A Mansion and its Murder
Page 19
They nearly did, but the more I thought about it the more the explanation seemed like special pleading. In fact, it would make more sense to see my uncle as a charming figure but a totally self-indulgent one: someone whose whole life consisted of doing what he wanted, and expecting other people to pick up the bills. Had anything of any geographical or scientific value ever been discovered during those expeditions of his that had cost so dear? Another thought suddenly occurred to me: had he, indeed, ever been on them at all? Were they, perhaps, a cover for months spent around the fleshpots of Shanghai, Cairo, or wherever?
And when Uncle Frank had been forced into actually doing something against his will to get his bills paid (there was, to my banker’s brain, something pretty undignified about a man of thirty-odd running up debts and expecting his family automatically to stump up for them), he had made the worst of things by entering into a detailed bargain of self-interest with someone he disliked and despised. He may even have chosen his wife on the basis of preferring someone who would wreak most damage on the Fearing family’s self-esteem. When the whole bargain had gone disastrously wrong he had – again, in one of those acts of unchecked impulse and self-indulgence – killed her.
And then there was his relationship with me. Could that have been something very different from what I had seen it as at the time? I faced this possibility with reluctance. It was the most painful thing of all. There had never seemed to me, not then nor since, the slightest cloud of anything – how was one to put it? – anything dubious or dirty in his love for me, in our mutual delight in each other. Yet apparently his ‘favourite form of sinning is with one who’s just beginning’ as Leporello sings at Sadler’s Wells. His preference was for working-class girls, but still … could his attitude to me have been entirely untainted by sex, by lust, call it what you will? Could I be entirely happy knowing the sort of girls, still children, whom he must have gone in search of if he really did frequent the fleshpots of Shanghai or Cairo? Could it not be said, viewed at its worst, that I flirted with him, and he with me? The only difference being that my flirtatiousness was untainted with sex, and that his was not.
A sudden stab of resentment flowed through me: why had he not written to me, as he so easily could? Why had he not wanted to reassure me that he was still alive? Of course there were plenty of reasons, including his liability for prosecution, even possibly for hanging. But could one of them be that, by the time, in his negligent way, he had got around to considering it, I was more or less grown up? Of no interest to him any more?
And then again that preference for working-class girls: if he had felt it, should he not have mastered it, as many sexual proclivities have to be mastered? But he was obviously not the man to do that, or even attempt it. He was an upper-class exploiter of the unprotected, and one of the worst and most blatant kind. And in this as in other exploits of his, the family picked up the bill and bought the silence of the girls and their families.
My uncle Frank was an amoral, self-indulgent, exploitative cad, a typical leisure-class bounder. And my love for him had left me emotionally ruined. But I put that last thought behind me: I had done too much with my life – far more than many emotionally fulfilled people – to worry about emotional damage.
When we finally got to the Bank I sent the flunkey in to fetch Ed. When he finally jumped into the cab, his whole body showed his excitement. He was full of the wonders of his day, and he went on and on about them as we began the ride to Marylebone.
‘That foreign business section fascinates me,’ he said, among much else. ‘That’s going to take off as things return to normal in Europe. That’s where the future lies. One of the blokes there was saying that people shouldn’t write Germany off. He says the potential there is fantastic …’
I let him go on. Eventually he remembered his manners enough to stop talking about the Bank and inquire about my day. I had my approach prepared.
‘Oh, much more interesting than I expected,’ I said. ‘In the delegation I was receiving there happened to be your grandfather’s sister-in-law – sister of his first wife, that is.’
Did I imagine it, or was there a flicker of worry in his eyes?
‘Didn’t know anything about a first wife.’
‘Oh, she was dead by the time he married your grandmother,’ I said. I don’t think I imagined his relief. Ed’s thoughts were becoming, or had always been, a mite dynastic, for all his naive front and puppyish air of careless blundering. ‘So there’s no question of his children being illegitimate.’
‘That’s a relief,’ he said, more casually. ‘Australians are always calling people bastards, but it’s better not to be one.’
‘You mentioned a photograph of your grandfather’s wedding day,’ I went on.
‘That’s right. On the sideboard back home.’
‘Was his bride much younger than himself?’
‘Hell, yes. Hardly more than a girl. These days I reckon he’d get called a cradle-snatcher, or a dirty old man. If you can believe my dad, he had to be forced to actually marry her – a real shotgun affair. With her family holding the shotgun.’
‘Yes, I don’t think my uncle was a man of conscience,’ I said sadly.
I put the subject aside as distasteful, and let Ed get back to talking about banking. He was still so much of a boy that I was loath to distrust him. Who but a boy would tell me things I was bound to know about every department in a bank I owned and had run? Who but a boy would lay down the law about things I inevitably knew a hundred times more about than he did? There was a delicious naivete about him that was delightful.
‘I really fell for the place,’ he said. ‘And by the end of the day I felt I was beginning to understand the system. Do you think it’s in the blood?’
‘Could be. Let’s hope you’ve missed out on some of the other things that could be there, too.’
‘It set me wondering: maybe that’s where my future lies. It’s not often that I’ve found anything so fascinating from the moment I started to go into it. Do you think I should be considering aiming for a job in a bank?’
‘Maybe,’ I said. ‘It could be arranged. We have excellent relations with Coutts and Barings, and with most of the big outfits. They might be willing to give you a start. It would be better not to think in terms of Fearing’s. It might alarm Digby. And the age of nepotism is over.’
‘That would be beaut,’ he said.
Again I thought I detected a dying fall, a note of disappointment, in his voice. I felt my mouth setting itself into a firm line. I am too old to be taken in a second time by male charm.
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ROGUE’S GALLERY
A SHORT STORY COLLECTION
How far would a child go to rid himself of a despised parent? Or a man of the cloth to be elected pope? From murderous ministers and conniving cardinals to the dark imagination of a schoolboy and the suspicions of an ageing Mr Mozart, this unique collection of Robert Barnard’s short stories takes you on a trail of murder, mystery and intrigue with some of his finest – and darkest – literary creations.
Including the prizewinning ‘Rogue’s Gallery’ and ‘Sins of Scarlet’, this eclectic collection proves that, whether reimagining the life of cultural icons or spying opportunity for morbid crimes amidst events grand and domestic, novelist Robert Barnard is the master of the short story mystery.
About the Author
ROBERT BARNARD was born in Essex. He was educated at Balliol College, Oxford, and after completing his degree he taught English at universities in Australia and Norway, where he completed his doctorate on Dickens. He returned to England to become a full-time writer and now lives in Leeds with his wife Louise, cat Durdles and dog Peggotty. He has been award
ed both the prestigious CWA Cartier Diamond Dagger, in recognition of a lifetime’s achievement in crime writing, as well as the CWA prize for the best short story of the year.
Also by Robert Barnard
Sheer Torture
The Mistress of Alderley
A Cry from the Dark
The Graveyard Position
Dying Flames
A Fall from Grace
Last Post
The Killings on Jubilee Terrace
A Stranger in the Family
A Mansion and its Murder
Rogue’s Gallery (short story collection)
Copyright
Allison & Busby Limited
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Hardback published in Great Britain in 2011.
Paperback edition published in 2012.
This ebook edition first published in 2012.
Copyright © 1998 by ROBERT BARNARD
The right of ROBERT BARNARD to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
This novel was previously published in the US under the pseudonym Bernard Bastable.
All characters and events in this publication other than those clearly in the public domain are fictitious and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent buyer.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN 978–0–7490–1181–9