Dance to Your Daddy (Mrs Bradley)

by Mitchell, Gladys

  ‘At what time was this?’

  ‘At about eleven this morning, Celestine said. By the way, did you have any lunch?’

  ‘Yes, in Shaftesbury.’

  ‘We had ours in Bournemouth. How do you like the suit Rosamund is wearing?’

  ‘I’m most concerned about having to owe you so much money, Dame Beatrice,’ said the girl, ‘but I hope that, by the end of May, I shall be able to pay everything back – everything but your kindness, of course. That I can never repay.’

  ‘Well,’ said Dame Beatrice, ‘we have plans for you, to keep you safely out of the way until all the problems are solved. You are going to stay with Laura’s parents in Scotland. It is all arranged.’

  ‘In Scotland? I shall feel safer there, now Romilly has been to this house. Suppose I had been alone here when he came!’

  ‘Well, you weren’t,’ said Laura, ‘so don’t panic. I’m taking you to London tomorrow, and one of the nurses at Dame Beatrice’s clinic will take you on to Glasgow, where my brother and his wife will meet you and take you to my home. There’s nothing for you to worry about. It’s all taken care of. There’s the dressing-bell. Push off upstairs and put on that dinner-gown you chose. It’s a smash-hit in any language.’

  ‘I like your brisk and business-like tone when you speak to Rosamund,’ said Dame Beatrice.

  ‘Ah,’ said Laura, squinting down her nose, ‘a talented nursery-governess was lost in me. Well, we’d better go up, too, I suppose. One of these days I shall come down in jeans and a windcheater, just to see the effect it has on Celestine. It’s because of her I dress for dinner, you know, not really because I want to.’

  ‘You have been with Rosamund all day. What do you make of the child?’

  ‘Not too sure I like her. Bit of a rabbit, I think, to let herself be given the run-around by the despicable old Romilly. After all, this is the third quarter of the twentieth century and she is twenty-four years old, although I’ll admit she doesn’t look it.’

  ‘Romilly is a cunning and unscrupulous man, I fear. I will accompany you to London tomorrow and see Rosamund handed over to the care of Nurse Merrow. After that, while you suborn your husband to neglect his duties and take you to Scotland with Rosamund and Nurse Merrow, I shall lunch by myself in Soho and then visit my sister-in-law. There is nothing Selina does not know about the ramifications of the Lestrange family tree, and if I ask her to place these new relatives of mine upon the appropriate branches she will feel that, at last, I am showing a proper interest. George will pick me up at her house and take me back to the clinic, and I will wait for you and Rosamund there. Keep dear Robert with you as long as you can. You see far too little of one another for the parents of an eight-months-old baby.’

  ‘If we’d seen less of one another, there might not be an eight-months-old baby, and that wouldn’t break my heart,’ said Laura, grinning. ‘But what’s all this about the family tree?’

  ‘I am hoping that Selina can hang Felix Napoleon on it, that is all, and Romilly, too.’

  CHAPTER NINE

  Bolero—Mother and Son

  ‘Bid me discourse, I will enchant thine ear, Or, like a fairy, trip upon the green.’

  Venus and Adonis.

  * * *

  (1)

  Lady Selina Lestrange had always regarded her more eccentric relatives with suspicion and disapproval, and it was with false cordiality that she welcomed Dame Beatrice to the ancestral home. She was the relict of Dame Beatrice’s first husband’s brother, and therefore the relationship between the two elderly ladies was not consanguinous and they had nothing in common except their age and sex.

  ‘Well, Adela,’ she said, ‘this is a surprise!’

  ‘Yes,’ agreed Dame Beatrice, meekly.

  ‘If I had known you were coming …’

  ‘I am not going to stay,’ Dame Beatrice assured her. ‘My business may take half-an-hour, or very little longer, at the most. I come in search of information.’

  ‘Not another of your odious cases of murder!’

  ‘A by-product of one. Did you know that Hubert has been killed?’

  ‘Hubert? Hubert who?’

  ‘The Reverend Hubert Lestrange.’

