Old Lanscombe moved totteringly from room to room, pulling up the
blinds. Now and then he peered with screwed up rheumy eyes through the
windows.
Soon they would be coming back from the funeral. He shuffled along a little faster. There were so many windows.
Enderby Hall was a vast Victorian house built in the Gothic style.
In every room the curtains were of rich faded brocade or velvet. Some of
the walls were still hung with faded silk. In the green drawing-room,
the old butler glanced up at the portrait above the mantelpiece of old
Cornelius Abernethie for whom Enderby Hall had been built. Cornelius
Abernethie's brown beard stuck forward aggressively, his hand rested on a
terrestrial globe, whether by desire of the sitter, or as a symbolic
conceit on the part of the artist, no one could tell.
A very forceful looking gentleman, so old Lanscombe had always
thought, and was glad that he himself had never known him personally. Mr
Richard had been his gentleman. A good master, Mr Richard. And taken
very sudden, he'd been, though of course the doctor had been attending
him for some little time. Ah, but the master had never recovered from
the shock of young Mr Mortimer's death. The old man shook his head as he
hurried through a connecting door into the White Boudoir. Terrible,
that had been, a real catastrophe. Such a fine upstanding young
gentleman, so strong and healthy. You'd never have thought such a thing
likely to happen to him. Pitiful, it had been, quite pitiful. And Mr
Gordon killed in the war. One thing on top of another. That was the way
things went nowadays. Too much for the master, it had been. And yet he'd
seemed almost himself a week ago.
