CHAPTER I
CALTON HALL
“Gone!” said the cook, tragically.
“They can’t be,” said the parlourmaid, with that blank disbelief that is so helpful in times of stress. “Did you look in the cake-tin?”
“Did I look in the cake-tin?” demanded the cook, in tones of fury. “They was never in the cake-tin, and they aren’t now. Wotever may be the custom in your home, Elizer, it’s not my ’abit to pile up fresh cream-puffs in a cake-tin when they’re all filled with cream and just ready for a party. ’Ow’d they look, I arsk you, all messed up, and the cream stickin’ ’ere and there on ’em in blobs? I left ’em spread out singly on them two big blue dishes, same as I could serve ’em in two jiffs. And they’re gone.”
“There’s the dishes, right enough,” said the parlourmaid, still bent on being helpful. She inspected faint traces of cream on their blue expanse, with the air of a Sherlock Holmes. “They been there once, anyone can see. Oh, have another think, Cook, dear—you must have put them on the cake-plates!” She dashed hopefully at a large safe, peered into its recesses, and lost heart visibly on meeting only the cold stare of a big sirloin and a string of pallid sausages.
“Anyone as ’ud think I’d put cream-puffs in the meat-safe—!” said the cook, wearily. “ ’Ave sense, Elizer, if it’s any way possible. I tell you, I left ’em on the blue dishes; there’s the cake-plates all ready for ’em, clean d’oyleys an’ all. An’ not a cream-puff left! Well, you can search me. I give up.”
“But where can they have gone to?” wailed Eliza, dismally.
“I dunno. But there’s young limbs in this school as is equal to anything. It ain’t the first time things ’ave disappeared from my pantry. Scones I’ve missed, time and again; and there was sausage-rolls last week, and ’alf a jam-sandwidge another time. Lots of little oddments, as you might say. But this is ’olesale, an’ no mistake!”
Eliza was understood to murmur something feebly about the cat.