Chapter 1: Act 1
Chapter Text
Even with just one more day to go, the spirit of Christmas has a hard time making itself felt at Downton Abbey. The house has been decorated, the baking is mostly done, the children are duly excited, but somehow the vital spark simply isn't there. Both Henry Talbot and Tom Branson, away together on a business trip, are keenly missed upstairs. Meanwhile, a considerable last minute addition to the usual pre-Christmas workload is leaving its mark on everyone downstairs.
As upstairs guests go, the Countess of Morcar is high maintenance, and that's putting it mildly. The bell of the Blue Room doesn't stop ringing. Albert races up and down the backstairs like an olympic runner to answer her summonses. Mrs Patmore is struggling to reconcile her long-planned Christmas menus with the extensive list of forbidden foods that the illustrious lady can't possibly be expected to ingest. Her Ladyship has only been here since mid-morning, but she's already the least popular person to darken the door of the Abbey since the King and his entourage last year.
"What did she want now?" Thomas asks Albert as they make their way up the stairs to the servery with the family's luncheon. They're glad to get out of the kitchen, where they've left Mrs Patmore to battle with the Countess' lady's maid over the necessary adjustments to dinner next.
"Extra blankets for her little yappers," Albert scoffs. "The room's so draughty, apparently, that the basket and covers she brought for them won't do."
"I'll give her draughty," Thomas mutters, thinking of the frostwork on the windows of his own attic bedroom this morning. He pushes the door at the top of the stairs open and lets Albert, who has both his hands full, pass through ahead of him.
"Made me stoke up the fire twice already, too," Albert continues when they're both walking along again, sensing that he's allowed to vent at least until they reach the servery. "That room's like a greenhouse now. No wonder the little beasts get aggressive. They even bark at her maid like mad."
Thomas glances at his long-suffering young footman. "Mind your ankles?"
Albert rolls his eyes. "Ankles, trouser legs, anything they can fit their tiny choppers around." The salmon terrine on his platter wobbles with indignation. "And the din they make is atrocious. But I gave the largest one a kick to remember me by when Her Ladyship's back was turned."
They were lucky, it seems, that Lady Morcar's chauffeur carried the wicker chest containing the three terrors all the way from the car to the Blue Room himself, or there would probably have been blood to clean from the carpet, too.
Thomas can't recall now why on earth he expected a mild-mannered, unassuming person when Lady Grantham announced at dinner a week or so ago that she would ask her childhood friend Gina to spend Christmas at Downton. Maybe because that's how Lady Grantham herself would behave as a guest in someone else's house. But apparently Lady Morcar has lived the life of a French nobleman's wife on the Riviera for so long that she has lost all her original American simplicity and straightforwardness, if she ever possessed either in the first place. She looks the part, too. She hasn't aged nearly as well as Lady Grantham, the angles of her lean face accentuated by too much paint, her bleached hair brittle and dull with grey roots showing.
"Please let's ask her, Robert," Lady Grantham appealed to her husband when His Lordship failed to show any great enthusiasm at the idea. "She has no children, and it's her first Christmas as a widow. It's bound to be hard."
The Countess of Morcar was barely out of her shiny automobile at the Downton front door when Thomas was already convinced that this woman has never known hardship in her life.
"Oh, she misses the Count terribly," Thomas heard her maid tell Mrs Hughes when the housekeeper showed her the kitchen and the servants' hall. "Sometimes a pain is so great that all you can do is run away and leave your old life behind, isn't it? She's travelling to forget her sorrow. Well, she can afford it."
By contrast, it seems that Miss Cusack, or so the maid introduced herself, can afford nothing at all. Her black dress has been out of fashion for at least five years, and has been rehemmed at least once, and the soles of her shoes that Thomas saw flashing white when she walked off towards the stairs to attend to her mistress are nearly worn through.
"Cora, you look so well," Lady Morcar trills in her thick American accent when the Crawleys sit down to lunch together with their guest, then turns to Lord Grantham. "But then, you take such good care of her. No, no!" She holds up a hand as if His Lordship had just violently contradicted her. "You do. I can tell. Alas, all I have of my dear husband now is my treasured mementoes."
"Ah, yes. Gina owns one of the most precious gemstones in existence," Lady Grantham explains to her family. "The Blue Carbuncle."
"The Blue Carbuncle?" Lady Mary asks, impressed.
"Jean-Baptiste gave it to me on our silver anniversary," Lady Morcar reminisces dreamily. "It's the colour that makes it so rare. The palest blue, like a lagoon in our beloved Antilles. And there's the mystique as well. It's not an old stone, but there had already been two murders, a vitriol-throwing, a suicide and several robberies committed for the sake of it by the time Jean-Baptiste acquired it for me."
Thomas and Albert exchange a look across the others' heads.
"That's not exactly reassuring," Lord Grantham remarks. "I hope you've got it safely stored in a bank vault somewhere."
"Oh, men!" Lady Morcar chides him with a laugh. "Always so prosaic. Jewels are made to be worn, not locked away! I brought it here with me. I'll wear it to dinner, then you can judge for yourself whether it deserves to be buried out of sight."
"Weren't you worried to bring something so valuable on your travels?" Lady Grantham asks, voicing the thoughts of everyone in the room, and a great deal more politely than any of the others would have put them, too.
"Why would I be worried? What could possibly happen in this quiet backwater of yours?"
Lady Mary's eyebrows rise almost to the ceiling.
"Yeah, well, I can never tell if she was more in love with the Count or with his money," Lady Morcar's chauffeur, Mr Baker, says over a cup of tea in the kitchen while upstairs lunch is being cleared away. Strictly speaking, he's the only person in the room who does not deserve a break, his duties having ended once the Countess' luggage was unpacked and the car put away. But that doesn't stop him stuffing his broad, flabby face with samples of Daisy's Christmas baking that were left to cool on the table, without asking permission of course, and offering comments that range from inane to downright unpleasant. Thomas has no time to deal with this as long as Mr Baker doesn't start targeting any of Thomas' own charges, above stairs or below, but he's glad all the same when Bates volunteers to fill the awkward silence.
"Have you been with Lady Morcar long?" the valet asks the chauffeur.
"Nah." Baker reaches for another piece of gingerbread. Daisy looks inches away from smacking him across his fingers with a wooden spoon. "I come with the car she's renting while she's here in England."
There's not much small talk to be got out of that, enthusiasm for anything that runs on petrol being an upstairs rather than a downstairs thing at Downton.
Mrs Hughes turns to Lady Morcar's maid instead. "And you, Miss Cusack?"
The maid blushes when all heads turn to her. "Oh... I've been with Her Ladyship for a few months. The French are much better than us with fashion and hair, of course, but Lady Morcar wanted a maid who spoke her language, so..."
She glances across at the chauffeur as if for his approval, though Thomas can't see why she should need it. Miss Cusack may be somewhat colourless and careworn in appearance, but she seems competent enough, and not unpleasant to be around, at least when she's not trying to square the circle on behalf of her mistress. "No red meat, no cow's milk?" Thomas heard Mrs Patmore lament earlier. "What do people eat in America?"
"Don't sell yourself short, please," Phyllis protests kindly. "Lady Morcar's hat, when she arrived, was a dream!"
That's quite true, actually. Thomas noticed it as well, an exquisite creation of navy blue with white piping and a crisp arrangement of white flowers and feathers that looked like they came from some fairytale winter kingdom.
"Well, you see," Miss Cusack explains, "I was a milliner before I became a lady's maid."
And they're off, Phyllis, Mrs Hughes and even Mrs Patmore, on a topic that Thomas neither understands nor cares about.
Albert looks in, out of livery already, to say he's off till dinner. Mrs Hughes abandons the subject of hats for a moment to raise her eyebrows at Thomas. She's not going to ask outright whether the butler of Downton really thinks this a good moment for their only remaining footman to take his half-day, but that's clearly what she means. Thomas shrugs to say yes, it is, because it's been fixed for weeks and he's not going to cut into Albert's rare free time for the sake of keeping that conceited cow happy. Thomas can hear the voice of Mrs Hughes' husband in his head, of course, "That's not how I'd have handled it back in the day", yes, thank you, more's the pity. But Mrs Hughes only sighs and relents. She does that a lot nowadays, it must be acknowledged.
"Enjoy your bell-free hours," Bates says to Albert with a twinkle in his eye. For some reason, Thomas is still surprised every time the man proves himself his staunch ally.
The conceited cow calms down a bit over the course of the afternoon, and the only denizen of Downton who has a real reason to be cross with her for a while is Teo the Labrador. She has been struggling to accept the presence of three other canines in the house since they arrived, and that simmering conflict reaches an ear-splitting climax when Lady Morcar comes down to the great hall with the chihuahuas on a lead for a walk in the park with Lady Grantham.
The bell board in the servants' hall does no more overtime for a while. On the next occasion when it goes off unexpectedly, Bates and the ladies' maids have already gone up to see their respective charges into their evening finery. Thomas hears it with only half an ear. He's down in his pantry for a minute to fetch the candlesticks Albert didn't have the time to finish earlier today, courtesy of Lady Morcar's incessant demands for greater comfort. But it's not the tinkle of the Blue Room this time, it's the lower ding dong of the back door, so it's probably Andy or Mr Mason from Yew Tree Farm with their promised shipment of geese for Daisy's and Mrs Patmore's Christmas dinner magic. Thomas would stay to say hello, but there's no time. The clock is at just past six, and the dining room is only halfway done. About time Albert showed his face again, too.
"Steady on, Mr Barrow!" Mrs Hughes exclaims indignantly when Thomas quite literally runs into her the next time he dives headlong down the backstairs, the dining room all shipshape and Bristol fashion but everything behind the scenes still a shambles. "Or it'll be broken ankles next!"
"Sorry, Mrs Hughes," Thomas pants, catching the stack of clean linen and bedding that he's nearly knocked out of the housekeeper's hands. "I was just - "
"I hope you were just heading for the servants' hall and a nice calming cup of tea now," she says in a kinder tone, taking the linen back from him. Thomas senses with relief that they're out of 'Mr Barrow' territory again. "I'd highly recommend it. Albert is back, he can take care of whatever's left to do."
A nice calming smoke in the yard outside, more like, Thomas thinks and pats the pockets of his coat while Mrs Hughes continues up the stairs. But he left his cigarettes in his day coat when he changed into his dinner things, and anyway, the servants' hall does seem inviting when he arrives down there, aglow with a warm light and abuzz with cheerful talk.
"Has anyone seen Al- " Thomas says when he looks in at the door, then breaks off and just stares.
"Hello," says the man at the table who cannot possibly be Richard Ellis, and yet he is. "Want some tea? You look like you could do with a break."
Thomas gapes, his heart beating up to his throat. "What - " he stammers, shakes his head, then laughs. "Well, I'll be damned."
Richard's smile almost reaches his ears. A bit late, it occurs to Thomas to mind his language. But there are no ladies present, only both Mr Mason and Andy with tankards of ale in front of them, and a ratty old bowler hat that sits on the surface of the table between them.
"You said there was no way - " Thomas protests weakly.
"Well, I found one."
Richard told Thomas weeks ago not to hope that they'd be seeing anything of each other over Christmas, and that they should look at the quieter days of January or February instead. It's downright devious of him to turn up here now, unannounced, on the twenty-third of December. He's been back to Downton a few times since the Royal Visit, but never without warning, and Thomas doesn't know whether to be alarmed or delighted how sure Richard must have been of his welcome.
"He's just passing through on his way to Sandringham," Andy explains while he pours Thomas a cup of tea, and Thomas doesn't know what would be more touching, his former footman's staggering ignorance of English geography or his willingness to fake a staggering ignorance of English geography for the sake of discretion. Thomas glances at Mr Mason, but the old farmer, a born diplomat as always, hides his smile in his tankard.
Weak-kneed, Thomas pulls out a chair and sits down next to Richard. "How long have you got?" He can't bear the idea of it being only for the evening, and him spending most of it serving that blasted dinner upstairs.
"Twenty-four hours, or nearly" Richard replies, turning Thomas into the happiest man in the north of England.
"Mrs Hughes is making him up a bed right now," says Albert's voice from the doorway. The young footman is pulling on his livery coat in a hurry, his face flushed, his unruly hair not yet back in place, as if he's run to get back to the Abbey in time. He points with his chin at the hat on the table. "Anyone own up about the hat yet?"
"We found it on our way here," Andy explains to Thomas. "It was lying by the wayside. We thought it might belong to someone at the Abbey."
"Until we saw it in a proper light," Mr Mason adds. "Can't imagine Mr Bates nor Mr Carson in a battered billycock like that. Maybe it's one of the outdoor people's."
The thing does look rather the worse for wear, cracked, spotted and just plain dirty.
Richard picks it up. "And I've told them not to see it as a battered billycock, but as an intellectual problem." He flips it over and peers inside.
"All right, Mr Sherlock Holmes," Mr Mason chuckles. "Let's hear it, then."
Richard tilts the hat so the lining catches the light better. "The owner of this hat," he declares, "is a middle-aged man and stoutly built. He either leads a sedentary life or he's considerably overweight, or both. He was fairly well-to-do three years ago, but he's now fallen upon hard times. He has, however, retained some degree of self-respect, which is surprising considering the fact that his wife has ceased to love him."
