Free Help the Poor Struggler by Martha Grimes Page B

did the other. He sat now at the kitchen table eating a mess of something.
    Mrs. Mulchop moved a pot in the huge inglenook fireplace, in the huge kitchen, in the huge house, in the huge grounds. . . .
    Jessie’s mind drifted like a veil of rain over all of this hugeness that was the Ashcroft house and grounds. “It’s too big,” she said, looking at the egg on toast on her plate. Its sickening yellow eye stared back at her.
    â€œYour egg, lovey?”
    â€œNo. The house. I’m all alone.” Jessie rested her chin in her hands.
    Mrs. Mulchop raised her eyes heavenward and shook her head. She did not realize that beneath this surface melodrama, a true drama of heartsickness was playing itself out. “You’re ten years old, not a baby. Wouldn’t your uncle be annoyed to see you so sorry for yourself?”
    Jessie was shocked to think that anyone would believe Uncle Robert would ever be “annoyed” by Jessie. “No! He’d understand.” Now Jessie felt the threat of real tears. Real tears she could not contend with.
    â€œYour uncle’s only been gone a few days, lass. No need to get fidgety about it —”
    â€œFour days! Four and a half! See —” Jessie scraped her chair back and marched to the calendar. “He didn’t leave me a note. He didn’t give me a Valentine, either.” She went back to her chair as if she’d just proven all theories of a clockwork universe defunct in the face of this outrage against reason. But what she felt was more worry than outrage.
    â€œHe’s probably only gone up to London to see to another governess for you.” Mrs. Mulchop glanced at her husband, but his face was too near his bowl to return the look.
    Jessie heard the slight sharpness in that another. She ran through governesses like a shark through a salmon-fall.
    â€œAnd you’re not all alone. There’s me and Mulchop and Miss Gray and Drucilla.”
    The Dreadful Drucilla, Miss Plunkett, the present tutor-governess. Not a proper one, though. More of a minder Uncle Rob had settled for when he had discharged the Careless Carla, who was absolutely brilliant at maths, but a little absentminded about keys and spectacles. Out walking across the moor, she had lost Jessie one day, though there had been, in the confrontation with Robert Ashcroft, some doubt as to who had lost whom.
    Battalions of governesses. How they sat so neatly and nicely when he was interviewing them. Uncle Rob questioned them closely about their former posts, their credentials, their ability to respond to emergencies; but now and then he would throw one in from left field, such as And do you like rabbits?
    Jessie liked to see the corners of his mouth twitch and the bewildered look on the face of the prospective employee. Well, yes. That is, I expect I’ve nothing against them.  . . . He had explained later to Jess that it was a matter of honesty, and Miss Whatever-her-name wasn’t being honest. She was from Portland (where the Ashcroft stone had come from). In Portland, one is never allowed to mention rabbits. They all hate them, Uncle Rob had told her.
    Thus that one had lost out on a very well paying post, as did most of the prospective women who applied. They sat there saying, Oh, yes, Mr. Ashcroft, when they meant No; or Oh, no, Mr. Ashcroft, when they meant Yes. And a lot of them would try to snuggle up to Jessica until they realized she wasn’t much good for a snuggle, and call her stupid things like “Poppit,” and pet her dog Henry, to show how much they liked animals.
    Robert Ashcroft could not go on forever relentlessly pursuingthe perfect governess, so in the end, he left it up to Jessie, as she was the one who would have to put up with the woman. Uncle Rob often asked her why it was she avoided the nicer ones and chose the worst. There was the Hopeless Helen (who kept the key to the drinks cabinet in more or less