Ten Lords A-Leaping: A Mystery (Father Christmas) (15 page)

Lucinda glanced over her shoulder as she reached for one of the breakfast plates. “Whatever is the matter?” she enquired, running her eyes over everyone at the table, as if counting heads. “No Oliver this morning?”

It was the invitation to break the ghastly silence. Tom’s eyes went to Hector, the host, the paterfamilias, the oldest man in the room. So did everyone else’s. The room seemed to lie in waiting as Hector rubbed his hands absently in an agitated gesture. Finally, as Lucinda pivoted back to the sideboard
with a sigh of boredom and dipped a serving spoon into the kedgeree, Hector cleared his throat and said,

“No Oliver, Lucy, I’m afraid. Oliver is dead.”

His tone was gruff, uncompromising, as if it were a fact unworthy of embellishment. Lucinda paused almost imperceptibly in her movements, then resumed the rhythm of spooning onto her plate the rice, egg, and fish concoction. Returning the dome to the dish with a metallic scrape, she turned to the others, catching Tom’s eye as she did. In hers, he thought he saw a distasteful admixture of triumph and sly satisfaction. Everyone seemed to be waiting breathlessly for her response, and when it came, it sent a tremor through the room:

“I’m surprised someone didn’t kill him earlier.”

Over Georgina’s gasp, Jane asked: “What makes you think Olly was killed?”

“Well, wasn’t he?”

“Seems a leap in logic, Lucy.” Jamie’s voice was stern.

“Not really. He was a complete bastard to me, to my mother, to …” She paused. “He’s a bastard in business—ask anyone whose worked for him. God knows what else he’s got up to in his sordid life. His lifestyle”—she laced the word with sarcasm—“wouldn’t kill him. Unlike Daddy, he’s the sort who can drink and smoke and take drugs and whore around and live forever, so presuming that
someone
killed him, Jamie, is
not
a leap in logic.”

Their stunned silence was their assent.

“Besides,” Lucinda said, her tone lightening, almost amused, “I happened to glance out the window when I was coming downstairs and spied a little man off in the Labyrinth
who looked a lot like a policeman. So when you told me Oliver was dead, I made a
link
in logic—not, I might add, a leap.”

“Lucinda, you’re behaving abominably.” Lady Fairhaven seemed to recover some spirit.

“Georgie, Oliver and I did not get on, never have, so I’m not going to parade great sadness.”

“You might try parading a little decorum, Lucy,” Hector snapped.

“You didn’t care for him any more than I did, Hector, so don’t play the grieving brother-in-law for my benefit. I arrived in time yesterday to see your little exchange of blows high in the sky. What
was
that all about?”

“It was nothing, and anyway it’s entirely private, Lucinda, and has nothing to do with you or with anybody … or anything.”

Lucinda snorted. “If Oliver was murdered, Hector, I expect the police won’t think it so private.”

“Why don’t you sit down,” Hector snapped again. “Your food’s getting cold.”

Lucinda glanced at her plate, then at the others. She lifted an eyebrow. “How …” She drew out the word. “… how did Oliver die?”

Tom watched the others exchange another round of cautious glances, sensing a subtext known only to the family. Finally, Jamie spoke:

“It appears, Lucy, that Olly was strangled.”

Sundry emotions flicked in Lady Lucinda’s lovely face, none of them horror: surprise, curiosity, acceptance. Finally, her attention shifted to Georgina, evincing for her half sister at least a bit of pity. “Oh,” she said, as if conceding a point. “I
am sorry.” She paused, took a few steps towards the table, tilted her head. “Might we know what he was strangled with?”

“Really, Lucinda, does it matter?” Lord Fairhaven’s drawl was dismissive. He darted a glance at his wife.

“Nothing appears to be in evidence.” Jane seemed to choose her words with care.

Lucinda’s finely plucked eyebrows went up a notch, but her expression turned hooded. She hovered by the breakfast table holding her plate as if expecting someone to pull a chair out for her, and Tom, in gentlemanly knee-jerk reaction, twisted painfully in a move to do so, but he could see her attention had shifted to something or someone out of his sight line.

“Ah,” she said, leaning over the back of the chair and dropping the plate on the table. She almost skipped to the door of the breakfast room, outside of which a voice, a light baritone, Dominic’s, could be heard brightly hailing her,

“Good morning, Lucy, darling.”

Tom watched with astonishment as Lucy dropped into a curtsy of balletic grace and athleticism and responded in a tone silvery with laughter,

“Good morning, my lord.”

“
G
eorgina lost a child to strangulation, you see,” Jane explained to Tom once the children had moved from earshot.

They were on foot along the curving gravel path west of Eggescombe Hall, the dower house, Eggescombe Lodge, their destination. Max and Miranda had scrambled on ahead, Max eager to show Miranda something.

“It was … a freak accident, though the word
freak
seems so …”

“Indecent?” Tom supplied.

“Yes, indecent. And unfair. Max was born a twin, you see. He had a sister, Arabella, who choked on—of all things—the border of a baby shawl when she was not many months old. The border had become detached and twisted in some fashion.”

“How absolutely devastating.”

“The shawl was an old thing that Hector had been swaddled in, and his father before that, I think. Amazing a baby
blanket could last for so long. There was no one to blame, really, though poor Georgie did blame herself—and Hector, too, I suppose: I think she does in some way hold Hector responsible because it was his family heirloom. The nanny had the afternoon off, so they couldn’t find fault with her.”

“Faultfinding should come with a sell-by date,” Tom murmured, watching as the children veered off the main path.

