Sheer Folly

by Carola Dunn

  Daisy emerged from the tunnel. Armitage and Rhino faced each other a few feet apart. Both had clenched their fists. Neither pipe nor cigarette holder was in evidence.

  Beyond them she saw Julia’s aghast face. Lady Ottaline looked excited. Could she so far have misunderstood the situation as to believe the men were fighting over her? Or was it sheer bloodlust?

  “Oh, don’t!” Julia begged.

  Daisy took out her notebook. “This will make a wonderful story for the scandal sheets! The noble earl of Rydal attacks a man half his size, in the presence of horrified ladies. I can just see the headlines. But hold off a minute, won’t you, please? Lucy will want to see this so that she can give an accurate report to Lord Gerald to spread in the clubs. I expect he’ll be able to dine out on the story for weeks.”

  The would-be combatants looked at her. Armitage appeared both annoyed and amused. Rhino glared, his face turning from red to purple.

  “It’ll make an even better story if Rhino has a stroke. For the papers, I mean. Gerald wouldn’t care to—”

  “Daisy!” Julia objected uncertainly.

  “Not that I’d want Rhino to make himself ill, of course. Or worse. People do die from strokes, and you look awfully overwrought, Rhino. If you could see the way your eyes are bulging. . . . Perhaps you ought to sit down.”

  “I’ll fetch you a glass of water from the back room,” Armitage offered. He hurried off, just in time—Daisy thought—to avoid laughing in his antagonist’s face. Julia followed him.

  “I expect you ought to cut down on the cigarettes,” Daisy said to Rhino. “They’re frightfully bad for you.”

  “I am perfectly well,” he said through gritted teeth. Then he parted them just far enough to stick his cigarette holder between, stuck a cigarette in the holder, and struck a match as he strode back to the outer cave.

  Lady Ottaline gave Daisy a look of pure loathing and went after him.

  Lucy’s anguished wail was audible in the inner cave. “Rhino, you blithering idiot! You’ve ruined another shot!”

  THIRTEEN

  Under the circumstances, lunch was bound to be an uncomfortable meal. Business having taken the rest of the men to the works in Swindon, Rhino and Armitage were the only two present, and they, of course, were not on speaking terms.

  As well as the strained relations between several of those who had visited the grotto that morning, Mrs. Howell was irritated because the soup was already growing cold when Lady Ottaline at last came down after refreshing her make-up. And Lady Beaufort was annoyed with Julia for leaving it to their maid to inform her as to her daughter’s whereabouts.

  “Mother, I’m twenty-eight!”

  “Past old enough to have better manners!” snapped the usually equable lady.

  “I thought you were probably still asleep, so I left a message with Willett. It was very early, but when I came down to breakfast, Daisy and Lucy were just about to leave, because Lucy had to catch the best light for her photographs. I wanted to see what they were doing.”

  “It’s about time I had a look at this grotto everyone is making such a fuss about. I hope you can spare the time to show me this afternoon, Julia?”

  “Of course, Mother.”

  “I don’t know why you want to see it,” Mrs. Howell grumbled. “Brin’s spent an absolute fortune on it, but when all’s said and done, it’s just a fancy hole in the ground.”

  “I suppose Mr. Pritchard may spend his money as he chooses,” Lady Beaufort said sharply.

  “He might spare a thought for my Owen trying to make ends meet after he’s gone.”

  After the strenuous activity of the morning, Daisy was too hungry to pay their sniping much heed at the time. Later, when they went out to the hall after lunch, she said to Lucy, “Mrs. Howell’s certainly changed her tune, hasn’t she!”

  “Has she?”

  “Didn’t you notice? Yesterday she was all deference to Lady Beaufort. At lunch she contradicted her practically every time she opened her mouth.”

  “I wasn’t listening.”

  “But don’t you think it’s odd? Perhaps she’s realising that a title isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. I must say, Lady Beaufort gave as good as she got.”

  “I have to go back and take some more flash photos,” said the single-minded Lucy. “Will you come and lend a hand?”

