Chapter 8: The Quarterly Report

I did not put the glasses on at dawn.

I put the case in my blazer pocket, where it rode against my hip.

At ten o'clock, three trustees arrived at the front door in a black car.

I knew because the deputy told me to stand in the hall and look presentable.

"Why?" I asked.

"They vote on the household's future today."

"And I'm the presentation?"

"You are the staff," he said. "Pour the tea."

They sat in the drawing room in a row.

To me they were three gray smudges, two wide and one narrow.

Their voices were the kind that never had to ask for a chair.

Mr. Roake took the head of the table.

The heirs sat across from them, and I'd put each one at a corner.

Goldie was dry.

Jasper had worn only thirty sunglasses, which I counted as a concession.

Ambrose stood behind them all, near the window, and the room was so cold the trustees kept their coats on.

I poured the tea.

It came out of the pot dark and smelling of tin.

The steam smelled wrong to me, but I put it down to bad water.

"I don't want any," Goldie whispered when I set hers down.

"Why not?"

"It tastes of pennies."

"It's tea."

"It's always tasted of pennies."

"Then I'll make you cocoa," I said, and I took her cup away.

I did not think about it again until much later.

"Gentlemen, madam," Mr. Roake said. "The ledger."

A folder opened with a papery slap.

"Incidents since the spring," he said.

"Seven floods. Two fires. A broken window on the east wing, and last night, a cracked window in staff quarters."

I held very still.

"A cracked window?" said the narrow trustee, with interest.

"A draft," I said, from the sideboard.

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