A Question of Inheritance (8 page)

The toast pinged up and he handed a piece to Georgia. She sat down, spread it liberally with butter, dug a silver spoon into the marmalade and dropped a blob on to her plate.

‘Did you sleep through the disturbance in the night?’

Georgia looked at him with an innocent face. ‘What disturbance? I’m a very sound sleeper.’

‘Polly had a nightmare. She thought she saw a ghost. She thought it was the ghost of a past Earl of Selchester come to foretell the death of the new Earl. Since the new Earl is her father, she was naturally rather upset. I think imagining a figure dripping with blood didn’t help.’

Georgia attended to her toast. ‘I expect the Castle is getting to her. She doesn’t like it, and so I suppose she imagines all sorts of things.’

‘I gather you don’t feel very friendly towards Polly?’

Georgia looked at him suspiciously. ‘Are you going to go all
pi
on me, Uncle Leo? Why should I like her? She doesn’t like me, she thinks I’m a horrible English girl.’

‘And you think she’s a horrible American girl.’

Georgia considered. ‘I don’t think she’s horrible. I just wish she weren’t here. I wish she was still in America, which is where she ought to be.’

Mrs Partridge came in with Leo’s egg. He thanked her, set it down on the table, pulled out a chair and gave the egg a neat tap with his spoon. ‘I expect she finds it strange here.’

Georgia said, ‘I expect she does. She doesn’t understand about old things. She doesn’t like the Castle, she told me so.’

‘And you do like it?’

Georgia nodded vigorously and reached out for another piece of toast. ‘I love it here. I like the fact that it’s all cold stones and old and full of history. You can imagine all sorts of things happening here. Besides—’ There was a long pause.

‘Besides?’

‘Besides, it’s my home. Now they’ve come, Hugo, and I won’t be able to stay here anymore.’

‘You knew you were just lodging here. It was always a temporary arrangement.’

Georgia said, ‘People sometimes lodge in a place for ages. I know Lady Sonia was going to sell the Castle, but it would have taken a while. We would have at least had a few more months here and then maybe we could have found somewhere else to live in Selchester.’

‘I gather from Hugo that you haven’t found anywhere else to live?’

Georgia said, ‘No. Nor has Freya. She’ll hate to leave, even more than me. She loves being in her tower. She says she might take a room in Eileen’s bed and breakfast. Eileen is Mrs Partridge’s sister. But living in rooms in a bed and breakfast isn’t home, is it?’

Her uncle agreed. Georgia said, in a sudden rush of confidence, ‘If we can’t find anywhere to live, Hugo might decide that he wants to go back to London and get a job there. I’ve said I wouldn’t go with him, but of course I’d have to, because I’ve nowhere else to go.’

Her uncle looked at her, consideringly. ‘It’s hard not having a home. Unfortunately, with the housing shortage since the war, it’s the lot of many people. But, you know, being with Hugo is a kind of security in itself. You could say that where Hugo is—’

Georgia interrupted her uncle with an impatient shake of her head. ‘If you’re about to say where Hugo is, is home, that’s not actually true. One of these days he’s going to marry someone, and then what happens to home.’

Leo said, ‘You’ll live with Hugo, just as you do now. I’m sure anyone he marries will be glad to have you as part of the family.’

Georgia said, almost rudely, ‘That shows how little you know about it. If anyone marries Hugo it’ll be that Valerie, and she can’t stand me. The first thing she’d do is make Hugo pack me off back to boarding school. She’s always going on to Hugo about that.’

Leo said, ‘I haven’t met the young lady.’

‘You haven’t missed anything. Oh she’s frightfully pretty and smart, and all over Hugo. But I sense an insincere nature. She’s set her cap at Hugo and she’ll get him to the altar through sheer determination and persistence. In her eyes I’m a big nuisance and I expect she wishes I’d gone to America to live with Aunt Claire. I don’t matter to her. She wanted Hugo to spend Christmas with her and her family, never mind me. And Hugo said he couldn’t, because of me. But if it weren’t for me that’s where he’d be right now.’

Leo said, ‘Don’t get into the habit of self-pity, Georgia, it’s not good for you. If Hugo really had wanted to spend Christmas with this Valerie, he would have done so. Don’t you have a friend you could have spent Christmas with?’

‘Well, yes,’ Georgia said reluctantly. ‘My friend Daisy said I could go there. Mr and Mrs Dillon asked me. Daisy said she’d have liked that.’

