Corpse in a Gilded Cage (3 page)

‘Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear,' sighed Mr Lillywaite, his whole gaunt frame suggesting the stiffest form of disapproval. ‘I must ask you—er, My Lord—to think what you are doing, think what this must do to the good name of the family in the eyes of the public at large. I have tried to make it as clear as I could that Chetton Hall and its contents are, considered as an entity, one of the national treasures.'

‘Let the bleeding nation buy it, then—provided it pays the market price.'

Once more Mr Lillywaite, in spite of his natural servility, could not keep from his face a fleeting expression of distaste. He had always known that the old Earl's brother had married beneath him. The moment he heard, with horror, of the young Earl's death he had realized that the new Earl and his Countess might not be up to par. Quite how stupendously below par they would turn out to be he had not for a moment suspected.

‘The point I tried to make at our last meeting,' he said, with what he felt was heroic patience, ‘was that in these matters there is something more to
be considered, something more than mere money. There are the family obligations, as custodians over the centuries of part of the nation's artistic and architectural heritage. This is one part—
one
part, only—of what we understand by the phrase
noblesse oblige.
It is this obligation that noble families like your own strive to uphold in these admittedly difficult times.'

‘Not all of them they don't,' returned the Earl triumphantly. ‘Do you think I haven't read in the papers about that lot that live in the South of France and are selling the old 'ome bit by bit and living off the proceeds like pigs in clover? And I don't blame 'em either. The nation can't have it both ways: you can't slam on death duties and income tax and wealth tax and I don't know what, and then scream “noblesser bleege” when the people who've got the stuff want to cash in their chips and get what they can while the going's good.'

‘Of course we would not disagree about death duties—'

‘I'm damn sure we wouldn't. And another thing: when you talk about “the national heritage” and all that rot, how come this place was only open to the public one day a year in the old Earl's time, eh?'

‘Er . . . the old Earl felt . . .'

‘Well now, I'm going to hand it to you straight: this is one nobless that isn't going to bleege. I don't owe no favours to the Chancellor of the Exchequer, nor to the nation. Neither the one nor the other has ever done any great favour to me. I'll be forking out enough from this little lot as it is.'

‘True, I can't deny it. There is, of course, the option of offering Chetton to the National Trust,' murmured Mr Lillywaite, following that line of thought reluctantly. ‘But I'm afraid that, even were you to do that, you would also have to offer it a considerable sum to cover the upkeep.'

The Earl stared at him in disbelief.

‘You must be joking.'

The lawyer did not pursue that option.

‘I suppose,' he said, ‘it will be necessary to offer the nation certain works of art, in lieu of death duties.'

The Earl looked suspicious.

‘Does that mean they'll be getting them on the cheap?'

‘As a rule the sum agreed is rather less than the piece would fetch on the open market.'

‘Forget it. Sell to the highest bidder, and
then
pay the death duties.' The Earl stopped in his tracks. Talk with Mr Lillywaite always made him feel ‘badgered'. He had felt the same way, not long before, when he had been
questioned after a road accident by the police. It brought out all his usually latent aggression and pig-headedness. ‘Here,' he said, turning to the lawyer with a look of intense suspicion on his face, ‘you're not in the pay of the Chancellor or something, are you?'

Mr Lillywaite screwed up his face in an expression of pain and outrage, as if he had been accused of frequenting a credit-card brothel.

‘Lord Ellesmere, I am merely trying to serve you—and the good name of your family—as best I can, in difficult circumstances. As I have done, and my father before me, all our working lives.'

‘Okay,' said the Earl, speedily appeased, and equably resuming his walk, ‘no offence. But from now on I'd be happier if you served me and let the family's good name take care of itself. The family's never done anything for me, you know.'

‘Very well,' said Mr Lillywaite, also resuming his walk, but engineering a turn in the direction of the great house, conceivably hoping for some psychological effect from the sight of it. ‘But you must realize that, even were selling decided on—'

‘It is.'

‘—it would be far from easy to find a buyer for a mansion—one might say a palace—of this size.'

