Ten Lords A-Leaping: A Mystery (Father Christmas) (6 page)

“Mr. Christmas?”

“Mrs. Prowse?” Tom glanced at his housekeeper with astonishment.
He had never seen her wearing the stiff black skirt and starched white blouse that was the traditional uniform of the housekeeper. And was that a spot of makeup? “Where did you—”

“It’s one of Ellen’s,” she cut in, adding, frowning down at the cinched belt, “It’s a bit loose, but it will do.”

“Mrs. Prowse, you’re meant to have a holiday, too.”

“I can’t very well sit about when Ellen is run off her feet, can I? The only staff are she and her husband. One of the dailies from the village was to come and help this evening, but there was a death in her family, so … Would you care for a nibble?”

“I’m sure the Gaunts can cope.” Tom selected something with salmon and crème fraîche. “Supper’s only a barbecue, very informal.”

“Oh,” Madrun murmured. “I thought it all might be a little more grand than this.”

“You mean no candlelit table groaning under the weight of crystal and china and silver. No evening dress. No gowns. This
is
the twenty-first century, Mrs. Prowse.”

“I do know that, Mr. Christmas.”

“And there are hardly any wives present.”

“Still, they might have made an effort.”

Tom sighed and popped the canapé into his mouth. He understood these Leaping Lords charity events were boys-only weekends for the peers involved. Wives weren’t forbidden, they were just discouraged. All the host had to do was crown the event with a slap-up meal of some nature that didn’t involve black tie—in Lord Fairhaven’s case a sort of slap-up
déjeuner sur l’herbe
—and send the boys on their way, to shoot
in Scotland, as Tom overheard some of them say they were doing. He suspected there had to be a sleepover in some circumstances, but he had picked up from snippets of conversation through the afternoon that Lady Fairhaven was averse to company at Eggescombe. She had been, as Jane said she would, perfectly gracious when she had supplied the crutches and gave him directions to the Opium Bedroom, but Tom found her smile thin and fixed, her interest in her guest strained and formal.

“Well, I hope you’re enjoying yourself at any rate, Mrs. Prowse,” he said, conscious of rising voices down on the lawn. “At least the titles are grand. Do you know that’s the Duke of Warwick over there—that very tall one, knobby knees, balding a bit, like Prince William?” He detected a glitter in her eyes as she glanced across the terrace.

“Yes, I saw him on the television.”

He couldn’t help himself. An opportunity to prick Madrun’s balloon was too tempting. “He’s an estate agent somewhere in the southeast, you know.”
Sic transit gloria
, he thought, amused.

“Nonetheless”—Madrun straightened herself and cast him a withering glance—“it’s an ancient title. And anyway, His Grace
owns
several estate agencies in Kent and Sussex and Surrey, and according to the
Sunday Times
Rich List he’s the seventy-first wealthiest man in England.”

“I am humbled. How do you know this?”

“I used the Google.”

“Mrs. Prowse? You and a computer?”

“Your daughter’s been showing me. It has its uses, I’ll allow.”

“Signs and portents!” Tom reached out for another canapé. “We must be at the End Times. Mrs. Prowse?” he pleaded as the tray retreated from his hand, out of reach.

Then he saw that her attention had been distracted by a sudden commotion in the middle distance. He followed her gaze to witness Oliver in the midst of an abrupt exit from his friends and swift descent of the stone steps to the lawn, his features a clot of ferocity as his red hair, worn near Byronically long, caught the sun’s rays and flared suddenly like an angry flame. He seemed to lunge in Lucinda’s direction. Tom couldn’t see properly through the thick balusters. All he could do was hear, and realise he had been hearing the genesis of some unpleasant exchange. Now there was a shriek, a growling incoherence of invective, and an unmerry tinkle of shattering glass.

“
I
seem to recall seeing you pull a rabbit out of a hat at some venue, Camden way, about fifteen years ago.” Oliver pulled the cigar from his mouth, enveloping his long, bony face in a cloudy wreath. “Can’t think what I was doing there.”

It was on the tip of Tom’s tongue to say that His Lordship had remarked on that very thing when they’d been introduced that morning at the Plymouth airfield.

