A Question of Inheritance (7 page)

Lady Priscilla looked approving. ‘She’s been finished, has she?’

Gus looked puzzled and Freya came to his rescue. ‘She was there to improve her French.’

‘How old is she, seventeen, eighteen? You’ll have to be thinking of bringing her out, Gus.’

There was another look of mystification on Gus’s face, and once again Freya supplied the missing information. ‘My aunt means that she might do the Season, be a debutante.’

‘As for the younger girl, you’ll send her to St Ursula’s. That’s where the Selchester girls go.’

As if on cue, the door opened and Polly came in, with a world-weary Babs slouching along behind her.

Polly stopped dead and gazed at Lady Priscilla, who gazed back at her.

Freya looked from one to the other and nearly burst out laughing. Polly’s plaits and her big round spectacles only slightly disguised the fact that she was extremely like her great-aunt.

Gus said, ‘Come and meet your great-aunt, Lady Priscilla Veryan. This is Barbara and Pauline. Known in the family as Babs and Polly.’

Lady Priscilla looked them up and down. She said to Barbara, ‘I hear you’ve been in Paris. It looks to me as though you’ve spent too much time at the Sorbonne listening to those tiresome philosophers.’

Barbara seemed not to mind this forthright greeting. Freya noticed that when you saw through the thick black eye make-up, her blue Selchester eyes were observant and even shrewd.

She shrugged, slouched even more and looked down at her feet, a bored expression on her face.

Lady Priscilla said, ‘For heaven’s sake, stand up straight. You’ll do yourself no good with rounded shoulders like that. Do you ride?’

This question obviously surprised Barbara and for a moment she did straighten up. Then she said, uninformatively, ‘Yeah, a bit.’

‘Come over to Veryan House and I’ll mount you. No good riding that wretched horse of Freya’s, he’ll have you off as soon as look at you.’

She turned her attention to Polly. ‘What about you? Gus, you’d best buy the girl a pony. Let Ben find you one, he’s a good judge of horseflesh.’

Polly was definite. ‘No, thank you. I’m afraid of horses. I wouldn’t mind a goat, though.’

Her father, Freya and Lady Priscilla all stared at her while Barbara, whose eyes had resumed their customary vacant look, gazed out of the window.

Lady Priscilla said, ‘Good heavens, child, what do you want a goat for?’

Polly said simply, ‘I like goats.’

‘Dirty, difficult beasts. If you want a pet you’d better get yourself a dog.’

Polly said, ‘No, thank you. Magnus wouldn’t like it.’

Freya said, ‘If you want a dog, Polly, don’t worry about Magnus. Don’t forget he’ll be coming with me.’

Polly said, ‘I like Magnus. I like cats and I don’t much care for dogs.’ This was said with a look at Lady Priscilla every bit as ferocious as her ladyship’s.

‘That’s what comes of being brought up in America,’ Lady Priscilla said – unfairly, in Freya’s opinion.

She was interested to see that Gus was sensibly keeping out of this conversation. He was outnumbered by Selchester women. Or perhaps he had no particular views on the subject of cats, dogs, ponies and goats.

Lady Priscilla was looking at Barbara again. ‘You can’t go around dressed like that. Not in the country. It’s completely inappropriate. It might do for Chelsea, but Selchester is not Chelsea.’

Freya heard Barbara mutter under her breath, ‘More’s the pity.’

‘Gus,’ Lady Priscilla said, ‘I hear you have a cousin who brought the girls up. What was she doing letting Barbara dress like this?’

Barbara said in a deliberately drawling voice, ‘Cousin Charlotte doesn’t say what I wear. I’m nearly eighteen and I choose for myself.’

‘That is exactly what the right kind of person looking after you will prevent. Where is this cousin of yours? Did she come over with you?’

Gus intervened. ‘My cousin Charlotte doesn’t care for travel.’

‘You mean the girls have no one to look after them? That won’t do, Gus.’ She turned to Freya. ‘You see to it that Barbara has some decent clothes. She can’t go around looking like that. People won’t like it.’

Barbara said, ‘I guess they’ll just have to get used to it, Great-aunt Priscilla. I’m not going to go round in tweeds and a London Fog for anyone.’

Freya wondered what a London Fog was and Barbara, seeing her incomprehension said, ‘I think it’s what you call a mackintosh. And those horrible wellington boots? No, thank you. If it’s wet and muddy I’ll stay in and read.’