An astonished silence follows this extraordinary statement. Then Andy, Mr Mason and Albert all start laughing heartily.
"You're having us on, right?" Albert asks, grinning. "How do you make that out?"
By way of an answer, Richard claps the hat onto his head. It comes down right over his forehead and settles on the bridge of his nose. So much for the man's build. More laughter, and this time Thomas joins in. He can't believe how effortlessly Richard is slipping into their little community again.
"Middle-aged," Richard continues, emerging from under the hat again, "because he's had his hair trimmed a short while ago. Look, the lining inside has all these hair-ends sticking to it, clean cut by the scissors of the barber. They're grizzled, but not white yet. The lining itself has perspiration stains all around it, so the man is not in great shape physically. Actually - " Richard feels along the inside with his fingers. "He was in a very agitated state, or walking very fast, when he lost the hat. It's still damp in places." He's enjoying himself far too much, and Thomas nearly bursts with pride in this silly, vain, irresistible and altogether lovable showoff of his.
"What about being well-off three years ago but not now?" Andy wants to know.
Richard holds the hat out to him. "There's a maker's label on the inside of the crown. Hartley and Sons, London. A fairly good brand, not cheap, until the Sons fell out and the place went out of business three years ago. So our man was able to afford one of their hats three years or more ago, but hasn't had a new one since, in spite of the stains and dents that you can see. Hence he was in funds three years ago but is watching every penny now."
"Blimey," Mr Mason mutters, impressed. "What else did you say? Self-respect? Unloving wife?"
"See how he's tried to cover some of the stains on the outside with black ink. He can't afford a new hat, but he doesn't want to look shabbier than he absolutely needs to."
"But what about the wife?" Albert insists.
"Easy." Richard tosses the hat to him. "This hat hasn't been brushed in how long?"
Albert catches the hat by the brim, holds it between thumb and forefinger, well away from his snowy white shirt, and wrinkles his nose. "Ugh. Weeks?"
"What loving wife lets her man go out in a hat that hasn't been brushed in weeks?"
"Ha!" Mr Mason exclaims. "This is where the magic trick ends, Mr Ellis. What if he's a bachelor? Or a widower?"
"All right," Richard concedes with a good-natured grin. "The wife's a bit of a stretch. I stand by the rest."
Struck by a sudden spark of inspiration, Thomas leans across for a closer look. Albert surrenders their find willingly. It's not pleasant to bring the grimy object into the vicinity of his nose, but Thomas takes a good sniff anyway. "Have we mentioned his lime-scented pomade yet?" he suggests, aiming for an offhand tone.
"See, it's not that hard," Richard smirks.
"There's something else, though, a sharper tang, like..."
Andy takes the hat and helps himself to a noseful, too. "Motor oil," he declares instantly.
"There you are," Richard concludes. "A man in close contact with motor vehicles, but who spends most of his workday sitting idly on his backside? You're looking for a chauffeur."
"Crikey!" Andy lets the hat drop back onto the table. "That's no coincidence!"
"He had a uniform on, though," Mason points out, scratching his own grizzled head.
"Wait, who - " Thomas cuts in, puzzled.
"Lady Morcar's chauffeur. He came down to the farm this afternoon," Mason explains.
"To buy a goose," Andy adds.
Thomas feels his mind boggle. "To what?"
"Buy a goose," Mason confirms. "Or reserve one, rather. Said his missus was cross with him for having to travel over Christmas, so he'd bring her a nice fat bird when he got back home to keep her sweet. His missus," he adds with a mischievous look at Richard. "Just so you know."
Resolute footsteps approach the servants' hall from the direction of the kitchen. With a sudden pang of guilt, Thomas glances at the clock. Damn.
"If you gentlemen could be bothered to actually serve the dinner we've been toiling away on - " Mrs Patmore has arrived at the door and spots Richard. Her grouchy expression relaxes into a smile. "Oh, Mr Ellis! To what do we owe the honour? No, don't answer that," she adds hastily and turns her attention to Albert instead. "Where have you been hiding, eh?"
"Sorry," the footman mutters. "Er, York. Christmas presents for my nephews."
"Nice." Mrs Patmore puts her hands on her broad hips. "Now if you please -"
"I'll help carry stuff up," Andy offers, rising from his seat. "We've held you up with our talk. Let me just wash my hands."
They don't get far. They're barely out of the servants' hall when the door at the head of the stairs bursts open and Phyllis Baxter comes flying down, pale with shock.
"It's gone!" she cries, wringing her hands. "The Countess has fainted, the maid's in a state, and Lady Grantham's telephoning for the police! Someone's stolen the Blue Carbuncle!"
Chapter 2: Act 2
Chapter Text
For the next hour or so, chaos reigns at Downton Abbey. The soufflé collapses, the soup goes cold, the Chardonnay gets warm, but nobody even notices. Headless chickens ain't in it.
There's no point in searching a house this size for a jewel no bigger than a large bean, not if it's been hidden on purpose, but Thomas is nearly alone in that opinion. The Blue Room gets turned upside down immediately, in case the stone has simply been lost by accident. No, no, impossible, a deeply distressed Lady Morcar insists, sobbing in Lady Grantham's arms while her dogs express their sympathy in deafening tones. Cusack unpacked the case containing the gem when they arrived, the Countess claims, and put it in the drawer of the dressing table right away… She'd be more helpful still unconscious, Thomas thinks while Mrs Hughes, Anna and Phyllis make short work of the immaculately made bed and take up the carpets. It's a relief when her complaints grow fainter and are finally cut off by the door to the backstairs swinging shut. Bates, limping back downstairs alongside Thomas, mutters something about culling the muts and cutting them open to check they didn't mistake the bauble for a dog treat. Thomas has no objections.
Lord Grantham, not being the type of man who invades the bedroom of a lady who is not his wife under any circumstances, has relocated to the library. He listens to Thomas' report – nothing, of course – and shakes his head. "It's a damn unfortunate business, Barrow. I hope we can keep it out of the papers."
Which, to be honest, is the least of Thomas' worries right now. Every time a thing of value goes missing in a house like this, every time, it's the servants who are the suspects, and sometimes with good cause. He doesn't want to believe this of anyone under his command, but he can't be certain either. Everyone indoors was aware of the stone being in the house by tea time at the latest, upstairs mealtime conversations being about as secret as the Prince of Wales' latest affairs. Anyone could have sneaked into the Countess' room while she wasn't there.
Sergeant Willis arrives, listens to Lady Morcar yammering for a while, and when even his patience is at an end, he demands that everyone in the house, absolutely everyone, assemble in the hall to give an account of themselves and their movements since the stone was last seen.
"Not you," Thomas hisses at Richard, who has been patiently waiting for news in the servants' hall with Andy and Mr Mason. How on earth are they going to explain to Willis who Richard is and what he's here for?
"Yes, me too," Richard mutters defiantly. The scraping of their chairs against the stone floor as they all rise drowns out his words for everyone else. "What do I do if the officers come down here to search? Hide in a broom cupboard? Plain sight is the lesser risk, believe me."
Thomas' brain says it's true, but his heart rebels against the idea of exposing Richard to the eyes of both the Crawley family and the police without a proper cover story.
"Don't worry, Mr Ellis." Mr Mason gives Richard a friendly pat on the shoulder in passing as he walks to the door. "You're my cousin come to visit for Christmas, if anyone asks."
Over the years, the moon has looked down through the vast skylight on many a memorable scene in the great hall of Downton Abbey, but rarely one so strange as this. The lights of the Christmas tree bathe the place in a mild and festive glow, but the battle lines are drawn already when Thomas arrives there with the rest of his staff and the downstairs visitors.
On one side is the Countess of Morcar, fuming, flanked by her maid and Baker, the chauffeur. The lady is crushing a delicate handkerchief in her hand, but going by the look on her face, she's looking for justice rather than comfort now, preferably by summary execution. Miss Cusack is eyeing her mistress anxiously. The chauffeur is looking around with pursed lips, mildly interested at best. But being only a temporary retainer, he's of course not obliged to feel Lady Morcar's distress as deeply as her maid seems to do. Thomas also notes that Baker is in a regular suit rather than his uniform now, having expected to be off duty for the rest of the evening. It fits almost as badly around his pot belly as the uniform did.
On the other side of the divide, the Granthams have taken up their station - Lord, Lady and eldest daughter.
Threatening to be crushed between both factions is a very unhappy Sergeant Willis, clutching his notebook like a drowning man would clutch a life buoy. He may have his questions ready, but he was certainly not expecting to have to fight for his right to ask them.
"What does it matter when I last saw the stone?" Lady Morcar snaps at the sweating officer. "Anyone could have snatched it. My room's been like Grand Central Station all day, servants coming and going all the time..." She honestly manages to make it sound as if they were doing it to annoy her.
"Well, it's a sensible question," Lord Grantham intervenes. "It could help narrow down - "
"Oh, I understand what an embarrassment this is for you, Robert," the Countess cuts him off at once, her tone switching to sickeningly sweet. "I'm not blaming you. There's a bad egg in almost every house, and it takes a great deal of experience to pick them out before they show their true colours." She turns to Lady Grantham. "The best of us can be taken in by a pretty face or a friendly smile."
"I resent the implication that the culprit must be one of our own servants," Lady Mary remarks sharply. Thomas can tell that she's slowly building up to boiling point, and Thomas himself isn't far behind. Her mother, meanwhile, seems too torn between loyalty to her people and her duties as hostess to put up much of a defence.
"Nobody said it has to be," Sergeant Willis agrees quickly. "So, er – "
"That's ridiculous," the Countess declares. "Cusack has been with me for months and months, she could have taken the stone any time before today. And Baker here has been handling my luggage since I got off the boat at Dover. If either of them had their eye on the Blue Carbuncle, why wait till we came to Downton?"
The answer to that is so obvious that it should occur even to a bumbling village policeman, but Willis either doesn't see it, or he prefers not to pour oil on the fire. "Well, then - " He turns to Thomas. "I should like to speak to everyone separately. Mr Barrow, can I count on you to - "
"What?" Lady Morcar interrupts the policeman with a derisive laugh. "Setting the fox to keep the geese now, are you?"
Thomas opens his mouth, bristling – and then he clenches his teeth in pain when the heel of Mrs Hughes' shoe comes down on his foot.
"I'm sure Mr Barrow has no objections to letting you use his office for the interviews, Sergeant Willis," the housekeeper declares a little too loudly, and everyone Downton dares to breathe again.
The Countess huffs. "Amateurs!" she cries. "I am going up. I have no patience with such incompetence." She gathers up the skirts of her evening robe and sweeps off towards the stairs, Miss Cusack hurrying along in her wake.
A consternated silence follows her departure.
"Well, that's nice," Lady Mary remarks drily when their guest is out of sight. "You'd think we were trying to help, but apparently not."
"Mrs Patmore," Lady Grantham instructs the cook, "we'll have a quick supper of whatever's still usable from your dinner preparations, whenever it's ready. We'll be in the library, Barrow," she adds for Thomas' benefit. "But please make sure first that Sergeant Willis has all he needs to conduct his investigation. We don't mind waiting."
"That hurt," Thomas mutters to Mrs Hughes when they make their way back to the basement, but all he gets in response is a very reproachful sideways glance.
The butler's pantry is transformed into an interrogation room, Thomas hands over today's duty roster, and Willis infinitely obliges him by agreeing at once that the three gentlemen from Yew Tree Farm are all in the clear, there being enough witnesses to attest that they never ventured further into the house than the servants' hall. That's one big worry less, at least.
"I'm sorry, Barrow," Lady Grantham sighs when Thomas is back upstairs three quarters of an hour later to announce, well, not dinner, but a strange assortment of warm and cold dishes that vaguely resemble the dinner Mrs Patmore originally had in mind. "I'm sure Lady Morcar didn't mean to insult you. She's just very, very upset."
Thomas briefly considers pointing out how quickly he'd be on the way to Downton station with all his worldly possessions in two suitcases if he allowed himself to fling baseless malicious accusations at people's heads every time he felt upset about something. But he can't do that to Mrs Hughes, not when she's already saved him from himself once tonight, so he merely forces a smile and inclines his head. Lady Grantham won't be fooled, but what can he do.
"I really don't understand it, though," Lady Grantham continues, turning back to her husband and daughter. "Gina didn't use to be like that. She was always a bit forward, yes, but not so..."
"... rude?" Lady Mary suggests without compunction.
"That, and..." Lady Grantham casts around for the right word. "So... I don't know. I haven't seen her in twenty years, and people change in twenty years. I'm sure I have. But her letters never sounded quite so..."
"I'd say 'American', but I don't want to be mean," Lady Mary smiles. She rises from her place on one of the red settees and leans down to kiss her mother on the cheek. "Come, Mama. We can't ignore Mrs Patmore's dinner twice in one day."
It's nearly eleven when Thomas finally steps out into the kitchen courtyard for the smoke and the talk he's been craving for hours. The sergeant has left, Andy and Mr Mason have said goodnight, and Thomas is suddenly alone in the dark yard with Richard as if it's the most natural thing in the world.
They light up and sit down side by side on the long table, their feet on the bench, well away from the icy ground. No white Christmas at Downton this year, just frosty nights and no sun that could at least make the rime on the ground glimmer and sparkle in the morning. They huddle together instinctively to share what little warmth there is.
