Joe gave a polite smile. ‘Shame he wasn’t there!’ he said.
‘Ah, here comes Yallop,’ said Dorcas with relief, ‘to summon me to my riding lesson. So good to see you again, Mr Briggs, and I’ll be sure to pass on your message.’
Barney remounted his horse with nods all round and went lolloping back up the drive at a fast clip.
Judging by the glower cast at the retreating back from under Yallop’s formidable black eyebrows, Barney was not universally popular in this household. In amusement Joe’s eyes flitted from Yallop to Dorcas and back again as they stood side by side in profile, chins raised, faces set in disapproval, guard dogs on duty.
He hoped his gasp had not been audible. Physically shaken by the suddenness of his perception, he actually put out a hand and steadied himself against one of the door pillars. He struggled to suppress the mad thought.
When the unwelcome visitor had vanished between the gate piers, Yallop turned to Joe. Whatever he had been intending to say was left unsaid, swept away by the fresh awareness that Joe had not yet succeeded in wiping from his features.
For a moment the two men held each other’s gaze, Joe questioning, Yallop calculating, then Yallop smiled slowly, nodded, and dropped a grandfatherly arm around Dorcas’s shoulders.
Swallowing down his emotion, and knowing that there were no words he could ever use to express it, all Joe could do was take the groom’s other hand and give it a manly squeeze.
Chapter Twenty-Three
‘Joe, for a man whose unsavoury job takes him from the swamps of Seven Dials to the cocktail bar at the Savoy, you can be unbelievably naïf!’ Lydia said on hearing his disjointed account of his day. ‘Now we see from where Beatrice got her louche ways!’
‘Lydia! Alicia Joliffe is a sixty-year-old widow who looks as though she’s been expensively moulded in glass by René Lalique!’
‘Doesn’t mean she was always a saint. It wouldn’t be the first, it wouldn’t be the thousandth time it’s happened! And the twentieth century doesn’t have a patent on passion, you know. And you say this Yallop is a good-looking fellow?’
‘Oh, yes. Undoubtedly. He must have been amazingly well set up when he was young,’ said Joe. ‘But he doesn’t strike me as being the type who would . . .’
‘All men are the type who would . . .!’ said Lydia crisply. ‘Particularly if they were young and impressionable and seduced, lured, commanded . . . who knows? . . . by an attractive employer.’
‘She’s certainly the kind of woman who would expect to get whatever or whomever she wanted.’
‘But she found herself paying the bill for her indulgence? A slip-up she regretted? Danger of discovery always there to torment her? It might account for Mrs Joliffe’s questionable attitude to her son? But can you have got this right, Joe? I mean, didn’t you say that Orlando was bequeathed the house by his father Joliffe? Old Augustus can’t have suspected anything. What does Orlando look like?’
‘More like his mother than anything. But shortish and wiry. He doesn’t look in the least like Yallop. Not at all. No, I must have been mistaken. And I made a fool of myself, gawping and shaking the chap’s hand in an emotional way. He’ll think I’m a very unsuitable uncle for Dorcas. Probably getting the horsewhip ready as we speak!’
‘Oh, I don’t know . . . these things can skip a generation. Think of Great Uncle Jack’s nose!’ Lydia smiled and Joe rubbed his own nose thoughtfully. ‘Do you think Dorcas is aware?’
‘No. I’m sure she isn’t. She’s deeply fond of the old chap, you can tell. There’s a bond there but I don’t think she realizes what that bond may be. She puts her dark looks – as do they all – down to her fleet-footed gypsy mother.’
‘It’s all coming down to inheritance, after all, don’t you think? “Who benefits?” you always say is the most important question in a murder case. Well, it seems to me you can say – Orlando benefits. The old girl was bending the rules to leave everything to Beatrice who, in her eyes, was the rightful heir. On two counts: she was the oldest and she was legitimate. It wouldn’t matter a jot to a feminist, which I understand she is, that Beatrice was female. Many of us cannot accept the laws governing male inheritance over female.’
‘Perhaps she told Orlando. Perhaps she threatened to expose his dubious parentage if he didn’t agree to the house being turned over to Beatrice? How would one ever find out? No one’s going to tell me, even if I were allowed to ask.’
‘Well! I never dreamed we had such lively neighbours! I shall be sure to pay a call. It does sound as though that unfortunate Mel could do with a bit of support . . . I’ll let you know how I get on, shall I?’