Enter Pale Death(51)
“Purdeys, eh?” Joe waggled his eyebrows.
“His own guns. Made to measure. He had long arms like me. They were the old man’s gift when he died.”
A valuable legacy but could it ever have been appreciated by the man’s oldest-born son, who had to stand by and watch the estate moving over to his younger, legitimate brother? Hunnyton showed no sign of teeth-gnashing resentment.
“Well, thank you for the offer!” Joe grinned. “Sharing a redoubt with killers—it’s what I’m used to. I know how to watch my back as well as my front.”
Fair warning, he thought.
CHAPTER 12
The Lagonda stopped at the bottom of the lime avenue at the point where some ancient landscape artist had calculated the visitor was best placed to be impressed by what, as Hunnyton had hinted, was one of the loveliest houses in England. Or anywhere.
The eye was led by the geometry of the row of sentinel trees straight over an expanse of deer-cropped grass, rising upwards to the bridge over a hidden moat and beyond, the grand façade. Hunnyton turned off the engine and they looked in silence.
“Towers and battlements it sees
Bosomed high in tufted trees,
Where perhaps some beauty lies,
The cynosure of neighbouring eyes.”
Hunnyton’s voice was quiet, as though speaking to himself.
“Milton had something entirely more medieval in mind, I think,” Joe said. “It’s bosomed high all right, and those tufted trees framing it look very like thousand-year-old oaks to me, but the house itself isn’t very battlemented. No towers or crenellations … no martial intent whatsoever, I’d say. Jacobean? You’d expect it. No one feared being attacked by the neighbours any longer by that time. The Count of the Saxon Shore had long ago sheathed his sword or beaten it into a ploughshare. The nearest you get to martial is those pinnacles either side of the gatehouse, and they remind me very strongly of the ones we passed this morning on King’s College Chapel.”
Hunnyton nodded in agreement. “It gets even more collegiate inside. It’s built in a square shape with an interior quadrangle complete with storey-high oriel window leading to the great hall.”
“A house for a scholar rather than a soldier, would you say?”
“It’s had its share of both,” murmured Hunnyton. “But the shape lends itself to comfortable living. There’s a very generous kitchen block to the northeast of the hall so the food doesn’t take forever to reach the table. There are company rooms on three sides on the ground floor, with different aspects. On the east there’s what they call a ‘summer parlour’ and on the sunnier south side another one called the ‘winter parlour.’ Oh, by the way, Sandilands, they don’t have anything so common as a ‘breakfast room.’ When you come yumming down for your devilled kidneys in the morning, you’ll find they’re being served in the east-facing summer parlour …”
“Don’t worry,” Joe interrupted. “I’ll just do what I usually do and follow my nose.”
Joe wondered again what thoughts were going on behind those deceptive eyes. Here was the firstborn (according to his own evidence) of the old lord’s sons. Disqualified from ever taking possession of the pile before him by the lowliness of his mother’s birth. Yet, by his situation, tied to the place. A tie at first of necessity but now of love, Joe judged from a fleeting expression on the man’s face. An emotion which was quickly corrected by the irony in his speech. Joe, a second son, although from much more modest circumstances, could begin to understand the envy, the anger, that the younger in line could feel. His own chagrin at the inevitable loss of his family home had been tempered by his complete lack of interest in farming and his older brother’s instinctive ability for it. But what if it had been the other way around?
“I’ll walk the rest of the way from here. Get acclimatised. I’ll just take my notebook and a pencil.”
“Good thought. Better not to arrive together, mob-handed like,” Hunnyton commented. “Some of the guests may be there already. They wouldn’t want to think a posse of lawmen was forming up to put a damper on their high jinks. I’ll leave you then. You can find your way through the stable block over there.” He waved to the right. “You won’t have time to stop for a chin-wag though or you’ll be late for lunch. The old girl is very punctual. You’ve got twenty minutes before she shakes out her napkin. I’ll drop your luggage off with the butler and then, Commissioner, you’re on your own.”
As he started up the engine again he called over his shoulder to Joe: “Watch out for the green man! If you catch him, do everyone a favour and drown him in the moat.”