He says nothing, just glances round the room. “Wyn, you’d better take her to the north wing.”
The north wing, when I finally see it, is a nightmare, one of those horror chambers you used to find at old fashioned fairgrounds.
Wyn laughs at me when we unlock the double doors and step into the wing. “Yeah, It’s full of crap.”
Crap indeed. The long corridors are dark with electric wires hanging from the ceiling and rooms piled high with furniture covered in sheets.
“When we cleaned the house last year, it was disgusting, you shouldo’ seen it. Dead animals and everything. The smell was” – he clamps both hands over his throat in a gagging motion – “and we had to wear masks and then Evan made us burn everything.”
“What dead animals?” I peer into the gloom, worried I might find skeleton of cattle.
“Oh, birds and rabbits. And, ” he says the last word with emphasis then his face splits in a gleeful smirk. “Did you know Evan is scared of foxes? He is like legitimately phobic. And they were nesting in the house. It was full of shit.” Again, he says this as if the more disgusting the better. “Yes, lots of shit. Fox shit and like pigeon shit on everything.”
I look down at the floor.
“Not here. It was most of it in the middle bit because the windows were broken and animals could get in. But the wings were all locked so nothing got there. Just dust and crap. We helped empty out all the rooms in the East Wing. That’s where your room is. It’s the best. The South Wing isn’t too bad. It was all locked up and like a museum. We’re not allowed in there. Evan says no one is to touch it until Alex and his friends check out if there’s anything like antiques, you know.”
“How long have you worked here?” I ask him while looking around for something to use in my temporary bedroom.
“I’m not working. I’m a volunteer,” he says as he leads me to the first of the massive rooms. “We’ll find beds in here.”
“You mean you don’t get paid?”.
“No.”
This can’t be right; he’s already spent several hours helping me. I can’t think of what to say, so I just follow him. There seems to be a kind of system. Different rooms are dedicated to different things. The first few have beds, all kinds of beds from four posters to small cots that must have belonged to servants. One of these would probably suit me, and it’ll be easier to carry to the other side of the house. But Wyn is a perfectionist. At his excited urging, we keep looking until we find a pretty brass double bed with a decorative headboard of swirling ivy in a free-flowing art nouveau pattern.
Now Wyn takes me around like a tour guide. And he’s a mine of information.
“How many people live here?” I ask hoping to nudge him into telling more about William Jones.
“No one lives in this wing, Or the West except Watson, he’s the gardener. He converted three rooms in the West Wing so he can be close to the back garden.”
Judging by what I’ve seen out of various windows, the back garden is a wilderness of dead wood. “He can’t have been here long,” I say.
“A couple of months but hasn’t done a thing. Alex jokes that he’s gardening online. And the professor calls Watson an expensive mistake who doesn’t like working with his hands. Neither does the professor, but he doesn’t have to.”
“How long has he lived here?”
“The professor? Ages.” Wyn makes an exaggerated arms-wide gesture.
“What’s he like?”
“He’s nice. He always pays me to clean up for him, but he says I’m not allowed to tidy up his papers.”
“Evan mentioned he had a father. Have you met him?”
Wyn gets suddenly animated. “Yeah. He was a millionaire, but he died long ago. That’s how Kendric Park came to him. His great grandparents used to live here. The family used to have a mine, a real silver mine. But it all ended, and they moved to England. Evan came back last Christmas.”
As soon as I can stop the rapid flow of gossip, I say, “I meant Professor Jones’s father.”
Wyn just shrugs. “Don’t know about that.” He points to a chest of drawers. “How about this?”
It’s made of some dark wood and needs a lot of polishing but is wide enough to have eight drawers.
“Are you sure we can carry all this” I ask him as he starts on another room full of wardrobes.
“Of course.” He sounds almost insulted that I dared to question his strength, “I can do anything you want.”
