prime minister by Stanley Baldwin but he was soon in trouble and a general election was called. George campaigned as hard as anyone, knocked on doors, spoke at public meetings, harangued and argued. Although Melsham was a safe Conservative seat, the result over the whole country was a victory for the Labour Party and Ramsay MacDonald was invited to head the first ever Labour government, albeit with Liberal support. ‘It won’t last,’ George said and was proved right when another election was held in October.
The Conservatives swept back into office, helped by a fraudulent letter published in the newspapers purporting to be from the President of the Communist International, calling on British workers to prepare for armed revolution. As far as George was concerned, it meant he could start lobbying for new contracts, but with his capital tied up in the industrial site and Barbara being bloody-minded over selling the farm, all he could do was play a waiting game and hope something would turn up.
Lady Isobel Quarenton, returning from her weekly visit to Melsham market, discovered a leak in the manor roof. What made her look up as she got out of the car, she didn’t know. Perhaps it was the sun winking on the upper windows or a biplane flying overhead; whatever it was, it was fortuitous because she noticed several slates missing.
James, her last surviving servant, who was butler, footman, gardener and chauffeur rolled into one, was shutting the passenger door of the Bentley, before driving it round to the coach house. ‘James,’ she said. ‘Had you noticed those tiles were missing?’
He looked in the direction of her pointing finger. ‘No, My Lady. Had I done so, I would have drawn your attention to them.’
‘I’d better go and see what the damage is.’ Maintenance of the once lovely old house was horrendously expensive and getting worse and she simply did not have the money; her only income was a tiny annuity her father, the Earl of Cotterham, had left her and the rents from a couple of cottages which had once been part of the estate. Inflation had reduced the former to next to nothing in value and the cottages also needed repairs.
Her mother had died when she was a child and her father of influenza in 1918, which was probably a blessing: he would have found the changes in their fortunes impossible to live with. But Melsham Manor was her home; she had never known another. Cosseted and protected all her life, and having no brothers, which might have made a difference, she had had little opportunity to meet young men, certainly none her father approved of. Consequently she had never married and now she lived alone, except for James, whose whole working life had been spent in the service of the family. Given the opportunity to leave, he had refused to budge on the grounds that she needed him. He did everything about the house and garden except the cooking, which she managed herself. One man couldn’t be expected to do so much and so it didn’t get done. But leaking roofs were important.
The attics, which had once housed kitchen maids, parlour maids, chambermaids and footmen, were now filled with lumber: old furniture; lampshades; toys; an old cradle on rockers; suitcases full of school books which her mother would never throw away; umbrella stands; a stag’s head; a stuffed owl whose glass cover was broken; tennis rackets; board games; a blackboard and a desk put up there when the schoolroom became redundant, all of it thick with dust and festooned with cobwebs. She hadn’t been up there for years and was appalled by the clutter. But she couldn’t ask James to clear it out and she couldn’t face doing it herself. She picked her way carefully through it to the spot beneath the missing tiles. It wasn’t difficult to find because the ceiling had collapsed and the floorboards beneath the hole were wet. If it rained again, it would seep down to the room below. Something had to be done. She went downstairs and rang Kennett’s.
It was the first time George had been inside the gates of the manor. There was a weed-encrusted gravel drive leading to the front door of a substantial mansion which was mostly Georgian, though one wing, at right angles to the main facade, was older and there was an extension at the back which had been added more recently, but everywhere spoke of neglect. His professional eye roamed over it