‘And would you have liked that?’

‘No.’ Georgia had lost interest in her toast. ‘I like the Dillons, but I wanted to spend Christmas here in the Castle.’

‘And that’s exactly what you and Hugo are doing. I can’t see that Lord Selchester is going to be in any hurry to turn you out. He seems to be an extremely kind man.’

‘Oh he’s perfect, Polly’s perfect, Babs is perfect. Well, maybe not, with all those gloomy noir thoughts.’

Leo said, ‘Where do you think Polly picked up that idea of the ghost?’

Georgia shot him a glance. ‘What did she say about it? Where did she say she’d heard about him? She’s always reading history and stuff, I think she knows more about the Castle than even Freya does.’

‘Her father asked that very question, and she said she hadn’t heard it from anyone, it must just have been a bad dream.’

Georgia was silent.

Leo said, ‘You told her about that ghost, didn’t you, Georgia?’

Georgia said, ‘Maybe. She asked if the Castle was haunted and she wanted to see where Lord Selchester died. So I showed her. And she wanted to know how he died and so I told her.’

‘How much do you know about how he died?’

‘I don’t know exactly, because you were all mean and wouldn’t tell me. But I know he was stabbed, and there was a lot of blood.’

‘So you invented a story of how his ghost haunts and told it to Polly, no doubt in graphic detail, for I will say, Georgia, that you have a way with words. It acted upon her imagination and the result was that she woke screaming in the night, a very frightened person.’

Georgia said sulkily, ‘It’s not my fault. If she’s got an overactive imagination, that’s her problem.’ She got up and took her plate to the tray on the sideboard. ‘Don’t look at me like that. In a moment you’ll be praying for me, and I don’t need that, thank you.’

‘I wasn’t aware I was looking at you in any particular way. Just think for a moment. You talk about Polly’s imagination. What about your imagination? What about those science fiction stories you like reading? If you were writing one of those, how would you write about an alien arriving on a strange planet where everyone was hostile?’

That earned him another suspicious look. Then she said, grudgingly, ‘You’re trying to say that Polly coming here is like an alien landing on another planet.’

‘I expect it is. It’s another country, a foreign country for her. We may share a language, but in many ways we’re very different. To Americans we must seem very poor and backward. She’s come from a different world, from an American university town to an English country town. It’s quite a change and the Castle would be a shock for anyone. She’s never set foot in such a place and now it’s her home. She’s had to leave her school, her friends, her country and come to a place that is utterly strange.’

‘I suppose you’re saying I’m like an inhabitant of the strange planet, not welcoming her.’

He said, ‘You haven’t exactly been welcoming, have you?’

‘I suppose not. But she’s such a know-all.’

‘You know quite a lot yourself. You certainly know about living in this country and in Selchester, which she doesn’t.’

There was another long silence and then Georgia said, ‘She didn’t say that I told her about the ghost?’

Leo said, ‘No. I could tell looking at her that somebody had told her. But she didn’t say anything to her father or to her sister. And I don’t think she will.’

Georgia said, ‘At least she isn’t a sneak.’

Leo said, ‘Have you done all your Christmas shopping?’

‘Why are you changing the subject?’

‘I was wondering whether you had bought a present for your new host and his family.’

‘No,’ Georgia said. ‘I don’t have any money left.’

‘I always send you ten shillings at Christmas, as you know. I have a present for you as well this year. Would you like me to give you the ten shillings now, so that you can do some Christmas shopping?’

Georgia’s face lit up. ‘I would like that, yes, because there’s a book I’d like to get Hugo which I haven’t been able to.’ Then she saw Uncle Leo’s face. ‘You think I ought to get a present for Polly.’

‘Can you think of anything she’d like?’

Georgia thought about that. ‘There was a little china goat that she was looking at in the shop. I could see she liked it. Or I could get her a goose. They have a lot of geese on sale here in Selchester, on account of St Werberga and that story of the goose. She was intrigued by that story. But of course she believes in saints and miracles and things, despite the way she goes on about liking facts. I wish people could bring geese back to life, but I can’t see it actually happening.’

‘Mediaeval saints like Werberga do stretch one’s credulity.’

Georgia said, ‘All right. I suppose I have been rather beastly to her, and it isn’t really her fault that she’s landed up at the Castle. I just wish she liked it more. Why can’t she appreciate it, instead of hating it? It wouldn’t be so bad then.’

