Читать книгу Gone With the Windsors - Laurie Graham - Страница 112

Carlton Gardens is in uproar. The smell is now so bad it greets you before you reach the drawing room. When I arrived, a housemaid was flicking the pelmets with a feather duster—as though something like that could be dusted away!

Melhuish was pacing the floor, and Violet had even canceled her meetings.

The exterminator hadn’t been sent for, however. I’d have thought that was the very first thing to do.

Violet said, “To exterminate what? We don’t have rats.”

Trotman said, “Oh yes we do, Your Ladyship. I’ve seen ’em the size of cats outside the scullery.”

Thank heavens I’ve moved out. Melhuish took umbrage at my suggestion that the prime suspects must be the dogs. He said, “My dogs do not smell.”

Well, they most certainly do, but I didn’t particularly mean the dogs themselves, rather some little gift-offering one of them might have left behind. My advice to them was to have the room stripped out, ceiling to floor. Dollars to doughnuts they’ll find a doggie woops.

Violet says it couldn’t be more inconvenient. They have the Yugoslavias coming for the weekend. Crown Prince Paul and his wife, Olga.