  “I can’t, darling. I’m going to be interrogating Armitage for my article.”

  “Blast! Then I can’t have him to help with the flash.”

  “Try Rhino.”

  “Not something likely!”

  “Mrs. Howell might lend you a servant. But considering the mood she’s in, I’d ask Barker instead, if I were you. Or Julia might do it. She has to escort her mother there anyway. There’s nothing to carry, remember. You left all your stuff in the hermit’s lair.”

  “Yes, Armitage swore it would be safe. Everything will have to be carried back here, though.”

  “I’m sure you’ll work something out. If you’re not back by tea-time, I’ll send a rescue party. I’ve got to fetch a new notebook and meet Armitage in the muniments room. Toodle-oo.”

  “Pritchard has a muniments room? That’s a bit grandiose for a plumber!”

  “I suppose title deeds and other legal documents relate to the property itself as well as to the family that used to own it. I’m hoping Armitage will tell me what became of the Appsworths. I must go. Good luck with the photos. At least Lady Beaufort should be easier to keep out of the pictures than Rhino!”

  Following the directions of the ever-efficient Barker, Daisy found the muniments room without difficulty, though it was tucked away in an odd corner of the ground floor near the servants’ wing. Armitage was already there, standing at the window, gazing out at a small paved courtyard. A pretty housemaid was crossing it, carrying a basket. By the slump of his shoulders, Armitage did not find the sight cheering.

  Daisy hesitated on the threshold, then tapped on the door. He swung round.

  “Mrs. Fletcher! Sorry, I was a long way away.”

  “In Canada?”

  “Well, yes.”

  “Whereabouts?”

  “Toronto. That’s where I live.”

  “It’s quite a big city, isn’t it?”

  “Part of your vast fund of apparently useless information? Not by London standards, but yes, it’s over half a million, and growing fast.” Abruptly he changed the subject. “What is it you want to know about the house?”

  “Anything that might appeal to the average reader of magazines.”

  “The average reader?”

  “Do I detect a ‘tone of intellectual snobbery’?”

  “What?” he asked, startled.

  “Shaw. George Bernard. At least, I’m pretty sure he’s responsible.”

  He laughed. “Now who’s using a tone of intellectual snobbery! I’ve no idea of the intellectual capacities of the average reader of magazines.”

  “Well, they’re literate,” Daisy explained kindly. “I’m not writing for the Illustrated London News. Let’s start with basic facts such as when the house was built and who the architect was. I take it you know?”

  He was in fact extremely knowledgeable about the building and quite willing to talk about it.

  After scribbling down a couple of pages of notes, Daisy stemmed the flow. “Hold on! This is far more information than any of my readers, however literate, are likely to want to know. Unless they’re students of architecture, which seems unlikely. Is that what you are?”

  “Pritchard knows far more about it than I do. You should ask him to give you a tour, as he did me.”

  “Really? I didn’t know he was interested in anything but the plumbing.”

  “He bought the Hall because he’d visited it in his professional capacity and fell in love with it. They consulted him, hoping to modernise the plumbing, but they couldn’t afford more than minor updates.”

  “They?”

  “The Appsworths.” His terseness contras
ted with his previous loquacity.

  “You’ve been studying the family papers. What’s your interest in Appsworth Hall?”

  “I hardly think that’s relevant to your article, Mrs. Fletcher.”

  “Not at all. I’m just curious. Nosy, if you prefer.”

  His lips twitched. “As a matter of fact, I’m a historian.”

  “How very respectable. Why make such a mystery of it?”

  “I haven’t made a mystery of it.”

  “Oh yes you have. Why else would Lucy and I be seething with curiosity? Well, actually, Lucy hasn’t been thinking about anything much beyond her photography. But I’ve been seething like billy-oh. It’s one of the perils of my profession. Does Julia know?”

  “Yes. Not that it’s any of your business.”

  “But Lady Beaufort doesn’t. Why on earth don’t you tell her?”

  “She wants Julia to marry wealth and a title. Who can blame her? Julia deserves the best of everything.”