Freya was impressed by the way the two girls were standing up to their great-aunt, but they looked as though they’d had enough of her.

Polly said to Gus, ‘Can we go now?’

‘Yes, be off with you,’ Lady Priscilla said. ‘I want a few more words with your father and then I’m going.’

After the door closed behind them she said to Gus, ‘Nice girls, we can make something of them. Your cousin Helena, my oldest girl, is bringing out her daughter Alice next season. She can bring Barbara out as well.’

Gus said, ‘I believe . . . My intention is that Barbara will go to college. Her mother was at Wellesley and—’

‘If she wants to go to university she can do that after she’s done the Season. Quite a few girls do that these days. It’s a complete waste of time and money of course, because they just get married in the end. Meanwhile, I’ll speak to Mother Joseph at St Ursula’s about Polly. They’ll get rid of that American accent in no time. And she needs to do something about those spectacles. A good man will find her a more becoming pair. I’ll give you the name of the ophthalmologist in London that Sir Archibald goes to.’

Lady Priscilla was making for the door. ‘Thank you, Gus, no need to show me out I know my well way well enough. Goodbye, Freya.’

The two cousins looked at one another. Gus sank back into a chair. ‘Do I have any more relatives who are as overpowering is that?’

Freya said, ‘She can be difficult, but her heart’s in the right place.’

Gus said, ‘Will she and her family be joining us here at the Castle for Christmas?’

Freya laughed. ‘Don’t worry, no. She’ll have a horde of her own family at Veryan House. I expect there’ll have to be some visiting but you shan’t have to entertain them for all of Christmas. Which is just as well, if we have to look after Sonia and her guests.’

Gus said, ‘I shall have to find a school for Polly. Would you know about this convent, St Ursula’s? Did you go there?’

Freya said, ‘No. Sonia did, but—’

Gus said, a twinkle in his eye, ‘But? I don’t have a long acquaintance with my half-sister, but I can imagine that she would have been a handful for even the most resolute of nuns.’

‘She did get into a lot of trouble one way and another.’

Gus said, ‘Was she expelled?’

Freya said, ‘It was phrased more tactfully than that. Just that the nuns felt that perhaps it wasn’t the right establishment for her. In fact, it was clear that no establishment would be suitable for Sonia and so she had a governess after that.’

‘I wonder if Polly would be happy in an English boarding school. If St Ursula’s is prim and proper, very English, she might feel uncomfortable there. Where did you go to school?’

‘I was sent to a boarding school in the north of England. A bleak establishment and I can’t say I liked it. Georgia was there, too, before she came to Selchester. She hated it.’

Gus said, ‘Georgia seems a young lady with strong opinions.’

Freya decided to be direct. ‘You mean the hostility she’s showing to Polly. It’ll pass. She feels unsettled, it’s not been an easy time for her.’

Gus said, ‘I didn’t like to ask Hugo. He’s her brother, but much older than she is. Are there any other brothers and sisters? What about their parents?’

‘Their parents died in the war. Georgia didn’t have a very good time of it. She was in London with her mother and their house was hit by a V2 bomb. She was hauled out of the rubble alive, but her mother wasn’t.’

‘What a terrible thing. Poor child. And so she has no one left but Hugo?’

‘There’s an aunt, who looked after her, only she got married and went off to America. Hugo had a job that took him abroad, but when he injured his leg last year, he took up a position at Thorn Hall here in Selchester. Georgia goes to the Girl’s High School here.’

‘Priscilla was talking about Babs being a debutante. I can’t see it.’

Freya said, ‘Priscilla thinks like that. It’s not a bad way to get to know people if you’re sociable, and if you like dancing and going to parties, it’s quite fun.’

‘Did you do this Season? And Sonia?’

Freya said, ‘Neither of us did. The war came. I didn’t mind, it was never what I wanted to do, but Sonia was furious. You’d have thought Hitler had started the war with the sole intention of preventing her from being a deb.’

‘What do you want to do, Freya?’

‘Don’t you come all head of the family with me, Gus.’ She spoke lightly, but meant to warn him off. ‘I want to do what I do now, which is writing and helping out at the bookshop in town from time to time.’

‘Ah, the family history. I assume you have a private income?’

If he knew how little that was after tax, he’d know it wasn’t enough to keep her clothed and fed and Magnus in fish. But she wasn’t about to tell him how she really made her living. The exploits and adventures of Rosina Wyndham’s lively heroine, Clarissa de Witt, were best kept between herself and the page.