"So, what's the news?" Richard asks, blowing a thick cloud of smoke into the cold night. "Apart from the Earl of Grantham's butler narrowly escaping the sack for talking back to a visiting countess?"
Thomas snorts. "I can't believe you came all this way to hear a jumped-up old bag accuse me of heading a pack of thieves."
Richard shrugs. "Don't take it to heart. Water off a duck's back and all that."
But of course Richard's plumage is considerably more waterproof than Thomas' own, or else he'd never have survived in his job until now. Besides, he isn't privy to the reasons why Phyllis Baxter emerged from her interview with Sergeant Willis with red-rimmed eyes, and why Bates came out of the pantry a little later with a face so white and stony that it might have been chiselled out of marble. Thomas has his own recurring nightmares about things from his past coming back to bite him. For both Phyllis and Bates, this may soon be reality.
Richard glances at Thomas, trying to read his silence while Thomas is still searching for the right words. "I mean, I felt plenty of criminal energy wafting around this place first time I was here, but… "
Most of the time, Richard's knack for lightening a dark mood with a joke works on Thomas like a spell. This time, it fails spectacularly. Thomas just grunts and takes another deep drag. "You can laugh. Intellectual problem, my arse."
They keep smoking, Thomas sulking, Richard frowning, until Richard suddenly gets to his feet. "I'm sorry," he says soberly. "I'm doing it all wrong. I swan in here without asking, at the busiest time of the year, when you're all on your last legs already - "
"It's not that."
"Police in the house, not a great moment to have your gentleman friend over, either... And now you're worried sick what it'll mean for your little downstairs family if the coppers get one of them in their sights. Or worse, if they turn out to be right."
"Well, yes."
"And I still think it's the right time to have a good laugh? Please punch me in the face next time. I might catch on a bit faster that way."
Thomas stares at Richard in disbelief, then grabs him by his tie - no great loss, that knot is never the tidiest anyway - and pulls him close. "Just shut up and kiss me, you idiot."
They clash rather than kiss at first, lips dry and chapped from the cold, sharp tobacco smoke trapped between them. But then Richard regains his balance, a steadying hand on Thomas' knee, and the moment becomes one of those rare ones that belong to them, and to them only.
A part of Thomas' conscious mind must have remained on the alert for any signs of the back door opening, so his ears pick up the sound of footsteps in the stillness of the night a full three seconds before the man they belong to appears. When he enters the yard, Thomas and Richard are both on their feet and at arm's length already, just two men taking a well-deserved cigarette break after work.
The newcomer comes hurrying towards them across the frozen ground. "Mr Barrow!" he exclaims, removing his cap and revealing the face of Joseph Molesley, cheeks glowing from the cold. He nods to Richard, too, then does a double take. "Mr Ellis?"
Richard smiles and inclines his head. Thomas begins to think that there's something to be said for Richard's plain sight strategy, because Molesley barely misses a beat. "Is it true what they say in the village?" he asks, wringing his cap in his hands. "The Countess of Morcar's jewel is gone? And they're suspecting someone from the house?"
"No finger's been pointed yet," Thomas reassures him. "Go on in. Miss Baxter should be down shortly, if she isn't already."
"I, er - " Molesley stops torturing his cap and switches to straightening it meticulously. "I've not come to see Miss Baxter. As a matter of fact, it's you I wanted to talk to."
Thomas raises his eyebrows, but then grinds his cigarette butt under his shoe. "Then come in and talk to me."
Molesley doesn't budge. "No, I - I'd rather say it out here, with no one else about. The thing is, I saw something, but I don't know if it means anything or not. I wouldn't've given it a second thought, under any other circumstances, but when I heard the terrible news, I said to myself, no, I've got to tell someone! What if I'm holding the key to the mystery without realising it? So I came straight here."
Thomas and Richard exchange a look, Thomas puzzled, Richard amused.
"Well, maybe if you'd tell us what you saw, Mr Molesley... ?" Richard prompts him with a patience that Thomas has never possessed and will never possess, not with regards to this particular individual at any rate. He's getting really cold out here with no smoke in his lungs and no Richard in his arms to warm him, and if he catches a chill he'll have the doctor's bill sent directly to the school.
"Oh, yes." Molesley squares his shoulders. "Well, the thing is this. This afternoon, when it was getting dark, I walked down to the Grantham Arms to have a pint with Mr Dawes and the others from the school. Seeing how it's nearly Christmas. We often do that before the holidays, it's nothing out of the ordinary," he explains to Richard, as if Richard were an explorer come from the metropolis to the wilder regions of the country to study the curious habits of the natives. Richard nods. "The shortest route from my house to the pub is along the lane behind the church and through their back yard," Molesley continues. "Mr Barrow, you know every nook and cranny around here, you'll agree that going round the back saves a minute or two... and I was in a hurry, I was running late already."
"And you saw something suspicious in the pub?" Thomas asks, shifting his weight from one freezing foot to the other.
"Not in the pub, strictly speaking. Outside, in the yard. Two men, talking with each other."
"Well, you just saw two men talking in a yard here, too," Richard points out in the most innocent of tones. It seems Thomas will need to have a word with him about that plain sight thing after all.
"No, no, those two were furtive, like," Molesley insists. "They were in the open doorway of the old coach house, whispering and laughing. And I saw one of them pass something small to the other, who looked at it and said 'Well done, you clever little monkey'."
"And did you hear anything else?" Thomas asks, intrigued against his will.
"No. Someone else came out into the yard to use the privy just then, so they drew back into the coach house, out of sight. I went into the pub then, thinking nothing of it. But now I can't stop wondering, what if they were accomplices, and one of them was giving or showing the other the Blue Carbuncle?"
"Have you told the police this?" Thomas' heart starts beating faster at the idea of the whole dratted riddle solving itself so quickly and neatly. Joseph Molesley has a history of stumbling on just the right kind of information, after all.
"No, I haven't... That's the thing, Mr Barrow. I wanted your advice first. See, I don't know who the man was that I heard talking. And he never moved out of the shadow of that building, so I couldn't give you a description, either. But I recognised the other one."
A sudden chill of foreboding passes down Thomas' spine that has nothing to do with the cold any more. "Well, out with it, please."
Molesley looks at his shoes, as if he suddenly regrets what he's about to say. "I'm afraid it was our young footman, Albert."
Chapter 3: Act 3
Chapter Text
"So Molesley's lying," Thomas concludes and pauses in his pacing, back and forth and back again in the narrow space between the door of Richard's guest bedroom and the chest of drawers under the window. "He must be lying. To protect her. Because with her history, she wouldn't stand a chance in court. A famous jewel, stolen from a house that employs a convicted jewel thief as a lady's maid? But I don't see how that gives Molesley the right to throw Albert under the bus!"
"Well, he hasn't thrown him under the bus yet," Richard points out. He's sitting on the bed in his shirtsleeves, shoes off, ankles crossed, his back propped against the pillows, and the real reason why Thomas has stopped in his restless march is to enjoy the sight better. It does have a soothing effect on his frayed nerves. "Remember, he came to you first, and he's agreed to keep quiet till you've talked to the lad."
Which won't happen until tomorrow after breakfast, Albert having turned in by the time Thomas and Richard got back inside the house. Thomas is not in the habit of cutting into his subordinates' precious short hours of sleep, either, least of all to answer to a charge that's very likely false.
"But what makes you so sure that Mr Molesley made it all up?" Richard asks. "Would he do that, even to save his lady love? He doesn't strike me as the kind of man who lies easily."
"I wouldn’t have thought it of him, either. But Albert is hardly more than a boy, he's been with us for years, and he's never put a foot wrong!"
"That amounts to little more than 'Because I don't want to believe it', Thomas."
"But why now? It just makes no sense. This house is full of things worth more than a year's wages that Albert could have snatched any time. Granted, the Blue Carbuncle is a bit more ambitious than a few silver spoons. But you can't take that thing to a pawn shop for a quick couple of pounds, either. You'd need a plan, you'd need contacts who'd sell it on... There was just no time for any of that. The first time Albert and I even heard about the stone was at lunch. He went out directly after that, and stayed away till just before the theft was discovered."
Richard sighs. "To do his Christmas shopping in York."
There's something deliberately bland in Richard's tone that makes Thomas perk up his ears immediately. "Anything wrong with that?"
"Just that I was on the five-forty-five from York, too, and no one even remotely resembling your Albert got off at Downton with me."
"Maybe he - "
Richard has a way of putting his head to one side and raising an eyebrow that is much more eloquent than calling Thomas a sweet innocent fool in so many words could ever be. Thomas feels his heart sink.
"Oh, come here, sit down," Richard takes pity on him. He moves his long legs aside to make room on the bed. "It's still too early to despair."
Thomas would love to just slump down there with Richard, next to him, on top of him, all over him, but that will make the bed creak something fearful. He carefully perches on the edge of the mattress instead. "That's easy for you to say, you know." It's not Richard who's responsible for the welfare of the men and women working in this house.
"True," Richard concedes. "And that's exactly why I am saying it. You're expecting the impossible of yourself, Thomas, if you want to get to the bottom of this affair and try and keep everyone safe and happy at the same time."
Richard is right, of course, but he might as well ask Thomas to change his birth date or his shoe size, and Thomas tells him so.
Richard only smiles. "See, that's why you've got me. Two pairs of eyes see more than one, especially if one is looking through rose-tinted spectacles."
Thomas pulls a face. "I'd look awful in rose-tinted spectacles."
"Don't get me wrong. I envy the people who work here under you. I wish I was one of them, honestly."
Richard is serious, and Thomas had better do something before he gets all dewy-eyed. "Oh, don't worry," he quips. "I'll find you work you can do under me before you go back."
Richard's responding chuckle is deep and low and altogether delightful. "Behave, or I'll make you find it right now."
"How I wish I could."
Thomas puts his hand on Richard's stockinged foot, which is the nearest part of him that he can reach. Richard hums with pleasure and wriggles his feet until Thomas has them both in his hold. They're long and narrow and elegant even when encased in black wool. Thomas would love to let his hands go exploring up those trouser legs for a bit, but it wouldn't be an option even if his mind wasn't on other things, not with all those young innocents sleeping or trying to sleep right next door.
They both know it, and there's no need to make a lot of words about it. Thomas shifts for a more comfortable position, tucks Richard's feet under his thigh to keep them warm and leaves it at that for the moment. "So, what do your two eyes see that mine don't?"
"Let's take it step by step. Do we know for sure that the jewel was even here in the house? Or could the Countess have lost it on the journey?"
"We do know that. Lady Grantham told her family so over dinner. She went to see if her friend was settled and happy just a short while after she arrived. The maid was still unpacking, and Lady Morcar told her to show Lady Grantham the stone, so she did."
"Hmm." Richard scratches his nose, which is somehow rather endearing. "And could the sergeant clear anyone?"
"Not really. None of us can account for every minute of our day, and Willis hasn't even talked to the housemaids yet. They'd already gone home when he got here. You and the Yew Tree Farm lot are the only ones who are out of the running. Anyone else could have found an excuse to go into the Countess' room when she was with the family, or outside with the dogs. Enough of us were in there. God knows she kept us on our toes. You'd think she's never had the pleasure of giving an order to a servant before."
"So that's a long list of potential suspects."
"Far too long. I thought we could rule at least Albert out, but apparently not, after what you've just told me." That rankles, more than it should.
"I'm not saying he must have anything to do with it. It's just that if he came back from York by an earlier train than mine, he must have got all his shopping done in just twenty minutes or so. Seems strange to go all the way to York for that. And he can't have been on a later train, because he got here only minutes after me."
Thomas wants to point out that maybe Molesley did witness something odd going on behind the pub and mistook someone else for Albert, but he realises he's grasping at straws. "How did that play out, by the way?" he asks instead. "Who got in at what time?"
"I was first. I caught a cab from the station, got here around six." Which was the bell at the back door that Thomas would not have ignored in favour of the dining room if he’d known who was outside.
"A cab?" Thomas raises his eyebrows. "Living it up, are we?"
A slight blush rises into Richard's cheeks. "I just meant to save time. Wanted to catch you before dinner." And thank you, now Thomas feels very stupid indeed. "My cab overtook a farm cart on the way here," Richard continues. "That was the gents from Yew Tree Farm with the geese. They got in a few minutes after me. Albert came in just after them."
Panting and red in the face. Wherever the scoundrel spent his afternoon, he'd better have an excellent explanation for Thomas tomorrow morning, or he can get ready for a good drubbing.
"She wants to leave," Lady Grantham tells her husband and daughter over breakfast the next morning. The two ladies of the family have come down to join His Lordship in what would otherwise have been a very solitary meal, Tom Branson and Henry Talbot not being due home from their trip until midday. Thomas, who is just carrying in fresh toast, perks up his ears for a first-hand account of Lady Morcar's latest antics.
"What, now?" Lord Grantham puts his tea cup down with a frown. "What a strange time of the year to leave a warm and comfortable house and take to the road."
Lady Grantham sighs. "I couldn't change her mind. I tried. She keeps saying that she doesn't blame us, but I do feel we've failed her badly."
