Free God Rob Ye Merry Gentleman by Andrea Frazer

DECEMBER 1 st
    It was the first day of December, early evening, and all was peaceful at Belchester Towers. Lady Amanda Golightly was engrossed in a crossword puzzle in the drawing room, everything else just filtered out. Opposite her, sprawled on a comfy old sofa, his fingers laced over his stomach, Hugo Cholmondley-Crichton-Crump was indulging in his post-prandial nap, his hands rising and falling with his respirations, while a gentle snoring issued from his slightly open mouth. They ate early on these dark winter evenings, when there were no guests.
    Beauchamp Senior and his wife Enid were in the dining room, Enid sitting as close to the table as her ‘bump’ would allow, sorting out tree decorations for the coming festivities, her husband putting them into four separate boxes for the trees they planned to erect this year: one in the drawing room, one in the library, one in the dining room, and one in the hall. His son, Beauchamp Junior, was on telephone and door duty, in case of the rare instance that they had any callers to the property. None were expected.
    Halting her furious lateral thinking, Lady Amanda called out, ‘Beauchamp!’ It had occurred to her that it was about time they had a post-dinner cocktail, and she was rather thirsty after the saltiness of the smoked salmon they had consumed a little earlier. This hail disturbed Hugo’s slumbers, and he made some rather coarse ‘gnam gnam gnam’ noises with his mouth, finishing with a particularly loud snort.
    Lady Amanda gave a sniff of disapproval, and then was immediately distracted by the efforts of two men attempting to enter the room simultaneously and getting wedged in the door frame. ‘Sorry,’ she apologised, and indicated that the elder of the two was the one whom she desired. Old habits died hard. There had been much confusion at first, when Beauchamp’s long-lost son had turned up seeking employment as a footman, and a temporary solution had been reached, but Lady Amanda was getting on in years and her memory wasn’t what it had been in her youth, especially when her memory was employed on something as tricky as four down.
    The butler often appeared at her elbow when she rang or called, having approached as silently as a cat and giving her quite a start. When there were two of them, the arrival of the pair, one on each side of her body, she had feared for her heart, physically jumping with shock. The son was as cat-like as his father in the stealthiness of his tread.
    Beauchamp the father had been in her employ for many years, his son was a recent addition to the staff, and only a short while ago they had arranged that she would summon them by either calling ‘Major’ or ‘Minor’, but this she had forgotten, so engrossed was she in her mental tussles with the crossword.
    â€˜My apologies, Minor: it’s your father I really wanted. About your duties, now, and I’ll mind my memory in future. ‘Major – Beauchamp – would it be possible for you to rustle us up a cocktail. I feel the need, and if Hugo doesn’t want his, I might polish that off as well.’
    â€˜And what would her ladyship prefer?’ asked her butler, solicitously.
    â€˜I’ll leave that to your own excellent taste. I just fancy a bit of a livener. I can’t possibly contemplate turning into one of those old biddies’ – here, she glared over at Hugo, still in the land of nod – ‘who falls asleep every evening, and only wakes up in time to go to bed.’
    He had barely left the room on his errand when there was a ring on the old-fashioned exterior bell-pull, and the slightly more tenor tones of the butler’s son calling out, ‘Got it’. Really, she’d have to stop him doing that. It was so common; as if they lived in a council mansion.
    The door was heard to open, followed by the strains of young voices, almost in tune with each other, raised in the melody of a