  ‘I have never heard of him.’

  ‘That is most interesting. I wonder whether you have heard, then, of Felix Napoleon?’

  ‘Oh, dear! Please don’t mention that old reprobate!’

  ‘Who was he?’

  ‘He was some sort of cousin. He was descended from a pirate or a bushranger, I believe – something disgraceful, anyway. We have never recognised the relationship, needless to say.’

  ‘But he had a right to his name?’

  ‘Oh, he was a Lestrange, if that is what you mean. He was also extremely wealthy, as a result, I have always supposed, of his ill-gotten inheritance.’

  ‘Is there any reason why he should have entertained kindly feelings towards me?’

  ‘Towards you? Why, did he?’

  ‘Failing his granddaughter and her next-of-kin, he seems to have left his fortune to me.’

  ‘Oh, well, if there is a granddaughter, you are hardly likely to outlive her.’

  ‘In the midst of life, of course – but you have failed to grasp the purport of my question. Apart from any suggestion of a legacy, why should he have thought of me at all? To my certain knowledge, I have neither met him nor corresponded with him. In fact, I am perfectly certain that I did not know of his existence until very recently.’

  ‘If he mentioned anybody, apart from his nearest relatives, in his Will, it ought to have been Ferdinand.’

  ‘My son Ferdinand? Why, what has Ferdinand done? Successfully defended him against a charge of some kind?’

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘Then why have I not heard of it?’

  ‘You were in America at the time, and it never became a cause célèbre. The unspeakable Felix Napoleon was thought to have strangled a chorus girl or a member of a corps de ballet or something. She had borne an illegitimate child which she was attempting to foist on him, I believe. Anyway, Ferdinand was mixed up in it somehow.’

  ‘Oh, was there an illegitimate child?’

  ‘Oh, yes. That was not in dispute.’

  ‘You would not, of course, remember the baby’s name?’

  ‘Certainly not.’

  ‘You never heard it?’

  ‘I may have done. I should not dream of charging my memory with anything to do with such disgraceful goings-on.’

  ‘Suppose I suggested to you the name Romilly?’

  ‘Is it of any importance?’

  ‘I think it may be of very great importance.’

  ‘You mean that this Romilly may have a claim on us?’

  ‘I think he may well consider himself to have a claim on his natural father’s fortune. As it is, a life interest in it is left to Felix Napoleon’s granddaughter, provided that she attains her twenty-fifth birthday. At her death the money goes to this Romilly. If she does not live to be twenty-five, I am to benefit’

  ‘What has the death of a clergyman to do with all this?’

  ‘That is what I have to find out. It is all very mysterious at present. Hubert seems to have been on his way to Romilly’s house when he met his death, and yet the spot where his body was found does not suggest that he was on the direct route to Galliard Hall. The police have the matter in hand, but I was hoping that you would be able to give me a pointer or two which might be of help to them.’

  ‘I am sorry, but you can scarcely expect me to interest myself in the affair.’

  ‘You have at least persuaded me that Romilly may have some right to his surname, and that is progress of a kind.’

  ‘You have already said that you think he may be Felix Napoleon’s natural son, but that gives him no right to call himself Lestrange.’

  ‘I have never seen why a natural son should have no right to his father’s name when that name is known and the claim acknowledged.’

  ‘Opinions diff
er, and I must say that I think you are unwise to have mixed yourself up in the affair.’

  ‘It is too long a story to tell you, and I doubt whether you would be interested in it, but I had no option.’

  ‘Because of the fortune?’

  ‘No. Because Romilly called me in in my professional capacity as a psychiatrist.’

  ‘You mean that the man is mad?’

  ‘No. He was hoping I would say that the heiress presumptive is incapable of managing her own affairs. If I did so, her expectations, for all practical purposes, would cease to exist.’

  ‘It seems that, as usual, you have got yourself mixed up in villainy.’

  ‘That is what I think. Before I go, I must try your exemplary patience a little further. Do the names Willoughby, Corin and Corinna mean anything to you?’

