Chapter 9: The Chimney

On Sunday morning I took a bucket, a candle and a ladder to the music room chimney.

Everard took the ladder out of my hands.

"Sit," he said.

"It's my piano."

"It's my roof."

"I don't know the first thing about roofs."

"I do," said the Duke of Ashvane, and went out of the room with the ladder on his shoulder.

I followed him up three flights of stairs and a trapdoor, and out onto the leads in the thin Sunday sun.

The whole of Hertfordshire was spread out below us, green and soaked.

He had taken off his coat and rolled his sleeves to the elbow.

He walked along the roof's edge, and I clung to the nearest chimney with both arms.

"That one," I said.

"That's the library's."

"Then the next."

He stood by the stack above the music room and looked down.

"There," he said.

A strip of lead around the base had lifted and curled.

Behind it the bricks were green, and the mortar had crumbled out of the joints.

"Every rain since October has gone down that flue," I said.

"Since before. The last tuner said the room was damp. Nobody asked why."

"Nobody asked a person who stands on a roof."

He glanced at me over his shoulder, and his mouth tucked up.

"I don't believe anyone has ever told me that my roof was in bad repair in quite that voice," he said.

"Would you like it in another?"

"No. It was an education."

He went to the trapdoor and called down for a bucket of mortar, a trowel and a roll of lead.

Keep reading free with an account. Start The Reason a Piano Tuner Ended Up at the Duke's Mansion from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.