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Hu
“I begin almost to feel a pang of sympathy for James Truelove—with a mother and a wife like that pair on the premises, his life must have been hell,” Joe ventured.
“It was no stroll through the cowslips. They hated each other. They used him as a pawn, of course. But save your sympathy. James was never a victim. He had his ways of escaping their attentions. Uncomfortable for everyone, though, including the servants. It’s never easy serving two mistresses, and both of them batty.”
“Bad luck on poor James, though?” Joe persisted.
Hu
“Where did it come from, this financial parachute? Are you allowed to say?”
“It’s no secret, it’s just that if you want to keep your head on your shoulders you never refer to it. Midlands manufacturing money in both cases. The old girl’s family made their fortune in Manchester. Cloth industry. Lavinia’s lot came from Birmingham. Metal. They prospered during the war. Any war you care to name. She was brought up in a family seat her grandfather bought for himself on the proceeds of carnage, well away from the soot and smoke and the sight of the labouring poor, in the hunting shires of the Midlands. Her father had aspirations of grandeur and the wherewithal to achieve them. He bought himself a baronetcy and his three daughters all married into the minor aristocracy.”
“But Lavinia and James produced no heirs to carry on the Truelove tradition of fortune hunting, I understand?”
“None. They were married for over ten years but no luck. She refurbished the old nursery and it stood equipped and ready to go, but over time it degenerated into a spare guest room. The strain of waiting and hoping sent her a bit doo-lally, I think. She certainly got worse with each year that passed. She was a woman who’d always got what she wanted the moment the want entered her head. She could never quite accept that Nature might be thwarting her. Her mother-in-law never mentioned it, of course, but it was clear to anyone who knew them that she thought Lavinia was a hen-headed waste of time. As did her son.”
“James was less than attentive, I’m guessing?”
“He was spending longer and longer periods of time away from Suffolk.”
“Busy man. A rising star on the political stage—you’d expect that.”
“Lavinia was accepting of his ambition. She shared it. She was already pla
“His philanthropic and academic interests?”
“Yes. Begun by his grandfather, continued by his father and lately vastly extended by James—at his wife’s expense. Lavinia fancied she saw her money being poured into support for university research into subjects she hadn’t the slightest interest in. ‘Long-haired, socialist riff-raff’ were having their pockets filled with her family’s hard-earned cash and encouraged to while away three years of their lives making stinks in laboratories and downing pints in pubs.”
“Many people would say she had a point.”
“And many people would say you’re trying to start an argument, Commissioner. They might even add you’ve got your own dark horse entered in this mad steeplechase over hedge and ditch.”
“I never bet on the outcome, Hu
Hu
The mild insult was accompanied by a sudden intensification of warmth in the Saxon eyes. Joe had noticed that Hu
The superintendent looked at the clock. “Better be off.” He handed Joe some pencilled sheets from his pocket. “Here’s some bumf I prepared for you. Plan of the Hall in case you need to run away in the night. Names of the senior staff. Map of the grounds, distances marked. Over the page, I’ve drawn a plan of the stable lay-out. I’ll walk you round the out buildings but leave you to it inside the moat. Oh, by the way, the drawbridge is pulled up at sunset. Traditionally and actually.”
“Drawbridge?” Joe questioned, suddenly alarmed. “Where are you sending me? Doubting Castle? The lair of the Giant Despair?”
“Drawbridges, in fact. One in front, one in the rear. Both in good working order. Most nights they remember to hoist them up and lower them at dawn. Guests from London enjoy that sort of thing. They write home about it. Take my advice—before you do anything else, ask the lad on the gate to show you where the levers are—anybody with two hands can work the mechanism.”
“Drawbridges! I loathe the things. They’re responsible for more death and injury than the enemy they’re supposed to be keeping out. Why the hell does Truelove feel he needs a moat in this day and age?”
“Moats are no big deal out here in Suffolk. Cattle troughs mostly, nowadays. Every farmhouse of any size has one, fed by underground springs. It was the main water source in the past. They’re not for defensive purposes, though perhaps in the Middle Ages they might have been. The great houses keep them for show and entertainment. Some stock them with fish. Truelove keeps his weed-free and crystal clear—a sight more healthy than Byron’s Pool in Grantchester, I can tell you. Everyone in the village who can swim learned to do it in that old moat. Younger guests like to splash about and squeal in the summer. Don’t worry—you won’t be expected to perform—it’s been far too cold a season so far and the water’s like ice still.”
Joe pocketed the plan and looked Hu
Hu
There wasn’t. Joe sensed that he and Hu