  ‘Corin and Corinna are Sally’s children, and therefore are my grandchildren. Their father thought it better that they did not use his name, as they are on the stage in some dubious kind of way, so, to my great annoyance, they have taken their mother’s maiden name of Lestrange.’

  ‘I thought Sally’s children were named Montmorency and Clotilda. I was present at their christening, if you remember.’

  ‘Those would scarcely be names which could be used for the kind of act which I believe they perpetrate.’

  ‘No, I see that. Oh, well, that accounts for them. What about Willoughby?’

  ‘I have never heard of him.’

  ‘He has disappeared. As he is Hubert’s brother, I am wondering whether he also has been murdered.’

  ‘You mean that this clergyman was murdered?’

  ‘The police appear to think so. I do not know yet what evidence they have. One more question, and then I will go. Do you know anything about a family named Provost?’

  ‘Provost? Do you mean the Marshall-Provosts? They are some sort of connections of Sally’s husband, John Ponsonby-Marshall, I believe, but they are rather poor and obscure and are not really recognised as relatives by John’s family. Why?’

  ‘They seem to be well known to Romilly Lestrange, that is all, but they seem to be called, simply, Provost.’

  ‘I will ring for tea,’ said Lady Selina in a tone which indicated, beyond all reasonable doubt, that this nuisance must now cease.

  (2)

  Armed with such information as Lady Selina had been able to supply, Dame Beatrice rang up her son on Lady Selina’s telephone and was invited to dinner and asked to stay for the night.

  ‘Well, mother,’ said the eminent man, when dinner was over and he had taken her off to his study for a private chat, ‘what mischief have you been getting into this time?’

  ‘I seem to be mixed up, to some extent, in the murder of a member of the family.’

  ‘Don’t tell me that somebody has had the public spirit and general goodwill to bump off Aunt Selina!’

  ‘No. I came here from her house and she appears to be alive and well.’

  ‘Who’s been murdered, then?’

  ‘A young man – well, I assume that he is young, or comparatively so – named the Reverend Hubert Lestrange.’

  ‘A parson murdered? Rather unusual, what? What did he do? Rush in where angels fear to tread, and get himself clobbered?’

  ‘I have no idea what he did. I have a feeling, however, that he was killed because of something he knew.’

  ‘That sounds as though he’d uncovered the family skeleton. Have we one?’

  ‘I hoped you would be able and willing to tell me that. What do you know of Felix Napoleon?’

  ‘Oh, that old rip! I got him off on a charge of fraud once, but haven’t seen or heard of him for ages.’

  ‘When was this?’

  ‘Oh, donkey’s years ago, of course. It was before I was called to the Bar, as a matter of fact. I was up at Cambridge. How the old boy had found out I was reading law I’ve never discovered, or even how he knew where I was, but he wrote to me and asked me to suggest a line of defence, as he trusted neither his solicitor nor the chap who was to be briefed on his behalf. He told me his side of the story, I saw a loophole, pointed it out and the result was that the case never came up for trial. The beaks threw it out, and quite right, too, on the evidence, although, personally, I wouldn’t be surprised if the old reprobate was guilty.’

  ‘How did Selina come to hear of all this?’

  ‘The man who was to be briefed was old John Marshall-Provost, Sally’s father-in-law.’

  ‘It seems to be a family affair all round.’

  ‘Yes, all sorts of daddies involved. Where do you come in, though?’

  Dame Beatrice gave him an account of Romilly’s letter and of what had happened, and outlined the course she had followed since she had received the letter.

  ‘I’m afraid for the girl,’ she said in conclusion. ‘When I heard that she was the heiress and was made cognisant of the conditions which were attached to the inheritance, and when I realised that Romilly (who, by his virtual incarceration of her, must be a resolute and unscrupulous man) was the next in line according to Felix Napoleon’s Will, I removed the child from Galliard Hall and have despatched her, with Laura’s help, to a place of safety. When I learned of Hubert’s death …’

  ‘If I may butt in at this point, mother, I think you should keep an eye lifting on your own account, you know. Some people can’t be all that pleased with your machinations, and yet ——’

  ‘I shall take precautions, particularly as I am returning tomorrow to Galliard Hall. All the same, so far as anybody is aware, I am simply keeping the girl under treatment.’

