Dance to Your Daddy

(4)

'So, according to his light-of-love, Tancred runs away from anything unpleasant,' said Laura. 'By the way, Celestine tells me we had a visitor. Pity there was nobody at home. You were off on a toot with the detective-inspector and I, in accordance with your instructions, had whisked Rosamund off to Bournemouth to get her fitted out with clothes.'

'Who was the visitor?'

'He didn't leave his name or a card.'

'Romilly, I venture to suppose. Did Celestine describe him?'

'A tall, smooth-faced, dark-eyed, grey-haired gentleman of late middle-age, wearing a very good grey overcoat and a black hat. He asked to be allowed to come in and wait, but she explained that we were both out for the day and she had no idea when to expect us. He then asked to see Rosamund, whom he called "the young Mrs Lestrange, who is staying here," and was informed that she had gone out with me, but that I had not said where I was going.'

'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.'