"I'm surprised there's nothing in the news," Lady Mary comments. She has been perusing the Yorkshire Gazette and now puts it aside.
"No, Gina didn't want it shouted from the rooftops."
"But making it widely known the stone is stolen goods would help to render it unsaleable."
"Well, I wasn't exactly looking forward to the press laying siege to our house at Christmas of all times, either," Lord Grantham grunts. "And I'm not going to stop her, Cora, if she feels she's better off elsewhere."
"Doesn't she want to wait and see what the police find out?" Lady Mary wonders.
"Where's she bound now?" His Lordship asks his wife.
Lady Grantham shrugs. "I don't know. I suppose she has other friends around the country. She's sent her chauffeur into the village, maybe she's cabling someone to see if they'll take her in. She said she wants to leave before lunch."
"Fine with me." Lord Grantham half-turns in his chair to where Thomas has taken up his usual post by the sideboard. "Please make sure she has everything she needs for the journey, Barrow. And see her off with the proper amount of ceremony. Let's not give her more things to hold against us."
"Very good, M'lord."
Nothing's good, of course, not up here where you could cut the tension between His Lordship and Her Ladyship with a knife, and not downstairs either, where Thomas arrives ten minutes later to pick a bone with Albert.
He can tell something's wrong when he's still on the stairs, years and years of experience allowing him to identify the mood of downstairs chatter long before actual words are discernible. The kind that's wafting towards him from the kitchen speaks, to Thomas' dismay, of shock and outrage.
He hurries down the last few steps and past the shabby bowler hat that someone's put on a hook on the wall, still unclaimed. The curious housemaids blocking the kitchen doorway part to let him through, and the burly figure of Sergeant Willis, his helmet under his arm, comes into view.
"You're going to throw him in prison?" Mrs Patmore's voice rises above the others, shrill with horror and disbelief. "On Christmas Eve?"
Sergeant Willis squares his shoulders. "I'm afraid today's date is neither here nor there in a matter like this, Mrs Patmore."
"Throw who in prison?" Thomas asks sharply. He puts a gaping hall boy out of his way and comes face to face with the police officer.
Willis nods wordlessly towards the corner by the refrigerator, where Albert stands, his face as white as the shirt of his livery, flanked by two of Willis' men.
Thomas has left it too late.
Willis is clearly not enjoying what he's come to do, but he won't back down, either. His podgy jaw is set in grim determination. "A witness has reported Albert meeting a man behind the pub for some fishy business yesterday afternoon around five."
"'Some fishy business?'" Thomas echoes incredulously. He catches a look from Mrs Hughes across the kitchen table, but she gives no sign that she's planning to play the peacemaker this time, quite the opposite.
Willis raises his hands, palms outward. "Now please don't argue, Mr Barrow. The matter is out of my hands. York is taking over the case. They're sending detectives over to pick him up. They'll be here by noon."
"On Christmas Eve, like a pack of heathens!" Mrs Hughes protests. "As if - "
"May I ask who this witness of yours is, Sergeant?" Thomas is struggling to keep his voice calm and composed. The urge to put his hands around Molesley's throat and squeeze nearly overwhelms him.
"I'm afraid you may not. He wishes to remain anonymous."
He would, the cowardly rat.
"But that wasn't me," Albert pipes up. He looks so small between his guards, like the child he still was not so long ago. "I wasn't here. I was in York."
Which Thomas as good as knows is a lie, or at least not the whole truth. He wishes he understood what silly little secret Albert is hiding that he won't divulge even in the face of arrest on a charge as grave as... oh, Christ. Realisation hits Thomas like a punch in the pit of his stomach, painful and sickening. But there's nothing he can do, nothing he can say, not with the law and half his household looking on.
"And now we'd like to take a look at Albert's room," Sergeant Willis declares. "If you'd be so good, Mr Barrow - "
Thomas looks across at his footman. The youngster lowers his eyes, and Thomas thinks he sees the tiniest nod. So Albert has at least been prudent enough not to keep anything damning in his room, and Thomas won't be forced to hand it to the officers on one of the many silver platters in this house. 'Circumspect', Richard's voice says in his head, and by the way, Richard, where is he? Thomas left him by the fire in the servants' hall with a book when he went up to serve upstairs breakfast, which seems criminally careless now.
"Show them up, Mr Barrow," Mrs Hughes says, walking over to put a reassuring hand on his arm. "I'll let His Lordship know. Everything else," and is Thomas imagining it, or does she tighten her hold for a moment for extra emphasis? "Everything else can wait."
It's an ugly scene, worse even than it always plays out in Thomas' nightmares, because it's real. The bed gets stripped, the wardrobe ransacked, every drawer emptied, every letter collected, every book flicked through and thrown on a heap, every last scrap of what little private life Albert possesses laid bare to prying eyes. For form's sake, Thomas should probably stay here in the open doorway and keep watch, but he can't, he'll be ill, he is ill already, he's -
A moment later, he's in the bathroom, the door bolted behind him, his damp hands slipping on the cold edge of the washbasin as he braces himself against it. He's not had much by way of breakfast, so nothing comes back out, but it's minutes before it feels safe to straighten up and let go. The face that looks back at him out of the mirror is as pale as a ghost's.
He'll burn Richard's letters first chance he gets. Right after he's put him on the very next train back to bloody Norfolk.
They're gone by the time Thomas can bring himself to move, the officers and Albert with them even though the Blue Carbuncle remains missing, and the atmosphere in the house descends into pure misery.
In theory, the great hall should be a hive of activity by now, everything made ready for tonight's Christmas reception. Thomas knows they're all waiting for his word, but the idea of Good Christian Men Rejoicing in the face of such disaster is too awful to contemplate.
Downstairs is quiet, the kitchen the only place still operating normally, food being the one thing people can't be expected to do without. When Thomas arrives there, Mrs Patmore is busy sorting through jars of pickles, Miss Cusack is wrapping sandwiches for the road in waxed paper, and Mrs Hughes is standing by the little desk with a face like a thundercloud, brandishing a folded newspaper.
"Who brought this rag into the house?" she demands.
"One of your housemaids, I think," Mrs Patmore shrugs. "It's just a paper, innit?"
"Just a paper?" Mrs Hughes opens it at random and reads from the headlines, her voice full of disgust. "'Convicted triple axe murderer escapes from German prison.' 'Broadway actress finalises fourth divorce on grounds of adultery'. 'Calais police hunt poisoner'." This is not what I want on my girls' minds at Christmas, thank you very much!"
Of course it's only a matter of time until Downton Abbey itself will be all over the front page of the News of the World, but Thomas feels sure that pointing this out would only earn him a whack on the ear with today's edition. Besides, that's the sound of the back door opening, and Daisy returns from outside, bringing with her a gust of cold air and the answer to the question where Richard has been while the coppers were snooping around the house. He's quite a sight in apron and sleeve covers, or he would be if it weren't for the unconscionable amount of blood staining the fabric. That axe-wielding Hun from the news can't have made it across the sea to the Downton kitchen yard quite yet, but Richard sure looks as if he's just participated in a beheading.
As it turns out, this is completely accurate.
"We've plucked and cleaned out the geese," Daisy reports to Mrs Hughes, handing her a bulging bundled-up sheet. "I didn't know if you wanted the black feathers, too, so I've put them in a separate box. If not, I'll just throw them in the boiler furnace with the heads and necks and feet."
"A black goose?" Mrs Hughes asks, momentarily distracted from her moral crusade. "That's unusual."
"It weren't all black, just the tail." Daisy turns to relieve Richard of the basket he's carrying. "Thank you, Mr Ellis. You've been ever so helpful."
"Not as helpful as you," he answers earnestly, but Daisy, bless her, just beams back at him.
"Well, the Crawleys will rest no less softly on black feathers than on white ones," Mrs Hughes sighs, gathering up Daisy's harvest.
"They're resting on their feather pillows while our lad is freezing in a cell!" Mrs Patmore mutters in a rare fit of mutiny.
Not entirely true. On the way down here through the hall, Thomas heard His Lordship instruct Mr Murray on the telephone to see about posting bail for Albert. But whether any magistrate will even be bothered to look at the case until after Christmas is anyone's guess.
Mrs Hughes departs, Miss Cusack excuses herself with a quiet murmur, too, and Thomas waves Richard into the sanctuary of his pantry with his eyes.
"I know what you're going to tell me," Richard says as soon as they've closed the door. "And you're right. Let me just get my things, and I'll be gone."
It hurts, but Thomas nods. With detectives from York on the way here, they can't keep letting the others stick their necks out for them.
"Although I did enjoy my brief promotion from idle layabout to scullion," Richard adds, a brief smile flashing across his face. "Daisy shooed me down to the cellar and then out round the back the moment the officers entered the house. All I had to do when they came out again with the lad was turn my back and keep plucking away."
He's still got a little fluff of white goose down sticking to his hair, too, just above his right temple, and Thomas reaches out and picks it off. It's so light that the marred fingers of his left hand can't even feel it.
Richard's smile lingers for a moment longer, but then it disappears. "What did he have to say for himself?" he asks as he starts peeling off the sleeve covers. "Did he explain what he was doing behind the pub?"
"No. He wasn't there. He was in York."
"Well, we know that's not true."
"No, but I suspect that Albert feels one of them risking seven years for theft is better than both of them getting a sure two years for gross indecency."
Richard pauses, his eyes widening in alarm. Then he groans. "Christ, what a choice."
"Mmh." A choice that speaks of an astounding amount of love, or of infatuation at any rate. "The fellow had better be worth it, whoever he is."
"Did you know?"
"About Albert? No. It's not exactly the kind of thing you'd chat about over tea in the servants' hall, is it?" That's the place where young men smile and joke with the housemaids.
"They all know about us."
"And I sometimes wish they didn't. But I'd have to go back in time to before the war to fix that. Albert's clearly much cleverer than I was."
"And now he's taking a terrible gamble."
"A gamble he's lost already." Thomas sighs. "No matter what comes of the larceny charge, once he's in prison in York, he's done for. A boy his age, and with his face? They'll eat him alive before the week's out."
The shrieks are faint and distant, so faint that at first, Thomas thinks they're in his head. But no, they're real, because now the back door bursts open and they can hear them clearly, not a figment of his imagination at all, desperate and shrill, a creature in terrible fear or pain.
"She's on fire!" That's Anna Bates shouting down the passage at the top of her voice. "Help! She's lit herself on fire!"
Chapter 4: Act 4
Chapter Text
The boiler room off the kitchen courtyard is black with smoke when Thomas, Richard and Anna arrive at a run. Phyllis Baxter is waging a valiant battle against the flames that are creeping all across the floor. She's swatting at them with the coal shovel, desperate to reach the figure that's writhing and whimpering on the ground in front of the open grate of the furnace. But the smoke and the acrid stench of burned hair are choking her, and she stumbles backwards into Thomas' arms, coughing. Thomas takes the shovel from her and hands her over to Anna's care, and a moment later he and Richard have cleared a path across the room.
"Get her outside!" Thomas shouts to Richard, who has pulled off his apron to smother the flames that lick at Miss Cusack's arms and hair. The ground around the Countess of Morcar's maid is still littered with smouldering cinders and half-burned logs from the open furnace that are only waiting to flicker back to full destructive life. Thomas stomps out as much of the glow as he can while they drag the sobbing woman to the door and out into the fresh air.
"Get her to the pump, cold water on the burns," Thomas orders as Anna and Phyllis, the latter still breathing hard but upright again, move in to help. His throat feels raw from the smoke, and when he wipes his sweaty face with the back of his hand, the glove comes away smeared with soot. "And douse that damn fire before it spreads to the house!"
The hall boys erupt from the back door with the fire buckets, directed by Mrs Patmore, and they soon have a bucket chain going. Bates mans the hand pump in the corner by the game larder, and the rush of water mercifully drowns out the pitiful noises that poor Miss Cusack is making as Phyllis and Anna do their best to cleanse and cool her wounds. Only minutes later, the fire in the furnace is put out and the beaten earth floor of the boiler room is flooded with water to wash the last embers away.
"What on earth was she doing?" Mrs Patmore wonders, kicking a charred piece of wood out of the way so they can set the door wide open and let out what remains of the smoke. "She didn't harm herself on purpose, did she?"
"Or lost her mind, for some reason?" Richard suggests, flexing his own fingers with a grimace. "What sane person rakes burnings cinders from a roaring fire with their bare hands?"
Indeed. Unless -
"She's not in her right mind," Anna whispers to them when Thomas and Richard join the other women by the pump. "She keeps saying she's 'got to find it'. I think she's in shock. Should we get her inside?"
Miss Cusack is half kneeling, half hanging over the edge of the water barrel, her scorched hands immersed in the icy water, Phyllis' arm around her back for support. In spite of the Downton women's efforts to comfort her, she's still crying and shaking uncontrollably. The fire has burned off the fabric of her sleeves almost to her elbows. She must be in absolutely agony.
Thomas nods. "Yes, we'd better."
Anna puts a hand on the woman's shoulder. "Miss Cusack?"
A desperate wail of protest answers her, and the maid raises her tear-streaked face. "No!" she pants, her eyes wild. "Don't - bury me - under that - name!"
Thomas and Anna exchange a startled look.
"You won't be buried any time soon," Phyllis hurries to reassure the poor creature, but she's already slipping back into her miserable stupor.