  “Don’t be soppy. Julia deserves a chance to be happy. Titles don’t bring happiness.”

  “All right! Forget the title. I can’t see much in it myself.”

  “Being rich isn’t much more to the point. I’ve known dozens of rich people who weren’t happy.”

  “Dozens?” Armitage asked sceptically.

  “Plenty, anyway. As long as she doesn’t have to live on sardines. . . . Are you a professional historian, or is it a hobby? Or are you going to write an article about the Appsworths? That would explain why you don’t want to tell me about them. You want to scoop me!”

  “Bosh! I may write an article, or even a book, but it’ll be the scholarly kind with lots of footnotes, no competition for you.”

  “Well, talk about intellectual snobbery!”

  “Sorry. But you must agree we have different aims and audiences. As a matter of fact, I’m a lecturer in history at the University of Toronto.”

  “What are you doing here in the middle of term-time?”

  “I took the term off—what they call a ‘sabbatical’ in the States—to come over and do some research into—some historical research.”

  Daisy was sure he’d been going to say something else, but it really wasn’t her business, she decided regretfully. “A lecturer. . . . Surely you can afford to support a wife in reasonable comfort? Things can’t be so different in Canada. Or—don’t tell me they still insist on dons being celibate?”

  “Good lord, no! Even Oxford and Cambridge gave that up decades ago. If I were an Oxbridge don I might conceivably be acceptable to Lady Beaufort. Though I doubt it,” he added gloomily. “Not with that fellow Rydal hanging about.”

  “For pity’s sake, you don’t think Julia would agree to marry Rhino just to please her mother? Talk about a fate worse than death! If all you’re worried about is living with a disapproving mother-in-law, I can give you a few tips. Not that Lady Beaufort could possibly hold a candle to Alec’s mother in that respect. Nor to my mother, from Alec’s point of view. And you’d have the Atlantic between you.”

  “What if she wanted to go with us?”

  “You do like to borrow trouble, don’t you? I shouldn’t think it’s likely. Isn’t Toronto in the Arctic?”

  “Not quite! It does get pretty cold in the winter, though. Another reason for Lady Beaufort not to want Julia to marry me.”

  “Do stop being such a defeatist! Faint heart never won fair lady. Think of all the Englishwomen who go off to India and Africa with their menfolk to rule the Empire. They put up with much worse than a bit of snow.”

  “Undeniable. Toronto is really a very pleasant city, even under several feet of snow. Mrs. Fletcher, have you ever considered setting up as an agony aunt?”

  “An agony aunt? You mean one of those columnists who dishes out advice to people who write letters to the popular papers?”

  “Yes. I believe you’d be very good at it.”

  Daisy gave him a suspicious look. “I’m sorry if you think I’m being officious, interfering in your affairs.”

  “Well, you are, you know. But kindly meant, I know. And you’re making awfully good sense. I’m sure you’d be good at it professionally. I promise I shan’t dismiss your words of wisdom out of hand. I need time to think.”

  “I’ll give you time to think when you give me some information about the Appsworths.”

  Armitage sighed. “Tenacious, aren’t you? What sort of stuff are you after?”

  Once he’d made up his mind to it, Armitage provided Daisy with several stories of a sort she could use in her article. One she particularly liked was about an eighteenth-century daughter of the house who had eloped with a handsome groom. Unlike most of its kind, the tale had a happy ending. The couple had been welcomed back into the bosom of the family because the groom was the only person capable of managing her papa’s favourite stallion.

  “Perfect! I suppose they wrote reams of letters about it? And someone saved them all? Being a historian is going to get much more difficult, don’t you think, now that people send telegrams and ring each other up on the phone. No one saves telegrams.”

  “That’s an interesting point, Mrs. Fletcher. When it comes to consideration of our times, future historians will have the newspapers, with everything they consider worthy of being printed, and I don’t suppose the bureaucracy will ever cease to produce rivers of paper. But social historians won’t have so much in the way of personal papers to delve into, I guess.”

