Enter Pale Death(26)

Joe caught the bitterness in the tone and wondered whether Hunnyton was showing his hand at last.

“At least six—three married couples—could be judged to have political interests, the men being MPs of differing persuasions, in fact,” Joe recalled. “That’s one thing that impresses me about James Truelove—he’s open-minded, with friends and influence with all parties. That’s not easy to achieve. Then there was the inevitable newspaper magnate and his wife. And Sir James and Lady Truelove …” Joe hesitated.

“Leaving the last two—whom I won’t describe as a couple. They were put to sit next to each other I understand from the butler—Miss Dorcas Joliffe, Sir James’s protégée and student researcher, and, by her side, his young brother, Alexander.”

“How young?”

“Not that young. Mid-twenties. Alex was an afterthought and no one was more surprised than his mother when he made his appearance on the family tree after James and two daughters. Still, a spare is always a useful addition to the heir.”

“I blush to air such an obvious matter but I suppose I should ask: What are his chances of succeeding his brother to the baronetcy?”

“He’ll have to outlive him and count on James’s not producing a legitimate son. So—the chances are not good when the incumbent’s youthful and vigorous as James is. Still, James had been married to Lavinia for some years and produced no children …”

Once again, Joe felt himself prodded into drawing a conclusion: “The smart thing, if Alex had some scheme in mind to inherit, would have been to encourage an infertile situation to run its course.”

“Right. With Lavinia dead, Sir James is on the loose again and could well remarry. Time enough to produce an heir to dislodge Master Alex.”

“What is Alexander currently up to?”

“He’s living at the Hall at the moment, taking a year off after his banking job in the City before he goes out to Africa or some other spot unprepared as yet for his attentions.”

“He gave up a banking career?”

“Ah. Good question. He’ll tell you himself—he got out minutes before he was booted out. Brags about it. Gift of the gab, like all the Trueloves.”

“Seating him alongside Dorcas—was that an attempt at matchmaking by any chance?” Joe managed to keep his voice steady.

Hunnyton fought back a guffaw. “No chance! You’d hesitate to match anyone you liked or respected with Alex,” Hunnyton said gloomily. “They probably let him down to dinner to make up the numbers and the two misfits found themselves next to each other. No—Dorcas Joliffe was there at the specific, though last-minute, invitation of her ladyship.”

“Eh? What? Lavinia Truelove?” Joe was astonished. “The silliest woman in the Shires? She didn’t even know Dorcas. And Dorcas wouldn’t have bothered to exchange more than a dozen words with her. Asking for trouble to put them at the same table.” He bit his lip.

“Well, it’s a blessing that it’s a wide table and they weren’t in hair-tugging reach, the butler says. A right ding-dong going on. Sir James was embarrassed, her ladyship was ‘a trifle over-excited,’ in butler terms. In other words even worse than her usual overbearing self. But that’s just my interpretation of what was said. You can’t fault the servants. They know how to keep quiet. They only opened up as far as they did because it was me asking.”

“Did you manage to find out what they were quarrelling about?”

Hunnyton drained his glass and looked back uneasily to the bright lights of the hotel behind him as though wishing to evade the question. “Well, of course … social occasion and all that … there was no way even Lavinia was going to shrill, ‘Keep your thieving little hands off my husband.’ If that was the compulsion behind the rivalry. What they were ostensibly arguing about was horses,” he finished and looked down at his feet.

“Horses? What horses?”

“Any old nags. Lady Truelove may have been a ninny but what she was good at—the only thing she was good at—was riding. She was raised in a midlands hunting county so you’d expect it. Hunting, point-to-pointing … she could go faster, jump higher, stay on longer than any man, they say. I think your lady-friend saw straight through to what I’ve always suspected—that Lavinia had absolutely no feelings for the horseflesh itself. She’d arrive in the stables booted and spurred, climb aboard and ride. Ask her the name of the horse whose mouth she was wrecking and she wouldn’t have a clue. Never tended them, never even took them a carrot. She wasn’t tuned in to them in any way. Really she’d have been happier at the wheel of a sports car if she’d ever been bothered to learn to drive.”