‘I manage. Now, you’ll have to have a quick lunch if you’re to get to the estate office for your appointment with Mr Jonquil.’

Chapter Four

Scene 1

The train was already in, the big locomotive letting out hisses of steam as the driver hung out of his cabin to speak to the guard. Hugo’s tall, lean uncle was standing at the ticket barrier talking to Mr Godley, the station-master.

Hugo was amused. Mr Godley had strong views on gentlemen in Roman collars, but he also knew that he would be treating Father Leo Hawksworth with the respect due to visitors to the Castle. Mr Godley still regretted the glory days before the war. When GWR didn’t really stand for Great Western Railway, but God’s Wonderful Railway. In those days, weekend after weekend, trains had brought visitors for the Castle. They would alight with their luggage and their servants, to be carried off in cars to the Castle.

As usual, Leo Hawksworth was travelling light and had a single suitcase with him. The station’s only porter, Bill, eyed it gloomily, knowing his services wouldn’t be needed.

Hugo got out of the car and limped round to the passenger side as his uncle came towards him. Leo adored fast cars and loved driving Hugo’s Talbot Lago, which he did at every opportunity. Hugo shook hands with his uncle, took his suitcase and put it into the boot.

Bill watched the car reverse and drive off, saying morosely to Mr Godley that it was just like a religious gent to be too mean to want a porter. Bill was a staunch member of the Union: he wanted everything to be nationalised that already wasn’t; thought all churches should be pulled down; and held that those who didn’t work on the railways were useless wastrels and a drain on society.

‘Come the revolution there won’t be no gents in peculiar collars driving away in fast cars or going to any castles.’

‘Come the revolution, you’ll be in one of Joe Stalin’s camps.’

During the war, Mr Godley had had to put up with the indignity of having female porters, but thank goodness those days were over. Although, as he looked with a jaundiced eye on old Bill, he thought perhaps the girls had been an improvement.

Scene 2

Leo slowed down as they came to the main street. He said, ‘Are we going straight to the Castle?’

Hugo said, ‘Yes.’

‘Has Selchester already arrived?’

‘He came yesterday with his two daughters,’ Hugo said. ‘I gather you already met him, in Oxford.’

‘Yes.’

Hugo was quick to pick up hesitation in his uncle’s voice ‘Don’t you like him?’

Leo said, ‘Indeed I do. He’s a most likeable man and a fine scholar. How he’ll cope with being Earl of Selchester I don’t know, but he’s capable and he’ll learn. No, there was an incident in Oxford that slightly disturbed me, that’s all. He has come into his inheritance in unusual circumstances, and perhaps there are those who haven’t welcomed the reappearance of an heir.’

Hugo glanced at his uncle. ‘Incident? Involving Gus?’ He didn’t like the sound of that.

‘Yes. He wasn’t harmed.’

‘So what happened?’

‘A car mounted the pavement and would have hit him if a passer-by hadn’t pulled him back.’

‘Did the driver stop?’

‘No, he apparently drove off at high speed. I heard about it when I dined in college that evening. I sat next to Professor Firkin, the passer-by who rescued Lord Selchester. Firkin’s no youngster, but was obviously quick on the uptake. He was still most indignant about what happened. He dislikes all cars in general and those in Oxford in particular. I think he believes that all drivers, once they get behind the wheel, are potentially going to commit some hit-and-run atrocity. However, he’s an astute man and even in the flurry of saving Lord Selchester, he noticed the number plate of the car. He’d rung the police to tell them and they’d got back to him to say it was a false number plate. They think the driver must have been involved in some criminal activity, which was why he didn’t stop.’

They had driven through the town, passing from the stately Victorian houses near the station, to the elegance of Georgian terraces, to the heart of the town with its higgledy-piggledly mediaeval streets in mellowed stone, and had reached the bridge. Leo took it at a rush before braking to turn into the Castle gates.

‘Odd,’ said Hugo. ‘But it must have been an accident. Who would want to kill Gus? Sonia wouldn’t mourn for him, but she’s hardly driving cars at him. She’ll be here for Christmas, by the way, but not arriving until tomorrow.’

‘I dare say Lady Sonia hasn’t taken kindly to being disinherited, although I imagine she hasn’t been left penniless.’

‘When they drop the H-bomb and the world ends, the one person left alive and sitting on a pile of money will be Sonia. She was very well off anyway, as you know, and she inherited money from her father.’