‘Don't you believe it. All these bleeding Arabs are just itching to buy up places like this. They point their prayer mats towards Buckingham Palace and pray it comes on the market.'

‘But surely you wouldn't want—'

‘I wouldn't give a monkey's fart.'

‘For the neighbourhood it would be a sad, sad blow.'

‘Don't you believe it. They'd lap it up. He'd come into residence once a year, throw open the grounds for a church bazaar, wander round in his nightshirt and hand out tenners for a slice of homemade sponge, and if I know that bunch down at the Chetton Arms they'd love every minute of it. They'd rake in a lot more shekels from Sheik Yerfanny than they would out of me and Elsie. More than they got out of the old Earl, too, I'd lay a tanner.'

‘Hmm,' said Mr Lillywaite, unwilling to admit that the Earl probably understood more about popular local reaction than he himself did. If he had been unbiased, which he was not, he would have admitted that the Earl gave his opinions with a good deal of force, and that they held more than a few grains of common sense. Indeed, down at his real local, the Prince Leopold in Clapham, the Earl's opinions on anything under the sun
were listened to by the regulars with the sort of respect they gave the Prime Minister, appearing on the Jimmy Young Show. But Mr Lillywaite was not yet willing to admit that he had lost the argument.

‘Of course, if any decision
were
made to sell, it ought to be the decision of the whole family. You have to remember that in this matter I in some sense represent Lord Portsea's interests as well.'

‘Whose? Oh—Phil's.'

‘Your elder son's.'

‘Oh well, Phil will be easy. He'll go along with anything I decide. He's a good chap—never the sort to make trouble. You'd like Phil. I'll introduce you when he gets out.'

Mr Lillywaite's eyebrows rose a fraction, but he had an inkling he had discovered a straw worth clutching on to.

‘These are, you realize, things that both he and
his
heirs in their turn are vitally concerned in. Do I gather you have not discussed them with him yet?'

‘No, I haven't. Quite apart from the fact that discussion with Phil isn't that easy at the moment, I never thought of it. I didn't discuss it with him when we sold the house in Hackney and bought the house in Clapham, and I shan't discuss it with him when I sell this place neither. He wouldn't expect it.'

‘Nevertheless, he has his rights. As heir presumptive he has clearly defined rights. I think it might be as well if I talked to him. You have no objections?'

‘None at all. Visiting days are Mondays and Thursdays.'

‘I feel sure the governor of Daintree will admit me whenever I care to appoint a time,' said Mr Lillywaite stiffly.

‘Pals, eh? Yes, well, it's quite convenient Daintree being only thirty-five miles away. Dixie was going yesterday, then stopping the night in Bristol and coming on here this morning.'

‘Ah—Lady Portsea.'

‘That's the ticket. Mind you, Dixie is another type again. A mind of her own, has Dixie. Too much so, if you believe my Elsie. Philip'll go along with anything—happy-go-lucky type, open as the day is long. But you never know with Dixie—I haven't the faintest idea how she's taking all this.'

Lady Portsea's reactions to ‘all this' did not interest Mr Lillywaite. He had no curiosity about human feelings. He had never inquired about the present Earl's reactions on succeeding. He would have shrunk from the
Earl's cliché—‘you could have knocked me down with a feather', as like as not—though he had accepted a whole barrage of clichés from the old Earl in his time, most of them to the effect that such and such behaviour was ‘frightfully bad form', or that the country was ‘going to the dogs' and its working men ‘needed a good kick up the backside'. But though Mr Lillywaite did not speculate about the reactions of the new Lord and Lady Portsea, he did consider them, coolly, as possible new counters to be used on his side of the game.

‘Well, that's all settled, then,' said the Earl. ‘You know, I don't plan to stop here much longer. There's nothing to keep us, thank the Lord. You go and talk to Phil, but you'll find he certainly won't stand in our way. And I wouldn't take a blind bit of notice if he did. It's “Home, Sweet Home” for Elsie and me, and I tell you it's not a moment too soon. I always sleep light, but this business has been that much worry that I haven't had a good night's kip since we got to this place.'

