The Servants by Michael Marshall Smith Page A

time. They keep getting mucky no matter what I do.”
    She pronounced “time” more like “toyme,” and some of the other words sounded a little odd to Mark’s ears. Her face was bright red and she was sweating like a pig. She grabbed the spoon from the man, spat in it, and rubbed it hard on an apron that at one point might very well have been white.
    “’Course it be,” she said. “Question is what you’re doing with it, Mr. Maynard. Know you don’t like to get your hands dirty.”
    And then she laughed, very loudly, and for a long time.
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    “This young gentleman had it in his possession, ” the man said, when she’d finally stopped. “Do you have any notion what he might be doing here?”
    The woman—Martha—grinned, showing a set of teeth in which there were significant gaps. “Came with the last side of beef,” she said. “I’m thinking he might make a nice pie. What do you think?”
    Mark blinked, having no idea how seriously to take this. He felt hot now, very hot—presumably because of the heat pumping out of the range. Just then it made a sudden, drawnout sound, like a deep and rumbling cough. Both Martha and the man turned to look dubiously at the cooker.
    “It’s doing it again,” Martha said, and a good deal of the cheer in her voice had disappeared.
    A bell started ringing then, insistently, and Mark noticed a row of them had appeared on the side wall of the kitchen. He was also aware of someone entering the room behind him, and turned sluggishly to see a stumpy young girl rushing in, dressed in a gray uniform.
    “I’m from upstairs,” he said, to whoever would listen.
    “Up stairs ?” the man in the suit said immediately, as if Mark had said he was from Mars. “Then how did you get down here ?”
    “Must be a friend of Master Tom’s,” the girl in the gray dress muttered as she hurried past. She spoke quietly, as if it was a risk. Her face was pale and a little blotchy. “The family has visitors from up London today, don’t they?”
    When she got to the back corner of the kitchen, she disap  
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    peared, just vanished clean away. Mark could hear the sound of footsteps on wood, hurrying, sounding as if they were going upward.
    “That’s as may be,” the suited man said. “That’s as very well may . . . be . But nonetheless I repeat, in the hope this time of an answer: how did he get down here ?”
    He turned to Mark with something between irritation and deference, and bent toward him again. “Young sir, what is your name ?”
    “Mark,” Mark said.
    “Mark,” the man repeated. “Mark. I see, I see . And how did you come to be down here, Master Mark, if I might be permitted to enquire ?”
    Mark pointed back at the corridor that led toward the front of the house. “I, er—that way,” he said.
    “ Aha, ” the man crowed, smiling in a thin, triumphant fashion. “Not the back stairs?”
    “No.”
    “But from the front .”
    “Yes.”
    The man nodded briskly, now looking like a chicken that had finally been proved correct over a point that had long been in bitter dispute. “Would you mind coming with me?”
    he said.
    Mark found himself following the man—Mr. Maynard—
    out of the kitchen and into the hallway. The scant light was once more coming from flickering sources on the walls. The dim bulbs that had been hanging from the ceiling had disappeared. It had become smoky, too, very smoky—particles
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    m i c h a e l m a r s h a l l s m i t h hanging in the air, swiveling in slow motion, like a kind of dark and weightless rain. There was a thick smell everywhere, like rancid fat. The noise coming from the range cooker had got worse too, and the last glimpse he got of Martha was of her standing unhappily in front of it, hands on her hips. They were only halfway along the passage when someone else appeared—the short woman Mark had also seen the other night. She had come in