He looked at his wife as he spoke.
She did not answer, but seemed to be busying herself pouring out more tea into her cup. Although it was already nearly full.
Vanda looked from one to the other and then she asked them,
“Have you heard of these men before?”
“No, no,” Mrs. Taylor answered quickly. “We knows nothin’ about ’em.”
She was obviously becoming agitated and so spoke in a way that was not in the least like her.
Vanda next looked at Taylor.
She did not speak, but he was well aware that she was asking him a question,
“I knows of nothin’ we can tell you, Miss Vanda,” he said at length. “They ’as nothin’ to do with us.”
“But you are aware they exist,” Vanda insisted. “Have they been here causing any trouble?”
Mrs. Taylor put down the teapot and laid her two hands palm down on the table as she turned to say to Vanda,
“Now just you listen to me, Miss Vanda. Go home and say nothin’ of what you’ve heard. There be nought you can do about it and we wants no trouble.”
“Trouble?” Vanda asked in a bewildered tone. “What sort of trouble are you talking about and how can it possibly affect you?”
Mrs. Taylor looked helplessly at her husband.
“We be alone ’ere, Miss Vanda,” he said, “except for the grooms and Repton be an old man while Nat and Ben be high on a horse but small on the ground.”
Vanda would have smiled at the description of the two younger grooms, who did in fact look rather like jockeys, if she had not been feeling so worried.
‘What can be going on?’ she wondered. ‘And why are the Taylors being so mysterious about it?’
When she then thought about it, there was really no one to tell.
Mr. Rushman, the Manager, was over seventy and could no longer ride a horse on the estate, but instead drove a gig.
He was not in good health and in the winter was laid up with bronchitis and rheumatism, which kept him in his house week after week.
She pulled her chair nearer to the table and, resting her chin on her hands she said,
“Now tell me what it is that is troubling you both. You know I will help if I can and, if you want me to remain silent, I will say nothing to anybody.”
Taylor looked at his wife.
Mrs. Taylor let out a big sigh that seemed to shake her whole fat body.
“We’ll tell you,” she offered at length, “but I for one be too afraid to even speak of them.”
“Speak of who?” Vanda asked.
Taylor cleared his throat,
“It be like this, Miss Vanda. We be ’ere as you knows to look after the ’ouse till ’is Lordship comes back ’ome.”
“No one could do it better,” Vanda said encouragingly.
It was true that, with the help of three women from the village, the house was as well looked after as when the old Earl was alive.
Granted there were not four footmen in the hall as had been usual or a butler in charge of them.
Nor was there a chef in the kitchen, the equal of the one employed by the Prince Regent and with four scullions under him.
When the Earl had died, Mr. Rushman had appointed the Taylors as caretakers of the house.
They had certainly lived up to that name and had taken the greatest care of Wyn Hall and they had always in the past told Vanda how much they enjoyed their job.
She just could not understand what could have occurred now to make them so frightened and reluctant to talk of their fears.
“Go on,” she prompted Taylor.
“They comes ’ere first about two weeks ago,” he began,
“They?” Vanda asked. “Who are they?”
“That be what we ain’t supposed to know,” he replied, “but they be men.”
Vanda knew that from the voices she had heard so she did not interrupt and Taylor continued,
“They asks for water and they says to the Missus and I, ‘you keep your eyes to yourselves and your lips closed and no harm’ll come to you’.”
“They said that!” Vanda exclaimed. “And what did you reply?”
“They be not the sort of men you’d make any reply to,” Taylor said.
“Then what happened.”
“Don’t tell ’er, don’t you tell ’er,” Mrs. Taylor said in an agitated manner.
“I had much better know the whole truth,” Vanda said, “and then if anything happens I will be able to help you.”
“Nothin’ll happen, but nothin’.” Mrs. Taylor chimed in. “They promised that if we said naught.”
“I don’t count,” Vanda said with an encouraging smile, “and I don’t like to see you both so upset.”
“We be upset right enough,” Taylor said, “but there be nothin’ we can do about it. Nothin’!”
“So where are these men?” Vanda asked.
There was a pause.
Then lowering his voice to little more than a whisper Taylor informed her,
“They be in the West wing, Miss Vanda.”
Vanda looked at in astonishment.
The West wing had been shut up for a long time before the old Earl had died. He had decided that the house was too big and the West wing had a good number of rooms that were never used.
In the East wing there was the fine Picture Gallery, the ballroom and a few bedrooms on the top floor and the West wing was just some rooms of no particular historical interest.
Vanda thought that the architects had built it merely to balance from the outside the other wing of the house. At the same time it was definitely a part of Wyn Hall.
She could not imagine anything more horrifying than having hooligans, or whatever these strangers were, living in the house.
It seemed extraordinary that the Taylors had not gone to see Mr. Rushman and demanded that these men were turned out.
She knew, however, that it would be a mistake for her to criticise their behaviour in any way.
She therefore said,
“If they have threatened you, then it must have been very frightening. But surely they don’t intend to stay for long.”
“We don’t knows about that,” Mrs. Taylor replied. “We just keeps ourselves to ourselves and pretend that they ain’t there.”
“But they are trespassing,” Vanda pointed out quietly.
“We knows that,” Taylor said, “but they are dangerous, Miss Vanda, and we ’ears tales of things that ’ave ’appened, which might ’appen ’ere.”
“What sort of things?” Vanda enquired.
Again he lowered his voice so she could hardly hear and she was really reading the movements of his lips as he said,
“Murders.”
“I don’t believe it!” Vanda exclaimed. “And if these men are murderers, then how can we allow them to be here in The Hall and near the village?”
Taylor