Enter Pale Death (8 page)

Joe smiled back over his glass at the troubled eyes and the leathery knuckles nervously swiping a springy quiff of hair from his forehead, glad that the mask was off and that he liked the bluff countryman’s face beneath it. “The word is ‘thanks!’ But sadly, swiftly followed by ‘no thanks,’ Hunnyton. A hold, you say? My instinct is to splutter into my ale and deny he has any such thing. But the fellow is likely to take over the Home Office before we’re much older and by that, become my boss.” Hunnyton gave a sympathetic growl and Joe ventured to say, “Your boss, too. Apart from the political power, he holds the financial strings that the girl I love dangles from and he pipes the tunes she dances to. The Truelove Foundation sponsors research in her department at the university. The man has a scientific interest. He rolls up his sleeves and involves himself at the laboratory level. They work well—and all too frequently—together. He fancies his chances—she rebuffs him in a good-humoured way from time to time.” Joe fell silent. This was a confidence too far.
He blamed the draught of excellent ale on an empty stomach and the sympathetic understanding of a stranger. All the same—loose words.

“Gawd! It’s worse than I thought. Would you like me to push him under a bus for you?”

Joe laughed, glad of the invitation to make light of his confession and he replied in kind: “Don’t you worry! I have several trained killers on the books who might oblige. I’m sorry to ruin your chances of possessing the miniatures but at least they’ll be ‘going home’ as you said they ought. To Truelove’s place in Suffolk. He has an ancestral home out there—not so very far from Cambridge. I expect you know it?”

Hunnyton nodded.

“A good and right outcome, I think you’d say?”

“Yes. None better,” Hunnyton agreed. “If that’s really where they’re going,” he added mysteriously.

They came to the end of their pints at the same moment and Joe prepared to take his leave. They solemnly exchanged cards, promising to be on hand for each other in any future emergency. Joe thanked Hunnyton for his hospitality and declared a polite intention to visit the pub again and stand his round.

“Ah. Might be some difficulty there, sir,” the superintendent murmured as he handed Joe his hat. “You see, it’s more of a club here. You have to be a member to buy the drinks. It’s the headquarters of the Federation of Domestic Servants—the ‘Narcissus Club,’ as it’s known. Named for the Narcissus who was slave, secretary and later freedman to the Emperor Claudius. He ran the Roman Empire in the name of his old master for many a year. Not to be confused with the self-regarding youth of legend who liked to peer into pools. Membership is granted to anyone of the rank of senior footman or above. And, of course, you have to have been in service in the family of a gentleman for a minimum of five years.”

“Good Lord!” Joe said. “There are some strange establishments flourishing within the douce confines of St. James’s!”

“This is a long way from being the strangest! Have you enquired into the ‘Slippered Orchid’ four doors down?” He shook his shaggy head in disapproval.

“Can’t wait! Well, it was a pleasure, Superintendent. See you at the sale tomorrow perhaps? It should be quite safe. I don’t think the Minister for Mischief will be making an appearance himself. Have you met the devilish Truelove? Do you know him?”

“I wondered when you’d ask me that.” Hunnyton began to turn the brim of his bowler through his fingers, deep in thought. Joe didn’t press for a response but let him take his time, mindful that people were very much divided in their opinions of the minister and quite often took a while to think of something polite to say. “I can’t say that I know him. Though I certainly ought to. The man’s my brother.”

“Your
what
?” Startled, Joe dropped his fedora to the ground.

“My younger brother. Half-brother to be precise.”

Joe snorted, hurried to the door and yelled, “Landlord! Two more pints in the snug please!”

He returned to the table, glaring at Hunnyton. “I never walk about town without a pair of thumbscrews in my back pocket. Shall I need to use them?”

Hunnyton held out his hands. “I’ll come quietly. You can pull rank rather than fingernails. That’ll do.”

“I always find confessions slide down more easily with a steak pie,” Joe said. “I’m sure I heard you mention …”

Hunnyton went to the door and called, “Confirm order for ale, Mr. Pocock, and will you add to that a couple of steak pies if they’re ready? With horseradish, mustard and mash.” He settled back in his seat. “You’ll enjoy this, sir. Albert in the kitchens used to work for the Duke of Northumberland.”

CHAPTER 5

Joe had picked up some relaxed phrases and refreshing attitudes from the American officers he’d worked alongside in the later months of the war. One of his favourites was: Once is happenstance, twice is coincidence, three times is enemy action.