"Get her into bed," Thomas instructs the women. "Put clean gauze on the wounds, call Dr Clarkson and stay with her till he's here. Don't let anyone near her," he adds on a sudden impulse. "Especially not the people she came with. And note down anything else she says, no matter how crazy it sounds."
"Anything I can do?" Richard asks while Anna and Phyllis lift their distressed fellow maid gently to her feet and start leading her towards the house. Bates hurries ahead with uneven steps to hold the door for them.
"You can go and fetch our coats," Thomas tells Richard. "We're going for a walk. If you see Daisy, ask her if there was more than one goose with a black tail at Yew Tree Farm. And bring a knife."
Richard waits until they're far enough away from the house not to be overheard, but not a moment longer. "Can you stop speaking in riddles now, please?" he demands, pulling on his gloves while Thomas puts up the collar of his coat against the cold. "Where are we going? And aren't you going to tell Lord Grantham that someone nearly set his house on fire?"
"All in good time, Richard." Thomas quickens his pace. It's good to be doing again, rather than fretting. "Was there another black-tailed goose?"
"Yes. One other just like that, Daisy says. Peas in a pod. They called them Nelly and Sally at the farm, though Daisy claims not even Mr Mason could really tell them apart."
"Excellent. This way." Yew Tree Farm is in the opposite direction, but they have an errand in the stable yard first.
"Give me the knife," Thomas says when they've crossed the quiet, empty space to where the Countess of Morcar's rented car is parked, glances around to check they're alone and then makes Richard stare by plunging the pocket knife deep into the front tyres, one after the other.
"Crikey," Richard hisses. "What are you doing?"
"Cutting off their retreat." Thomas snaps the knife shut and hands it back to Richard. "Now for the farm, and let's hope we're not too late."
"So we've got our culprits? Plural?" Richard asks as they hurry along, making a bee line across the lawn to the gate at the end of the drive. Their shoes are wet through from wading around the flooded boiler room anyway, and speed is paramount now. Who knows when the porky chauffeur will turn up for the next part in this dirty game he's playing.
"Plural, yes. The chauffeur and the maid. They're in cahoots. Because Miss Cusack, if that is her name, must have been the one who actually took the Blue Carbuncle. Baker had no business hanging around on the upstairs gallery once the luggage was taken up, he'd have been challenged at once. But the maid as good as lives in Lady Morcar's room. I don't know how he persuaded her, but I'm guessing he has some kind of hold over the woman that compels her to do his bidding."
"Sounds familiar."
Thomas nods. "So familiar that I'm surprised I didn't spot the pattern sooner." Phyllis probably guessed it right away. They arrive at the gate, pass through and strike out for Yew Tree Farm. "So, she took the stone from the Countess' room, but he was the one who hid it, so it wouldn't be found even if they or their possessions were searched."
"Hid it, where?"
"Oh, come on, Richard." After that shameless display of ingenuity yesterday evening, Richard is being positively dull today. "Impress me. You didn't do all that badly with the hat."
Richard lets out a short bark of laughter. "Beginner's luck. You're miles ahead of me. Go on, you impress me."
"Baker went and hid the jewel inside one of Mr Mason's geese."
Richard halts so suddenly that he nearly stumbles. "He what?"
"Inside one of Mr Mason's geese," Thomas repeats. "Put yourself in his shoes. He's walking down this road - " He points down the wooded lane, and they get moving again. " - with one of the world's most valuable jewels in his pocket. He knows he's got to put it somewhere safe till Her Ladyship leaves the Abbey after Christmas and he can get in touch with whatever middleman will sell it on for him. He can't leave it on his person or in his car or in his luggage, because he'll be a prime suspect to any policeman who half knows his job."
"But the sergeant didn't look at Lady Morcar's own servants twice."
"That's because Sergeant Willis is a dimwit who doesn't know when he's being steered," Thomas scoffs. "Of course it would make perfect sense for Lady Morcar's people to steal the jewel in a house full of other suspects who can be made to take the blame, rather than on the road where no one had access to it except for them. So, along Baker walks, trying to figure out where to stash the stone, and then he comes up on the same sight that we'll come up on in a few minutes - a flock of geese milling around in Mr Mason's paddock. And he has a brilliant flash of inspiration. All he has to do is feed the stone to a goose, one that's in some way distinct from the others so he can single it out again later, and then go and buy the bird for his own supposed belated Christmas dinner."
"How's that brilliant?" Richard objects at once. "If he feeds the stone to a goose, even assuming the goose lets him do it - in the course of nature, the stone will just come out again at the other end and be trampled into the mud by thirty pairs of webbed feet, lost forever."
Thomas flashes the man beside him a smile. "That's what you think, city boy. Geese have a crop, where they'll store anything they can't digest directly. So all you'd have to do is cut open the crop, once the bird is killed, and retrieve your treasure."
"So Baker fed the stone to a goose and then pretended to want to buy the bird?"
"Oh yes. Mr Mason and Andy as good as told us that last night. But Baker made a mistake. Because he chose a goose with a black tail, thinking that was a unique pattern in Mason's flock. But we know it wasn't."
"Blimey." Richard rubs his gloved hand across his own sooty forehead. "So there was a mix-up? The Abbey got the loaded goose, while Mason set aside its empty twin for Baker?"
"No." Honestly. "I'm talking to the man who was put to cleaning out that carcass, aren't I? And he doesn't seem to recall a precious stone of immeasurable value tumbling out of it."
Richard pulls a face. "Ugh, no. And Daisy insisted we were thorough, I assure you." He still looks a bit green around the gills even now.
"But Miss Cusack was in the kitchen when you came back in, and overheard Daisy talking about the black feathers, and that she'd thrown the offal in the boiler furnace. So the poor ninny thought the goose containing the stone had been sent to us, and ran to retrieve the head and neck from the fire, and the jewel with it. Baker must have told her of his oh so clever ploy, but of course she couldn't know either that there were two geese that looked alike."
Richard shudders. "So she burned the skin off her hands for nothing?"
"Exactly."
"And gave the whole game away."
"That, too. I don't suppose Baker will be amused when he finds out." And Thomas can only hope that they've mounted a strong enough defence, with Bates standing guard while Phyllis and Anna care for the luckless maid. But if anyone will be able to comfort the woman and gain her trust, it'll be Phyllis Baxter.
The sight that greets Thomas and Richard when they emerge from the woods and reach the boundaries of Yew Tree Farm does not include a cheerfully chattering flock of geese at all. The paddock below the farmhouse is empty, and the acrid smell of the birds' droppings is all that remains of its former inhabitants.
Mr Mason rounds the corner of his house and comes to meet them when they approach, his breath white on the cold air. "Can I help you gentlemen?" He grins when he sees their dirty faces. "Have you come down a chimney, like Father Christmas?"
It's not the old man's fault that they don't have time for this nonsense, but they don't have time for this nonsense, so Thomas comes straight to the point. "Where've your geese gone, Mr Mason?"
"Lord bless you, Mr Barrow, where does a goose go for Christmas?" With a laugh, the farmer pats his tweed-clad stomach. "Andy's out delivering the rest of them right now. We're selling them as far as Thirsk this year."
Thomas and Richard exchange a look and let out the same curse at the same time.
"I've kept back just the one," Mason continues. "For the French lady's chauffeur. Though I doubt he'll have much joy of his special bird now. She's been taken poorly. I've put her behind the house. Didn't want the others to catch it if it were some kind of bug. But maybe she just ate something funny."
Nelly – Mr Mason insists that this is Nelly, while Sally got taken to the big house yesterday to grace the Grantham dining table – looks very down in the mouth indeed, or in the beak, as it were. Thomas and Richard watch her pecking listlessly at a few blades of grass in Mr Mason's kitchen garden while the old farmer struggles to contain his fury at what they've just told him. He couldn't care less about a stolen jewel, that much is clear, but he does care about his animal.
"Cruel, that is. He must've hurt her, the brute, so now she can't feed like she should," he fumes. "I'm telling you, gents, I'm not knocking her on the head now unless she gets worse and it's a mercy. Our Nelly don't deserve that."
Thomas points out that the police will insist on securing the evidence. Mason grumbles that he'll give them evidence. It turns out he means that quite literally.
"But I'll need another pair of hands," Mason explains as he pushes the door into his kitchen open with his elbow a moment later, Nelly firmly lodged under his arm, wings folded after a brief token struggle, head and long white neck lolling resignedly. "And she's not going to like it, so keep your gloves on. You don't want to be nipped." The farmer nods at a chest in the corner by the door. "There's a tarpaulin in there. Put it on the floor, or I'll have to do me Christmas cleaning twice."
Richard closes the door to keep the warmth inside the room while Thomas prepares the makeshift operating table in the empty space between the kitchen table and the hearth. He hasn't done this kind of thing for a long time, but he's done it so often that he barely needs to think about it. Mason only has to show him how to hold the bird down without damaging the wings or the brittle feet. Richard, who seems to think he's done enough goose-handling for today, dead or live ones, leans against the kitchen table to watch.
Thomas can sense Nelly's panic build as soon as Mason's fingers start probing around the tissue at the lower end of her neck. Muscles seizing up, limbs threatening to twist out of his grasp, this, too, is exactly how Thomas remembers those many other acts of benevolent torture he used to take part in in the overflowing casualty clearing stations back in the war. But Nelly takes it better than a lot of the men did, Thomas acknowledges as he tightens his hold on the trembling little body. At least he hasn't heard her scream for her mother yet.
"There. I can feel it," Mason announces. "Now out with the thing."
Nelly does start screaming then, her ear-splitting screeches echoing around the cosy kitchen while Mason, with infinite care and patience, starts working the stone back out along the bird's gullet. Frantically flapping wings free themselves and smack Thomas around the face, but the animal's vociferous protest actually works in their favour. Gravity takes care of the final few inches, and while Thomas is still desperately grappling for a better hold on the slippery feathers, Nelly emits the half-digested contents of her crop straight onto the floor. A final faint gabble, and then her spindly legs fold and she collapses in Thomas' arms. Her tormented neck goes limp, her eyes close and her head drops onto his knee.
"Good girl," Mr Mason mutters, and when he returns from rinsing the spoils under the tap, the largest jewel Thomas has ever seen is glistening and sparkling in the palm of the old farmer's calloused hand, pale aquamarine blue, like the sea laving the white shores of a faraway tropical island.
"It wasn't Molesley," Richard says into the astounded silence. "Mr Molesley didn't rat on Albert. Baker did."
"How d'you know that?" Mason asks, handing Richard the stone while he goes rummaging in a kitchen drawer for something to store it in.
"Because Baker hasn't reclaimed his hat."
Mr Mason laughs. "Not the hat again."
"He's right, though," Thomas agrees. It started with the hat, it ends with the hat, and Thomas will never think ill of Joseph Molesley again. Or not much at any rate. "It must be Baker's, we worked that out last night already. But he hasn't taken it back. Because that would mean admitting that he went out a second time yesterday afternoon, after his visit here." Thomas' legs will soon be numb if he stays kneeling here on the floor for much longer, but somehow he can't bring himself to put the bird down, not when it's just made itself so at home in his lap, and the others don't seem to mind, either.
"Went out where?" Mason asks.
"To the village. To the pub. To celebrate his success, or to meet with a fence, who knows. But he happened to step outside to relieve himself just at the right time to see Albert - " - disappear into the Grantham Arms coach house with his special someone for a romp in the hay - " - talk to a stranger. He realised at once that this was a brilliant chance to set the lad up. Albert was a good suspect already, in and out of the Countess' room God knows how many times that day. But this encounter made him the perfect scapegoat."
Baker probably crept close enough to listen, too, to make sure that Albert was engaged in something that he couldn't explain away easily. Sweating with excitement, enough to soak the lining of his hat. The pig.
Nelly seems to sense Thomas' anger. She opens one eye, half-raises her head off his knee and lets out a reproachful little quack.
"Then he followed Albert home in the dark." Thomas absently smooths down the soft silky feathers on the back of Nelly's head and neck, and the goose snuggles back down, comforted.
Mason comes back with a small brown envelope. "And he lost his hat on the way? Why would he lose his hat?"
"Maybe something startled him, so he drew aside into the bushes and it got caught on a branch," Thomas suggests. "And then he couldn't find it again in the dark, so he hurried on without it because he didn't want to lose his quarry. Maybe he was expecting to witness something else incriminating."
"Something did startle him, and I know what it was." Richard, who has been absorbed in his contemplation of the Countess' jewel until now, looks up, takes the envelope from Mason and slides the stone inside. "It was my cab. I remember there was a point when the driver slowed down, saying he'd seen a large dog or something that he didn't want to run over. But when we got to the spot, there was nothing there. Baker must have dived into the undergrowth when we came along, not to be caught in the headlights, and lost his hat in the process." He seals the envelope and passes it to Thomas, who puts it in his inside pocket, careful not to dislodge the goose.
"And then we came up in the cart a few minutes later and found the bowler there." Mason nods. "It all fits together."
"And this morning, under the guise of some errand for Lady Morcar in the village," Thomas concludes, "Baker went straight to the police station to make sure the dirt would stick. And it did."
Mason chuckles wryly. "That's a damn fine chain of reasoning, gentlemen. Have you missed your calling?"
