A Mansion and its Murder by Robert Barnard Page A

something into his beard – I imagine it was some professed doubt as to whether he could ‘make her happy.’ Mary Coverdale’s voice came across the hedge to us clear as a silver spoon on fine glassware.
    ‘You mustn’t worry, Francis. We are extremely well suited. I shall be an excellent hostess for Blakemere.’
    They passed on. Miss Roxby looked at me and raised her eyebrows. Since she would never initiate such a conversation but sometimes allowed herself to be led into one, I said, ‘She doesn’t understand the situation at all.’
    ‘Seemingly not,’ she said quietly.
    ‘Uncle Frank doesn’t care a fig for Blakemere, or for his wife being hostess here.’
    ‘I wouldn’t have thought so.’
    ‘At least she doesn’t imagine she is being married for love,’ I admitted grudgingly.
    ‘True. And I suppose it will have been difficult for anyone to explain to her that she is beingmarried in return for the wiping out of debts.’ She realised at once she had said too much, had given rein to a side of her that her profession obliged her to keep hidden. A child, however secretive by nature, could never entirely be trusted. She said quietly: ‘But to return to the Dark Continent …’
    We were on our way to understanding each other very well indeed.
    Meanwhile, preparations for the wedding were proceeding apace, though all the bride’s preparations were going on at Tillyards, so I was not nauseated by them. The wedding was to be large, indisputably an event, but a local event. Uncle Frank had insisted on this latter point. I had heard him do this one day when, exceptionally, I was allowed to sit with the family at teatime. He made it clear he wanted none of the banking bigwigs from London invited, nor the national politicians.
    ‘It is only the wedding of a younger son,’ he said. ‘To pretend otherwise would be tasteless.’
    He looked at my father when he said this.
    ‘Don’t expect me to back you up,’ Papa said. ‘It’s a matter of indifference to me what sort of wedding you have.’
    ‘Nevertheless,’ said Uncle Frank carefully,‘the fact is that circumstances could change, and you could be father to a whole string of future lairds of Blakemere.’
    My father’s face twisted in distaste.
    ‘I assure you that should circumstances change, as you so tactfully put it, the last thing I would consider would be to embark on a second venture of matrimony.’
    I rather pertly put in my two pennyworth: ‘And you needn’t think I want to be Lairdess of Blakemere. I’m going to be a great writer.’
    Uncle Frank turned to me, with something of his old smile.
    ‘Well, that’s original, at any rate. We’ve never had a writer in the Fearing family.’
    ‘We’ve never had an explorer, either. I don’t see why the Fearing family should produce nothing but bankers. I’m going to be a great writer, like the Bronte sisters.’
    ‘I won’t have those women mentioned at my table!’ thundered Grandpapa. I subsided into silence, but I noticed a satiric glint in my grandmother’s eye. I think she knew that Grandpapa had very little idea who the Bronte sisters were, only that they were not quite respectable.
    My ambition to be a writer, which lastedall of three months, at least made me observe the preparations and the wedding itself with an eye eager to absorb the telling details. I will not bore myself by setting them down – they would seem impossibly lavish and fussy in this Age of Austerity we live in now. Uncle Frank absented himself as far as possible from all the fuss and flurry. I imagine him as having several last flings in all his favourite bachelor haunts, though on second thought I don’t imagine he saw them as last flings, and why on earth should he? Such a marriage as he was undertaking was not likely to change his essential nature, or his habits. It was like a royal marriage of convenience – like Charles II marrying a Portuguese princess he had never seen.
    Finally the day dawned. I was