Leo finished his egg and laid down his spoon. ‘We can’t have other people the way we want them, Georgia.’

‘No,’ she muttered, ‘but we can wish some of them weren’t here.’

Chapter Five

Scene 1

Gus had an appointment with his land agent and the steward. Freya, feeling that he ought to show his face in the town, decided to make him jump in at the deep end and said that she would meet him in the Daffodil Tearooms at eleven o’clock.

Freya and Polly walked down into Selchester together. Polly was quite silent, although Freya tried to draw her out, asking her about the voyage and about her life in school in America.

Polly surprised her by saying, almost primly, ‘I don’t think I want to talk about that, thank you. Because it’s all finished hasn’t it? I won’t ever go back there, not that I mind about the school because it wasn’t particularly nice. But I did have some friends.’

‘You’ll make new friends. And living in Selchester won’t be all bad.’

‘Won’t it?’ She looked around. ‘It’s kind of quaint.’

‘This is the High Street and up there is Snake Alley, which is where the Daffodil Tearooms are. I can see your father’s car over there on the Green. Oh, and Babs is with him.’

‘She came into town earlier,’ Polly said. She called out to her father, ‘Hey, Pops, we’re over here.’

Gus joined them; Freya thought he had a harassed look on his face. ‘Tough morning?’ she asked.

He nodded. ‘It’s going to take me a good while to get the hang of all this. I suppose I can trust them. If they wanted to give me the run around and have their hands deep in my pockets I reckon at the moment there’s not much I could do about it.’

Freya could reassure him on that point. ‘You’re all right with those two. I’ve known them all my life. My uncle trusted them and he was a good judge of character, so don’t worry. There are cheats and rogues in Selchester the same as everywhere else, but those two aren’t among them.’

The Earl looked relieved. ‘I’m glad to hear that.’

They had reached the Daffodil Tearooms and Gus looked up at the swinging sign depicting a flourish of daffodils planted in a blue-and-white teapot.

He said, ‘I guess this is the hub of the town? The place everyone comes to pick up the news and pass it on?’

Freya was amused. ‘Got it in one.’

He smiled. ‘We live now in Cambridge – Cambridge, Massachusetts – because I’ve been teaching at the university. But I grew up in a small town and I guess folk are the same whichever country they’re in.’

Jamie and Richard, who ran the tearooms, were thrilled to see the little party come in. Jamie bounded over to them, emitting little squeaks of pleasure. Richard darted out from the kitchen when he heard the hubbub, wiped a floury hand on his long white chef’s apron and extended it to greet Gus with less ebullient enthusiasm.

Jamie took them to a corner table, pulled the chairs back and flicked the surface of the immaculate tablecloth. ‘Is Freya taking you on a tour of Selchester? I hope she’s going to take you to the museum, I heard you know all about the Romans and you were picking up pieces of Roman pottery while you were out walking with Mr Jonquil.’

Gus looked startled; Freya’s lips twitched.

‘Go today, because it will be closed tomorrow and then not open again until after the New Year. Mrs Morrison has to have some time off, and I’m sure you’ll be fascinated by Selchester’s past.’

‘I’ll do that, if it’s all right with you, Freya? Will we have time?’

‘Yes. It isn’t a big museum; it won’t take long to see what’s there. I’d just like to call in at the bookshop and then we can go on. It’s quite close.’

A man in a trench coat, who’d been sitting by the door, got up. He pulled his trilby low over his eyes, laid a couple of coins on the table and left.

‘Not even a thank you or a goodbye; what manners,’ Jamie said. ‘Now, what can I get you? I know what you’ll want Freya. And, Lady Barbara, isn’t it?’

Babs was slouched in her chair, a sketchbook on her knee and a pencil in her hand, seemingly oblivious to her surroundings. ‘Nothing for me,’ she said, without looking up.

Jamie gave a sniff of disapproval. ‘What about this young lady? You must be Lady Pauline.’

Polly looked at him seriously for a little while and then her face broke into a smile, the same rather sweet smile that her father had. Her eyes danced behind the big glasses. ‘Doesn’t it sound silly? My name is really Polly.’

Jamie said, equally serious, ‘Then you’re Lady Polly. I like that. Would you like some orangeade?’

Polly said, ‘What I’d really like is a milkshake but I don’t think you have them over here. My cousin said you don’t have the same sort of things that we do and you don’t have drug stores and ice cream sodas and things?’

