The Light of the Day - Eric Ambler [54]
“You will sleep here,” he said. “The chef has the next bed. You will eat your meals with him in the kitchen.”
“Where is the toilet?”
“There is a pissoir across the yard in the stables.”
“And the bathroom?”
He waved his hand towards the sink. He was watching my face and enjoying himself just a bit too obviously. I guessed that this had been his own wonderful idea of a punishment for the crime of calling him a servant, and that Harper probably did not know of it. In any case, I had to protest. Without some privacy, especially at night, I could neither use the radio nor write reports.
I had put my bag down on the floor to rest my arm. Now I picked it up and started to walk back the way we had come.
“Where are you going?”
“To tell Mr. Harper that I’m not sleeping here.”
“Why not? If it is good enough for the chef it is good enough for you, a driver.”
“It will not be good enough for Miss Lipp if I smell because I am unable to take a bath.”
“What did you expect—the royal apartment?”
“I can still find a hotel room in Sariyer. Or you can get another driver.”
I felt fairly safe in saying that. If he were to call my bluff I could always back down; but I thought it more likely that I had already called his. The very fact that he was arguing with me suggested weakness.
He glared at me for a moment, then walked to the stairs.
“Put the car away,” he said. “It will be decided later what is to be done with you.”
I followed him down the stairs. At the foot of them, he turned off left into the house. I went out to the yard, left my bag in the garage, and walked back to the car. When I had put it away, I went into the house and set about finding the kitchen. It wasn’t difficult. The passage which I had glimpsed from the back entrance ran along the whole length of the house, with a servants’ stairway leading to the bedroom floor, and, on the right, a series of doors which presumably gave the servants access to the various reception rooms in front. There was a smell of garlic-laden cooking. I followed the smell.
The kitchen was a big stone-floored room on the left of the passage. It had an old charcoal range along the rear wall with three battered flues over it, and a heavy pinewood table with benches in the middle. The table was cluttered with cooking debris and bottles, and scarred from years of use as a chopping block. Empty butcher’s hooks hung from the beams. There was a barrel on a trestle, and beside it a sinister-looking zinc icebox. A doorway to one side gave on to what appeared to be a scullery. A short man in a dirty blue denim smock stood by the range stirring an iron pot. This was Geven, the cook. As I came in he looked up and stared.
He was a dark, moon-faced, middle-aged man with an upturned nose and large nostrils. The mouth was wide and full with a lower lip that quivered much of the time as if he were on the verge of tears. The thick, narrow chest merged into a high paunch. He had a three-day growth of beard, which was hardly surprising in view of the fact that he had nowhere to shave.
I remembered that he was a Cypriot and spoke to him in English. “Good evening. I am the chauffeur, Simpson. Mr. Geven?”
“Geven, yes.” He stopped stirring and we shook hands. His hands were filthy and it occurred to me that Mr. Miller was probably going to need his Entero Vioform. “A drink, eh?” he said.
“Thanks.