“That’s the other thing,” said Charlotte, a little grimly. “There are other things on display all the time in the back rooms of the place. She talked an awful lot about some jewellery that she claims has a link to her own family.”
“I suppose she must want it back. She mentioned it before, didn’t she? I didn’t think she lacked for an inheritance. Didn’t her husband leave her a great deal of money?”
“These are from her own family and she feels they belong to her,” Charlotte said.
“How will she get it all back? If it is truly hers, she could ask for it and provide proof.”
“Oh. The proof must be lost. Maybe she had hoped Mr Nettles would obtain it for her...”
“Maybe,” said Adelia. Or maybe, she thought, he’d refused. One more black mark against him and one more reason for Octavia to strike.
There was no more opportunity for speculation. They entered the church.
Disgracefully, Adelia found it very hard to concentrate on higher thoughts.
Her mind was dominated almost completely by Octavia Dymchurch.
And whether they ought to just forget it all completely.
Eighteen
For Theodore, Christmas Day was a whirl of eating, drinking, visiting and being visited. He was climbed upon by small children in their best dresses, and mauled by dogs who were given free run and who invariably got up on tables and into baskets and generally caused chaos. He endured polite conversation with distant family members and laughed merrily with close friends, and managed to put everything of any importance out of his head.
Sometimes there were pauses. Strange little quiet moments when he found himself temporarily alone yet deep within the noisy whirl of activity like he was a silent centre as a cheerful storm raged about him. Those moments were a painfully delightful mix of every emotion he’d ever experienced, all pressed together, and the overriding feeling was his awareness that he was old now.
Yes. His children were grown up and starting families of their own. Generation after generation spun around him in new clothes, unfamiliar fashions, speaking strange new words, excited for a future that he would never see. A new century was dawning. He had expected that he’d see it, at least the first few years, but new twinges and tweaks, new aches and a new shortness of breath reminded him that it was an assumption he could no longer make with absolute certainty. He had no certainty – he had only hope.
Yet this was not a sadness. It caused no anger or despair in him. He could see the fruits of a long life well lived all around him and it seemed very right, very fitting, that eventually his place would be taken by others. He had been to many lands and met many people and though there was always – always! – a hunger for more, there was also, sometimes, just a creeping weariness. A desire to sleep just a little longer. A need to sit in the sun and do nothing. He was satisfied. He was complete. He was aware that he had drunk more brandy and eaten more sweet things than he ought to have done that particular day, and those things were certainly influencing his mood. Even that knowledge made him smile, and he reflected on Charlotte’s philosophy of life: Memento Mori, she would say. Remember you are going to die. Eat, drink and be merry now.
But one more glass of sherry tipped him over from replete satisfaction to a maudlin regret.
For there was one person who was not here, who ought to have been here.
It was time, he decided, as he drained the glass, to seek out a reconciliation with Bamfylde. His son and heir had been abandoned and cast out for too long. If not now, he thought – when? I shall seize the moment. In the new year, that shall be my project and my only project.
As for the murder of Digby Nettles, he no longer cared. Yes, yes, he muttered to himself as miraculously he found his glass had been topped up by someone passing. Yes, let that woman come to Charlotte’s dinner and let Adelia do her thing and get some answers.
But that is where we will leave it.
A new year dawns. Let us move on.
THE DAY AFTER CHRISTMAS Day was a far more sober affair which started late and took a while to really get going. It was St Stephen’s Day, of course, or Boxing Day in more vulgar parlance. The household was half-empty. Servants had gone to visit their families or were sleeping off the effects of their own parties in the servants’ halls of their own employers or those of their friends. A certain amount of licence was afforded to all parts of society, even in the town; the countryside still stuck to even older rites and rituals, with the Lord of Misrule taking charge for the Twelve Days.
London liked to paint itself as a little more sophisticated, which to Theodore’s mind meant that one was supposed to purchase decorations rather than make them. Nettles had some revolutionary ideas, Theodore reflected, but there was something to be said about the way that allowing the unfettered growth of business didn’t always work out the way it was supposed to. Not everyone benefited. Get everyone tied up in money and there were always going to be losers at the bottom.
It made crime more interesting, of