Jamie said, ‘We don’t, but Richard can rustle up a tasty milkshake. Chocolate?’

That settled, Jamie went off and came back with a plate on which resided some of Richard’s famous cakes.

Gus looked taken aback. ‘At this time of the morning? I only just finished having breakfast.’

Freya whispered to him, ‘You have to eat at least one, otherwise they’ll be offended.’

The door bells tinkled to announce another arrival. Babs looked up, and stared, her pencil poised above her notebook. ‘Isn’t that Vivian Witt, the film star?’

Freya swung round. ‘It is.’ She waved, gesturing to Vivian to join them. The actress came over, kissed Freya and was introduced to Gus and his family. She looked Gus up and down and said, ‘You’re very like your father. No, thank you, Freya, I won’t intrude. I’m waiting for a friend.’

Gus watched her as she sat down at a table by the wall, and said, ‘She’s as lovely in person as she is in her movies. Am I mistaken, or was there a chilliness about her?’

‘You’ll have to forgive her,’ Freya said. ‘I dare say she was startled to see the resemblance between you and your father. They didn’t—’ she hesitated. ‘They didn’t get on too well. But once she gets to know you, she’ll be fine.’

‘Does she live here?’ Babs said.

‘She has a cottage here as well as a flat in London.’

Polly stretched out a hand for a cake. ‘I suppose she gets away from her admirers here, it must be awful being a film star and everyone recognising you.’

Jamie was back with a pot of coffee and a gleam in his eye as he began his interrogation of Gus.

‘So, you’re Lord Selchester, the eighteenth Earl, isn’t it amazing, when we all thought there’d be no more Earls? What do you think of the Castle? How are you settling in? It’s such an excitement for all of us here to have a new Earl and an American one at that. But you’re so like the late Lord Selchester, we’d have known you anywhere.’

Gus took it all in good part, and also seemed to stand up to the curious stares of the people who had come into the Daffodil for their morning coffee. Freya could tell from the whispering and the glances that they all knew who he was. They were fascinated and the minute he left, they’d all be discussing him.

She said, ‘You have to get used to the fact that you can’t breathe here in Selchester without the entire town hearing about it.’

That caused a wry smile. ‘Just the way it is back home. Only we were never anyone particular. Not what you might call the cynosure of neighbouring eyes. Here I guess a new Earl rates quite highly on the interest charts.’

‘Yes, people will follow your every move until they get used to you. I wouldn’t be surprised to see a welcome committee waiting for you at the museum.’

He looked alarmed. ‘I hope not.’

‘Only joking, but everyone in the town will know everything you’ve done by the time you’re heading back to the Castle.’

Scene 2

Babs didn’t want to go to the museum. ‘I guess I’ll just wander around for a while.’

Freya took the others across the road, saying, ‘This is our bookshop. You’ll like it, Polly. It’s run by Dinah Lindsey, who’s an old friend of the family.’

She pushed open the door and led the way in. Dinah, who was dusting the books on one of the shelves nearest the ceiling, looked down from her ladder at the group below. She jumped lightly down, tucked the feather duster into an umbrella stand, and held out her hand.

Introductions, and then the Earl looked round appreciatively. ‘This is exactly how a bookshop should look.’

Polly sniffed the air. ‘I love the smell of books.’

Dinah said to her, ‘I don’t know what you like reading, but feel free to browse.’ She turned to Gus. ‘It’s a privilege to meet you. You’ll find copies of some of your books on the shelves here, and Selchester School uses your translation of the
Odyssey
.’

Gus said, ‘Selchester School? Is that where you go, Georgia?’

‘No, I go to the Girls’ High. Selchester School is a boys’ public school. Only public doesn’t mean what you think it does, it means it’s a private school where you pay hefty fees.’

Polly tugged at her father’s sleeve. ‘Can I have some of my allowance, Pops?’

‘Sure, honey, you want to buy some books?’

Polly said, ‘Not exactly at this minute. I think I’ll come back later.’

Dinah said, ‘We’re open until half past five today. The run up to Christmas is our busiest time.’

As if on cue, the door opened and two or three more customers came in.

As Freya, Gus and Polly left the shop, he said to Freya, ‘Could we call in at the museum right now? Or do you have any particular plans?’

