Ten Lords A-Leaping: A Mystery (Father Christmas) (22 page)

“What might be worse than homelessness?” he asked, his mind returned to their earlier conversation.

“A philosophical question?”

“No, earlier, when you said your … half brother had rendered you basically homeless, you alluded to a worse condition.”

“Oh.” She regarded him steadily, arrested in her movements. “There’s something about you that makes me want to tell secrets. What is it?”

“I’ve been told I have a kindly face.” Tom laughed for the first time that day. “Or that people think priests are of necessity discreet.”

“Aren’t they?”

“I am.”

“Well, then …” She restored the cap to the bottle. “Illegitimacy is worse. Oliver had it in his fat melon that our father did not properly divorce
his
mother, thereby making our father’s marriage to
my
mother bigamous and illegal. Which in turn would make me a bastard. From there, he could challenge my right—and my mother’s—as beneficiaries of the Trust, and deny us our titles.”

“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.