“I agree.” Jane followed his eyes. “Where are those two off to? Marve’s is over … oh, I know. Let’s follow them. Is it too much with the crutch? Marve wasn’t expecting you—or us—at any particular time and we’re not even sure if she’s at home.”

Roberto had answered the telephone in the dower house when Hector had called earlier from Eggescombe Hall’s morning room, where some of the adults had repaired after breakfast, entering, though hardly aware of it, that strange suspended state of agonised waiting that follows a family death. Hector’s call was intended to inform his mother of Oliver’s death and to say he was sending the children over to remove them for the time being from the disturbing atmosphere. Tom had watched His Lordship’s face pucker with disapproval during the brief conversation; he’d dropped the phone into its cradle with barely disguised contempt.

“ ‘Have them come anyway.’ ” Hector reported Roberto’s response with a sceptical rise of the eyebrow. “Mummy’s probably still out riding somewhere.” He had glanced at his watch, as if the time—it was past nine thirty—proved she couldn’t possibly be out on a horse. “Shall I try her mobile? Perhaps she’s still at the stables.” The question was rhetorical. He dialed but received no response, and left no message. Hector, Tom noted, omitted any word of Oliver’s murder to Roberto.

“Anyway,” Jane continued, as they turned down a fresh path through a phalanx of topiary bushes past a sign that read
ALICE
’
S GARDEN
, “Hector and Georgina were here in Devon at the time when Arabella died. In August, as it happens, which explains in part why Georgie seems to only endure these two weeks she and Hector are in residence here in the summer. But Hector insists—it is his ancestral home and country seat. And Max”—she flashed a smile at Tom—“loves it down here. Well, kids do. There’s so much to explore. Even if one of them is dressed in a suit.”

They both looked ahead to see Max leading Miranda past a pair of stone gates. Earlier, when the family had been at breakfast, he had come in with Miranda (who had eschewed her overalls for a light summer dress) to the breakfast room wearing a sort of Jazz Age summer suit, beige with white stripes, and white shoes, and carrying a boater, looking for all the world like he had stepped out of a musical comedy. They had already breakfasted in the kitchens, with the Gaunts, which struck Tom as odd: the formally dressed boy eschewing the formal surroundings of the breakfast room.

“I say, Pater, there’s a policeman in the garden,” Maximilian said airily.

“You’ve been outdoors then.” Hector had cast his son a weary glance.

“Miranda saw the ghost of Sir Edward on the south lawn last night. We went to look.”

“I can’t think ghosts leave evidence of their presence.” Dominic looked up from his plate.

“Well, no.” Max’s aplomb faltered a moment. “Anyway, I escorted Miranda up into the tree house—”

“I see,” Hector murmured, his eyes returned to his newspaper.

“—and we saw a man wrapping tape around the Labyrinth.”

“Wrapping tape?” Hector rose from his chair and moved to the window, almost stumbling over Bonzo. He pulled aside the sheers and craned his neck in the direction of the Labyrinth.

“
POLICE. DO NOT CROSS
, it said. We offered to help, but he didn’t have enough tape to go around. He wouldn’t tell us why he was wrapping the Labyrinth, though. However—” Max paused and looked about the room in a bid to capture everyone’s attention. “—Miranda and I have a theory, don’t we, Miranda?”

Miranda nodded, exchanging a knowing glance with Tom, who gave a passing thought to Mrs. Gaunt saying nothing to the children of the morning’s tragedy.

“We think—” Max began grandly with a sweeping gesture of one hand.

“Maximilian, come here,” Hector commanded, not unkindly.

“Don’t you want to hear what we think?” Max moved obediently down the room.

“Max, there’s been a death.”

“That’s what
we
thought!” Max squealed excitedly.

“Your uncle Oliver has died.”

“Oh.” The carapace cracked. Max appeared doubtful for a moment, his lower lip slipping forward in the same pout his father affected. “Is this true, Mater?” He turned to the stricken Georgina.

“It’s true, Max.” Hector answered for his wife. “In the Labyrinth, as it happens.”

As the room fell into an uncomfortable silence, Max looked to Miranda, who seemed to take a cue. In a bright voice, she asked, “Was he murdered?”

There was a perceptible intake of breath around the table, followed by a short, sharp laugh—Lucinda’s—quelled by a warning glare from Hector. Coming as it did from a child and voiced for the first time, the word
murdered
seemed to fall like cold rain upon the adults of the room. Tom saw Hector glance at Miranda with a flicker of contempt, which sent him hurtling to her defence.

“We don’t know,” Tom had lied, inviting her with a protective arm to be hugged.

“How interesting!” Max had enthused.

“Max!” Georgina spoke sharply.

“How?” Max ignored her. “
How
was Uncle Olly murdered?”

“Never mind!” Hector’s volume evoked a regimental sergeant major’s. “You’re upsetting your mother!”

Max flinched, his eyes widened, but he held his ground. He looked around the table, very much the cynosure of everyone’s attention now.

“No one, I daresay,” he said, “really liked Uncle Oliver very much, did they?”

“He’s an unusual boy, Max,” Tom remarked, his thoughts returned to the present.

“Very bright. His father could be more attentive to him.
Georgie seemed in many ways to withdraw from motherhood, with the death of Arabella, I’m sorry to say. Marve is the one who really mothers him. Phones and texts him at Ampleforth. Writes long letters—yes, letters. Remember letters? Telling him all about what’s going on here at Eggescombe and so forth. And the Gaunts are very good with him.”

“Would you say …” Tom hesitated to voice a passing thought.

“Would I say what?”