A Mansion and its Murder by Robert Barnard

Blakemere) was drafted in to represent the Fearing family. Thismeant inviting both the child’s parents to the wedding, which the family had hoped to avoid. However, a few weeks before the wedding, Uncle Alfred was elected to the Royal Academy (he was a very boring painter, though a charming man), and this meant that his profession could be mentioned when he was introduced to the other wedding guests, though some of the local gentry were still rather sniffy.
    I was thrown during those weeks on the company of my governess Miss Roxby – Edith. With her I was petulant, indignant, openly contemptuous of the bargain that had been struck, but the worst of my tantrums and moods were controlled in her presence because I had come to respect her greatly, and because I sensed that she sympathised with my attitude to the marriage. She introduced me, in our spare time, to many books that have become lifelong friends, and she awoke in me an interest in my country’s history which has been a great standby in my two main careers. I remember one occasion a few weeks before the wedding when I was questioning her about how the then Queen had come to the throne, and she had taken down a tall, heavy book full of photographs and engravings, which had been published for the Golden Jubilee (wewere by then between Jubilees). It had a family tree of some complexity, and I studied it intently.
    ‘So she inherited the throne,’ I said eventually, ‘even though her father’s younger brothers had sons .’
    I had studied it, you see, with my own situation very much in my mind.
    ‘That’s right,’ said Edith Roxby. ‘If the Duke and Duchess of Kent had had a son, he would have taken precedence over the Princess Victoria, as she then was. But they didn’t – he died soon after she was born – so she took precedence over the sons of his younger brothers.’
    ‘I see. That seems quite fair … But it does seem odd that Uncle Frank should be badgered into marriage to produce a son.’
    ‘That is quite different, Sarah,’ said Miss Roxby, peddling the family line, I now know, with reluctance. ‘A son is needed to take over Fearing’s Bank.’
    ‘So a woman may take over the country, but one may not take over Fearing’s Bank?’ I said, with remorseless logic. ‘Not that I want to! I can’t think of anything more stuffy and tedious. But you’d think that what was good enough for the Royal Family would be good enough for Fearing’s Bank, wouldn’t you?’
    Thus did the seeds sown by Mr Gladstone’s casual remark flourish in my childish brain.
    As I have mentioned, there were occasions on which the happy bride-to-be Mary Coverdale visited Blakemere, and on such visits Uncle Frank (but she always called him Francis) was in attendance, glumly but dutifully. If she noticed his glumness she did not comment on it. She was not naturally a gay person herself. She had her mind set seriously on one subject, and went after it single-mindedly.
    This was brought home to me forcibly by a scrap of conversation I overheard on one of those visits. As I have said, Mary Coverdale ignored me – not so much snubbing me as simply being unaware of my presence, since I had no place in her view of her own future at Blakemere. She was almost equally unaware of the existence of Aunt Jane and my mother, while being very conscious of the respect due to my grandfather and grandmother, and more uneasily aware of the claims of my father.
    Anyway, the fact that I and Miss Roxby were also in the vicinity was ignored during one of these visits when Uncle Frank and his future bride were walking in the terrace gardens. They were arm-in-arm, yet they could not haveseemed further apart. Miss Roxby and I were on a seat behind a hedge, studying a map of Africa showing how it had been opened up in recent years (by our heroic Empire builders, whose work will have to be comprehensively undone in the years ahead). As they passed by on the other side, I heard Uncle Frank mumble