Leo said dryly, ‘No doubt, but nothing compared to what the Castle and land are worth. Selchester was one of the lucky ones. All that time during the thirties when so many families were selling off the everything from the family silver to the houses, he got richer and richer.’

‘By all accounts, he was a very shrewd man. And he left the estate in good condition and it’s been well looked after since he vanished.’

‘How is Georgia taking the new regime?’

‘Badly. She doesn’t want to move out of the Castle, although she knew we’d have to at some point. She seems to have taken the younger Selchester girl in aversion.’

Hugo couldn’t altogether blame his sister. It wasn’t Polly Fitzwarin she disliked, but Polly the Usurper. The blame lay with him, unable to provide a home for Georgia. And she needed stability; a pity, in a way, they’d ever ended up at the Castle. She’d been there long enough to feel at home. It was worse for Freya, of course; it really was her home she was going to have to leave.

Leo said cheerfully, ‘Oh, it was inevitable that Georgia would resent the newcomer. Don’t worry about it. Either they’ll go on hating one another, in which case when Georgia moves out of the Castle she won’t see anything of her, or they’ll become close friends. Either way, there’s nothing you can do about it.’

Hugo said, ‘I’m sure you’re right, but a little civility wouldn’t come amiss.’

‘What are your plans for after Christmas? Have you found anywhere to live?’

‘No. There was some talk that the present occupants of Nightingale Cottage might be moving out, but I’ve come to think that that’s wishful thinking.’

‘Why?’

Hugo said, ‘I’ve never met them; they don’t really seem to play much part in town life. They aren’t natives of Selchester, but then of course a lot of people aren’t. They reputedly practise witchcraft.’

‘Witchcraft?’

‘No need to get alarmed, your help won’t be needed in that line. Selchester has its share of witchy history, but I think they’re in fact some breed of folklorists. They tend to stop farm labourers and ask them questions about ancient customs and rituals. I gather some of the more waggish elements amuse themselves spinning the couple strange tales.’

‘How’s work?’ Leo was taking the climb up to the Castle slowly, mindful of the bumpy road and the sheep that were grazing on the land to either side.

Hugo watched the patterns made by the powerful headlamps, and then said, ‘Interesting, at the moment. I’m burrowing into the past, into things that happened before the war. In case they reveal truths about the present.’

Leo was one of the few people outside the Service that Hugo could speak to about his work. Leo was a priest scientist, a physicist who had been engaged in highly secret war work during the war. He would have the Official Secrets Act engraved on his heart.

‘The battlefield on which the Cold War is being fought and the aftermath of the Burgess and Maclean affair,’ Leo said. ‘Inevitable, of course, even though thankfully we aren’t quite as paranoid as they seem to be on the other side of the Atlantic.’

‘No, I can’t see a McCarthy getting that kind of a hold over here.’

‘And what about the bureaucracy, now you have a desk job?’

‘I ignore it whenever I can.’ That was something that had rarely troubled him when he’d been an agent working in dangerous places abroad, living on his wits, answerable to no one when on a mission. He’d relished the work, which had ended the day someone from the other side put a bullet in his leg on a dark night in Berlin.

‘What you’re doing now is, I suppose, a kind of detective work. You’ll be good at that. You have an analytic mind plus intuition and you like solving problems. As you showed when you tracked down the late Lord Selchester’s murderer.’

‘That was hardly a single-handed effort. Team work; Freya and you and Georgia contributed as much as I did.’

They were driving through the archway to the Castle now, and Leo swung the car left to go towards the stables. Hugo said, ‘For those first months I was at the Hall, Selchester’s murder and the investigation meant that I had plenty to keep me occupied. One can hardly expect another murder.’

Leo said, ‘I sincerely hope not.’

Scene 3

That night, a cold and frosty night, the silence of the Castle’s ancient walls was rent by a piercing scream. This was followed by more screams; sounds of pure terror and panic. Hugo, woken from a deep sleep, reached for the gun that he no longer had. He leapt out of bed, landing awkwardly on his leg, which gave an excruciating stab of pain. He was hurtling out of the door even as he struggled into his dressing gown. Where was the noise coming from? At first he’d thought it was Georgia, but when he looked into her room, she was fast asleep. He limped along the corridor, down some stairs and then up another flight to reach the corridor where Babs and Polly had their bedrooms.

The screams were coming from Polly’s room.

