Read Online God Save the Queen! by Dorothy Cannell - Free Book Online Page A

relatives at all who would offer you a home?”
    “Not that I knows about.”
    “You poor man.” She handed him the sugar bowl by way of a consolation prize.
    “Sir Henry will see me all right.”
    “I wouldn’t bank on her Ladyship,” Mrs. Much said darkly.
    “She’s not the easiest to please,” Mr. Tipp conceded, “but she does love Gossinger Hall something fierce.”
    “Well, good luck to her!” Mrs. Much resettled herself at the table. “Don’t take offense, because it’s clear you have your loyalties, but I can’t pour my heart and soul into a place where there’s not one fitted carpet or a color television in sight and the plumbing dates back to the Dark Ages. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing when on my very first day Mr. Hutchins took me up one of those stone staircases and showed me that horrible pit toilet. I’ve never seen such a disgusting place in my life. And I couldn’t have been more thankful that it’s kept locked and I wasn’t to be put in charge of one of the keys and told to go in there and clean once a week.”
    Mr. Tipp tried to look sympathetic, but as a man who had dreamed of mucking out the stables as his father and grandfather had done before him, he found himself somewhat at a loss for a response. So he wisely said nothing.
    “I’ll be glad to get out of this place.” Mrs. Much got to her feet again and with a heartfelt sigh removed Mr. Tipp’s teacup from his hands. “Flora’s a nice enough girl, but I wouldn’t say she’s company. Not much spark to her, but I’m not one to pull people to pieces. Maybe she’s not strong. She’s pale enough to be a ghost, which isn’t to be wondered at after growing up in this tomb of a house! Sometimes if I wake up in the middle of the night,” Mrs. Much gave a trembly laugh, intended to indicate she wasn’t a coward by nature, “I hear noises deep down inside the walls that sound like screams.”
    “There’s a lot of stories told about strange doings at Gossinger Hall over the centuries.” Mr. Tipp lowered his voice. “You’ll have heard tell about the Queen’s tea strainer that went missing. But did you know there’s some as say one of the maidservants was blamed, and punished, for taking it? Seems to me, considering there’s been one or other of us working here down through the years, that she was a Tipp like people say.” This confession was made with a curious hint of pride. “And it could be that it’s her screams you hear of a dark night, and her who put a curse on Gossinger Hall.”
    “There’s a curse on the windows all right.” Mrs. Much was looking out the one above the kitchen sink. “All those horrid little panes with so much lead on them it looks like cross-stitch. Give me a nice picture window and double-glazing any day. Mrs. Frome, the lady I worked for before coming here, had the loveliest big windows. It was that sort of house, if you can picture it, Mr. Tipp. Only five years old, with fitted cupboards everywhere you looked and all the pictures bought to match the curtains. They purchased every bit of furniture brand-new when they moved in, Mr. Frome insisted on it. And, as I told him when Mrs. Frome was taken away in the ambulance never to come home again, he could take comfort in knowing he’d nothing to regret. Don’t go reproaching yourself that you didn’t buy one of those self-cleaning cookers, I said when Mr. Frome cried on my shoulder like a baby. Those sort of gimmicky things take all the fun out of housework. And it was true. I’d loved every minute of scrubbing the racks so you’d never think a Yorkshire pudding had come out of that oven.”
    “That’s a sad little story.” Mr. Tipp looked up at the clock as he spoke.
    “It was an overdose that took her.” Mrs. Much teared up. “Accidental, of course, because what woman with a fridge that makes ice cubes and a Laura Ashley bedroom would want to make away with herself? And I took it especially hard, because before Mrs.