  “Still, most of those personal papers were always produced by a very small section of the population, weren’t they? So history’s been biased towards the rich and literate. Now most people are literate but most can’t afford phones and cables, so they write letters, so history will be biased towards them. Does that make sense?”

  “Very much so.”

  “I’m never sure whether my logic is leading me round in circles. I’ll tell you what else they’ll have to delve into: gossip columns for the rich and famous, and for the others, the columns of agony aunts!”

  “With a good deal more truth in the latter than the former, no doubt!” Armitage said, laughing. “I hope you have all you need for your article, Mrs. Fletcher. You’ve just about wrung me dry.”

  Daisy still wanted to know what had led to the Appsworths losing their family estate. However, she probably wouldn’t be able to use it in the article, and she didn’t want to try his patience too far. “Yes, thanks,” she said. “You’ve been frightfully helpful. Now I just have to ask Mr. Pritchard to give me a tour of the house. I wonder whether he’ll be going into Swindon tomorrow.”

  “I can’t help you there. It depends on Wandersley, I guess.”

  “You don’t know exactly what he’s here for, do you?”

  He shrugged. “Only that it involves considerable prestige as well as profit for Pritchard’s Plumbing Products. I hope the old boy gets it. He’s a good chap. My apologies, by the way, for the excessive alliteration. It’s difficult to avoid.”

  “Perhaps,” Daisy suggested, “you should take up writing advertising slogans.”

  Not until she was in the middle of transcribing her shorthand into something more readable did she realise that, by chance or deliberately, he had never actually explained his interest in the Appsworths’ papers. It was all very well saying he was a historian. The Appsworths had been an obscure country family with no claim to fame, a very minor barony who rarely made an appearance in the public life of the country, and never notably. So what was it about them that had drawn the attention of a Canadian academic?

  FOURTEEN

  Of the Swindon contingent only Mr. Pritchard returned to Appsworth Hall in time for tea, as befitted his semi-retired status. He came in a little late, fetched himself a cup of tea from Mrs. Howell, and went to sit by Lady Beaufort.

  “I hear you visited my grotto,” he said. “How did you like it?”

  “Sheer folly,” said her ladyship, “but a most amusing folly.”

  He laughed. Daisy caught only snatche
s of their conversation thereafter, because Lucy was intent on describing every photo she had taken that afternoon. She explained which shots she expected to come out best, and wanted Daisy’s opinion as to whether she should take any more.

  “I was thinking, I might be able to get something worthwhile of the monk. Sort of blurry and atmospheric.”

  “Ghostly.”

  “Yes. Too silly, do you think? It’s just that this is the first folly we’ve tackled that deserves more than a couple of illustrations, at most.”

  “Nothing venture, nothing gain. We don’t have to use it if it doesn’t work.”

  “I’ll have to persuade Armitage to pose for me again.”

  “Not on the edge!”

  “No, by St. Whatsit, I think.” Lucy fell silent, pondering ways and means.

  Pritchard was urging Lady Beaufort, “You should really see it by night.”

  “Julia tells me it’s beautifully illuminated. But I don’t know. . . . It’s quite a walk up that hill. You should put in some sort of seats for us elderly folk.”

  “Elderly? Not you, Lady Beaufort! But that’s an excellent notion. I can’t imagine why I didn’t think of it before. This evening—if you’d like to go up this evening?—I could have chairs carried up.”

  “Let’s try it,” said Lucy, emerging from her abstraction. “Where’s—? Oh, he’s talking to Mrs. Howell. Blast.”

  “I think it’s more a case of Mrs. Howell talking to him, or at him. I expect he’d be glad to be rescued. I’ll leave you to it. I’m going to ask Mr. Pritchard if he’ll give me a tour of the house tomorrow. And then I’d better rescue Julia from Rhino and Lady Ottaline.”

  “Right-oh, but for pity’s sake don’t breathe a word about going back to the grotto. The last thing I need is that blundering jackass ruining any more shots. I should charge him for the wasted plates.”

  “Try sending him a bill. You never know.”