A Mansion and its Murder Read Online Free PDF

single-handed marauding parties of Mongolians, eventually running up the Union Jack at the desert’s central point and claiming it for Queen Victoria. Thinking of the problems we have at the moment in India and various other parts of what used to be the Empire, it is perhaps fortunate that Uncle Frank refrained from prising Outer Mongolia from the grips of whoever then ruled it to add to them.
    It was not summer but late autumn when Uncle Frank arrived home. There had been, asalways, no advance notice. He may have felt that any letter would only come by sea, like himself, so it could hardly arrive much before him, though in fact he later told me he had had a week in Cairo (‘sampling the fleshpots,’ he said, which made me wonder whether the Egyptians were cannibals) on the way home.
    It was not surprising that I was the first to know of his return, since whenever I passed a window which looked out over the long drive that led to the Gatehouse and beyond that to the little country village of Melbury I scanned the rolling expanses of Fearing property for signs of Uncle Frank’s return. And when one day in early October I saw the carriage that plied between Melbury station and residences of consequence in the neighbourhood I knew at once that it contained my dear uncle. This was not childish intuition. I had been wrong a hundred times before, and eventually I had to be right. I left Miss Roxby’s side and tumbled down the marble staircase (each step better adapted to a fully fledged giant than to my by-now eleven-year-old legs), and positioned myself in a dismal alcove containing the sort of sinister potted plant that thrives on shadow. If he had known it was Uncle Frank arriving, Mr McKay would certainlyhave been there in the echoing entrance hall, his face set in just the right blend of welcome and disapproval. As it was, there was just Robert, an underfootman, his face blank not from formality but from boredom.
    This was not a time for coyness or for playing games. The moment I saw the weatherbeaten face below the panama hat, I rushed from my hiding place.
    ‘Uncle Frank! Uncle Frank!’
    He swung me aloft, my beribboned hair knocking off his fine hat, and he kissed me and tickled me and roared his delight at seeing me again.
    ‘Sarah Jane! The only thing worth coming home for!’
    That made me swell with delight and pride. When the boisterous part of the welcome was over, he put me down on the staircase, sat down beside me and looked at me closely.
    ‘How you’ve grown. You’ll soon be a full-sized rabbit. I won’t be able to swing you up in my arms much longer.’
    ‘I shall be a young lady,’ I said roguishly, ‘and it won’t be proper for you to swing me up.’
    ‘How true. The dignity of young ladies must be preserved. Be glad you’re not a Chinese ladywho has to walk a respectful distance behind her menfolk.’
    ‘Does she really ? I thought that was only in books. It can’t make for stimulating conversation. Anyway, I don’t have any menfolk.’
    ‘You have me. And I’ve never noticed you being particularly respectful of me.’
    ‘Would you want me to be?’
    He laughed, throwing his head back. ‘You know, come to think of it, I don’t think I would like that at all.’
    ‘Be careful you don’t take cold, Sarah Jane,’ my governess said quietly from two steps above us. And the stair was rather chilly through my dress and light undergarments. Uncle Frank stood up and turned around.
    ‘How right you are, Miss – er, Roxby, isn’t it?’ He looked at her quizzically and appraisingly (I can see the expression now, and can analyse it, though I could not have done so then. He was wondering whether she was an ally or a foe). ‘I trust your charge has grown in knowledge and wisdom as much as she has grown in stature during my absence?’
    I giggled. ‘She had increased her knowledge of Outer Mongolia quite prodigiously,’ said Miss Roxby gravely. ‘But I hope she has learnt alot of other