The fire was banked low, fitting for a day that seemed, as Mrs. Ward put it, warmer outside than in. The tea was excellent, the Dundee cake was better and even the thought of Owens couldn’t dampen Jonty’s spirits. “You’ll have nightmares. Forget about him.”
“I’m trying to, but it isn’t easy.” The fire needed stoking, as the sun was sinking low in the sky and the evening chill setting in. Orlando knelt down to add a log and some old pine cones, warming his hands against the bright eruption of flame. “Maybe if we concentrated on more pleasant things, we could chase the ogre away.”
Jonty slipped off the sofa, snuggling against Orlando on the hearthrug as if they were a pair of undergraduates engaged in some earnest late-night discussion. “I’ve been working hard on our case, and I’d love the chance to brag a bit about what I’ve done.”
“Of course. Boast away.” Orlando rested his head on his knees, hugging his legs.
Jonty smiled. Whatever happened, departmental problems or personal indignity, they’d see this through together. And they had a case to solve, which would help keep Orlando’s mind off things.
He reached behind him for the folder that he’d laid on the floor earlier. “I’ve drawn a rather splendid diagram.” He spread it out on the rug, out of range of anything but the most daring spark from the fire. “What I couldn’t get from Bresnan’s notes, I got from the man himself.”
“You rang him?”
“Well, clearly I didn’t fly down there in one of Dr. Panesar’s time machines. He seemed slightly shocked to be receiving a telephone call on the Lord’s Day, but I dragged his mind from things rectorial—and if that’s not a word, it should be—to matters familial.” He tapped the diagram. “Although, before I get to them, I’ll cover the other bit. Bresnan had heard the story about Rosalind Priestland from Simon. Who got it from Peter. Her sin, penitence, and absolution seem to be common family knowledge.”
“And were they the cause of Simon’s doubts concerning his brother’s death?”
“They were. Especially because, as maybe you can guess, the ‘victim’ of the theft was an older gentleman to whom she used to read. More secrets.” Jonty sprawled over the floor, smoothing his beloved drawing. After a few moments of silence, he looked up to see Orlando start suddenly, clearly coming back from some labyrinthine passage of thought. “You’ve not heard a word of what I’ve just said, have you?”
“No, sorry.” Orlando didn’t even attempt to lie; he’d have been seen straight through. “I was thinking about you lying in front of the fire. Romantic memories. Could you bear to repeat it?”
Back then, both their bodies had been immaculate, apart from the odd mark from a rugby boot. Now they bore the signs of combat, although Jonty averred that the scar on Orlando’s chest was one of the most erotically stimulating things he’d ever seen.
“What we did in front of the fire, or my little speech?” Jonty grinned. “I said it was a complicated old business. Only I used more words than that.”
“I bet you did. Wasn’t Bresnan surprised you were digging into the past?”
“Not especially. I insisted that it all linked to the case.” Jonty ran his hands through his hair, reinforcing the impression of a wayward schoolboy. “I may have said we had an important clue.”
“Lying. And on a Sunday too.” Orlando shook his head.
“I wasn’t lying, just stretching the truth a bit. Anyway, Bresnan hasn’t always been candid, either. He’s known a lot of the family history all along but didn’t choose to share it with us.” Jonty jabbed his finger at the place where the Reverend Bresnan’s name appeared on the chart. “He knew about the grandmother not necessarily being dead. And we thought we’d rooted out some real scandal.”
“Sounds like he deserves to be lied to—so long as you haven’t stretched the truth so far that it pings back at you.” Orlando pointed at old Mr. Bresnan’s name. “Right. How did the money trickle through the branches of the family?”
“Will you listen this time? Good.” Jonty traced through the lines of the fiscal family tree as he spoke. “Luckily there are no titles here, just good old-fashioned lucre and a bit of property. Old Andrew Priestland left each of his sons a healthy inheritance. Money was split fifty-fifty, but the house went to Simon, him being the elder by a few minutes.”
“Hold on. Mitchell said that Peter was the elder, after the child who died.”