  ‘Well, beware of how you enter the cockatrice’s den, that’s all. A man with his eye on a fortune is not going to be too nice about the methods he uses to get his hooks on it, you know, especially if he’s old Felix Napoleon’s natural son. For one thing, he may well feel that, as the first-born, and of an earlier generation than the girl, he has the prior claim, and, for another, he may now take after his father, who struck me as a plausible and blackhearted scoundrel, if ever there was one.’

  ‘Yet you did him a very great favour.’

  ‘Oh, no, it certainly wasn’t meant as a favour. It was just a very young man’s conceit. I spotted the flaw and nothing pleased me better than to point it out to him and his solicitor. It was just one of those odd things which come along when one’s looking up something quite different. I was in love with my own cleverness in those days and, after all, the old villain was a Lestrange.’

  ‘Exactly what I feel about Rosamund, La famille oblige. Selina had some story that he had murdered his mistress.’

  ‘One of his mistresses, she meant. He was notorious for his harem, I believe. I never heard that he murdered anybody, though. I think Aunt Selina must have got the wires crossed. She probably heard of this fraud thing I mentioned, and stepped up the details.’

  ‘Did you ever hear of an illegitimate son?’

  ‘He had two, but I don’t know whether they had the same mother.’

  ‘Would you know their names?’

  ‘Yes, of course.’

  ‘Why “of course”?’

  ‘Well, because I knew them both at Cambridge. Romilly was my year and happened to be on my staircase, and Caesar came up when Romilly had gone down and I was at the beginning of my fourth year. I didn’t have a lot to do with them, but when I found their name was Lestrange I felt I had to be civil. It was Romilly who put his father’s case before me, as a matter of fact, and asked me what I thought, as he knew my intended profession.’

  ‘So Romilly would be about your age?’

  ‘Just about, I suppose. Small, dark chap and wore very powerful glasses. Blind as a bat without them, he once told me, and, on another occasion, I had evidence of it.’

  ‘Did you know anything of his life after he left the University?’

  ‘Yes, he wrote to me twice while I was still up, once to send me five pounds he’d borrowed the previous term, and once to tell me that he was emigrating to Kenya, as
his father had bought him a half-share in a coffee plantation. I never heard from him again.’

  ‘What about the younger brother, Caesar?’

  ‘He got himself rusticated in his second year. Started an undergraduate paper and printed some fairly actionable items about some of the dons. Was chewed up by the Dean, but persisted in his naughty ways, so Cambridge’s loss became somewhere else’s gain. I believe he got into Fleet Street later on, but I didn’t really know him. Different faculties, and three years’ difference in our ages, you see.’

  ‘Do you remember what he was like to look at?’

  ‘Not very clearly. The most noticeable thing about the poor chap was that he had one leg shorter than the other and had to wear a surgical boot.’

  ‘How did you know they were illegitimate?’

  ‘Romilly told me. He was bleating about it in a mild sort of way, and saying that he didn’t suppose his old man would leave him anything worth talking about, although he’d always acknowledged him and kept him and his brother, and all that.’

  ‘What kind of man was Romilly?’

  ‘As I remember him, he was diffident, kindly, a bit vague, but a completely harmless chap. He was a connoisseur of pictures, I remember. Spent all his money on good copies of old masters and said he intended to collect the real things when he could afford it. My five-pound loan, I remember, went to make up the price of a very fine copy of Francesco di Giorgio’s Saint Dorothy walking with the Holy Child. I must say that he’s just about the last man I should think of as a murderer, but, of course, when it’s a question of money——’

  ‘Did you ever hear whether Felix Napoleon’s legitimate union was blest with children?’

  ‘Yes, there was a son named Harvard, some years younger than Caesar, but he was killed in the war in 1944. I knew about him because he came up once or twice to see the other two, and I was invited to cocktails.’