“Julian?”
“No, no. Tony. Julian’s father. About fifteen, Tony was, when I first went out to Bugolaland. It was a couple of years later that the tragedy happened. Mrs. Manning-Richards came down with a fever. Dead in a matter of days. Aunt Dora had come out by then to keep house for me, and naturally she did what she could for poor Humphrey and the boy. In fact, between ourselves, it seemed only a question of leaving a decent interval after the wife’s death, before… Very suitable, in every way. Both of them in their late forties, a motherless boy to care for, and I was by that time engaged to my future wife, and to tell the truth I was a little worried about Aunt Dora’s future. But,” Edwin sighed, “it was not to be.”
There was a pause and Henry said tentatively, “Another tragedy?”
“If you like to call it so,” said the Bishop. “Humphrey Manning-Richards went on home leave. I personally am convinced that he would have proposed to Dora the day before his boat sailed, had it not been for the fact that the rains broke early that year and put an end to the farewell picnic which I had organized for him. At any rate, be that as it may, Manning-Richards sailed for home without — er — speaking to Dora. And the next thing we heard was that he had married a young person from the chorus of a musical comedy, which was currently playing in London. A foreigner, into the bargain. Serbo-Croat or Yugo-Slav” — the Bishop pronounced it Juggo — “or one of those Balkan countries which were changing their names so rapidly at that time. Magda, her name was.”
Edwin paused again, and then snorted. “Magda Manning-Richards. He brought her back to Bugolaland with him, but I fear she was not well received. Oh, she was an attractive little thing, I agree, but a good twenty years younger than he; more his son’s age than his, to be truthful. I’ll be frank with you, Mr. Tibbett. Nobody liked Magda Manning-Richards, and few people took any trouble to conceal the fact. We were a small European community in Alimumba at the time, and Aunt Dora was greatly loved. There was a lot of resentment, and the Manning-Richards were more or less ostracized socially. That meant a lot in those days.
“Well, to cut a long story short, Humphrey soon cottoned on to what was up, and he did the only sensible thing. He applied for a posting, and was transferred to East Bugolaland some hundreds of miles away — he and his wife and the little boy, Tony. Not so little by then either.
“We quite lost touch with the whole family. The next thing I heard was about ten years later — that Humphrey had died of a heart attack. Then Violet wrote and told me that she’d seen the announcement of Tony’s marriage in The Times. He’d stayed on in Bugolaland and was farming there. Married a local girl, a clergyman’s daughter, I believe. I thought no more about them until I read one day that Tony and his wife had both been killed in a car smash somewhere up in the eastern hills. He’d stayed in the east, very sensibly. Much better climate — almost cold in the winter. Well, it was very sad, of course, but I hadn’t seen Tony since he was a schoolboy and I’d never met his wife. So that seemed to be that.
“You can imagine how surprised I was when Violet told me that Maud had met this young man called Manning-Richards at the Sorbonne in Paris. ‘Bless my soul,’ I remember saying, ‘I wonder if he’s related to the family we knew in Bugolaland?’ He was, of course, Tony’s son. He’d been orphaned by that car smash when he was only six, and brought up in Bugolaland by his step-grandmother until she died recently. He’d come over to Europe to finish his studies in England and Paris. And met Maud, by a strange chance.” Edwin puffed at his pipe. “I can’t think of anything else. Is that what you wanted to know?”
Henry smiled. “Yes and no,” he said. “It’s all very straightforward. I had an idea that perhaps — but obviously I was wrong.”
“Wrong — wrong — and mature, at that,” remarked the Bishop, knocking his pipe on a large pewter ash tray.
Henry thought quickly. Then he said, “Five letters?”
“Of course.”
“Grown. Mature. Anagram of wrong.”
The Bishop beamed. “I misjudged you, Tibbett,” he said generously. “Well, I won’t take up any more of your time. I expect you’d like to see Julian. He’s been asking for you.”
***
Maud and Julian came into the study together, hand in hand, like children.
“Well now,” said Henry, “what can I do for you?”
“Julian didn’t want me to come with him,” said Maud, “but I was determined…”
“She thought that if we both came, you might take it more seriously, you see, sir,” said Julian. “I mean, I know it sounds a bit thin…”
“Now, now, one at a time,” said Henry. “Why don’t you sit down for a start?”
Reluctantly, Julian released Maud’s hand and ushered her into a chair, as gently as if she had been made of egg shell. Then he sat down himself, and said, “It’s about Frank Mason.”
“I thought it might be,” said Henry.
“You mean — you know?”
“I’ve met young Mr. Mason,” said Henry.
“I — I knew him slightly at London University.”
“I gathered that much from him,” said Henry. “I also gathered that you and he didn’t exactly hit it off.”
“That’s putting it mildly,” said Julian. “He was a thoroughly unpleasant type of man. Too many of them around these days, if you ask me. It’s not socialism per se that I object to, it’s the lack of mental discipline which contents itself with woolly theories of pie in the sky and never bothers to work out the cost.”
I suppose, Henry thought, that he can’t help sounding pompous. He’s young, after all. Aloud, he said, “I don’t quite see what all this has to do with…”
“I’ll explain,” said Julian. “For a start, one of the things I objected to most strongly in Mason was his attitude to his father. Taking as much money as he could from him with one hand and kicking him with the other. Sorry about the mixed metaphor, but you see what I mean. As soon as Mason had had a couple of drinks, he began to tear down his old man and all he stood for in a disgustingly hypocritical way.” Julian almost choked at the memory, as though his vocal cords had become tied in knots.
“One day I couldn’t stand it any longer, and I put it to him, fair and square, how he had the nerve to live on the profits from his father’s business while professing the political and social ideas that he did. And I’ll tell you what he said. He said that the only possible justification for a man like his father was that his ill-gotten gains should pass eventually into the hands of somebody who would use them to promote world revolution. ‘Like you, I suppose?’ I said, and he said, ‘Precisely.’ ‘Which means,’ I said, ‘that you are looking forward eagerly to your father’s death, does it?’ And, believe it or not, he actually said, ‘But of course, old man. I’d bump him off tomorrow if I thought I could get away with it.’ ”
“How very interesting,” said Henry.
“I know it’s true,” Maud burst out, “because Julian wrote and told me, and I’ve still got the letter, only it’s not here, it’s at Bradwood; and so you see that proves…”
“Oh, I believe you,” said Henry. He smiled. “I can almost hear young Mr. Mason saying it. So you think he murdered his father.”