‘Certainly I'll see Lord Portsea as soon as I can make arrangements,' murmured Mr Lillywaite pensively.

They were emerging now from the Mile, and Mr Lillywaite noticed with regret that the Earl cast not a second glance at the monumental pile of Chetton Hall that now stood in all its glory before them. They strolled on, an ill-assorted pair, and they had just reached the flagged floor around the fountain when Mr Lillywaite paused, puzzled. From the distance, from behind his back in fact, there came the sound of a motor vehicle. Approaching nearer. Surely it could not be . . .

But he turned and—yes, it was. A vehicle—an estate car—was actually driving up the Countess's Mile, throwing up clouds of sandy dust in its wake.

‘Dear God!' breathed Mr Lillywaite. ‘Does this mean the reporters are on to this at last?'

But as he spoke the car emerged from the Mile and drew up beside them—actually drew up beside the splendid fountain designed by Auriol Jukes for the second Earl. The front window of the car was down, and from the driver's side emerged the head and shoulders of a heavily built and heavily made-up woman, with partially blonded hair and false eyelashes. She smiled a smile that was meant to be jovial but turned out to be ferocious, and waved a plump arm in the direction of the house.

‘Hey, Dad, is it semi-detached or detached?' she yelled, and let out a yelp of laughter in self-congratulation at her wit.

‘Get out, you lot,' she shouted over her shoulder, and the back opened
and a quartet of children began to jump stiffly down. The driver's door opened briskly and the woman herself emerged. Her imposing bust was draped with a pink nylon blouse, and across her large hindquarters were stretched a pair of brilliant orange slacks.

‘What a place, eh, Dad?' she shouted, against the waters of the fountain, once more with that ferocious joviality. ‘What rent's the Council rushing you for this little lot, then? It's a real giggle, isn't it: you and Elsie all on your tod in this great barn.' She turned to the figures emerging from the front part of the car. ‘Chokey came with us to visit Phil. And you remember Sam, don't you, Dad? We won't interrupt.'

And smiling a wide, ingratiating smile in the direction of Mr Lillywaite, she marched up the steps to the Dutch Garden, in the wake of her children who had scampered up before and were now gazing raptly at the great house.

‘Take your fingers off that flower, Karen. You pick that and I'll scalp you. Pull your bleeding socks up, for Christ's sake, Gareth. You're mixing with the gentry now.'

And the orange slacks proceeded in the direction of the Queen's Entrance, followed more slowly by one middle-aged man of watery eye and distinctly unreliable appearance, and by a large and amiable young West Indian. Even when she disappeared from view, her voice could be heard, shouting instructions to the children and accompanying them with threats of dire repercussions.

‘Get along in, you lot, and if one of you puts smudges over the furniture, I'll have the hides off the lot of you—got that?'

Finally, as the two men stood there, the voice faded into the distance, and it all seemed very quiet.

‘That was Dixie,' said the twelfth Earl.

The normal mode of approach to Chetton Hall was through the main gates, past the lodge, then along a drive of over a mile, past the Dower House, then finally into a courtyard formed in the right-angle where the Blenheim Wing intersects with the original house. Here steps would be
found leading to the Great Entrance Hall (for the imposing Queen's Entrance on the West Front led to nothing more than a dingy ante-room, whatever it may have opened up to in the Danish Queen's time). In the courtyard and the lawns around it, making no impact on their manifest need for gardeners' attention, the Earl pottered on the afternoon of his family's arrival, trying to conceal a broad grin at the humour of it all. Friday afternoon was well advanced before Joan and Digby drove carefully into the courtyard and parked the car neatly and unobtrusively under the windows of the Blenheim Wing. Joan got out first, closed the door carefully, patted at the creases in her skirt, then finally looked around at the time-mellowed brick glories of the Jacobean house, and the more stately splendour of the wing, executed by Leoni in the early years of George I's reign.

‘Very nice, Dad,' she said, and set her mouth into a self-satisfied smile of the kind that was habitual to her.

The Earl kissed her, roaring with delighted laughter.

‘That's the understatement of the year!' he shouted. ‘Sounds as if you were visiting us in our retirement bungalow!'