“Exactly.” Jonty smiled gleefully. “And it contradicted what Bresnan told us. If we assume our client’s got it right, then Mitchell must have heard the story from either Rosalind Priestland or Peter himself. Why should they all lie to him? They must have known, even the grieving widow, or else she’d have been curious about why the younger of the two had been the one to inherit the house, rather than the elder.”
“I can’t think what they’d have had to gain by lying.”
“Neither can I, at present. Maybe it was a genuine mistake on his part.”
“Hmm. Perhaps. Did the daughter get anything?” Orlando circled her name with his finger.
“A small bequest, not in the same league as her brothers’. Presumably Mr. Priestland expected her husband to look after her. Although as I understand it, while the Bresnans weren’t exactly poor, they weren’t as comfortable as the rest of the family.” Jonty wrinkled his nose. “Our poor old reverend seemed more and more embarrassed talking about it. No wonder he’d like to get his hands on Uncle Simon’s estate. And no wonder Rosalind wants to sit tight and get her hands on her dear departed’s lolly.”
“What’s this small scrawly thing here? The one in red?” Orlando traced a spidery line along the chart. “The one that looks like some small creature has clambered through the inkwell and progressed along the paper while your mind was, as so often, elsewhere.”
“That, old thing, is the inheritance in the maternal line. Oh yes, Simon’s mother had property of her own, tied up so tightly, the twins’ father couldn’t get his paws on it. Intended for her children at her death, irrespective of their gender and, again, in proportion to their primogeniture.” Jonty poked his lover’s knee. “Want me to explain that last word?”
“No, thank you. I don’t think you used it properly, anyway.” Orlando put on his one up to the mathematical boy smile. “The first-born child got a bigger proportion of the loot. But when did they get it? That’s the thing.”
“Not when they were barely out of swaddling clothes. They didn’t even realise there might be any money due to them, not until the kind and thoughtful letters came, explaining the truth about their mother’s disappearance and hinting that there was a financial implication.” Jonty doodled on the chart with his fingers, circling the names. “Bresnan’s pretty upset about that too. His mother would have been well-provided for.”
“I don’t think I follow.” Orlando traced the red lines again. “Is this where the money went or not?”
“It’s where the money was supposed to go, only it didn’t. Obviously not when her husband said she was dead, as she was probably still alive. And not when she actually died, assuming she was the same woman who took the ill-fated yachting trip.”
Orlando peered at the minute writing to ascertain the Christian names. “Now I’m completely lost. Is there some doubt that it was . . . Alice Priestland on the boat? And who on earth’s this?” He pointed to the name Helen Phillips.
“That’s the woman who died at sea. Or what she called herself. Helen was Alice Priestland’s middle name, apparently, which argues for a link between the two. But you’re right about there being some doubt.” Jonty put on a suitably smug grin. “You can bet there is. She’d clearly changed her name, to hide the shame and scandal. Her husband wouldn’t give her a divorce, so she was living in sin, or so the letters said. Nasty things, those letters. I’d love to know whose hand was behind them.”
“Why didn’t Bresnan tell us all this beforehand?”
“I think he’s mortified to have to expose so many of the skeletons in the family closet. I s
uspect that’s why he tried solving this problem on his own and then came to us rather than a private detective. Wants to keep it all as quiet as possible.” Jonty stretched, taking in the fire’s warmth. Orlando had said he often thought of him as a great ginger cat that he kept as a pet. Well, cats deserved their place of honour on the familial hearth. “And he’s a sight too fond of riddles and showing off his clever way with them. Would it make you feel any happier to know that Bresnan was very impressed that we’d located so many of his blind alleys so quickly? I didn’t say we’d simply stumbled across them.”
“I should hope not. Or that we seem to have been handed a map marking them all.” Orlando looked worried again.
“I wish we had those letters to look at.” Jonty rubbed his forehead, forgetting his fingers were inky.
“Look at the state of you. You’ve covered your face with smudges.” Orlando took out his handkerchief, wetted the edge, and got to work tidying his friend up. “I bet those letters were burned. And anyway, what good would seeing them do? It’s not like we could recognise the writing.”
