A Sinister Service Read online

  “And tell me,” Lady Annondale said with an inquisitive lift of her eyebrow, “have you designed anything lately for Her Majesty?”

  Eva understood the question was meant to detect whether Crown Lily still enjoyed being the favored pottery of the Royal Household. She and the four Renshaws turned their faces toward the designer.

  He smiled pleasantly. “Of course. I designed a luncheon set for the Princess Royal’s birthday last spring. She was quite enamored of it, as was the queen.”

  “Splendid.” Lady Annondale cast a significant glance at her brother. “You see, Fox, this shan’t take long at all.” She received, in response, a half-hearted shrug.

  “Yes, well . . . While it’s . . . er . . . true that Mr. Mercer here has been working on patterns for you, Lady Annondale, another of our artists has been doing so as well.” Mr. Tremaine’s cheekbones glowed with color. “He’s quite talented as well, and eager to take up the project, and, well, you understand, I don’t wish to play favorites. Especially when your ladyship”—he raised his gaze to take in the other Renshaw siblings—“and the rest of your charming family should have the very best of choices to consider.”

  The balding art director compressed his lips, then sighed again and nodded. “Indeed. Our Percy Bateman does fine work, if sometimes a bit overly bold in line and color. He’s young, of course, and at times could use some reining in. Raw talent, you understand. We’re very glad he joined our art department.”

  “Yes. Yes, we are.” Mr. Tremaine stressed the word we.

  Eva narrowed her eyes and studied this Mr. Mercer. He didn’t seem at all glad the younger man had joined what he obviously considered his art department. She allowed herself a small smile, knowing each young Renshaw to be of strong opinions and unafraid to express them. They would soon see for themselves which artist embodied their vision for their grandparents’ anniversary gift.

  But would they be able to agree? She had her doubts that it would be as easy or quick an endeavor as Lady Annondale believed.

  “All right, then.” Lady Annondale glanced at the nearest building. “Shall we go and meet this Percy . . . ?”

  “Bateman, ma’am,” Mr. Tremaine was quick to offer.

  Lady Annondale nodded distractedly. “Go and meet him and see what our choices are?”

  “Of course, ma’am. Right away.” The owner of Crown Lily half stumbled as he led them around a building and into another enclosure. Eva no longer felt an urge to grin at the man’s jitters. Perhaps meeting nobility had unnerved him, but he won Eva’s respect by seeming disinclined to allow his art director to take on the project without giving the younger artist an equal chance. “We’ve arranged a tour of the factory,” he said as he held a door open for them. “This is our main administrative building, where we house our designers, accountants, clerks, and salesmen, and where we entertain prospective clients, like yourselves. Let’s begin in the showroom.”

  “A tour won’t be necessary.” Lady Annondale breezed by him through the doorway.

  The man looked crestfallen, until Lady Phoebe spoke up. “I would love to see the facilities. Amelia?”

  “Oh, yes, I’m very curious to see how the china is made.”

  Fox added his consensus with a shrug. “Count me in.”

  “Phoebe,” Lady Annondale murmured, but Mr. Tremaine came to the rescue. He stole a quick glance down at her rounded belly.

  “If you’d care to wait in our conference room, Lady Annondale, I’ll . . . er . . . have tea served and you can look over the various shapes of our teacups. They’re already laid out on the table. It’s those shapes, you realize, that will determine the look of the rest of the service. In fact, that was part of the plan. A tour, followed by tea and refreshments served in a variety of cup shapes and sizes.”

  “Oh, what a wonderful idea!” Amelia exclaimed. She pulled the pin from her hat and removed it, allowing her honey-golden hair to fall forward around her shoulders. “Thank you, Mr. Tremaine. Julia, you can wait here with Hetta while the rest of us take the tour. It won’t take very long, Mr. Tremaine, will it?”

  “Not at all,” he assured them.

  “Very well.” Lady Annondale pulled off her gloves. Hetta went to her side to help her off with her overcoat and smoothed the sleeves of her frock “Perhaps Mr. Mercer will keep me company and tell me about his ideas for the design?”

