The Murder of Busy Lizzie

say!’

‘It was what you had to say which intrigued me, darling. How do you mean—cheap and nasty? Nasty it may be, and probably is, but…’ Sebastian squinted at the list of tariffs which was printed on the end page of the brochure… ‘I wouldn’t call it cheap. Maggie and I could hitch-hike all over Europe for about a tenth of what’s put down here.’

‘Well, you are not going to,’ snapped Marius. ‘You are coming to the island of Great Skua.’

‘But why? I mean, why are you so keen we should stay with this aunt? With her reputation she can hardly be a fit hostess for my little sister.’

‘If you will abandon this flippant and tasteless line of talk and stop showing off in front of your mother, I will endeavour to explain,’ said Marius. ‘I referred a minute ago to the fact that your aunt is the owner of what must be a valuable and desirable property—’

‘No hawkers, no circulars, no touts,’ muttered Sebastian in his sister’s ear.

‘And this property must inevitably fall to another owner some day.’

‘Yes, to the fly-by-night,’ said Clothilde.

‘The illegitimate son has been adopted’, went on Marius, disregarding her, ‘and can have no claim on the estate. I regard it as my bounden duty, therefore, to allow nothing to stand in the way of a reconciliation with your aunt.’

‘Great expectations!’ muttered Sebastian. ‘Very well, Father,’ he said aloud, ‘I love to think that birds in their little nests agree. By all means let us suck up to Aunt Eliza if you think the pickings will be worth it. All those in favour?’

‘When did she have the baby?’ asked Margaret. ‘Was it a long time ago?’

‘Yes, my dear,’ replied Marius, ignoring his son. ‘It was quite a romantic story, I believe. It happened nearly thirty years ago.’

‘Long enough ago to be respectable, and therefore long enough ago to be uninteresting,’ said Sebastian. ‘That means the little intruder will be a man of early middle age by now.’

‘I am a man of early middle age,’ said Marius, who was forty-four. ‘Ransome would be something under thirty. In any case, whatever his age, he can be disregarded as a possible heir to his natural mother’s estate.’

‘I wish I were as sure of that as you seem to be,’ said Clothilde.

‘But what actually happened?’ asked Margaret. ‘I mean, how did she meet the father and why didn’t your family make him marry her, and all that sort of thing? I thought that, in their station of life, pressure was always brought to bear.’

‘In this case that was impossible,’ said Marius stiffly. ‘I regret to say that the father of the child was already married.’

‘Well, couldn’t they find some other poor daffy-down-dilly to take the rap?’

‘Now really, Margaret!’ protested Marius.

‘See what dreadful ideas this sordid story has already put into my small sister’s hitherto innocent head,’ said Sebastian. ‘So they had the baby adopted, did they?’ he went on hastily, catching his father’s eye. ‘So that puts him out of the line of direct succession, does it?’

‘If he was legally adopted, and if Eliza does not remember him in her will,’ said Clothilde.

‘Well, as I said before, I’m willing to take a chance,’ said Sebastian. ‘ “The Assyrian came down like a wolf on the fold”—although it seems as though Ransome’s father was the wolf, doesn’t it?’

‘Yes, and you and your father are only the silly sheep who are going bleating to Great Skua to see what you can get, and that will be exactly nothing,’ said Clothilde contemptuously. She turned her back on them, picked up a book and began to turn over the pages.

‘I wouldn’t mind spending a month at Aunt Eliza’s hotel,’ said Margaret, ‘especially as it’s on an island. It would make a change, if nothing else.’

‘Well, my dear,’ said Marius to his wife’s back, ‘it appears to be a majority decision, doesn’t it? I will answer Eliza’s letter as soon as we have dined and tell her that we accept with pleasure and are delighted with her suggestion that we should spend a holiday month with her at her hotel on Great Skua.’

‘You three must please yourselves,’ said Clothilde, ‘or, rather, you must please yourself, Marius, and leave the children to please you. However, I consider that I am entitled to my own point of view on the matter of Eliza and her desert island.’

‘Surely, surely, my dear,’ agreed Marius soothingly. “This family is not a dictatorship. I should never dream of attempting to persuade you to alter your opinions just to please me.’

‘That is just as well, for I have not the smallest intention of altering them. I neither like nor approve of Eliza, nor can I imagine anything more boring than spending a month on her sea-girt little piece of rock and mud.’

‘We shall all be there together, my love, and, as intelligent people, we can surely manage to entertain ourselves without ennui for a matter of four short weeks. Besides, if we pride ourselves on a democratic approach to family matters, it seems to me that you have been out-voted and must perforce fall in with the wishes of the majority.’

‘I do not feel myself bound in any such way, Marius,’ said Clothilde, slamming her book down and turning to face him. ‘I shall not go with you to Great Skua. The best I can do is to promise you a warm welcome and a substantial meal when you return from this unnecessary and ill-advised expedition. The good meal you will certainly need, I imagine, even if the welcome is supererogatory.’

‘What have you got against Aunt Eliza, Boobie?’ asked Sebastian, putting his long thin arm round her shoulders. ‘Tell your devoted and most inquisitive son. Is there some ghoulish secret hidden in your heart concerning her? You can’t dislike a woman simply because she has begotten a child without benefit of clergy, can you?—or can you?’

‘You none of you know what I can do,’ said Clothilde. ‘I hope you will all enjoy your stay on Great Skua. That is all I can say.’

‘Oh, now, really, my dear!’ protested Marius.

‘No,’ said his wife. ‘You go and toady to Eliza if you think fit, but I have not the smallest intention of going with you.’

chapter two

Theory and Speculation

‘No tales of them their thirst can slake,

So much delight therein they take,

And some strange thing they fain would make,

Knew they the way to do them.’

Michael Drayton

« ^ »

So what was all that about?’ asked Sebastian, when he and his sister were alone. ‘Why is poor Boobie all stewed up? What’s the idea of her outfacing The Tutor and repudiating Aunt Eliza’s little island?’

‘Do you think she means it?’

‘About not going? Yes, I’m sure she does. No wonder The Tutor looked so flummoxed. I should think it’s the first time she’s ever flouted him.’

‘Well, you can’t really blame her, I suppose. She has pretty good reasons.’

‘Because Aunt Eliza had a little fly-by-night all those years ago?’

‘No—well, not only that.’

‘What do you know, then, that I don’t?’