He was growing impatient with his own self. His ankle was giving him gyp, his backside was growing numb, and he had been struggling to rise from the sun lounger onto his crutch with Max and Miranda as unhelpful witnesses when Oliver fforde-Beckett, who might have lent a hand but didn’t, sidled over, drink in one hand, cigar in the other, whistling for some unaccountable reason.

“I doubt I did the rabbit trick,” Tom grunted, balancing awkwardly on the crutch as he tried to recover a little dignity.
Pulling small animals from headgear had largely vanished from his repertoire by his late teens. He glanced at Oliver, whose frown suggested Tom’s memory was the faulty one.

“
Were
you a magician, Mr. Christmas?” Max looked up at him brightly.

“Before I entered the priesthood, yes.”

“How
spiffing
! Do you—”

“I know.” Oliver’s drawl cascaded over his nephew along with a cloud of smoke. “You did something with a tie. I remember because the mark was sitting next to me. You snipped it to ribbons then restored it a moment later. Clever. I suppose,” he added dismissively.

Max coughed and put his fingers to his neck. “Could you do mine, Mr. Christmas?”

“A tie would be best, but—”

“Untie yours, old man.” Oliver addressed his nephew. “An unknotted bow tie would work as well, wouldn’t it, Vicar?”

“Don’t tell me, Maximilian, that you’re wearing one of those pre-tied jobs.” Dominic fforde-Beckett had been hovering near, glowering—Tom thought—at his cousin, but he turned to the child and spoke amiably.

Max grimaced. “Mater has a headache, and I couldn’t find Pater.”

“You should have asked Gaunt.” Dominic lifted the tab of Max’s collar for examination. “He tied all my ties when I was a boy.”

“Yes.” Oliver smirked into his drink. “I expect your dear mother was likely too tied up in some other fashion to be of any use.”

“Shut up, Olly.”

“Why don’t you see if you can find a tie for the vicar?” Oliver ignored Dominic and addressed his nephew.

“Oh! Shall I?”

“But—” Tom watched with dismay as Max darted back through the French doors into Eggescombe’s interior only to poke his head around a second later and say with a gallant smile to Miranda, “I shan’t be long.”

Tom, prepared to dissuade Max again, was distracted by his daughter, who had remained silent during the exchange. Usually, she would sigh or groan or roll her eyes in advance of any of his harmless feints of magic, having reached the age of finding her father faintly embarrassing in certain instances, but here she was smiling vacantly after Max, her dark eyes glistening.

“You need some things from your magic kit, don’t you, Daddy?” She turned to him.

“I’m afraid so, darling. It may be in the car, unless it was brought up with the luggage. Your grandmother has a notion for me to perform at their church fête when we get to Gravesend, but I suppose I could pull a coin out Maximilian’s ear.”

“Oh, Daddy.” That one bored Miranda beyond measure.

“Speaking of tricks, Oliver,” Dominic said. “I’ve spent much of the last week consulting with Raymond Firbank at Thorpe End about his art collection. You know of Raymond, of course—”

“Yes, he’s an old queen with a taste for—”

“Interestingly,” Dominic interrupted, “he’s recently purchased—privately, but from whom he did not say—a Pissarro, specifically
Church at Dulwich
. I—”

“I had a notion you were in Cap Ferrat with Lucy and that bitch mother of yours.” Oliver scratched an eyebrow, dropping cigar ash onto his shirt.

Tom glanced with worry at Miranda then at Dominic, who bared his teeth and snapped:

“I wasn’t. As I said, I was with Raymond Firbank.”

“Looking at paintings? I’ll bet that wasn’t all you were up to,” Oliver drawled, smirking at Tom.

Dominic shared his cousin’s long face, though his jaw was squarer, more taut. Now his face blazed as he raised his voice: “I found it remarkable that Raymond had
Church at Dulwich
, as it has hung in the upstairs hall at Morborne House since I can remember. Pissarro did a number of paintings of the Pont-Neuf and the Louvre and Kew, but he only did
one
of a church in Dulwich.”

“How do you know? Perhaps he did two and one’s been hiding in some attic somewhere.”

