Three things always stick in my mind about him … You’re quite sure it is all right for me to speak? … Well, the first is when I had only been at the house a month or two and was still finding my way about and I was right down in the basement and heading for the kitchens, I suppose, when I came across him in the shadows, sitting on a step.
He seemed to think my name was Rosie. There’s no knowing where he got that idea from. But I had been warned by Mrs Pledger that he was confused enough to begin with and that in such an event it was probably best not to bother to put him right.
Well, he asked me where the trolleys had got to. I should explain that between the kitchens and the lifts up to the dining room is a fair old stretch, so there are tramlines set into the flags of the basement corridors and when the food is ready to go upstairs it is put inside the metal carts, then wheeled down the tracks. So I understood that these were the carts the old Duke was after, but seeing as how I did not know where they were kept I told him, in my politest voice, that I supposed that they were all locked up and I was about to carry on my way when he jumped up and grabbed me by my hand and insisted that I help him hunt them down.
Well, to be honest, I hoped we would not find them. I was very nervous about the whole affair and not half as pleased as he was when we came across one, tucked in a corner, just by the cupboards off the main corridor. Well, having found the cart I made my excuses and was all set to leave again but the old Duke … beg your pardon, His Grace … was having none of it and insisted I help him out.
Well, he … Oh, I don’t quite know how to put it … but he made me … made me … push the cart up and down … with him inside. He climbed inside the cart, where the plates and tureens would normally go, and had me push him up and down the corridors … at speed.
There I’ve said it. Oh, dear… You’ll have to excuse me a second … Oh, my goodness … What a to-do.
The second thing … now what was the second thing? Oh, yes. That they discovered His Grace … and I should say here that I was not personally present at this one, but my good friend Molly was and she’s no reason to lie … but that they found him one morning in the dumb waiter which we use to bring the coal up from below. Just sitting there when they pulled it up, he was. All squashed up in the coal lift, with his face as black as you like.
Molly told me she was all set to scream – as indeed you would be – but he raised a finger to his lips so she never got the chance. He said that if she listened very hard she would hear the coal miners far below. Said you could hear them digging up the coal.
Well, she asked to be taken off coal duty after that one. Said she’d rather sweep the mausoleum every morning than risk another episode like that.
The third and final thing which stays with me, and the last thing I want to mention here, happened really not that long ago when I was coming in to work one morning, at the very crack of dawn. I was almost at the house and thinking to myself how the world was freshening up and was very much looking forward to spring when I saw a strange shape hanging from a tree. Very peculiar. I thought to myself, it looks just like a man. And of course it was a man. It was the Duke himself, caught by his trousers. Just dangling from a tree.
I went to the bottom and shouted up to him. Asked if he required assistance of any sort. And he explained that he had been checking on the bud situation and that he appeared to have got his trousers snagged. I asked if he had been there very long and he said that he did not think so, but that whatever it was I intended doing I should hurry up because there was no knowing how long his trousers would hold out. It was a fair old drop.
So I went and called Clement, who came running. We had to fetch a ladder to get him down.
Yes, that last one will certainly stay with me. His Grace hanging from a tree.