“That seems malicious.”
“That is precisely Oliver fforde-Beckett. I’m sure that as a child he pulled the wings off flies.”
“Is there any foundation to his belief? I would have to say that when I glanced at an entry on the Morborne marquessate on the Internet a few weeks ago, my eyes did pass the words bigamous marriage.”
“It’s absolute nonsense. Uncle Anthony—Dominic’s father—made the accusation years ago, at the time of the trials, but there was no proof. Anthony insisted that our father—Olly and Georgie’s and mine—married my mother before he was properly divorced from Olly and Georgie’s mother, Christina—that there had been a secret wedding on Baissé and so on. The High Court dismissed it. Oliver claims now that he had been rummaging recently through some of Daddy’s old papers he’d collected when he was wrapping up our father’s affairs in Baissé six years ago and found something that proves Uncle Anthony’s claim, which is rubbish. Anyway—he chose to spring this on me some weeks ago, before I joined Mummy in Cap Ferrat. He was gleeful! It was a bloody assault! Mummy was properly outraged when I told her. It’s one of the reasons I returned from France when I did. I wanted to know what Olly’s been up to.”
“But surely, others …” Tom cast about for an explanation. “Oliver’s mother, for instance, wouldn’t she have knowledge of this?”
“Pooh! Christina had already ingratiated herself with the richest man in Central America and was set to marry him. He has absolute brimming pots of money. She wasn’t that bothered by divorcing Daddy, and I don’t think she would be at all pleased with Olly’s recent busywork. But then Olly loathed his mother’s remarriage as much as he loathed his father’s. For someone who’s spread himself about and lived so immoderately, he can … could be surprisingly middle-class in his conventions. The hypocrisy of it all. He’s treated me all my life—and Dominic, too—as if somehow his parents’ estrangement was our fault. All the nonsense with Daddy’s divorce from Christina happened before I was born!” She looked towards the Gaze Tower, its summit now empty. “It’s Dominic who suffered the most. His father went to bits when our mother left to marry his own brother. Before he was packed off to boarding school, his nanny and the Gaunts were mother and father and whatever. There’s Gaunt now.”
“The Gaunts?” Tom asked as they both looked past the brick wall to where Dominic and Gaunt appeared to be in conversation at the base of the tower.
“Funny they should be working for Georgie and Hector now, but then it is awfully hard to find good help. Uncle Tony, Dominic’s father, you see, retained custody of Dominic. He had enough pluck to do that, at least, before he descended into drink. He drowned, you know, in the Indian Ocean. They really shouldn’t let an alcoholic sail around the world alone.”
“Then surely your mother would have then taken over your brother’s care.”
“Dominic’s? Oh, nominally. He was at boarding school for most of the year, of course, and came to us in London or Baissé on holidays. I adore Mummy, I do, but really, a bitch sow would be better at mothering. She never quite got the hang of it.” She smiled. “Now I’ve told you much too much about the fforde-Becketts. Of course, I know in the circumstances you’ll be discreet. As—” She paused and narrowed her eyes. “—shall I.”
Her meaning was not lost on Tom. She would not embarrass him about their assignation, if he did not air the fforde-Becketts’ dirty laundry. He moved to leave, uncertain if he had spent the time usefully, when Lucinda interrupted: “Whatever can they be talking about? Dominic!” she called again as the two men began walking away from the base of the Gaze Tower. Dominic heard this time. He waved in her direction absently and the two men disappeared past a row of trees.
“Oh, well.” Lucinda sighed. “Are you sure you won’t take a dip, Tom? You don’t really need a bathing costume, you know. I shan’t really be surprised by anything, shall I?”
“I have no towel,” Tom pointed out, growing a little tired of her flirtation. “And the water probably wouldn’t do the bandage good.” He gripped the ends of the chair preparatory to heaving himself up, casting about for a polite excuse to make his exit, when Dominic pushed through the gate in the wall and strode towards them.
“According to Gaunt, we are to assemble in the great hall at four thirty,” he announced without preliminaries. “Hullo, Vicar.”
“We? Me and thee?” Lucinda searched Dominic’s face. With his eyes covered by sunglasses, he appeared expressionless.
“Thee, me … he.” Dominic gestured at Tom. “All of us, except Maximilian and …”
“Miranda,” Tom supplied.