  “Nothing would give me greater pleasure, Lady Annondale,” the designer said. “Truly, there is nothing like holding each shape in your hand, and actually sampling tea from it, for helping to find the exact right product.”

  Lady Annondale turned to her maid. “Hetta, would you care to join the others? I’ll be fine here with Mr. Mercer, I’m quite sure.”

  Hetta shook her head vigorously. “I stay with Madame,” she said with a possessiveness that ended the matter. She also issued Mr. Mercer a stern look from under her blond brows. Not that she had any reason to distrust the designer. Hetta merely assumed that manner with any individual new to her lady’s acquaintance.

  After a brief word to a young man Eva supposed was his secretary, Mr. Tremaine led them along the main hallway. Sounds of typing, of telephones ringing, and muted conversation reached her ears from behind closed doors. He opened a set of double, frosted glass-paned doors. Unmistakable pride brought a renewed flush to his cheeks. “This is our showroom.”

  Good heavens. Eva gasped as she peered over Phoebe and Amelia’s shoulders. Bright electric lights and the sunlight pouring through a wall of floor-to-ceiling windows illuminated china of every shape, pattern, and color—florals, geometric designs, crests, and picturesque scenes. Porcelain gleamed and glimmered everywhere Eva looked. She had never seen so many cups, saucers, and dishes in one place, not even in the china department at Harrods. There were porcelain teapots that ranged from short and round to tall and tapering, creamers and sugar bowls, serving bowls and platters of many different sizes on stands to display their designs.

  “And through here is our conference room, where we’ve set up an exclusive display based on your initial thoughts on what you might like.” Mr. Tremaine opened another door into a well-appointed room, with a long mahogany table and at least a dozen leather chairs ranged around it.

  Lady Annondale, the first to enter, approached the table. She reached out a fingertip to stroke the graceful line of the nearest vessel, a fluted teacup sporting a bright burst of flowers. She raised the cup by its delicate pink handle and held it to the light from the windows. Even from where Eva stood in the hallway, she could see the transparency of the porcelain, which rivaled an eggshell in its thinness. Hetta followed her mistress inside a good deal more timidly.

  “Ach du meine Güte,” the Swiss woman murmured. Eva had spent enough time in Hetta’s company to know this loosely translated to good gracious. Eva nodded her agreement.

  Once Mr. Tremaine saw Lady Annondale and Mr. Mercer settled with a pot of tea and plate of biscuits, he gestured to Phoebe and the others. “This way, if you please.”

  He preceded them to another, heavier door. They stepped outside to an expansive enclosure between buildings that stood several stories tall. Directly behind a row of them, the tapering stacks of those odd structures Eva had seen on the way here poked against the sky. Lorries lumbered slowly across the open space, jostling over crisscrossing rail tracks that connected one building to another. Men were methodically loading and unloading barrels from railcars.

  Eva helped Lady Amelia back on with her hat to prevent the bits of floating ash from settling in her hair. They crossed the quadrangle and entered a building. The industrial humming Eva had noticed earlier grew stronger now, seeming to vibrate up through the linoleum floor and radiate from the tiled walls. The first room they came to reminded Eva of the cellars back home at Foxwood Hall, with their stone walls and floor and utter lack of adornment. Ranged about the room were several wide, round vats made of steel. They were at least a dozen feet in diameter and nearly met Eva’s shoulders; she was just a
ble to peer into the interior of the nearest one. Curved blades fanned out from a center axle. There was no one working here, and these particular machines stood idle. Still, she heard the rumble and grind and felt the vibrations of what must be several others of these contraptions in nearby rooms like this one. She supposed these lay dormant for their tour, for safety’s sake.

  “This is one of our grinding rooms,” Mr. Tremaine said. “This is where the ingredients for our porcelain—beef bone, stone, and clay—are ground and mixed.”

  “Looks like Mrs. Ellison’s hand-cranked dough kneader,” Fox exclaimed, “only giant-sized.”

  “It’s not much different,” their guide informed them.

  Perhaps not. Eva had more than once wondered what might happen to a finger caught in the dough kneader’s blades. Now she shuddered to think what would happen to someone unfortunate enough to fall into one of these vats while the blades were churning.