Maybe. Maybe Thomas should chuck it all in, stop solving other people's problems and go into goose-breeding instead. There is something infinitely soothing about sitting on a kitchen floor with several solid pounds of quietly breathing goose in one's arms. Everyone overwhelmed by Christmas, insufferable guests and the sheer evilness of mankind should be entitled to a few moments of peace and quiet like this.
"Don't know what Her Ladyship was complaining about." Mason smiles down warmly at the unlikely pair. "You're the kind of fox I'd set to keep my geese any day, Mr Barrow." He holds out his hands to relieve Thomas of his burden so he can get to his feet.
It's a shame, but Mason's right, they should be off. Baker won't be going anywhere on his flat tyres, but they have a lost treasure to restore, and Albert doesn't deserve to spend a minute longer in Sergeant Willis' holding cells than absolutely necessary, either.
Reluctantly, Thomas hands Nelly over. It is strange, now that he thinks about it, that Lady Morcar should have had geese on her mind on the very same day that her prized jewel disappeared inside one of them. Very strange. Almost… too strange to be a coincidence.
Chapter 5: Act 5
Chapter Text
They make it back to the Abbey in time, but only just. The front door stands wide open in spite of the cold, and a good portion of the Countess' trunks and suitcases are stacked nearby, ready to be loaded into the car that of course hasn't turned up yet.
It's not every day that a farmer on his tractor comes bowling along the drive at top speed, so the hall boys can hardly be blamed for pausing in their work to stare. They're still staring when Mr Mason throttles the engine just outside the front door, and Thomas and Richard climb down from the back of the vehicle, the former hampered by the weight of Nelly the goose, the latter clumsy and slow as if he's been hit by a sudden bout of motion sickness. Which may well be the case, after their mad rush along the rutted country lanes.
John Bates comes out of the house to see what the racket is all about, stern disapproval written all over his broad features. "With all due respect, Mr Barrow," he intones for the sake of the hall boys, and then lowers his voice to an exasperated hiss. "Can you kindly not go missing when we've got a countess to see off?"
Thomas considers pointing out that Bates is labouring under a serious misapprehension there, but that would spoil the joke, so he merely shrugs. "I'm here now, aren't I? Who told you to leave your post?"
"The doctor's with her, and Miss Baxter. Anna had to help Lady Morcar pack. Seems Her Ladyship can't wait to be off."
Thomas can easily believe it.
"Right, let me look after our witness while you go in and sort it out," Mason cuts in, taking Nelly from Thomas. It's a good move, even if Nelly instantly disagrees, because it's hard to look the part of an earl's butler, never mind that of a Crown prosecutor, when you're carrying a goose under your arm.
"Go and find Mrs Hughes," Thomas instructs Bates, brushing tiny white feathers off his overcoat. "Ask her to come to the hall pronto. With that newspaper she confiscated this morning, if she still has it."
"Gina, you can't be serious," Thomas hears Lady Grantham appeal to their guest when he and Richard enter the house, followed by the hall boys. "She's ill, she can't travel. Just give us the address where you're going next, and we'll send her on when she's well again."
They're by the fireplace, ready for the farewells, Lord and Lady Grantham and Lady Mary. Anna stands by holding Lady Morcar's famously beautiful hat and gloves.
"First I lose my husband's beloved gift, am I to lose my valued confidante now as well?" their guest complains, pulling the fur collar of her coat more closely around her wrinkled neck.
"You know you'd both be welcome to stay with us as long as you like, if you don't want to leave her behind," Lady Grantham suggests half-heartedly. This conversation seems to have been going in circles for a considerable time, and she's clearly no longer expecting her offer to be taken up.
Thomas hands his overcoat to one of the hall boys and nods to another to close the front door. The Crawleys and their guest look up sharply at the sound of it falling shut.
"Ah, Barrow," Lady Mary greets him with a practiced smile when Thomas approaches them to report back for duty. It's the kind of smile that she puts on when she'd rather spit and hiss. A quick glance up and down her butler's bedraggled appearance doesn't improve her mood, either. "You look as if you might be able to persuade Lady Morcar that her maid is not fit for travelling. And while you're at it, we're on tenterhooks to hear what exactly has been going on and where on earth you've been. Bates has been frustratingly vague."
"I'm very sorry, Your Ladyship," Thomas replies, trying but failing to sound adequately contrite. "I was out on the Countess of Morcar's business."
"What?" their visitor snaps. "I don't recall asking you to - "
"No, of course you didn't," Thomas agrees at once. "You're hardly the person I'd look to to safeguard her interests." He wishes with all his might for the green baize door to open and for his reinforcements to turn up. The Crawleys may not let him stall for time for long, not with the tone he's taking with the woman. But he honestly can't be bothered to pretend any more.
Predictably, a deep vertical crease forms between Lady Grantham's eyebrows. "Barrow, please recall who you're talking to."
In a rare turn of events, Thomas' prayers are answered as soon as they're made. The door to the backstairs swings open, and they all appear together, Mrs Hughes and Bates first, and yes, she's clutching the News of the World, followed by Phyllis Baxter and Dr Clarkson carrying his bag.
"I would, M'lady," Thomas assures Lady Grantham, grinning inwardly as he puts the match to the fuse. "But you see, whoever this lady is, I very much doubt that she's the Countess of Morcar."
The charge blows up beautifully.
The range of emotions that play across the woman's features is quite impressive. They change from raging fury to cold contempt and from there to the deep hurt of innocence wrongly accused within seconds, but it's the fact that she can't decide which one to settle on that gives her away.
Meanwhile, Lady Grantham is reeling as if she's just taken a bullet to the chest. Lord Grantham and Lady Mary just stand there dumbstruck.
"But then who - " Lady Mary begins, frowning.
But her mother, whom Thomas would have expected to question her butler's sanity rather than her own judgement, recovers faster than he would have thought possible. She takes a deep breath, steeling herself to face the truth, and then rounds on the pretend countess, nostrils flaring. "What have you done with her?" she demands, her voice as sharp as the crack of a whip. "What have you done to my friend Gina?"
Her guest has decided by now that haughty disdain will serve her best. She's clearly not going to break down and confess any time soon, but Thomas feels confident that they won't need her to. He will look like the world's biggest fool if he's got this part wrong, but he might as well go for broke now. "I believe the best person to answer that would be Mrs Hughes, Your Ladyship," he suggests and gestures to the housekeeper.
"Me?" Mrs Hughes asks, utterly at a loss. She steps forward, the newspaper pressed to her chest. "What do I know of this matter?"
"You're holding the answer in your hand." Thomas nods at the paper. "Maybe you'd like to read it out to us. You'll find it towards the back. I believe the headline was 'Calais police hunt poisoner'."
With a look at Thomas that tells him plainly that he hasn't heard the last of this, Mrs Hughes opens the paper, searches for and finds the article, and begins to read to her breathless audience. "'Police in the French port city of Calais are baffled by a heinous crime that has taken place at the city's Grand Hotel Metropole. One of the hotel's guests, the Countess of Morcar, was found in her room by a chambermaid yesterday morning, unconscious and barely clinging to life with severe symptoms of strychnine poisoning.' Lord have mercy." Mrs Hughes glances up at Lady Grantham, reluctant to continue, but Her Ladyship, pale and grim, nods to her to go on. "'While the Countess was rushed to the hospital'," Mrs Hughes resumes the story, "'it was discovered that all her luggage had been removed, including all her clothes, jewellery, personal effects and her beloved chihuahuas. Neither could the Countess' maid be found. She was last seen by hotel staff ordering a cup of hot cocoa for the Countess late on the night before. Enquiries have since brought to light that the maid, American-born Catherine Cusack, is being sought by police in no less than three countries for similar acts of theft and fraudulence. A former actress and chorus girl, Miss Cusack, who is fifty-eight years of age, of above-average height and slim build, appears to have made it a criminal habit to ingratiate herself with older unmarried or widowed ladies in order to relieve them of their riches. It is feared that she may have resorted to murder this time to achieve her nefarious ends. According to a statement from the local Prefect of Police, the Countess of Morcar remains in hospital in critical condition while the whereabouts of the faithless maid are currently unknown. Until she is apprehended, any ladies looking to hire a new maid are strongly advised to double-check the applicants' antecedents if their description answers to that of Miss Cusack.'" Mrs Hughes ends and lets the paper sink down.
"You rapacious little beast!" Lady Grantham hisses at the woman whose description answers exactly to that of Miss Catherine Cusack. "You killed Gina for the Blue Carbuncle, and then you came here to lay the blame at our door!"
That's about the size of it, and Miss Cusack - the real Miss Cusack - knows the game is up. She lets out a cold, high-pitched laugh. "Well, you're all so clever. But I'm afraid he laughs best who laughs last. It's time to say goodbye, Cora dear. Because I'm leaving right now. I've enjoyed playing a countess in your house ever so much, but I don't think I'll be back."
"You're not going anywhere!" Lord Grantham leaves his wife's side and moves to stand between Miss Cusack and the door. "Mary, call the police station."
Lady Mary takes a step or two in the direction of the telephone, and Thomas realises a moment too late that this puts Lady Grantham in a precarious position - face to face with a suspected murderess, and no one else within reach.
Miss Cusack jumps at the opportunity. Her hand goes into the depths of her fur coat and comes back out holding a small revolver. The short barrel gleams ominously in the light from the Christmas tree as she grabs the petrified Lady Grantham's arm and raises the weapon. "Out of my way!" she snaps at Lord Grantham. "I'm not keen on using this little toy, but I will if you force me!" She glances around to check that everyone stands frozen into terrified stillness, then fixes her eyes on Thomas. "You. Open the door, and tell my chauffeur to bring the car round."
Thomas' thoughts are racing as fast as his heart, but none of them are helpful. The car may be out of commission, but anything could happen before they even get outside. What's needed is a distraction, something that will make the murderous maid lower or let go of the gun right now. But whoever of the dozen or so people in the hall makes the first move will inevitably make themselves a target.
The silence is so profound that they can hear the sound of a car engine being revved up outside the house.
"I can't allow you to leave," Lord Grantham protests, but his voice is unsteady, betraying his fear. "Not unless you let go of my wife."
"No, darling, that's not how it works," Miss Cusack informs him sweetly, tightening her hold on Lady Grantham's arm. "Your wife will come with me, to guarantee your good behaviour till I've got away to safety."
In a horrible travesty of the usual rituals that accompany a guest's departure, Anna Bates steps forward with Lady Morcar's hat and gloves, and Thomas' heart leaps into his mouth. "Let me hold that for you, miss," she says calmly, and to the utter astonishment of all present plucks the revolver right out of Miss Cusack's hand. "Today's really not a great day to be waving a gun around."
Belatedly, Bates surges forward, desperate to protect his wife. But Anna has already handed the revolver to Lord Grantham. "It's not loaded," she explains. "I felt it in her coat when I was getting her things ready upstairs. That seemed a bit fishy, so I took the cartridges out when she wasn't looking."
Lord Grantham quickly clicks the cylinder of the gun open to check. "Exactly true. Well done, Anna." And then he manages to pass the weapon to Bates just in time to catch Lady Grantham as she goes to pieces in his arms. Meanwhile Bates, Thomas is ready to swear, can't possibly have looked more besotted with his own wife at his bloody wedding.
With a bang, the front door bursts open, and Tom Branson and Henry Talbot come marching into the house, Baker the chauffeur trailing behind them with a hangdog expression on his ugly face.
"Good morning, everybody," Branson calls breezily into the hall, handing his own hat and gloves to a hall boy in passing. "This gent here just crashed his car at the bottom of the drive and was violently attacked by a rampaging goose as soon as he got out." And true enough, Baker's uniform bears witness to at least one heavy tumble into the mud while fleeing from Nelly's wrath, possibly two or three. "Can anyone please explain what's going on?"
"I don't know what's happening, M'lady!" the chauffeur whines, oblivious of the fake Lady Morcar's unmasking. "That ruddy bird must be rabid!"
"And you're a cheating bastard, Baker!" Miss Cusack rages back at him, shaking off the torpor that's held her captive since Anna disarmed her. "We said we'd go halves, and here they catch you trying to make off without me! When it was your goddamn clever plan that ruined everything in the first place!"
The man's jaw drops, an expression that is comically mirrored on both Branson's and Talbot's faces.
"He, er - " Talbot gestures at Baker. "He said he's the Countess of Morcar's chauffeur, but..."
No, Thomas has never heard a countess call her chauffeur a bastard, either. To the best of Thomas' knowledge, Lady Grantham didn't even do that when one of them stole her youngest daughter.
"This is not the Countess of Morcar, Henry," Lady Mary explains.
"And he's not a chauffeur, either," says a voice that Thomas is very surprised to identify as Phyllis Baxter's. It's not like her at all to speak up of her own volition in this kind of company, so she immediately finds herself the centre of attention. "He's a crook, and a loan shark. Our patient told us. Her real name is Joanne Horner. She came here pretending to be Lady Morcar's maid because this man promised her to forgive her debts if she did." Phyllis looks around as if to check that it's fine if she keeps talking. Nobody raises any objections, so she continues. "All she had to do, he said, was to go down to Dover with him, meet an American lady off a boat and be her maid for a couple of days. She had no idea what she was getting herself into until it was too late. And that's how far we got," Phyllis ends, "before Dr Clarkson arrived and gave her something for the pain. She's asleep now."
