Free The Pride of the Peacock by Victoria Holt Page A

felt a little uneasy at having been watched by Hannah.
    “Do you prefer it now to the days when my family were here?”
    She hesitated, then she said: “In some ways. Mr. Henniker goes away a lot and we have the place to ourselves. It seems funny that … at least it did at first, but you get used to most things. He’s easy to work for.” I could see that she was implying that my mother was not.
    “Miss Miriam was only a girl when she lived here,” she went on.
    That was a long time ago. Before I was born. “
    They won’t be pleased to hear you’ve been here. Miss, I reckon. “No, they won’t,” I agreed and added: “If they find out.”
    Mr. Henniker is a very strange gentleman. “
    “Unlike anyone I’ve ever known,” I agreed.
    “Well, you just think of the way he came here. Who’d have thought a gentleman like that would take a place like this?”
    We were silent for a while contemplating the view. My eyes kept going back to the Dower House. Poor Jarman had

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    straightened himself up as Maddy came out and started io| talk to him.
    I was amused that unbeknown to them I could I watch them. I Shall we go in now. Miss dave ring suggested Hannah, ‘y I nodded and we descended the circular stairs and entered , a room-I admired the moulded beams of the ceiling, the ;
    panelled walls and the carved fireplace.
    There are so many rooms like this that you lose count of them,” said Hannah.
    “We don’t use them all even when there’s a house party.”
    “Is there often a house party?”
    “Yes, gentlemen come to talk business with Mr. Henniker. At least that’s how it was. I don’t know if it will be the same since his accident.”
    “I suppose they come about opals.”
    “All sorts of business Mr. Henniker’s engaged in. He’s a very rich gentleman. That’s what we say is so good about being here … in the servants’ hall, I mean. There’s never all this talk about economizing, and wages come prompt, not …”
    “Not like it was when my family was here.”
    Most of the gentry have their money troubles, it seems. I’ve talked to others in houses like this. But someone like Mr. Henniker . well, he’s got to have a lot of money to buy the place, hasn’t he, so it stands to reason he can afford to keep it up-not like someone inheriting it and finding it’s a drain. “
    “I see that it must be a great comfort to work for Mr. Henniker after my family.”
    “It’s all so different. Mr. Wilmot’s always saying it’s not what he’s used to, and I reckon he sometimes hankers for a house with more dignity. But it’s nice to know your wages are there … on the dot just when they’re due, and there doesn’t have to be all this pinching and scraping. He never locks up the tea or anything like that … never asks to see Mrs. Bucket’s accounts, but I reckon he’d know fast enough if there was any fiddling.”
    We had come to a gallery.
    “Once,” she went on, ‘there were pictures of the family all along here. They were taken away, and Mr. Henniker never put up pictures of his own. A gallery’s not a gallery without pictures of the family, Mr. Wilmot says, but we don’t know much about Mr. Henniker’s. “
    The gallery was beautiful, with carved pillars and long i narrow
    windows, the stained glass of which threw a lovely glow over the place. There were curtains of rich velvet at intervals round the walls. They hid the part which wasn’t panelled, Hannah explained.
    They say this is haunted,” she told me. There always has to be one haunted room in a house like this. Well, this is it. No one’s seen or heard anything since Mr. Henniker’s been here. He’d frighten any ghost away, I reckon. They used to say that they could hear music here coming from the spinet that was once there. Mr. Henniker had it shipped out to Australia. It meant something special to him, I heard. Mrs. Bucket says it’s a lot of fancy. Mr. Wilmot believes it though, but then he’d think that any family