He reckoned he was well into the stage of enemy action.

“I’m sure I shall,” he said. “It’s a Tuesday. You save me from the Police Canteen’s version of not very Hot Pot.”

He’d decided that Hunnyton—if that was his name—had recognised him, had even perhaps been lying in wait for him, and had drawn him here for a purpose. Joe had shared his information on the superintendent’s interest in the portraits but was keeping silent on the second and more interesting record of the name Hunnyton that he’d turned up on police files recently.

The steak pie was all that had been promised, served swiftly and correctly with a flurry of starched white napery and good silver cutlery laid out on the table between them. By unspoken consent both men held off from serious conversation, content to enjoy a work of culinary art when it was offered.

“There’s lemon syllabub or Eton mess to follow, or just strawberries,” Hunnyton invited. “The Cambridge Favourites are in season at the moment. New variety.”

Joe was glad he’d taken the hint and declared for the
strawberries; the plump miracles of summer magic were duly served on Delft-patterned dishes with a matching pot of yellow Devon cream so thick it had to be spooned from the jug. Finally, comfortably bloated, relaxed and unharried, Joe calculated that his subject must be feeling much the same and decided to come at him crabwise. “Tell me about your name, Adam. Truelove? Hunnyton? Should I guess at a mother in common?”

“Not that.” The idea seemed to amuse him. “No, it’s a father we share.”

Joe absorbed this and was wondering how to frame his next question without giving offence when Hunnyton continued bluntly, “Illegitimate. That’s the word you’re skating around. You could—well, perhaps not
you
, Commissioner—could say by-blow. Wrong side of the blanket. Baseborn. Bastard. I’ve heard them all.”

“And I’ve heard it said, Hunnyton, ‘There are no illegitimate children, just illegitimate parents.”

Hunnyton managed a smile. “Well, the guilty parties in my case were the old Sir Sidney and one of his domestic servants. Before his marriage to James’s mother, the then young and spirited Sidney had an affair with a young and spirited upstairs maid. My mother. She had red hair—a big beauty in the style of Boadicea, Queen of the Iceni, who gave the Romans such a bad time. I’m just surprised she let Sidney get away with it undamaged. No one else ever got the better of her. Sorry, sir, it all gets a bit predictable from now on and I risk boring my audience.”

“Not at all,” Joe said. “I’m all twitching ears and attention.”

“The inevitable happened. In those days, and I’m not so sure it wouldn’t happen now, the girl would have to leave the village for good or perhaps go and spend a month or two with her aunty in Ipswich. She’d return having mysteriously lost all that weight she’d been putting on. Childless, of course. But in my mother’s case, the pregnant girl was married off hurriedly to a by no means
unwilling man on the estate, the whole arrangement sweetened by the offer of a cottage on the village green complete with a half-acre potato patch and bake-oven. I was a six-month baby. ‘Popped out just in time for a slice of his mother’s wedding cake,’ as they say in the village.”

“And in Westminster!” Joe chortled. “Quite a few of those about, in all ranks of society. No names, no pack-drill, but I can tell you that one or two of our politicians have surprising dates on their birth certificates.”

Hunnyton grunted. “They can keep it quiet. It’s harder to hide in a small village. Especially when the child is unfortunate enough to grow up looking the spitting image of his real father.”

“Good lord! Must have been difficult for Mr. Hunnyton, whose name I take it you bear?”

The craggy features softened in affection. “No. Nothing ever flummoxed the old feller. Head Horseman by trade. That’s a pretty stylish thing to be in Suffolk. It has a certain standing and my stepfather lived up to it. No one would be disrespectful to him or his family, whatever that consisted of. He knew what he was taking on; he loved my mother very much, I think, and he was never less than kind to us. No—he was no Mr. Murdstone.” He grinned. “Dickens would have found no inspiration for a heart-rending family saga in
my
early situation. Freud wouldn’t have known what to make of a child with a loving mother and two caring fathers.”

“Two? Old Truelove kept himself in the picture, did he?”