The doctor nods. "I'll send the ambulance round to fetch her. The burns are extensive. I'd rather have her at the hospital, in case her condition worsens."
"Thank you, Doctor," Lord Grantham says, his arm still firmly around his badly shaken wife. "Please do what you can for the unfortunate woman, and don't hesitate to send us the bill. As for these people - " He turns to the fake countess and her equally fake driver when the bell on the front door goes off.
Thomas recalls with some difficulty that he's the butler of this place and that, in the absence of his footman, it falls to him to answer the door, even if it's already wide open.
Outside stand two men who, for some reason, are so clearly plain clothes police officers that Thomas could smell it a mile off.
"North Yorkshire Police, Criminal Investigation Department," the older of them announces, doffing his hat. "We have a warrant for the arrest of the woman calling herself the Countess of Morcar."
Thomas has no love for policemen, really not, but he's never watched them carry out their duty with greater satisfaction.
It's not the departure everyone envisioned an hour ago. Downton lines up to see Catherine Cusack go, but there's no ceremonial array of the smiling family on one side and the servants standing to attention in due order of rank on the other side. A strange liberal spirit rules this moment of triumph, and Thomas finds himself watching from between Lady Grantham and Lady Mary as Miss Cusack, head held high in disdain, climbs into the waiting police car, followed by Baker, who couldn't let himself be arrested with style if he tried.
"Thank God Gina woke up in time to tell them where she'd been planning to go," Lady Grantham remarks. She has bounced back remarkably from her earlier fright. "Or they'd still be wondering in Calais where to look for her maid and her property."
"Well, thank God for Anna and her quick thinking," Lady Mary adds, sounding unusually humble. "I was not prepared for Christmas without you, Mama."
And thank God, Thomas thinks fervently, that it hasn't occurred to either of them yet that Lady Grantham would never have been threatened with a gun in the first place if the complete moron they employ as butler had resisted the temptation of staging a dramatic confrontation in the great hall.
"It's a shame about the Blue Carbuncle though," Lady Grantham sighs. "Gina may have offered a thousand francs in reward for its retrieval, but I don't suppose she'll ever see it again."
"They might talk in exchange for a lenient sentence, though," Lady Mary shrugs. "Or maybe poor Mrs Horner knows more than we do."
Out of nowhere, Thomas feels a nudge against his hand and glances down in surprise. Nelly the goose is looking up at him expectantly out of her beady black eyes. She has waddled up behind him just in time, it seems, to remind him that this is the moment to make sure the Crawleys will forgive him even a gun to Lady Grantham's head. She's right. He's clean forgotten what he's carrying in his pocket.
"Ooh!" Lady Grantham cries when she sees the bird. "Who let that thing in here?"
"This is Nelly, M'lady. She's Mr Mason's." Thomas puts a gentle hand on the goose's head, as much to say hello as to keep her from pecking at Lady Grantham, but he needn't have worried. "And she's an affectionate soul, really, as long as you don't feed her things that hurt her." He digs into his inner pocket for the envelope containing the jewel.
Lady Grantham's eyes go wide in joyous disbelief as she takes it from Thomas, silver salvers be damned, and she gasps with delight when she pulls it open and peers inside. "Barrow," she declares, "you're a marvel. Robert!" She turns to her husband, who is just walking up to them. "Look at this! Oh, we must let Gina know at once. Nothing will hasten her recovery like knowing her jewel is found and safe. You know what?" She puts a hand on her husband's arm. "She must come here as soon as she's able. I'm sure Mary and Henry could go down after Christmas and fetch her. We owe her that, after nearly letting that awful woman get away with her horrible crimes. Please let's ask her, Robert."
Oh yes, and it's Lady Morcar's first New Year's as a widow, too. It's bound to be hard, and all that. If Thomas could afford risking his job more than once in the same day, he'd bury his face in his hands.
The police car drives off, the Crawleys move inside, the hall boys start carrying Lady Morcar's luggage back into the house with their usual stoicism in the face of upstairs volatility, and Thomas turns to find Mrs Hughes waiting for him.
"Thomas? I think you should come with me."
Oh well. He knows he's in a for a roasting about the newspaper thing. Might as well get it over with. "Look, Mrs Hughes, I know you don't approve - "
"No, it's not that." She waves his explanations briskly aside as she precedes him into the house. "Though how I'm ever going to convince my maids now that they waste their time and taint their souls reading this kind of stuff is more than I know."
Thomas is about to protest that this honestly wasn't the point he was trying to make, and that he will never ask anyone within these walls to read aloud from the News of the World again. But the words die on his lips when Mrs Hughes pulls the green baize door open.
Thomas lost sight of Richard early on in the proceedings, even before every thought in his conscious mind became fixed on the task of preventing a bloodbath in the great hall. He wouldn't have looked for him in Daisy's arms, but that's where he's ended up, slumped on the backstairs as if he's made it there just in time before his knees buckled. This is how the others must have found him, and unlike Thomas, whom the truth has been staring in the face for hours to no avail, they've put two and two together without delay.
Daisy has lowered herself onto the step above Richard's, an arm across his chest for support. Bates holds Richard's forearm in a tight grip so Dr Clarkson, his doctor's bag open at his side, can cut, literally cut, Richard's fine leather glove from his hand with a scalpel. They're on the second one already. The ruin of the first is on the floor beside the bag, like a snake's skin forcibly shed before its time.
"Nearly done, Mr Ellis," Dr Clarkson says in an awfully cheerful tone, drowning out a particularly undignified little whimper. "And it doesn't stick so badly now."
Thomas catches a glimpse of Richard's face, pale and shining with sweat, teeth digging deep into his lower lip to keep himself quiet. His eyes flicker like those of a little wild beast of the forest that would give anything to just hunker down in its burrow until the storm has passed.
Thomas' heart aches with guilt. How could he have been so blind? It was never the residual queasiness of spending an hour elbow-deep in poultry innards that dulled Richard's wits this morning, sapped all his energy and made him taciturn and grumpy, until the strain of keeping up the facade became too much. Silly man, silly, silly man, to just put gloves over his hurts and pretend to be fine. Of course he wasn't. Thomas had a shovel to beat down the flames that were threatening to engulf Mrs Horner. Richard only had his hands.
The second glove comes off, and the face Daisy pulls at the sight it reveals is horribly eloquent.
"Well," Dr Clarkson says, putting his head to one side as he surveys the extent of the damage. "I won't insist on you joining Mrs Horner in the hospital, Mr Ellis, but you'll have to take it easy for a few days. Skin doesn't regrow from nothing. Plenty of rest. No more running around doing the police's work for them."
"Is there more?" Richard unclenches his teeth to ask. "I'd hoped that was over." Trust the man to crack jokes even with the skin on his fingers in tatters.
"It is over," Mrs Hughes confirms, then turns to the doctor. "Don't worry, Dr Clarkson, we'll look after him."
Bates releases Richard's arm, the doctor leans down to stow his instruments in his bag, and Richard's eyes meet Thomas'.
"Why didn't you say anything?" Thomas blurts out, feeling idiotic.
Richard makes a brave attempt at a smile. It comes out very lopsided. "You were on a roll. Didn't want to slow you down."
They pull him to his feet, and Thomas moves in to offer an arm to support him up the stairs. The man deserves a bed of roses, and Thomas is resolved to move heaven and earth to make the Abbey's attics yield the closest equivalent possible.
Richard shakes his head. "No. No, don't." But he's not angry. He's still trying to smile. "You've only got five hours left to make a whole Christmas happen. For God's sake go and do it."
Chapter Text
Five hours, and they pass in a blur of frantic activity. Nothing is calm, but all is finally bright. In still the same unusual spirit of camaraderie between those above stairs and those below, everybody mucks in, and the hall is turned into a proper Christmas venue in record time.
The children come running back in from outside where Mr Mason's let them stroke a goose, Mr Barrow, a real goose! and promptly get underfoot. Thomas plucks Miss Caroline out of harm's way just in time as Mr Branson and Mr Talbot wheel the grand piano out of the drawing room into the hall. He shoos the children off to the relative safety of the staircase, and Master George very helpfully lets Johnny Bates chase him all the way up to the gallery. Going by how enthusiastically they're pointing finger guns at each other, they're clearly playing 'Johnny's mum arrests the nasty robber.'
Lady Grantham calls Miss Sybbie back down a moment later to assist with setting up the glasses for the punch.
"Daisy can take care of that, M'lady," Mrs Patmore intervenes quickly when she sees them at it. "You don't have to."
Lady Grantham shakes her head earnestly. "Oh, I think I do, Mrs Patmore."
Sybbie manages to break only one glass out of seventy, and Her Ladyship clears the shards away in person, too.
Around mid-afternoon, Sergeant Willis enters the hall with Albert in tow, and the cheer that rises up to greet them is loud enough to lift the roof from its rafters. Willis steers the slightly befuddled footman towards Thomas, but his hand on the youngster's shoulder is entirely avuncular this time.
"One rascal, returned with little thanks," the sergeant announces in his best official tone, then lowers his voice. "Sorry that took so long. My York colleagues were extremely interested in what Albert was doing behind the Grantham Arms. They only let him go when his partner in crime came running and owned up."
"His - what?" Thomas must have misheard that. Even in the most benign seasonal spirit of forgiveness, the officers from York can't possibly have turned a blind eye to an all male rendezvous.
"It was the new barman from the Grantham Arms," Sergeant Willis elaborates. "The redhead, Freddy Whatshisname. Apparently Albert talked the fellow into selling him a bottle of gin under the counter. They were spotted at the handover. But when he heard that we'd taken Albert in over the matter of the jewel, he came at once and told us the true story." The officer glances at Albert, whose face blushes a deep crimson. "I've already given him a piece of my mind about the virtue of moderation, but he may need reminding from time to time. Oh, and I'm afraid we'll have to write to his mother. Shall I do that, Mr Barrow, or will you?"
"I'll take care of that, Sergeant." Thomas manages to keep his face entirely blank until Willis has walked off to pay his respects to the lady of the house.
"Please don't," Albert pleads with Thomas in an undertone as soon as the policeman is out of earshot. "She doesn't know." The lad's eyes, wide and helpless, meet Thomas' for a short moment, then he looks down again. "I'm so sorry. I'll never meet him again, I promise."
Now that won't do at all. "The more fool you," Thomas grumbles. "Brains and decency? That's a rare combination, Albert. If I were you, I'd hold on to him with all I've got." God forgive him for encouraging anyone in his care to lie and scheme to get by, but who is he to enjoy himself in Richard's company and deny the same happiness to others? "Just promise me you'll have a good new cover story ready when you turn twenty-one. I've not much sleep left to lose."
"Albert was in York, by the way," Thomas explains while he fluffs up the pillows and arranges them more comfortably at Richard's back. "He got off his train, popped into the station bookshop to pick up some books for his nephews, a matter of minutes, then hopped right on the next train back to Downton for their meeting the coach house. The small thing Molesley saw him show his friend was the punched return ticket. He'd kept it in case anyone would question where he went."
"A return to York is a lot of money for a shaky alibi."
"Not so bad. They went halves on the fare. They'll split the fine for selling spirits to minors that Willis had to hand out as well. And I bet they'd have pooled their funds to keep each other afloat if either of them had lost his job over this, too. If it isn't true love, I don't know what is."
Richard shifts in his bed, but bracing himself against the mattress with his bandaged hands is not a good idea, so he abandons the attempt with a grimace. "You're a terrible romantic, Thomas."
Thomas refrains from pointing out how many times he's got on a train to somewhere, hours away sometimes, just because Richard happened to be passing through and could fit a meeting into his tight schedule, however public and however brief. It's not like he's ever heard Richard protest or complain. "Well, thank you for your endless patience with this awful flaw of mine." He slides his arm around Richard's back to help him sit up. "How are you feeling now?"
He looks terrible, not to put too fine a point on it.
"Splendid, thank you," Richard mutters and leans into Thomas' embrace. "It's Christmas, and I'm with you. What else do I need?"
Less of the burning pain that must still be pulsing through his fingers, maybe? Less of the fever that makes his sweaty undershirt cling to his back while his body takes revenge for not being allowed to rest and heal for hours on end? But Thomas can't detect a trace of irony in Richard's tone.
"Some Christmas, eh?" he says aloud, looking around the bare attic room. He's surprised and touched to see that someone's found the time put a vase with a bit of holly and greenery on top of the chest of drawers. It certainly wasn't there yet during their council of war last night. And to be fair, the pillows didn't actually need straightening either.
"Some Christmas," Richard echoes contentedly. He rests his heavy head on Thomas' black-clad shoulder, and Thomas wishes they'd never have to move again. "I asked Miss Baxter to leave the door open, so I could hear the singing from below. Haven't felt so much at peace in weeks and weeks. But I'm sorry to be a burden. You did all the work, now you're missing out on the fun."
Thomas turns his head to nuzzle Richard's messy hair. "You're not a burden. And what fun are you talking about? Lady Mary warbling 'Silent Night' while His Lordship gets slowly but surely plastered on the Christmas punch?"