  “And what exactly is the mixture?” Lady Amelia went to the vat, stood on tiptoes, and peered over the edge. Eva felt half tempted to pull her away. “How much of each do you use?”

  “Our formula, my lady, is the strictest of secrets.” Mr. Tremaine seemed to have shed his nerves and replied with enthusiasm. “You see, our special ratio of bone to stone to clay is what makes our china not only the thinnest of Staffordshire bone china, but the strongest. It appears delicate, but it’s made to last, to be passed down through generations. If you’ll all come this way . . .”

  He led them into an adjoining room, another chilly, damp space, where Eva beheld several long metal tanks that stood even higher than the grinding pans. “These are rotary cylinders, which further mix the clay into a smooth and creamy slip. Once that’s done, the slip flows through this trough—or ark, as we call it—and over a powerful magnet to remove any metallic particles remaining in the mixture. Once that’s done, the clay is run through the pug mill to remove any air bubbles that might have formed.”

  “Are bubbles bad?” Amelia asked.

  “Very bad,” Mr. Tremaine confirmed. “They can cause an item, whether a cup or plate or what have you, to explode in the heat of the firing.”

  “I’d like to see that!” Fox exclaimed.

  “Fox,” Phoebe admonished in a whisper. “Behave.” Then to the rest of them she said, “This is so much more scientific than I’d imagined. Quite an elaborate process.” She turned to Eva for consensus.

  Eva nodded, impressed and slightly intimidated by what she’d seen so far. “To think, all this for an object as simple as a teacup. It’s rather like magic, isn’t it?”

  “This is only the beginning.” Mr. Tremaine smiled proudly. “There are many stages to producing our china.”

  “What happens next?” Amelia gazed around her, her eyes alight in her eagerness to learn more.

  The owner walked them out of the building and across the cobbled yard to yet another section of the factory. If Eva had to find her way back to Lady Annondale by herself, she didn’t think she could do it, not without a map and a compass.

  Now she found herself tilting her head back until it could go no farther. This area played host to several of those bottle-shaped structures. Up close they were huge, several stories high, round and wide at the base, tapering to narrow chimneys at the top. Each sent black smoke curling against the afternoon sky. If Eva had felt intimidated by the grinders and rotary cylinders, she was doubly so now. The notion of these looming brick structures posing a danger might be irrational, but she couldn’t shake the sensation. They were simply too big, too foreign to anything she had ever encountered before.

  “These are the bottle kilns,” Mr. Tremaine was saying. “They’re where the first firing takes place—fifty-five hours at twelve hundred fifty degrees centigrade, followed by a cooling period of seventy-two hours. We light several kilns at a time, on a rotating basis.” He went on to describe the series of heat-dispersing flues that ran beneath each kiln, fed by coal furnaces, or what he called fire mouths, set at the base of each kiln.

  “They’re colossal!” Lady Amelia shaded her eyes as she gazed up at the tops of the kilns. “Has anyone ever been trapped inside?”

  “No, indeed, my lady.” Mr. Tremaine sounded almost scandalized. “Not in our nearly two-hundred-year history. There have been other kinds of accidents, to be sure, but not here. We take the utmost precautions to ensure the workers have cleared out before the kilns are sealed and the heating process begins. Nothing organic can survive inside at those temperatures.”

  “No, I would imagine not.” Lady Phoebe moved closer to Eva as if by instinct. “I’m sorry to say I find them rather unsettling.”

  “I think you’ll appreciate the next part of our tour, then.” Mr. Tremaine ushered them away from the kilns. “Now you’ll see more of the artistic side of the business.”

  Before they could enter the next building, however, a voice behind them called out, “Renshaw! Good heavens, is that you?”

  They all turned, and Eva beheld a youth of about Fox’s age, with close-cropped hair and a prominent nose. He reminded her of someone . . .

  Fox strode to the other boy, kicking up dust on the cobblestones in his haste. “What the devil are you doing here? We all thought you died.”

  CHAPTER 2

  Phoebe watched her brother hurry over to the other boy. He had a dog with him, a hulking creature with a muscular body, broad at the shoulders and narrow at the rump. His fur was sleek and short in a brown-and-white pattern. More significantly, the dog possessed a wide, flat snout that assured her that once he set his teeth into something, he wouldn’t release it until he was blasted certain he wished to.

