Posted by Robert Hill on June 06, 2014 at 13:02:02 user eclrh.
In Reply to: Re: Ransome's Sketch - Re: Beckfoot Layout posted by Peter Ceresole on June 06, 2014 at 00:23:14:
We know Beckfoot had electricity- don't we?
I thought we knew it didn't, apart from Dick's pigeon battery, and possibly accuumulator-operated servant bells. In PM ch. 16, when the D's, having tested the Scarab, are going in late past the house,
"It was still daylight out of doors but, as the house came into sight, they saw the glimmer of a lamp or candles in the drawing-room."
If the drawing-room didn't have electric light, the rest of the house wouldn't have done.
A moment later Dick's bell goes off, and in the next chapter Nancy tells how the GA insisted as a result on testing all the servant bells, but I suspect they were probably purely mechanical nevertheless, or at most accumulator-operated. There may be a quote relevant to that in PP.