“There isn’t! I went around to Morborne House last week—”

“What?” Oliver nearly spat the cigar, his languid tone vanished. “I gave Haddon strict instructions—”

“Haddon couldn’t reach you on your mobile. And as I am family and told him I only wanted to examine a painting in the course of my work, he let me in. Remarkably,
Church at Dulwich
was hanging where it’s always hung.”

“Said so, didn’t I. There are two.”

“Pissarro didn’t make exact copies of his own work, you idiot.”

“Watch it, you!”

“The one at Morborne House is a forgery, Oliver—a superb
forgery, but a forgery nonetheless. I am, as you very well know, an expert in nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century painting.”

“Are you?” Tom interjected quickly, hoping to stem the rising acrimony. “How interesting. A Guercino painting disappeared from my church a few years ago. We’ve had no luck finding it.”

“I’m afraid, Vicar, that your Guercino is likely hanging in some vulgar Russian oligarch’s bloody ugly bunker,” Dominic responded with impatience, turning back to his cousin. “So I examined more of Great-Great-Grandfather’s collection. There’s a Morisot, a Monet, a Renoir, and a Félix Bracquemond that are clearly fakes.”

“Really? I am surprised. Then Great-Great-Grandfather didn’t have quite the eye we thought he had.”

“Haddon informs me that a number of works have gone out for ‘cleaning’ or ‘reframing’ over the past year or so, notably when my mother is absent.”

“Your mother is almost always absent from London, Dominic—south of France, California, West Indies. It’s ridiculous that she has a life right to the use of Morborne House.”

“Those are the terms of the Trust. You can live there, too, if you wish.”

“Too right, I can. And I will.
I’m
the bloody Marquess of Morborne. Why am I living in a squat?”

“A
squat
? You mean your mews flat in Belgravia?”

“Dominic, with you it’s always been too easy to take the piss.”

Dominic’s face darkened. “You’ve never been bothered before about living at Morborne House!”

“I am now! I have my reasons, which”—Oliver pointed his cigar at his cousin—“you will learn in due course. In any case, Charlotte will not be living there if I’m living there. Imagine living with that twat! And Lucy won’t be living there, either.”

“Which is why you’ve had the locks changed.”

“Precisely.”

“You don’t have the permission of the Trust.”

“Bugger the Trust.”

“And you’ve been selling pictures and putting fakes up on the wall, haven’t you, Oliver. I don’t need to tell you what an absolute violation of the Trust that is!”

“I said, bugger the Trust. The Trust will do what
I
want!
Le trust, c’est moi!
”

“Vous parlez français!”
Miranda interjected.

“Only because he’s as madly arrogant as the Sun King,” Dominic sneered.

“Mad Morborne they call me in the music trade.” Oliver waved his hand airily, evidently pleased with himself, the smoke from his cigar trailing in the frail evening light. “And here comes our little Maxie.”

“This isn’t over, Oliver,” Dominic warned.

“Sod off, cousin. Look, Vicar, Max has brought a tie. Over to you.”

Max displayed the tie with a flourish.

Tom drew it forwards with his finger to examine it—it was dark blue with discreet yellow and burgundy striping, the sort, he thought, that adorned the necks of millions of men every
working day. Oliver glanced at it, then looked away, seeming to lose interest in baiting his cousin, settling again into a kind of off-key, tuneless whistle. Dominic’s eyes slid off Oliver, his lip uncurling to turn a kinder face to his cousin’s child.

“It’s a splendid tie, Maximilian,” Tom said, rebalancing himself on his crutch, “and it would be perfect for the trick, but—”

“Daddy needs his magic wand,” explained Miranda. “He can’t do magic without it.”

“In effect,” Tom allowed, grateful to his daughter, though it was a bit of a fib. “And my arm on a crutch would make manoeuvring difficult.”

“Oh, what a pity.” Max regarded the neckwear glumly.

“Here, Max, you’ll like this.” Dominic took the tie from him and began threading it through the belt loops of his cream trousers, tying it loosely so the ends fell against his hip. “We’d do this at school sometimes. What do you think? Fred Astaire used to wear a tie as a belt on occasion. Very smart in the day.”