  “Who on earth could that be?” she asked Eva, though she didn’t expect a reply. “Fox didn’t mention knowing anyone in Langston, much less at Crown Lily Potteries.”

  The two boys shook hands and fell into a conversation Phoebe couldn’t make out, though she heard their short bursts of laughter. The dog jumped once toward Fox, but at a word from his master, he set his rump obediently on the ground. Then the pair appeared to become serious. She started toward them.

  “Fox, who’s your friend? Do introduce us.” She stopped some yards away, hoping the animal wouldn’t change his mind about behaving.

  Amelia stopped beside her, perhaps with the same thought in mind, while Eva came up behind them. Then Mr. Tremaine spoke.

  “Trent. Shouldn’t you be filling saggars?” At the sound of his voice the dog gave a friendly bark and trotted over to the factory’s owner. The man bent down to pet the top of his head and gave his shoulders a rub for good measure. He was rewarded with a few affectionate licks before the dog ran back to his master.

  That young man made a face. “I have been, Mr. Tremaine. I’ll go back in presently.”

  “Don’t leave yet.” Fox turned toward Mr. Tremaine. “Don’t send him off. We’re schoolmates at Eton. Or we were before Mercer here disappeared into thin air.” Fox regarded his friend. “What happened to you? And what are you doing here?”

  “Mercer,” Phoebe repeated as a realization dawned on her. “Are you Ronald Mercer’s son? The art director?” she added. Behind her, Eva said, “Oh,” as if this answered a question she’d had.

  “I am,” the youth said, but with little apparent satisfaction. His eyes were hazel, a trait he must have gotten from his mother, for Mr. Mercer’s eyes were dark. “Ronald Mercer is my father, and he’s the reason I’m here.” He relayed this latter information to Fox, who shook his head in puzzlement.

  “I don’t understand. Why did you leave Eton? You were near the top of our class. I only wish I had your marks.”

  The other boy shrugged, staring down at his dog. He bent down to stroke the animal’s stout head and nonexistent neck.

  “Trent is here learning the business.” This came from Mr. Tremaine. “He’s to follow in his father’s footsteps someday.” Phoebe distinctly sensed the word perhaps in Mr. Tremaine’s tone, as if he doubted the boy’s abilities.

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nbsp; Another glance at Trent’s sagging posture suggested it wasn’t the boy’s abilities in question, but his willingness.

  “In light of your reunion, Trent, why don’t you join us on the tour and leave the saggars for later.” Mr. Tremaine smiled indulgently.

  Trent Mercer brightened at the prospect, but Fox frowned. “What are saggars?”

  “They’re special containers we use for the firing,” Mr. Tremaine explained. “They’re made of clay, and have separate compartments into which each item of china is placed to protect them from discoloring in the intense heat. They prevent the glazes from fusing one piece of china to another during the second firing.”

  Fox looked incredulous. “You left Eton for that?”

  “Father has me learning the china industry from the ground up.” Trent shoved his hands in his trouser pockets. His lips flattened for an instant, further revealing his displeasure. “I’ve shoveled ash and stone, been a packer, worked the glost oven—”

  “What’s that?” Amelia wanted to know. “Is that different from the bottle kilns?”

  “Why don’t we continue our tour, and you’ll have the answers to all your questions.” Mr. Tremaine held out an arm to usher them into the next building. They saw the glost ovens, where glazes were melted by electricity into a clear glass finish—a different process than that for the colored glazes. Next came the throwers, who shaped cups and other round items on wheels, and then the molders, who poured liquefied clay into molds to produce more intricately shaped items, such as the fluted cup they’d seen inside.

  They watched an engraver etch one of Ronald Mercer’s designs onto a copperplate. The plates were then covered in pigment and applied to tissue paper, which would be used to transfer the pattern onto the china. From there each piece was given to a painter or enameler, who painstakingly applied colors according to the designer’s explicit instructions. Along the way there were various inspection rooms to ensure the quality of every piece. The rooms in each department were vast, nearly as large as the ballroom at home.