Traitors Gate - Anne Perry [59]
When he turned into the kitchen, the cook, still in her black bombazine with her apron over it, looked up sharply. She was new since Pitt’s time, and to her he was a stranger. She was flustered as it was, with the loss of her master, being allowed to attend the service herself, while still being in charge of the funeral meats.
“You lost, sir? The reception rooms are back that way.”
She pointed to the door through which he had come. “’ere, Lizzie, you show the gentleman—”
“Thank you, Cook, but I am looking for the gamekeeper. Is Mr. Sturges about? I need to speak to him about Sir Arthur’s dogs.”
“Well I don’t know about that, sir. It isn’t ‘ardly the day for it….”
“I’m Thomas Pitt. I used to live here.”
“Oh! Young Tom. I mean …” She colored quickly. “I didn’t mean no …”
“That’s all right.” He brushed it aside. “I’d still like to speak to Mr. Sturges. It’s a matter Sir Matthew wished me to look into, and I need Sturges’s help.”
“Oh. Well ’e was ’ere about ’alf an ‘our ago, an’ ’e went out to the stables. Land needs to be cared for, funeral or no funeral. You might find ’im out there.”
“Thank you.” He walked past her, barely glancing at the rows of copper pans and kettles, or the great black cast-iron range still emanating heat, even with all its oven doors closed and its lids down. The dressers were filled with china, the larder door closed, the wooden bins for flour, sugar, oatmeal and lentils were tight. All the vegetables would be in racks outside in the scullery, and the meat, poultry and game would be hung in the cold house. The laundry and still room were along the corridor to the right.
He went out of the back door, down the steps and turned left without conscious thought. He would have known his way even in the dark.
He found Sturges just outside the door to the apple room, the ventilated place with shelf after shelf of wooden slats where all the apples were placed in the autumn, and as long as they did not touch each other, usually kept all through the winter and well into the late spring.
“‘Allo, young Tom,” he said without surprise. “Glad as you made it for the funeral.” He looked Pitt directly in the eye.
It was a difficult relationship and it had taken many years to reach this stage. Sturges had replaced Pitt’s father, and to begin with Pitt had been unable to forgive him for that. He and his mother had had to leave the gamekeeper’s cottage and all their furnishings which had gone with it, the things they had grown accustomed to: the kitchen table and dresser, the hearth, the comfortable chair, the tin bath. Pitt had had his own room with a small dormer window next to the apple tree. They had moved up into the servants’ quarters in the Hall, but it was nothing like the same. What was a room, when you had had a house, with your own doorway and your own kitchen fire?
Of course he knew with his head how lucky they were that Sir Arthur either had believed Pitt’s father innocent or had not cared, and had given his wife and child shelter and made them welcome. Many a man would not have, and there were those in the county who thought him a fool for it, and said so. But that did not stop Pitt from hating Sturges and his wife for moving into the gamekeeper’s cottage and being warm and comfortable there.
And Sturges had then walked the fields and woods that had been Pitt’s father’s work and his pleasure. He had changed a few things, and that also was a fault not easily forgiven, especially if in one or two instances it was for the worse. Where it was for the better, that was an even greater offense.
But gradually memory had softened at least a little, and Sturges was a quiet, patient man. He knew the habits and the rules of the country. He had not been above poaching on the odd occasion as a youth, and he also knew it was by the grace of God, and a landowner willing to look the other way, that he had never been caught himself. He made no judgment as to whether Pitt’s father had been guilty or innocent, except