The Mayor of Bellacourt

Chapter 2

It was Wednesday, and Blanche--the head lady's maid at Bellacourt Manor--was freaking out. Not because it was Wednesday, although Wednesday was her second favorite day of the week. Her *favorite day of the week was Thursday--the day the local Doctor arrived with his weekly delivery of morphine. The Bellacourts were generally found in a much more congenial and amenable mood when their fresh morphine arrived, which in turn made life more pleasant for their entire staff.

Even on the weeks when the Bellacourts' morphine supply had miraculously lasted through the week (Newport's version of a Chanukah miracle) by Tuesday evenings Dodo Bellacourt, the mistress of the house, could reliably be found vociferously complaining of the morphine's "lack of freshness."

It did strike some of the staff as odd that a doctor would be a syphilitic hunchback who made deliveries at the servant's entrance rather than the front door, but no matter, everyone under the roof was always relieved and happy to see him.

But on this particular Wednesday, Blanche was freaking out because it was her day off. The staff at Bellacourt Manor were each allowed one and only one day off per year. One day on which they might attend to matters of the personal or the familial. It was difficult for the Bellacourts to even imagine that the staff had lives worth caring about beyond the manicured lawns of Bellacourt Manor, but apparently it was so. Blanche hadn't been back to East Crumbsington in a year. She had been anticipating this day anxiously for weeks, and finally, at last, her trip home was just a few short hours away.

Blanche rose that morning even earlier than was normally required, tidying her spare 6'x6' room. The day before she had prepared as best she could everything that would be left in the hands of her house maids during her absence, so that any disasters that may occur while she was away might be minimized.

Blanche got dressed, made her bed, put up her hair in a tight bun, then left her room to make her way down to the kitchens. As she turned the corner to the stairs she almost crashed directly into Mr. Peepers, the head butler.

"Ah. Blanche," Mr. Peepers said with a sneer. His inky hair was plastered so defeatedly down against his forehead that his hairline remained immobile, no matter how strenuously he arched his eyebrows. "I'll need you to see to Lady Beatrice's chambers this morning. Apparently her husband, Master Albert, was asked to perform his husbandly duties last night."

"Oh no," Blanche said, as her heart chilled.

"Yes I'm afraid so," Mr. Peepers said. "And consequently there is quite a lot of vomit to be cleaned up around the bed. And under the bed. And the walls. Everywhere, really," he finished, in a way that conceded the horrifying impressiveness of the situation.

"Yes, well," Blanche began. "Perhaps one of the chamber maids could see to Master Albert's vomit? It is my day off today and I must run to catch the carriage to East Crumbsington."

Mr. Peepers pointedly turned his head away from Blanche and stared off in the direction of the window at the end of the hall. The window faced the east lawn of the Bellacourt Estate, which was only barely visible in the early morning gloam.

"Do you see what I'm doing here, Blanche?" Mr. Peepers said, addressing the window. "I'm looking out that window. Look out the window with me. NO don't look *at me, Blanche, look out the window. Look there and tell me what you see, Blanche."

Blanche squinted and tried to see something anything, outside the window. "Umm, the outdoors? The east lawn? Lady Lillian's baby elephant?"