“He did. I think he took his inspiration from Charles II, whom he much resembled. Charming rogue but affectionate to all his offspring including the illegitimate ones. He had me educated. I outgrew the village school pretty quickly. When he noticed this, he put me into private tutoring alongside his other children. This led to three years at the university. Strings were pulled—perhaps money changed hands—and I was offered one
of the eleven ‘poor boy’ places at Trinity. Reading a subject useful to my position in life, of course. In the good old tradition, Sir Sidney was having me raised to become steward of the estates. The land and the house were his passion and he was pleased to find, in me, an equal enthusiasm. I’d been keeping the accounts from the age of sixteen, buying stock, helping to run the farm. I was on the payroll from an early age.”

“A position which gives you access to the best pies in town?”

“It’s an honorary extended membership these days. I gave up my position of servitude—like many others—when the war broke out. I joined up.”

“The Suffolk Regiment?”

“Second battalion. It was quickly mobilised, not short of volunteers, and sent off to France. We were there from Mons to the Armistice. The army changed my perspective. By the end, my mother and stepfather were both dead. I was twenty-six. I wanted to spread my wings. There were openings everywhere for big, healthy chaps like me with a degree in economics and a commission, and I chose the police force. For much the same reasons as yourself, I expect. Once I’d done the basics, promotion was quite quick, and I enjoy the work.”

“Have you maintained your connections with the present lord of the manor? Sir James?” There was no sign in Joe’s polite enquiry of his intense personal interest in Sir James.

“We were never bosom pals. I always felt he resented my relationship with his father. Looking like him, thinking like him, did me no good in Master James’s eyes. ‘Stop bossing me about, Adam! You’re as bad as Papa!’ he used to squeak. James favoured his mother. He’s got that family’s dark, handsome looks. And their talent for manipulation.”

“To say nothing of their political clout and family money?” Joe suggested. “Perhaps the younger brother would provide more interesting material for Herr Freud?”

“There’s no overt bad feeling between us any longer. We began to get on better after the old man died and he inherited. I’ve always admired his energy and intelligence. In fact there is—and always has been—a level on which we meet and understand each other. Under that glossy layer of sophistication there’re some pretty rugged characteristics that he gets from his pa. Just tell him there’s coppicing going on in the twenty acre wood and he’ll be down there like a shot, wielding a bill-hook, and wielding it well. He can layer a hedge, grallock a stag and sink a pint of cider with the best of ’em. I taught him to ride myself. Picked him up, dusted him down and popped him back on his pony whenever he fell off.”

Joe noted the unemphasised implication of Hunnyton’s horseman’s skills, learned from his stepfather no doubt, and he remembered his own older brother performing the same service for him as a three-year-old beginner. He remembered also the gratitude had been mixed with a much stronger emotion—a resentment that he was less skilled, less strong, less mature. Infantile frustration had so consumed him on one occasion that Joe had burst into tears and hit about him with his whip. Not at the horse, of course. His older brother Tom had borne the brunt of it, holding the squalling, thrashing child at arm’s length and laughing until the rage subsided.

“Horses!” Joe said, shaking his head. “The stupidest animals ever invented, I do believe.” He asked carefully, “Does Sir James still require a little dusting down?”

After a silence, an equally careful, “He finds me useful on occasion.”

“Your half-brother begins to sound like the perfect English gentleman. Yet you recommend, I remember, the use of a long spoon when supping with him …”

“I do. It was perfect English gentlemen who carved out our Empire, let’s not forget.”

Joe smiled. “And how many of those devils would you turn your back on?”

“James is ruthless. He gets what he wants. Because he’s able to ask for it with a charming smile, and thanks you with every appearance of heartfelt gratitude when he has it in his possession, doesn’t mean he ought to have it in the first place.”

“Hunnyton, this wouldn’t be, by any chance, a roundabout way of getting me to foul up Truelove’s bid for those portraits? I have worked out that they are
your
ancestors, too.”

Adam laughed. “Nothing so obvious! I’d have just put such a proposition to you straight out. And been ready to accept a refusal. Sweetening with strawberries, were you thinking? Corrupting by confidence? No! Not my style. I’m not seeking any favours. But I may be doing
you
one. It’s just a friendly warning I’m giving you. It may be all rubbish, the product of a suspicious copper’s mind, but I wanted to plant the notion in your head that he may have an undeclared reason for getting his hands on these pictures. A reason that might not please you.” He stirred uncomfortably in his seat. “Oh, I should learn to mind my own business. It’s just that I can’t sit back and watch him do another fellow down. I never could put up with a rigged fight. But suit yourself.”