Dance to Your Daddy

'A parson murdered? Rather unusual, what? What did he do? Rush in where angels fear to tread, and get himself clobbered?'

'I have no idea what he did. I have a feeling, however, that he was killed because of something he knew.'

'That sounds as though he'd uncovered the family skeleton. Have we one?'

'I hoped you would be able and willing to tell me that. What do you know of Felix Napoleon?'

'Oh, that old rip! I got him off on a charge of fraud once, but haven't seen or heard of him for ages.'

'When was this?'

'Oh, donkey's years ago, of course. It was before I was called to the Bar, as a matter of fact. I was up at Cambridge. How the old boy had found out I was reading law I've never discovered, or even how he knew where I was, but he wrote to me and asked me to suggest a line of defence, as he trusted neither his solicitor nor the chap who was to be briefed on his behalf. He told me his side of the story, I saw a loophole, pointed it out and the result was that the case never came up for trial. The beaks threw it out, and quite right, too, on the evidence, although, personally, I wouldn't be surprised if the old reprobate was guilty.'

'How did Selina come to hear of all this?'

'The man who was to be briefed was old John Marshall-Provost, Sally's father-in-law.'

'It seems to be a family affair all round.'

'Yes, all sorts of daddies involved. Where do you come in, though?'

Dame Beatrice gave him an account of Romilly's letter and of what had happened, and outlined the course she had followed since she had received the letter.

'I'm afraid for the girl,' she said in conclusion. 'When I heard that she was the heiress and was made cognisant of the conditions which were attached to the inheritance, and when I realised that Romilly (who, by his virtual incarceration of her, must be a resolute and unscrupulous man) was the next in line according to Felix Napoleon's Will, I removed the child from Galliard Hall and have despatched her, with Laura's help, to a place of safety. When I learned of Hubert's death...'

'If I may butt in at this point, mother, I think you should keep an eye lifting on your own account, you know. Some people can't be all that pleased with your machinations, and yet-'

'I shall take precautions, particularly as I am returning tomorrow to Galliard Hall. All the same, so far as anybody is aware, I am simply keeping the girl under treatment.'

'Well, beware of how you enter the cockatrice's den, that's all. A man with his eye on a fortune is not going to be too nice about the methods he uses to get his hooks on it, you know, especially if he's old Felix Napoleon's natural son. For one thing, he may well feel that, as the first-born, and of an earlier generation than the girl, he has the prior claim, and, for another, he may now take after his father, who struck me as a plausible and blackhearted scoundrel, if ever there was one.'

'Yet you did him a very great favour.'

'Oh, no, it certainly wasn't meant as a favour. It was just a very young man's conceit. I spotted the flaw and nothing pleased me better than to point it out to him and his solicitor. It was just one of those odd things which come along when one's looking up something quite different. I was in love with my own cleverness in those days and, after all, the old villain was a Lestrange.'

'Exactly what I feel about Rosamund, La famille oblige. Selina had some story that he had murdered his mistress.'

'One of his mistresses, she meant. He was notorious for his harem, I believe. I never heard that he murdered anybody, though. I think Aunt Selina must have got the wires crossed. She probably heard of this fraud thing I mentioned, and stepped up the details.'

'Did you ever hear of an illegitimate son?'

'He had two, but I don't know whether they had the same mother.'

'Would you know their names?'

'Yes, of course.'

'Why 'of course'?'

'Well, because I knew them both at Cambridge. Romilly was my year and happened to be on my staircase, and Caesar came up when Romilly had gone down and I was at the beginning of my fourth year. I didn't have a lot to do with them, but when I found their name was Lestrange I felt I had to be civil. It was Romilly who put his father's case before me, as a matter of fact, and asked me what I thought, as he knew my intended profession.'

'So Romilly would be about your age?'

'Just about, I suppose. Small, dark chap and wore very powerful glasses. Blind as a bat without them, he once told me, and, on another occasion, I had evidence of it.'

'Did you know anything of his life after he left the University?'

'Yes, he wrote to me twice while I was still up, once to send me five pounds he'd borrowed the previous term, and once to tell me that he was emigrating to Kenya, as his father had bought him a half-share in a coffee plantation. I never heard from him again.'

'What about the younger brother, Caesar?'

'He got himself rusticated in his second year. Started an undergraduate paper and printed some fairly actionable items about some of the dons. Was chewed up by the Dean, but persisted in his naughty ways, so Cambridge's loss became somewhere else's gain. I believe he got into Fleet Street later on, but I didn't really know him. Different faculties, and three years' difference in our ages, you see.'

'Do you remember what he was like to look at?'