A Mansion and its Murder Read Online Free PDF Page B

useful things as well.’
    ‘I am delighted to hear it. Ah well, now for the difficult bit,’ said Uncle Frank, his shoulders shrugging underneath his magnificent travelling coat. ‘Pleasant things never last, do they? But one who has braved the present-day descendants of Ghengis Khan should not shrink from being taken back into the bosom of his family, should he?’
    And he kissed me again, shook hands ceremoniously with Miss Roxby, and took himself off into the gloomy body of the house. I heard no whoops of joy at his return.
    In the next few days I went to great lengths to find out what was going on – about my uncle Frank’s debts, his way of life, above all about his proposed marriage. This was not easy: Miss Roxby kept better surveillance over me than my earlier governesses, and the family did not have the aristocratic insouciance that would have allowed them to have family rows in front of the servants (of whom Miss Roxby was certainly one). This meant that my play times were spent in tracking down members of the family who might be consulting together about the Frank problem. Alas, in the daytime they never were, or if they were, it was in totally inaccessible orunguessable parts of the house, which had many such. When I saw Uncle Frank with the family his manner was always nonchalant, uncowed. In fact, he almost seemed to be tormenting them.
    ‘What is a gay bachelor to do on a dull November day in the country?’ he would say to his mother. ‘I must teach one of the footmen to play billiards.’
    His mother compressed her lips, sensible enough not to point out that if he did what the family wanted him to, he wouldn’t be a bachelor at all.
    ‘What you should do with me, you know, is lock me up in a small, obscure room in this rotten pile,’ I heard him say to my father, ‘and have the servants bring me some basic meals three times a day, and then you’d be rid of all the worry and expense of me. You could give it out I’d lost my reason. The mad brother in the attic – I have rather a fancy for the role. And the whole county would believe it. They would believe any rumour about me, provided it was bad enough. Maybe after a while I could get out, roam the house by the light of a candle and burn it down. Take more than a candle to do that, though, I would imagine.’
    There was no reply to this from my father.I think he was in two minds about the family’s determination to get Uncle Frank married. Quite apart from the prospect of my inheriting Blakemere, there was the possibility of Mama dying and of his marrying again and fathering a son (though on reflection I don’t think Papa was particularly philoprogenitive).
    But the most memorable example of Frank’s teasing his family occurred one morning when Miss Roxby and I were proceeding downstairs (a major operation in itself) to go out for our walk, needing some fresh air between Arithmetic and French. We looked down, hearing voices, and we saw Frank encountering his father in the entrance hall. My uncle was smartly and rather formally dressed, the carriage drawn up outside the door.
    ‘Must pay my respects to the neighbours now I’m home again,’ he said cheerily. ‘They’ll expect to hear my account of remote parts.’
    ‘Splendid, splendid,’ said Grandpapa.
    ‘I’ve always been on excellent terms with the … Blacketts,’ said Uncle Frank over his shoulder as he made his exit to the waiting carriage.
    Grandpapa’s face fell. He knew he was being played with, but he’d hoped that his son wasvisiting the Coverdales. But I knew, and I knew because Miss Roxby knew, and Miss Roxby knew because her best friend was governess at the Blacketts, that Mary Coverdale’s best friend was Violet Blackett, and if she was to be found anywhere during the day away from her own home, it would be Matton Hall, the Blacketts’ country seat.
    As the carriage drove away, as jaunty in its motion as Uncle Frank’s own walk, I felt a tear come into my eye at the