“I’m sure we couldn’t. Ow. Do be careful.” Jonty swatted his lover’s hand away. “I just feel they’d give off something rather nebulous and subjective. Stop snorting, these things happen. They might give us an inkling of who wrote them, by the style or something.”
Orlando snorted again, probably at the wooliness of the average fellow of Tudor literature’s thinking, although even his own precise logic wasn’t helping much. “I still can’t get a feel for this case, why information is being withheld and then offered or, in the case of the interviews at Downlea, thrust upon us. Back to the money.”
“As usual, my genius boy, you’ve come to what seems to be the whole crux of the matter. It’s why Peter wanted the grave opened and Simon didn’t. It wasn’t just a matter of establishing whether it was empty and if the woman who’d died at sea might have been their mother. Apparently, they had people telling them that she couldn’t have been Alice Priestland and that the letters were just malicious, so there was a reasonable element of doubt. It was also about what had happened to their rightful inheritance. The fact that they were due something had never been in doubt. They found her will.”
“When? Where?”
“With the old nurse who’d looked after them when they were babies. It had been left in her safekeeping, as Alice Priestland didn’t trust her husband. Simon and Peter got in touch with the nurse after the letters started to arrive, in case she could throw any light on the matter. Bresnan says he’ll send us a copy.” Jonty slowly folded up his chart, then settled in front of the fire, hugging his knees like one of the dunderheads. The early evening was becoming cool and the fire was enticing.
“Don’t hog all the heat.” Orlando whacked his friend’s backside, making him budge up so they could range together, like a pair of attractive firedogs, gracing the hearth. “And don’t hog all the information, either. What did the nurse say? If she had the will, why didn’t she make it public when Alice Priestland supposedly died? Or did die, if you’re of that opinion.”
“Because the nurse was one of those who suspected she wasn’t dead. Alice Priestland was very low after the babies were born and had spoken to her, in confidence, about wanting to leave her husband.”
“Blimey.”
“Save that blimey for the last little bit I have to share with you. There may even be the need for some language a touch stronger. Talking of which, do you fancy a small libation of sherry?” Jonty made to rise from the rug, only to be restrained by Orlando’s firm grip on his leg.
“You’ll get no libation of any sort until you tell me every last morsel of this story.”
Jonty grinned, leaning into the viselike grip. “The nurse told the twins that their mother had converted all her worldly wealth into jewels.”
“Not that again. It’s becoming old hat, women dispensing money by means of gewgaws and jewellery, especially when they want to avoid their husbands knowing about it.”
“You should be jolly grateful that they do it. You’ve done pretty well out of Grandmother Forster’s jewellery.”
“I stand corrected.”
Prior to meeting Jonty, Orlando had been, if not in a state of penury, then at least financially constrained. Perhaps like Bresnan was now. Some clever and imaginative use of the jewellery Jonty’s grandmother had left him to bestow on his bride had made the Coppersmith coffers healthy. If he couldn’t match Jonty’s riches, at least he could pay his way now and not feel like a kept man.
“I suppose,” he continued, “that she’d found some sort of means of wangling it, if the money was in trust. What happened to these jewels?”
“Nobody knows. Maybe they financed her running off with her paramour, if run off she did. Maybe they even bought that fatal, faltering yacht.” Jonty stretched again, snuggling against his lover once more and counting off points on his fingers. “They weren’t in the house, not unless old Mr. Priestland got his hands on them. And the nurse insists he didn’t. Not with the family solicitor or at the family bank.”
“What about in Helen Phillips’s house? Or her bank?”
“Search me. Maybe they went to Davy Jones’s locker with their original owner.” Jonty pursed his lips in thought. “Apparently Simon and Peter didn’t try to find out, or if they did, they played the fact so close to their chests that their nephew wasn’t aware. I just don’t understand it.”
“What, where the jewellery went?”
“No, idiot. Why the brothers didn’t dig deeper. If someone had written to me last week to say that Mama had escaped the flu and run away with the gardener or something, I wouldn’t rest until I knew the truth. You understand that, don’t you?”
“Of course.” Just as it had been for Orlando and uncovering the facts about his family name. No peace until they were established without doubt. “Did you ask Bresnan?”