Hugo arrived at the same time as Freya and Gus. Leo, clad in a Jaeger dressing gown, was hard on their heels. Hugo flung the door open and went in. There was Polly, huddled in the bed, clutching a pillow, her hair wild about her. She was no longer screaming but giving out great gasping sobs.

Freya pushed past and went towards Polly, but she shrank back, holding her arms up to protect herself, shrieking. ‘Don’t come near me, don’t come near me.’

It was Babs who saved the situation. She arrived in a long purple dressing gown, sailed into the room, took one look and told them all to stand back. She sat down on the bed and said, ‘Pull yourself together. There’s nothing to be afraid of and no need to cry. Stop it at once or I’ll slap you.’

Polly made a gulping noise and flung herself into Babs’s arms, clinging round her sister’s neck, her body shivering and rigid.

Mrs Partridge had arrived, her hair in curlers and waving a broomstick – to ward off intruders, she said afterwards – and after one look at Polly, said she’d go downstairs to heat up some milk and fill a hot-water bottle.

Polly’s tale was at first incoherent, but it finally came out that she’d woken ‘quite suddenly, like someone had pinched me’, and there, standing at the foot of her bed was the figure of a man drenched in blood. ‘The room had gone all cold. It was my grandfather come back. He’d come to tell me Pops is going to die like he did. It’s what happens, the head of the house comes as a death warning to his heir.’

She began to shudder again, and Babs held her more tightly. ‘You had a nightmare, Polly, that’s all.’

Gus said, worried, ‘She’s never had a nightmare before, not like this.’

‘She’s never stayed in a place like this before,’ Babs said.

Scene 4

‘I wonder what put such an idea into her head?’ Freya said, when she, Leo and Hugo went down to the kitchen to have a nocturnal cup of tea. ‘There are supposed to be ghosts here at the Castle. Sonia used to see them, and of course there was that maid, Hattie, who was so frightened by them. But I never heard anything like this “head of the house coming back”. It’s nonsense.’

‘Georgia,’ Leo said. ‘It’s the kind of thing you find in ghost stories, and so she made up a tale and told it to Polly to scare her.’

Hugo said, ‘I wouldn’t have thought Polly was the sort to be easily scared. She seems a most rational young lady. She has a precise mind and a passion for facts.’

‘Perhaps, like Sonia, she’s one of the Selchesters that does feel the place is haunted.’

‘That kind of rationality can be protective. Georgia’s imagination is there for all to see. Polly’s may be even more vivid, and therefore alarming and best suppressed. But none of us can control our dreams,’ Leo said.

‘Or nightmares,’ Hugo said. ‘All rather Freudian for you, Leo.’

‘Freud may have written all kinds of nonsense, but he had a healthy respect for the unconscious and how we fear ourselves.’

Freya, frowning, said, ‘Perhaps we shouldn’t have put Polly in the Blue Room. Sonia’s always claimed it’s haunted, although I can’t remember who by. Certainly not a blood-soaked grandfather.’

Mrs Partridge came in to shoo them out of the kitchen. ‘Time you were all back in bed. Lady Babs has taken Polly off into her room. There are two beds in there, much the best place for her to be. And let’s have no more talk of ghosts, Miss Freya. Leave that to Lady Sonia.’

Scene 5

Georgia came flying down the main staircase, two steps at a time, leaping the final four steps in one go. She landed lightly at the bottom to find herself at her Uncle Leo’s feet.

‘Good morning, Georgia. No banisters to slide down?’

Georgia said, ‘The banisters here are too wide, I’ve tried but it’s not very comfortable. The back stairs are all right, but there isn’t quite the sweep there is here. People who build these things don’t think about that.’

Leo said, ‘You’re up very early.’

Georgia said airily, ‘Oh, I woke up early and I was hungry, so I thought I’d come down to the kitchen and make myself some toast.’

Leo said, ‘Mrs Partridge said she’s going to bring my egg into the dining room.’

Georgia pulled a face. ‘It’s much better having breakfast in the kitchen, but of course with the new Earl and his family we have to do anything everything properly. It’s not really fair on Mrs Partridge.’

Leo led the way into the dining room and said, ‘I think Mrs Partridge is quite enjoying having a full house.’

‘Her niece Pam is coming up to help later on today. And I’m helping, too.’

Leo inspected the dishes laid out under silver covers on the sideboard, helped himself to eggs and bacon and fed a slice of bread into the toaster. ‘Are you? I’m glad to hear it.’