Liza watched Mary close the door.
She then proceeded up the flight of stairs to the second floor. As on the
first, she opened a narrow door out into the end of a long hallway. No one was
around, but the sound of the people downstairs echoed up a stairway down the
hall. Carefully Liza walked down the hallway, passed several closed doors. She
was not sure, exactly, what she was looking for. At first she imagined opening
up the many doors until she found a room with Mr. Cogsworth sitting tied to a
chair. That, was, of course, crazy… but as she thought about it she realized that
it was as good a plan as any.
Liza went back to
the first door she had passed on coming into the hallway. Maybe she should
begin by checking the rooms now? She held her breath as she lightly knocked on
the door. She was not, frankly, sure what she would do if someone answered or
saw her. Maybe she could convince someone she was looking for the powder room,
but she doubted it.
When there was no
answer Liza slow and as quietly as she could turned the knob. She doubted
anyone downstairs would hear her over the noise of the party. In fact she
imagined she could have yelled and no one would hear, but still, she did not
want to alert anyone unnecessarily to her presence.
The door swung
open silently and she found herself looking at a small but tastefully decorated
bedroom. The air was still, and slightly musty. The decorations seemed somewhat
plain, still very nice by almost anyone’s standards, but compared to what she
had seen in the rest of the house they were somewhat mean.
The room was also
quite empty. It seemed like the room, being at the end of the hall, was more
likely a backup guest room, for times when the house might be truly full of
guests staying over.
Liza carefully
closed the door and made her way down to the next door, this time on the other
side of the hallway, the side facing the street.
Again she knocked,
and when there was no answer she stepped inside. This time the room seemed less
musty and cleaner. The decorations also were more up-to-date and fancier by
far.
She was about to
turn around and leave when she heard a noise, someone, or some people, were
coming up the stairs. She quickly stepped inside the room and closed the door
as quietly as she could. Footsteps and giggling echoed in the hallway. A man’s
deep voice was talking quickly and animatedly while a woman’s high laughter
rang out. Liza though to press down on the door’s lock, a second later the
handle of the door jiggled.
“Bother!” said the
man’s voice. “The man’s gone and locked this one too. Perhaps we could see what
is free upstairs…?”
“Betsy!” and more
giggles.
“Yes! Betsy, sure,
come on!”
Liza let out
breath and rolled her eyes at the same time as she heard the couple walk away.
She wondered for a moment which room she was in. Why didn’t they go across the
hall? Well, either way she was glad. She waited until she could no longer hear
the couple and then unlocked the door, opened it and carefully looked out into
the hallway.
She came back into
eh hallway and went down past the landing to the other end of the hallway and
to another close door. She was about to try the handle again, but as she
thought about it more she realized that it was very unlikely that she would
find Mr. Cogsworth here in the house. She realized she was wasting precious
time.
Maybe if she could
find the study of Mr. Iggelsdin she might find paperwork. She stopped to admire
a large portrait of an elegant woman. The woman’s face was thin and arch, but
her eyes seemed to hold a deep cold in them. A peel of laughter arose from
downstairs and Liza was brought out of her reverie.
Where would the
study be, she wondered. In many houses she had been in the study was often on
the first floor, but she had not noticed such a room on the way in. Of course
it might have been behind closed doors. But, she wondered, maybe in a house
this large, with rooms devoted to entertaining on the first floor, the study
might be on an upper floor. She glanced again at the painting, noting that in
the background, behind the rather severe looking woman, was a country house.
She wondered if-
“Can I help you?”
Came a voice, a woman sounding as if she was trying to sound polite but at the
same time dripping with the expectation that she would have to remonstrate the
person she was speaking to.
Liza turned around
and found herself face to face with a tall tight faced woman who was bedecked
in the largest, most elaborate dressed Lizard seen that night. The woman also
wore a tall white powered wig that seems to have various fruit in it. The dress
was beyond puffy and had royal purple and gold cloth running in stripes up and
down the poofed out skirt. To Eliza’s mind the woman looked nothing short of
ridiculous, but the woman’s sour and hateful expression quickly killed any
intention to laugh.
Liza’s mind raced,
not sure what to say. She needed a moment to think…suddenly it clicked, the
portrait! It was her!
“M-Mrs. Iggelsdin?
Pamelia Iggelsdin?”
The woman drew
herself up and almost sneered. “Yes, I am Mrs. Iggelsdin And whom do I have the
pleasure of addressing?” She asked in a way that easily conveyed the exact
opposite of any sort of pleasure Liza could imagine.
“I, uh, I am Liza
Littlefield Ma’am. I uh-“
“Yes, well Ms.
