weren’t bad either, but afterthey rotted away, the spiders made ones that are at least twice asdecorative. One just has to love that fashionable cobweb pattern,don’t you agree, Miss?
No. It couldn’t be as bad as that. It justcouldn’t. For one thing, because Mr Ambrose would have long agochased the spiders away after they refused to pay rent. Besides…helovedme! He wouldn’t stuff me into some hovel with no floorand half a rotten roof, would he?
