Upstairs there was a large new bedroom for them, and on the third floor two small parlors became a very nice billiard room for Lenox. In the basement the builders only made a slim hallway between the houses, firstly so as not to tamper with the foundation and secondly because the couple didn’t need as much space down there. They were reducing their staff. They only required one coachman now, two footmen, one cook (Lenox’s, Ellie, was foul-mouthed but talented), and one bootboy. Lady Jane’s cook gave notice, explaining that it was excellent timing, since she and her husband had always hoped to open a pub and now had the money. Still, it would leave four people out of work. Fortunately Lady Jane’s brother always needed servants, and those who wanted to move from London to the country received their new billets happily. Three of them took this offer, and the fourth, a bright young lad who had been Lenox’s coachman, took two months’ pay and set out for South Africa to make his fortune, with a letter of introduction from his now former employer.

All of this still left one enormous problem: the butlers. Both Lenox and Lady Jane had long-serving butlers who seemed half part of the family. In fact it was unusual for a woman to have a butler rather than a housekeeper, but Jane had insisted on it when she first came to London, and now Kirk, an extremely fat, extremely dignified Yorkshireman, had been with her for nearly twenty years. More seriously, there was Graham. For all of Lenox’s adult life, Graham had been his butler, and more importantly his confidant and companion. They had met when Lenox was a student and Graham a scout at Balliol College; special circumstances had bound them there, and when Lenox left for London he had taken Graham with him. He had fetched Lenox his morning coffee, yes, but Graham had also helped him in a dozen of his cases, campaigned for him in Stirrington, and traveled with him across Europe and to Russia. Now all that might change.