“Marve and Roberto?” Lucinda continued to search his face.
“Apparently.”
“I suppose it’s the police who want us at this assembly.”
Dominic nodded.
“A summons, then. I’m not sure I care to be summoned.” Lucinda lifted her watch and frowned at it. “I had planned to stay here well into the cocktail hour.” She glanced to the summer sky, scrimmed by a few high white clouds, and sighed. “I should never have left Cap Ferrat.”
Dominic lifted his sunglasses to his forehead and regarded her thoughtfully. “No, perhaps you shouldn’t have.”
“Do you have my fifty pounds? I forgot to ask … earlier.”
“You’ll get it when we get back to town, Lucy.”
“It’s ridiculous to place bets in a cashless society, don’t you think, Vicar?”
“I didn’t think you were serious … about the money, I mean,” Dominic responded instead.
“I was. With Oliver bullying the Trust, I expected to be cut off from funds any minute. Of course, that’s all changed now that—”
“Don’t go on about it, Lucy.”
“Dominic and I had a little wager yesterday.” Lucinda smiled at Tom.
“Lucy.” Dominic’s tone was warning.
“On the horses?” Tom asked out of politeness.
Lucinda canted her head at him. Her smile broadened. “In a way. We each chose a different … steed.”
Tom suppressed a sigh. Arch conversation made him weary. “Who won?”
“I believe I’m the one requesting the fifty pounds.”
“Lucy.” Dominic threw her a disgusted look. “Shut up!”
“If you insist, darling.” Lucinda granted her half brother a tight smile. “What were you doing up the Gaze Tower?”
“Gazing, of course, darling. What else is there to do? The country really is rather a bore. Do you not find the country boring, Vicar?”
“Not at all.”
“I do.”
“What a good thing Riseley Castle and Kilmore went for back taxes. No demesnes for you, darling. No tenants and sheep and land agents and day-trippers and point-to-points and dog trials and God knows what else.” Lucinda picked up the sun cream once again. “Moths have got to the ermine, I should tell you. I was looking for something up in the attic rooms in the spring at Morborne House and found the robes in a trunk. If Her Majesty pops her clogs anytime soon, you’ll be in for a new kit for the Coronation. The coronet could use some repair, too.”
Dominic seemed lost in thought, looking over the turquoise waters.
“I’m not sure Dominic is looking forwards to his new responsibilities,” Lucinda stage-whispered to Tom.
“Lucy, do shut up.”
“I’ve been telling the vicar our family secrets.”
“Have you,” Dominic responded dryly. He seemed to rally. A thin smile parted his lips. “Nothing too outrageous, I hope.”
“Nothing that hasn’t been in The Daily Mail or The Sun or the late unlamented News of the World.”
“I’m going to take a swim. It’s ridiculously hot.”
“You didn’t bring a bathing costume, either?”
“Either?”
Lucinda gestured to Tom.
“Joining me, Vicar?” Dominic moved around Lucinda’s sun lounger and began to unbutton his shirt.
“No, thank you.”
Tom pointed to his cast boot.
“Gaunt is bringing towels.”
“Good old Gaunt.” Lucinda reopened the sun cream tube.
Dominic stripped off his shirt and folded it over another of the deck chairs. Tom glanced at the man’s lean, smooth torso, noting a bruising where the right pectoral met the shoulder muscles and a light, but still visible, scratch along his upper arm.
“Yes?” Dominic shot him an ambiguous look.
“I didn’t mean to stare.” Tom realised that is what he had been doing. “But you look as if you’ve had some sort of misadventure.”
“I’m a fruit, I bruise easily,” Dominic responded, peeking at his chest as he tugged at the belt of his trousers.
Lucinda glanced up sharply and struggled to look over the back of the sun lounger. “I was going to have you do my back,” she addressed the air, waggling the tube of sun cream.
“It will have to wait.” Dominic dropped his trousers to the tiles. His pants followed. He stepped out of them with brisk, urgent movements and turned to toss them onto the chair. Tom cast his eyes to the sky where a loop of inky black birds circled over the Gaze Tower, thinking how peculiar it was that nudity could endow someone with a social advantage. Clothed, he felt oddly defenceless. He dropped his eyes to glimpse Dominic’s eel figure slice the water in a perfect arc and pull himself down the pool’s length in strong, smooth strokes.
