The Hunt for Sonya Dufrette Read Online Free PDF Page B

’infect‘) his daughter with some of his pet theories. It wasn’t a subject Lady Mortlock was ever willing to discuss, though Antonia had seen books on eugenics and euthanasia on her study bookshelves, even one favourable account of the Final Solution. Lady Mortlock had also been extremely interested in the welfare of the several girls who came to clean the house and had tried to help them in various ways, but had not met with any great success. Antonia had observed the girls put their heads together, whisper and giggle. Not a very happy woman, Antonia had decided.
    Sir Michael had retired from his top MI5 job only the year before, but was already showing signs of mental and physical decline; the once keen intelligence was no longer in evidence and he had turned into an amiable old buffer who pottered about his house and garden dressed in shabby country tweeds, cigar in hand, and liked nothing better than to sit reading P.G. Wodehouse or simply dozing in the sun, like an ancient lizard.
    It was Sir Michael who had invited the Dufrettes, a decison which had angered Lady Mortlock so much that, in a rare outburst, she had referred to it as ‘extremely ill-judged, bordering on the feeble-minded’. Lawrence Dufrette had been working in MI5, in what, prior to his retirement, had been Sir Michael’s department.
    Antonia had never met the Dufrettes before, but they already held a fascination for her. (The allure of the freak show?) Lady Mortlock had warned her to expect the worst. Lawrence she had described as ‘cranky and cantankerous’ while she had been positively horrified at the prospect of having Lena stay at Twiston. A previous visit had been termed a ’disaster‘. Apparently Lena had smoked between courses and had nearly started a fire by dropping her cigarette amongst the sofa cushions and leaving it there. She was fat and slovenly, far from bright, indiscreet. The derogatory epithets had rolled off Lady Mortlock’s tongue. Lena and Lawrence had little regard for anyone and invariably conducted their rows in the most public manner imaginable. The LL double act, somebody had called it.
    Lawrence Dufrette had already carved a reputation for himself as a maverick and something of a loose cannon - by all accounts a picaresque and eccentric figure on the fringes of the Old Establishment. From Burke’s Landed Gentry Antonia had discovered that Dufrette was born in 1930, the elder son of Jasper Dufrette, a landowner and high court judge in Malaya, and Millicent Herbert. He had been educated at Harrow and Trinity College, Cambridge, where he read history. He served as a lieutenant in the Intelligence Corps in 1951 and was stationed for a while in post-war Berlin. His extensive knowledge of heraldry had led to his appointment as Bluemantle Pursuivant of Arms and, consequently, he played an important role in many great state occasions. At the Coronation in 1953 he had been standing near the Throne - ‘closer than all but the great officers of state’, as Harold Nicolson had put it in his diary.
    Another diarist, society photographer Cecil Beaton, had described young Lawrence Dufrette’s appearance in some detail. ‘With his light blue eyes, sand-coloured hair, quartered tunic of scarlet, blue and gold and sombre stockings, holding the two Sceptres in his pale ivory hands, he was the perfect work of art. He has a long, pale, lovelorn face. He seems to be burnt with some romantic passion.’ Dufrette had been the Earl Marshal’s press secretary throughout Coronation year.
    He had been given a job at the College of Arms and might even have become Chester Herald, but, in Lady Mortlock’s words, ‘Lawrence’s absurdly haughty and cavalier attitude to his colleagues and irresponsibility over money led to his enforced resignation. He thought he was better than all of them put together. Primus inter pares. That kind of rot ... He hasn’t improved with age. You should hear how he talks about his colleagues in MI5. Men of