LITMIR.BIZ

       39

      The next day, Friday, was Christmas Eve. In the morning the two boys and I continued our long march through the Eton Latin Grammar. In the afternoon, we walked in the park. It was exceptionally cold that year. Everywhere the ground was hard and white with frost.

      The mansion-house stood at the southern end of a ridge. The boys took me north along a path running up the ridge’s spine, which commanded a prospect of the river’s sinuous, shining curves beyond the turnpike road in the valley below. No expense had been spared to accentuate the picturesque nature of the spot. An obelisk surrounded by seats artfully constructed of rustic stone marked the highest point of the park and also the place where six paths intersected. We followed the widest of them, which led north-west and gently downwards to a small lake formed by damming a stream that drained down to the river. To the north and west, beyond the stretch of frozen water, lay dense woods.

      Charlie pointed to the trees. “Mr Carswall has ordered the gamekeepers in the covers to shoot strangers on sight. There are poachers at work, he says, and some of them may be housebreakers too.”

      Edgar stared at him. “Surely they would not dare come here?”

      “What is to stop them? We can hardly send for a constable if we see them.”

      The ways of great estates were foreign to me. But before I had been twenty-four hours at Monkshill-park, I had begun to suspect that something was wrong. The domestic economy of a large establishment should run as smoothly as Mr Carswall’s watch. A well-tended park should show everywhere the presiding hand of its owner. Monkshill was a splendid house, in a splendid park. There was no shortage of money. Yet it seemed to me that neither of the ladies had been entrusted with the direction of the indoor servants, and that the master did not care to interest himself in the estate.

      Instead, Mr Carswall had hired people to do these things. This would not have mattered if he had ensured that those he had hired were doing their jobs. But everywhere one saw small signs of neglect: from the spots of grease on the footmen’s liveries to the gate with a broken hinge in the park palings. It was possible, I thought, that Mr Carswall was not habituated to the responsibilities of such an establishment. But I knew too much of his capabilities to believe that he could not have remedied the shortcomings, had he desired to do so.

      It puzzled me at first. An older man would have seen the reason directly. Mr Carswall was old; he knew that his powers were declining; and he was husbanding his energies for a purpose I did not then understand.