Littlefield, what can I hope you with… exactly? Are you here for the ball? In
that… get up?” The woman was looking Liza up and down as if she was a rag
picker. Liza’s mind was quiet blank. What on earth could she say she was doing
sneaking around the house? This whole thing was a terrible mistake.
“I, well, I uh, I
needed, I was looking to-“
“Well! Spit it out
girl!”
“I-“
“Ohhhhhhh, there
you are miss!” A high and rough female voice came from behind Liza, who froze,
now completely at a loss as to what was happening. “Miss Liza, isn’t it?” Liza could now see the
owner of the voice, a small, slight woman in an apron and a small paper hat.
“You poor thing, you really must have overheated sum thin’ fierce. I told you
to go down the stairs for the loo, not up. Sorry ma’am” The maid said as if she
had just noticed the large purple and gold being standing in front of her. “I
mean, the powder room.”
“You know… this
girl?” Mrs. Iggelsdin almost screeched. The maid looked taken a back.
“Oh no mi lady,
not at ‘tall, but I found her quite over heated downstairs. I helped the miss
out of her dress and told her to go down stairs to get some relief I
did. Poor thing misheard me, didn’t you?”
Liza nodded
dumbly.
“And she’s still
not well, why the color’s go right out of her I’d say.” The maid looked
meaningfully at Mrs. Iggelsdin, as if waiting for her to challenge her story.
Instead she pursed her lips.
“Very well, take
her down stairs then Ethel. Be sure she doesn’t get into to anymore trouble.
“Yes M’lady.” The
maid, Ethel, said with a small bow. Liza felt the color come back to her face
and her mind clear, but she decided it was in her best interest to play up her
“condition.”
“Yes…” She said,
almost as if half asleep. “Thank you soon much Mrs. Iggelsdin. I am sure I will
feel better after I sit a spell…” by this time Ethel was pulling Liza by the
hand to the stairwell. Liza’s last look at Mrs. Iggelsdin showed the woman to
be studying Liza much as a spider studies a fly.
As they made their
way down to the first floor Liza tried to speak.
“Thank you, I-“
“Hush Mis!” Ethel
said, glancing back behind Liza.
“But I-“
“”Shhh, not until
you get better, downstairs.” She said the last word with raised eyebrows
as they reached the first floor landing.
Liza nodded and followed silently as they went down the next flight into
the low floor.
Here the house’s
decorations and style became instantly plain as could be. The walls were
regular plaster, no paper, and the lights unadorned fixtures. This was the
downstairs of the great house where the servants scurried about, bringing up
plates of food or bottles of wine or bringing down empty plates and bottles.
Ethel steered Liza into a small room filled with shelves of dishes and glasses.
The maid closed the door behind her.
“Ethel is it?”
“Yes ma’am.”
“Oh Ethel, I owe
you many thanks, maybe my life perhaps. I am Liza.”
“Yes Ma’am, your
friend told me as much.”
“My friend? Oh,
Mary. You know Mary?”
“No Ma’am, but she
stopped me as I was passing by and wanted to talk to me. She asked me a couple
of questions and then told me to find you.”
“Questions? Such as?”
“Oh, how long I’d
been here, I told her five years, and what I did. I’m a third floor maid,
second to the first maid there, but for the party I am helping out in general.
I think she was worried about you, thought you might be going through the rooms
upstairs. When I hear that I told her I’d better get you quick. The Iggelsdins don’t
like people poking around much.”
“No? Why not?”
“Well, I am not
supposed to talk much about the house hold you know ma’am, but I don’t mind
saying the family is mighty strange. They pay decent but lots of coming and
goings.”
“Did Mary mention
a Mr. Cogsworth by any chance?”
“No ma’am, but I
might have heard the name, now that you mention it.”
“Yes? Is he here?
In the house?”
“No ma’am not that
I know. Look, I don’t know anything really, just heard the name. I’ll be real
honest with you ma’am, you aren’t gonna get much from the help if you’re
sneaking around here. Not because anyone here is especially loyal to the
Iggelsdins. but because the Iggelsdins just don’t share much with us. I worked
at other houses and there you know everything, but here they’ll host people and
send the maids and footmen out of the room. And they make it quite plain that
they don’t want us telling anything, even if we did know. So I aren’t saying
anything.”
“Oh yes, of course
Ethel. You did me a great service rescuing me from that woman. I won’t press
you any further. If you could do me one more small favor-
“The Dress ma’am?”
“Yes, how did
you-“
“Well ma’am, a
good housemaid knows everything that happens in a house, right? I have your
dress downstairs, I found it on the way up to find you. Let me fetch it for
you.”
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