“He tripped over my slippers last night and fell into the wardrobe,” Lucinda said.
“I don’t understand.” Her remark drew Tom from envious contemplation of Dominic’s prowess. He had never learned to swim.
“The bruising.”
“I see.” There seemed little point now in remaining by the pool. Dominic continued his methodical harrowing of the water’s surface; Lucinda remained motionless, Ingres’s odalisque simmering in the sun, the carapace-black lenses of her glasses tilted to the sky. He moved to rise from his chair, but again he was arrested, this time by the children coming through the gate. Miranda, nearly obscured by a tower of towels, was led by Max topped by a checked tweed hat, the flaps of which were tied at the crown by a jaunty ribbon. No Inverness, however. A simple white collared shirt and pale trousers were likely concession to the heat.
“Over there, I should think,” the boy commanded. Miranda dropped her burden on the chair that held Dominic’s shirt.
“Where’s your spyglass?” Tom asked the boy, one troubled eye on the unclothed figure gliding through the pool. His daughter had seen one too many unclothed males in a single day. It was all getting a little too sybaritic.
“Dash it! I don’t have one,” Max replied. “And I did look everywhere.”
Lucinda twitched, seemingly roused, and lowered her frames to examine her nephew. “A deerstalker? Maxie, you’ll boil your head in that thing.”
“But, Aunt, we’re looking for clues.”
“To what?”
“To the mystery of the murdered marquess.”
Lucinda’s laugh set the birds on the wall to scattering.
“Strangled, I mean,” Max amended.
“How did you know that?” Tom asked sharply.
“My dear Mr. Christmas, we listened at the door at Grandmama’s,” Max said imperiously. “And we also know that the … the …” He snapped his fingers. “Miss Christmas?”
“Ligature.”
“Precisely! That the ligature hasn’t been found. Miranda and self are helping the police with their enquiries.”
Lucinda smiled. “Do the police know that?”
“Ours, dear Aunt, is an independent enquiry.”
When Miranda asked, “What’s the matter, Daddy?” Tom realised his growing unhappiness that the cavalier turn of conversation had telegraphed itself to, at least, his daughter.
“I think,” he said, fingers drumming along the arm of the chair, “we all need to keep in mind that a man has died, he’s died in his prime, and he’s died in a cruel and painful fashion.”
“But, Daddy, no one really liked him very much.” Miranda echoed Max’s words of the morning.
Perhaps it was the enervating heat of the afternoon, perhaps it was the vexation of a twisted ankle, or perhaps it was the folly of his moments with Lucinda, but Tom sensed an unaccustomed and uncomfortable lick of anger curling up within, tempered only by the reminder that children could be artless creatures. He said, reining in his temper but aware that he presented a spectacle of severity to his young audience:
“Whether the late Lord Morborne was liked or disliked by anyone should have no effect on our attitude towards him in death. Whatever his sins, he is loved and forgiven by God, and on earth the crime against his person demands justice. This is not some parlour game. The process of finding Lord Morborne’s killer and bringing that person to earthly judgement deserves and commands our respect. Do you understand?”
“Yes, Daddy.” Miranda’s head bent to her shoes.
“Yes, headmaster.” Lucinda suppressed a laugh.
Max tilted his head and crooked his arm on his hip regarding him coolly, as if this were a debate, not a dressing-down. “I say, Mr. Christmas, you may have something there. One must put aside one’s feelings if one is to be a proper detective. Reason must rule passion. Mr. Holmes would approve.”
“Reason must rule what?” came Dominic’s voice from the edge of the pool. Tom glared down at the slicked-back hair, at the wet planes of a face sharpened by the sun, with a silent warning that he oughtn’t even think about hauling himself from the water in his state of undress.
“Passion,” Max repeated.
“Very wise.” Dominic fingered some residual moisture from his forehead.
“Were you wanting a towel, Cousin Dominic?”
Dominic caught Tom’s eye. “No, I’ll soak here for the time being. If you’re Sherlock Holmesing, Maximilian—love the hat—you might find a clue in the Gaze Tower.”
“Might I?”
“If I were Moriarty I would leave one there.”
Max regarded his cousin with uncertainty. “A villain wouldn’t deliberately leave a clue.”
“Only if he wanted to be caught,” Lucinda pointed out dryly.
“A villain, Maximilian,” Dominic corrected, “might inadvertently leave a clue.”
