Florence and Giles

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‘Please, Mrs Grouse, I have dropped my needle on the floor of my bedroom and cannot look for it, for I haven’t a candle. Would you fetch me a new one, please?’

She exasperated a sigh. She had been full-flowing her complaint and did not want to be cut off. In a trice she unclipped the key ring from her belt and held it out to me by a particular key. ‘Here, Florence, unlock the large armoire in the storeroom and take one out – only one, mind – then lock the cupboard and bring the keys straight back here to me.’

I skipped off. Now, normally this would have been a rare chance to purloin an extra library candle or two, but I unheeded that. I straighted to the housekeeper’s sitting room and her desk. Then began an anxiety of trying keys. There must have been some thirty keys on that great jangling hoop and I knew I had but a minute or two at most to find the one I wanted. It obvioused that most were too big, great door keys that they were, so I concentrated on the dozen or so small keys that doubtlessed for cupboards and drawers. I lucked it the fourth one I tried. It slipped gratefully into the lock like a child into a warm bed on a cold night. It turned with a satisfying click.

I was tempted to open the drawer and it was all I could do to stop myself, but I knew that if I did and found something I would be powerless not to look at it and so would end up redhanding me. I left the drawer unlocked, which all along had been my strategy, and hastened back outside. There was no time now to visit the storeroom for the candle and so I had to hope that Mrs Grouse would not think of it or, if she did, assume it was in my pocket and not ask to see it.

As it was, it fortuned she was still so busy complaining John she simply took the keys from me without a word or even a glance and I awayed fast before she turned her attention to me. I made my way up to my room and from under my bed pulled out the box of old dolls and other such childish things that were long unplayed these days. This was where I kept my secrecy of bedtime books, for no one but me ever looked in it. It was also the hidery for my purloinery of candles, which I needed for the library and for reading in bed at night; I filched one whenever I could. For instance, whenever I aloned in the drawing room I would remove a candle from its holder, break off the bottom half, secrete it in my pocket and replace the top part; nobody ever noticed the candles were growing shorter. In the double candelabra I operated on both candles this way, to keep the appearance of them burning at the same rate.

Tonight I intended to open the drawer I had unlocked and inspect the contents, if any, and for that I would need my own candle. I could not risk lighting Mrs Grouse’s sitting-room candles. She might notice next day that they had mysteriously burned down overnight; and in the event of anyone hearing me and coming into the room, even if I heard them approach and managed to snuff the candles first, they might see them smoking or spot that the wax was warm and soft. My own candle I could snuff and then push under the rug next to Mrs Grouse’s desk, for retrieval in the morning.

My intention was to pretend to nightwalk, which I had often done before when I sleeplessed and wanted to library during the night. My nightwalks had been described often enough to me to know just how I should walk, as regards posture, pace, facial expression and so on, but there was an extra difficulty this time: because my nightgown was unpocketed, I could not carry candle and matches with me, for if caught it would obvious my trip was planned and not a nightwalk at all. So I took my candle and matches downstairs and hid them in the top of a plant pot in the hall. The plant was some bushy thing with leaves like a jungle, under which my lighting equipment would not be seen.