Chapter 5
It was four o’clock in the morning by the time the last of the guests drifted off to bed. Jeremy was exhausted. Once the room was clear, all the staff trooped in and began the mammoth task of cleaning. He was dead on his feet. His back hurt, his feet ached, and if he didn’t get out of his damned uniform soon he was going to scream. The room smelled of stale wine, cigar smoke, sweat, and overheated bodies masked by perfumes. It was awful. They got the worst of the rubbish away, and then went around with brushes, mops, and polish. By five o’clock it was clean.
They trudged out of the room. Then it was time to start getting ready for the day. The butler sent half the staff to bed for a couple of hours and set the other half to readying the breakfast room, filling the coal scuttles