“Yes. I read somewhere—in a Beano comic, I think—that a murderer always takes something away and leaves something behind.”
“You couldn’t possibly have read that in a Beano comic.”
“But why the tower, Cousin Dominic?”
“The only thing to do is go and find out.”
“By George, you’re right.” Max adjusted his deerstalker. “We must eliminate all possibilities. Come along, Miss Christmas.”
“You were eager to get rid,” Lucinda remarked to Dominic when Max and Miranda had disappeared past the gate.
“Only because the water, dear Lucy, is absolutely bloody freezing if you’re not moving through it.” He scrambled onto the pool’s ledge behind Lucinda, darted for the nearby chair in a cascade of dripping water, and snatched a towel. Even at a distance, Tom could see gooseflesh.
“And is there a clue in the Gaze Tower?” Lucinda called to be heard behind her, as Dominic wrapped one towel around his hips and another one across his chest.
“Don’t be silly. Of course there isn’t.”
“You used to play awful tricks on me. I followed him around like a puppy at holidays on Baissé,” Lucinda said in a confiding tone to Tom. “I was besotted by my older brother … cousin, whatever you are, Dominic. I think your daughter is rather taken with Maxie, don’t you, Vicar?”
Tom emitted a feeble noise of agreement.
“They’re much too young, and nothing would come of it anyway.” Dominic pulled the chair over and sat down, splaying his white legs.
“Yes, true.” Lucinda waggled the sun cream in his face and shifted in her lounge chair. “Back.”
“What time is it? Is there time?”
Tom glanced at his watch. �
�Three twenty.”
“Is it worth it?” Dominic frowned as he took the bottle from her. “We have this … this summons to the great hall. You’ll get oil all over the Louis Quinze.”
“Back!” Lucinda commanded again, turning fully. Tom’s eyes went helplessly to her curvaceous backside, then felt Dominic’s smirking glance upon him. He wiggled the bottle invitingly. Tom responded with a shake of the head.
“You’re the eighth Marquess of Morborne.” Lucinda’s voice echoed against the tiles she looked to be addressing. “Where will the ninth come from?”
“I believe that’s a non sequitur, Lucy dear.”
“Not really. Answer the question.”
“Shut up.”
“Maximilian will be the eleventh Earl of Fairhaven when Hector dies. Where will the twelfth come from?”
“Don’t be so bloody obtuse.”
“I’m merely reconsidering your remark that nothing would come of Maxie and darling Miranda. Your daughter is darling, Vicar.”
“Thank you,” Tom said evenly.
“You will have to perform your feudal duty, Dominic,” Lucinda continued.
“For the sake of passing on moth-eaten ermine and a tarnished coronet?” Dominic grunted and popped the top of the bottle.
“Morborne House? Four Paul Cézanne, three Paul Gauguin, two Claude Monet, and Renoir’s painting of a pear tree?”
“But are they real or are they forgeries?” Dominic squeezed a dollop of cream onto his fingers. “Anyway, as Maximilian stands to inherit all of this—Eggescombe and the rest of it—and needs must pass it on, I’m sure one day he will put his mind to his duty.”
“Well, Hector did.” Lucinda’s laugh eased into a sigh as Dominic’s hands pressed into her back.
Dominic smiled at Tom, who realised his expression must have betrayed the curiosity he felt. “I think you’ll find, Vicar, that with Max the apple hasn’t fallen far from the tree.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Georgina arrived at the great hall next to last. She hesitated in a swift, sweeping assessment of the assembled, and clacked across the floor in low heels to the long oak draw-table where Ellen Gaunt had laid out tea and stood ready to serve. Tom thought Lady Fairhaven’s eyes rested for a fraction of a second longer over her mother-in-law, the dowager countess, who had assumed earlier a red wing chair to the right of the fireplace, matched throne to the wing chair to the fireplace’s left, which accommodated Hector in slumped repose, one ankle over the other. Each had a familiar: Roberto rested on a hard cane-backed chair next to Marguerite, arms folded over his chest, eyes directed to the chimneypiece, as elaborately carved as the screen above the door; Gaunt stood stiffly by Hector, arms by sides, eyes alert to the needs of those in the room. Bonzo was slumbering at his master’s feet.
Ten Lords A-Leaping: A Mystery (Father Christmas) Page 17