The museum was a two-storey redbrick building with a grand stone entrance and ‘Museum’ carved in curly letters above it. Freya had loved it as a child, but she hadn’t been there for quite a while.

As they went in, the familiar smell of dusty old things mingled with floor polish greeted her: some things never changed.

An elderly woman with a pince-nez and a shawl draped over her shoulders was sitting at a desk inside the entrance. She greeted Freya with a little snort of delight and came forward with a smile. Her voice was high and thin and precise. ‘Well, well, Miss Wryton. We haven’t seen you in here for a good long while.’

‘Hello, Mrs Morrison. How are you? This is the new Lord Selchester, and he’d like to look around.’

Mrs Morrison had been acquainted with two previous Earls and wasn’t the least flustered by meeting another one. She said, ‘Of course, you’re Mr Augustine Mason. I saw the review of your translation of the Georgics in the
Journal of Vergilian Studies
. I look forward to reading it when it’s published in England.’

The Earl seemed surprised but, Freya thought, pleased. Writers always were when it turned out that they met someone who had read one of their books. A pleasure denied her, but then she wasn’t a scholar poet like Gus, whose publications were eminently respectable.

Mrs Morrison was apologetic. ‘I’m afraid everything is a little disorganised. Some schoolchildren were in here yesterday. It was a treat before they break up for the holidays, and we haven’t really put things straight since then. Mr Hetherington came over from Yarnley to give them a talk and demonstrate some of the weapons.’

She gestured towards a wide room lined with suits of armour, swords and halberds. Rifles from the time of the Crimean War and eighteenth-century blunderbusses hung on the wall alongside a battle-axe and mace.

Gus’s eyebrows rose. ‘This is quite a fine collection.’

Mrs Morrison said, ‘It was a gift to us, from the old squire at Thorn Hall before it was sold. Weapons were rather a hobby of his, and he gathered quite a collection. Arranged, as you can see, chronologically from the more modern ones right back to a longbow supposed to have been used at Agincourt. There’s also what is thought to be a Roman sword, but that’s in the Lindsey Room.’

‘What’s happened to the crossbow, Mrs Morrison?’ Freya asked. ‘I always liked that.’

‘It’s up in the gallery together with a modern one Mr Hetherington brought with him. He took the children out to the field behind the museum and fired the crossbow for them.’

Gus said, ‘Quite a lethal weapon.’ As he spoke, he turned and bent over to read a label beside a suit of armour.

A whistling sound, and then a loud bang as something struck the armour. Gus jumped back as the suit of armour toppled forward, striking the ground with a metallic clatter.

Mrs Morrison gave a faint scream and Polly, dragging at her father’s arm, pointed a horrified finger towards the crossbow bolt lying on the floor.

Hugo and Gus sprang into action. Gus’s concern was for Polly and he swept her up and out of the door into the next room in a flash. Just as quickly, Hugo, his leg forgotten, hurled himself towards the stairs and hauled himself up to the gallery that ran across the upper part of the exhibition room.

No one there. Propped in a corner was a crossbow. One glance told Hugo that no one could have fired it. But lying on its side, with part of it thrust through the railing, was another crossbow. Hugo dropped awkwardly on to one knee and examined it. It was a modern replica, in perfect condition.

He got to his feet and limped along to the door at one end of the gallery. Leaning over the railing, he called down to a still flustered Mrs Morrison. ‘What’s behind this door?’

Mrs Morrison looked up at him and said in a voice that was at first unsteady and then became firmer: ‘That’s one of the storerooms. Where items that aren’t good enough to put on show or need work are stored.’

‘Is there any other way someone could get into the gallery other than up the stairs?’

Mrs Morrison looked doubtful. ‘There’s a window at the back of the gallery on the other side. I suppose somebody could climb in that way. But does it look as though anyone has?’

Hugo went to see. The window wasn’t locked, and he pushed the casement open and looked out. A stout drainpipe, and a magnolia espaliered against the wall. Easy enough for someone to shin up and climb through the window. Provided they didn’t have a gammy leg: his calf was throbbing after his own efforts.

He came back, picked up the modern crossbow with a handkerchief round his hand and propped it in the corner beside the other one. Then he went back down the stairs.

Freya was helping Mrs Morrison reassemble the suit of armour and she said, ‘Anything there?’

He said, reassuringly if untruthfully, ‘I think the crossbow must accidentally have been left loaded. A careless thing to do, but it can happen.’