Richard chuckles softly. "That woman is an angel, though. Miss Baxter, I mean, not Lady Mary. She sat with me all afternoon. I still can't believe what you told me of her past. This house is full of astonishing secrets."
And Thomas hasn't even had occasion to say a word about Bates' record yet. He'll save that for the next time someone happens to brandish a gun in the great hall when Richard comes visiting. "I'm glad we could clear her. She deserves to be happy." Thomas feels Richard hum in agreement and recalls with a pang of conscience that Richard is still waiting to have his own mind put at rest, too. "Oh, and speaking of secrets," he hurries to add, "I made a call to Sandringham to say you wouldn't be turning up any time soon. Couldn't get a hold of Miller, but they said they'd pass the message on, and they didn't ask any nosy questions, either." 'They' being a scandalised Mr Wilson, what was Mr Ellis thinking, rendering himself unfit for duty on Christmas Eve, what, what? An accident? Harrumph. No mention of a Merry Christmas or a speedy recovery, either. But Richard looks so relieved that Thomas doesn't have the heart to go into detail. "I came up here twice during the afternoon to tell you, but you were asleep both times."
Curled up on his side and twitching with discomfort even while his mind was floating far below the surface of consciousness. It was hard to watch, and it would have been worse if a distraction in the form of Mr Molesley hadn't chosen to round the corner into the men's corridor just then, far too early for the reception, looking for Phyllis.
"Go on up," Phyllis Baxter finally sidled up to whisper to Thomas just ten minutes ago in the great hall, when the reception was in full swing already. "He's awake now, and you won't be missed for an hour or so." Thomas didn't need telling twice.
Wide awake, and thirsty as a fish. When Thomas hands Richard the water glass from the bedside table, he takes it between both palms like a little child and drinks about as greedily.
Thomas sits down on the side of the bed. "What did Dr Clarkson say?" He nods at Richard's hands. "Will it be just a matter of time, or should we start worrying?" Not that Thomas wouldn't gladly split his salary to keep them both afloat in the very worst case, too.
"No need to worry at all," Richard assures him in between sips. "He said I can go back to work in a few days, and I should be up to the fiddly stuff again in a week, or two at most. Might keep the scars. Don't mind. Remind me of you, and this madhouse of yours."
Thomas wants to take Richard's hands into his own and breathe the gentlest of kisses on his fingers, but even that will hurt, so he doesn't.
Richard misreads his hesitation. "Oh, Christ. Listen to me whine about a few blisters, when - " His eyes go to Thomas' left hand, the gloved one. He knows what's under there, of course, and he also knows how many times Thomas has wished he could have got away with just scarring and nothing worse. Richard sighs and closes his eyes for a moment. "See, I'm getting it all wrong again."
"That's not what I was thinking. I was thinking that I've just been granted a few days of pure bliss that I haven't deserved, and I'm trying to decide what exactly we should do with them."
Richard puts the empty glass down on his lap and raises an eyebrow. "Won't you be busy getting everything ready for the real Countess of Morcar now? I suppose Lady Grantham will want you to pull out all the stops, to make up for what's happened."
"At least it's Albert who'll be in charge of feeding and walking her mutts, not me."
"I wouldn't have minded joining you on a walk or two."
"Yes, you would. Those little buggers are a terror. But Albert deserves it, for keeping me up at night like that. Though truth be told, they did help solve the mystery."
"What, the dogs? How?"
"By barking at the lady's maid. It was one of those little things that really should've made us prick up our ears. Of course they barked, seeing how Mrs Horner was a complete stranger to them."
"And there were more things like that?"
"Oh yes. Like the fake Countess calling people to her room again and again for no reason. She was building a suspect list. Or how she bragged about the jewel in front of us, to make sure we all knew about it. And how she didn't want the story blazoned abroad, even though it would've been so much harder for the thief to sell the stone then. She was just keeping the price up. And remember the heavy make-up, and the hurried, shoddy hair job that transformed Catherine Cusack into Lady Morcar in a single night while she was crossing to Dover?"
"That was incredibly risky, though. What if Lady G had clocked it?"
"Lady G, who hadn't seen her friend in twenty years? And who would've been much too polite to make her doubts known? It said in the paper that Cusack used to be an actress. She was with the Countess long enough to pick up her mannerisms and her way of speaking. She was sure she could mimic her convincingly, as long as she looked the part."
"But she overdid it."
"Yes. She laid it on a bit too thick, both the paint and the attitude."
Richard laughs. "With that lot, it's hard to tell sometimes who's just insufferable by nature and who's doing it on purpose."
"You tell me."
They share a wry grin.
"Do you think she might have riled you up on purpose with those nasty comments, too?" Richard asks. "Make the butler blow a fuse, give her another reason to leave at once and in a massive huff?"
"Maybe. I think she did plan to leave last night, as soon as the supposed theft was discovered. Only she couldn't, because Baker had complicated things by putting the stone down the goose's gullet, instead of hiding it somewhere more accessible. They couldn't very well knock up a farmer at ten o'clock at night and demand that he single out one specific bird from his flock in the dark and hand it over at once, could they? How suspicious would that have looked?"
"True. But what if one of your housemaids would've actually read that paper this morning, and stumbled across the report on the poisoning?"
"A housemaid, time to read the paper, on the morning of Christmas Eve? But you're right, it was a desperate gamble. But they must've figured if they only painted Albert black enough and Downton got its own cloak-and-dagger story, nobody would pay much attention to the outside news any more."
"So now we know why the fake lady sent her chauffeur into the village this morning."
"Albert wasn't Baker's only errand, though. Willis said the York detectives also recovered a telegram he sent from the post office, booking two places for them on an ocean liner from Liverpool to New York under a false name. It steamed off without them this afternoon."
"Bloody hell. Hang on - two places? Then why was the fake lady so keen on taking Mrs Horner with her?"
Thomas reaches across to refill Richard's glass from the carafe on the bedside table. "Maybe to cover their tracks. Who knows how much of the strychnine Cusack had left over? Imagine if the woman who went by that name was found in a ditch somewhere, or in a dingy Liverpool hotel room, with a note at her side that said she was racked with remorse about her murder attempt on her mistress…"
"That's grim, Thomas."
"It could have sown some very useful doubt and confusion, long enough for Cusack and Baker to get away to New York unhindered. I wish we could put it past that witch, but I wouldn't. Mrs Horner didn't, either. 'Don't bury me under that name', remember?"
"Poor thing." Richard nods thank you while Thomas puts the carafe aside. "Did you hear Mrs Horner really was a milliner? Miss Baxter told me. She had a shop together with her husband. He died in the war, and she tried to keep it going without him, but she ran deeper and deeper into debt. The shop closed down, so she took on work as a lady's maid whenever she could find any. But every penny she earned went to Baker. He'd lent her money at extortionate rates when the bank no longer would. She still owed him more than two hundred pounds when he contacted her with that offer that he said would clean the slate once and for all."
"How come he's gone into thieving and fencing now? Money-lending not paying off like it used to?"
"Are you surprised? With the economy going down the drain and so many people out of work, repayments will have been slowing down a lot. There's only so far you can get with threats and beatings when people literally don't have two pennies to rub together. Add to that the police really cracking down on his sort lately... There was going to be no new hat for Mr Baker until he'd scored a big coup that would do away with any penny-pinching for years, maybe forever."
"Not that hat again!"
Richard tilts his head back against the pillows and laughs, and Thomas' heart leaps at the sound. "Oh, please let me be a little proud. I feel it's the only thing I've contributed. The rest was all your work, and it was a treat to watch you at it." Thomas feels the colour rise into his face. "Speaking of new hats, what will you do with the reward money?" Richard asks before Thomas can think of anything intelligent to say. "A thousand francs, Miss Baxter said? I've no idea how much that is in pound sterling, but it sure sounds like a lot."
Thomas shakes his head. He's honestly not even thought about the reward yet, if only because he's had no time, but it doesn't seem right. "Not sure it's mine to claim. I'm just glad this is over without bloodshed or heartbreak. Anna Bates deserves it more than I do. She may have saved Lady Grantham's life. Or maybe it should go to Albert, as compensation for the fright he's had. Or to Phyllis, for the sleepless night and the selfless nursing duty. Or to Mr Mason, for successful goose surgery. Or to Mrs Hughes, for raging about the exact right thing at the right time. Or to you, for sacrificing the skin of your fingers in a good cause. It took so many people to sort this out. It doesn't seem fair to appoint just one winner."
"What will you do then, share?"
"If I've got anything to do with it, I'd say it should go to Mrs Horner. I'm sure it'll be enough to pay off her debts and give her a fresh start. It could even be enough to retire on, if she's too badly hurt to work again."
Richard holds out his glass to Thomas. "Can you put this away for a moment? I need to kiss you very urgently."
It's easier said than done, but with Richard's arms over Thomas' shoulders, hands sticking out far enough to be safe from further harm, they make it work.
"I would ask you to climb right into my lap, if there was a point," Richard mutters in Thomas' ear when they come up for air, his lips so close that they brush against the shell.
It sends a shiver down Thomas' spine. "What do you mean, if there was a point?" he whispers back. They're alone up here, with everyone else busy with Christmas. Phyllis promised them an hour, and they've only wasted half of it talking. She'll keep an eye on the stairs for them, and head off anyone who might try and stray into the attics right now. "There's every point."
Richard pulls a face. "But I'm useless, Thomas. My hands – "
"Mmh. You won't need your hands."
The matter hangs in the balance for a moment, and Thomas almost starts worrying that he's being pushy, that Richard needs rest and sleep and nothing else. But then a smirk lightens up Richard's face. "If you say so. Challenge accepted."
"Just one more thing." Thomas puts his hand on Richard's chest, but it's more playful than restraining.
"What is it?"
"I just want to get that man out of my head again before I take you at your word and make myself at home there." Thomas glances pointedly down at the bedcovers currently hiding the lower half of Richard's body. "Mr Molesley says Merry Christmas. He came an hour early to apologise for making us think he'd gone back on Albert." And to sample plenty of punch, going by how jolly and red-cheeked he already was by the time Thomas found a free minute to talk to him.
Richard raises his head, frowning. "Why would he apologise - "
"- for a misunderstanding that wasn't his fault?" Thomas grins, but without malice. "That's the Joseph Molesley brand of logic for you. We all think the only reason he hasn't proposed to Miss Baxter yet is that he's hasn't figured out how to ask her for permission to do so, too."
Richard takes a breath as if to say something, then changes his mind and closes his mouth again with a maddeningly secretive smile.
"What?" Thomas demands, instantly suspicious.
"Nothing. Well, not nothing, but..." Richard actually blushes, and the penny drops.
"Christ!" Thomas protests, torn between laughter and exasperation. "I can't believe she told you before she told me!"
"I'm sorry if I've blown it. I think she just needed to tell someone and I happened to be there."
Damn Richard and his talent for making friends left, right and centre the moment he enters a house. No matter how much Thomas loves him for it, he will never understand how he does it. That said, the punch really was the most likely explanation for Molesley's exuberant spirits, wasn't it?
"I hope you're not cross?" Richard asks, a little concerned at Thomas' silence. "You'll still be the one who walks her down the aisle, I'm sure."
"Oh, I'm not cross. I'm delighted. It's about time, too. They've been dancing around each other since 1922."
"Not everyone goes from nothing to seventh heaven in a mere four days, Thomas."
"I'm still ashamed it took me four full days. Should've taken a leaf out of your book and done it in four minutes."
"Four minutes? Two at best. I will have you know that I was lost already when I crossed the threshold of Downton Abbey for the first time."
"Is that the word, lost?"
"All right." God, that smile. "Found."
And to the distant sounds of the rest of the household still singing and making merry down below, find each other they do, up here in their nest, warm, safe, home.
"I can't get that stone out of my head," Richard murmurs afterwards, Thomas' arms still around him, Thomas' head resting on his chest.
"Mmh," Thomas mutters sleepily. "I noticed you couldn't stop staring at it back at Yew Tree Farm."
"Want to know why?"
Thomas tilts his head back for a look at Richard's face. "Of course. Didn't know you were interested in jewellery."
"I'm not." Another kiss, chaste again now, Richard's warm lips on Thomas' forehead. "But it was the exact same colour as your eyes."
Thomas smiles as he listens to Richard's heart slow back down, beat by beat, peaceful and content, while the soft flakes of the first Christmas snow start swirling past their window like goose down.
THE END
Notes:
Any similarities between this story and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s classic Sherlock Holmes tale, “The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle”, are completely intentional and no coincidence at all.
An entire flock of geese and three annoying chihuahuas were harmed during the writing of this story, but I’d like to assure you all that Nelly is fine and still very much in love with Thomas. She survived Christmas and became the founding mother of Mr Mason’s new flock.
I only learned after I wrote this story that the legal drinking age for liquor in England in 1928 was 18, not 21. But I’m not sure I’m comfortable with Thomas condoning a 17-year-old’s relationship with an adult, so it's still 21 in this story.
Thank you so much to everyone who has kudoed and commented, or may yet do so. I treasure all feedback immensely, and our conversations are such a great source of joy to me in these difficult times. But if you’ve preferred to enjoy this story in silence, please know that I appreciate you, too!
Feel free to say hello on Tumblr any time, I’m @jolie-goes-downton.
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