“Yes, and he was none the wiser. Maybe Rosalind Priestland knows, but I’m not sure I can see, as yet, how we can ask her. Unless the answer lies down in Hampshire.”
Orlando sighed. “If I go down to this place near Romsey and manage to avoid all the pubs, who is there left to talk to? The nurse must have died, surely?”
“She has. But the verger who buried old Mr. Priestland is still there, apparently. Bresnan keeps in touch with him.”
“Hmm. I’m not sure anything is to be gained from talking to somebody who, knowing our present luck, will turn out to be some senile old man who probably doesn’t know what day of the week it is.” Orlando stared into the fire, eyes unreadable. “And isn’t all of this getting away from the point? We’re supposed to be finding out if Rosalind Priestland killed her husband.”
Jonty watched the flames dance. “I know. And I’m convinced that the key to it’s here.” He lovingly tapped his folded-up chart. “Knit all these strands into a credible tapestry and we’ll have the solution in our grasp.”
“Are you saying you think that Simon was there? And that he sneaked in and killed his brother because of something to do with their mother?”
“I’m not saying anything so definite. But the solution to everything is in here.” Jonty tapped the paper again. “I bet you ten quid.”
A dinner, a glass of port, and a game of cribbage later, Jonty sat in his bed, spectacles perched on his nose and a tired, contented smile on his face. Orlando felt for a moment like saying no to carnal desires—it had been a long day, going through what had seemed a ton of paperwork left by his predecessor—but there was something in the twinkle of those blue eyes that drove him to nod his head. Maybe Delilah had blue eyes like that, and she’d flashed them at Samson en route to the hairdresser’s. Or Cleopatra had pointed her cornflower-blue gaze on poor old Anthony and changed the destiny of two nations. Alexander surely had blue eyes. When Hephaistion saw them, he’d been driven to . . .
“You’re too quiet. I don’t like it.” Jonty’s spectacles were perched on his head now, while he rubbed his brow and looked
like a particularly obtuse dunderhead.
“I was thinking.” Orlando hung his jacket on a coat hanger and then began to undo his cuffs. He wasn’t prepared to admit what he’d been thinking. He could illustrate that much more clearly in gestures once they’d touched on this business with Owens. Funny how often they’d punctuated deep, intricate conversations, whether about other people’s murder cases or their own personal challenges, with bouts of lovemaking.
“Is that all you were doing, thinking? Couldn’t hear the cogs of your brain grinding, so I couldn’t be sure.”
Orlando didn’t grace the remark with more than a snort. There’d been plenty of jokes these past fourteen years about his habit of thinking everything through to the nth degree. “You reassure me about our friendly blackmailer while I get into my pyjamas. Give me a plan of campaign.”
“Plan? All I seem to have is a random jumble of ideas about too many things. I need to sleep on his horrible threats, just as I need to sleep on the horribly complicated family business with the Priestlands and the Bresnans.” Jonty gently disentangled his spectacles from a stray lock of hair, removed them, and placed them carefully in their case. “Maybe I’ll wake in the morning with inspiration on both fronts.”
“Chance would be a fine thing.” Orlando’s pyjamas seemed to be fighting back, the buttons wanting to inveigle themselves into the wrong holes.
“I don’t know why you’re bothering with those. That jacket will be off in a minute.”
“It’s to annoy you, of course. Or maybe to excite you. I know how fond you are of stripping me. I’m just getting everything as you like it.” Orlando twitched back the covers, sliding into a bed nicely warmed by both a hot water bottle and his lover’s body.
“Well, that takes some beating. I’ve had chocolates from you—and flowers on one notable occasion—but never a love token so amusing as a perfectly presented row of buttons.” Jonty took the book he’d been reading earlier and laid it with much care on the bedside table, an act that had come to mean, Lights out, time for love. “I know you’ve been hard at work over a hot slide rule or sets of tables most of the day, but I hope you’ve got enough energy left for . . .” He didn’t finish the sentence, choosing instead to run his fingers along his lover’s thigh.
Lessons for Survivors Page 11
