“How fascinating. But how might this have involved Charlotte and Robert?” Theodore said. He felt a wave of irritation wash over him so he reached out for another small cake. “There is far more to the story than they have told us. I have half a mind to go after Robert and shake it out of him. Do you not think he is a little hot-headed? And I do not agree with them that this secret they shared is irrelevant.”
“You are right. And I wish to do the same to Charlotte – shake the information out of her. I am deeply disappointed in her but she seemed awfully concerned to keep Robert happy and stop him getting too overwrought. I do not have him pegged as a violent man, and she ought not to bow to him quite so much, don’t you think?”
Theodore frowned. “I noticed no bowing. She was merely being supportive.”
“Hmm. When does support become blind submission? Anyway, as to this secret, I think there are a number of possibilities. Perhaps they have made an introduction – you know, introduced Mr Nettles to a friend of theirs, organised the purchase of a painting, and have had that painting to subsequently prove to be forged. Perhaps they then told the wrong person about it. That could cause social embarrassment.”
“Not to this degree. There has to be more,” Theodore said, still frowning. “The storage of stolen goods – that would make them far more likely to come up against the law. They could have been duped into it. Money laundering – another very, very serious crime. Those sort of things could be accidentally entered into, perhaps, and they wouldn’t notice until they were in too deep.”
“A mistake, a mistake. I wonder what it was,” Adelia mused, repeating it to herself as if it might spark insights. She suddenly snapped back to attention. “No, Theodore. Put that down. You’ve had enough.”
“But it’s Christmas!”
“Yes, a time of solemn reflection and restrained joy upon the birth of our Lord Jesus Christ,” she told him.
“It’s a time of cake.”
“You pagan.”
He was unrepentant. The newspapers were full of moral outrage about the decline of the true meaning of Christmas and he, for one, welcomed the loosening of the rules. That sparked an idea. “Mistakes get made when we are drunk,” he said. “And secrets do get spilled. Think of all those parties and good company and drinking and friends that they are caught up in. You did not know me when I was their age, but rest assured I made some mistakes that in the wrong company would have been quite catastrophic had they got out. Haven’t governments toppled due to a secret being shared by the wrong person in the wrong place?”
Her eyes lit up. “Yes. If we consider the demon drink to be part of this, there is no limit to what foolishness that pair might have got up to. But still, I feel we must get the truth from them.” Her brief smile died and she shook her head sadly. “What an idle pair of jesters they both are. I am ... almost ashamed of them.”
“They are young and directionless, with money to burn,” Theodore said. “I know how that was. I...” But he stopped. He was thinking, then, of his eldest son Bamfylde, who was even now in London, behaving in exactly the same way, as far as he knew.
Adelia could not read his thoughts, or so he hoped. She said, “Well, so what are we to do about all of this?”
“Let us look into it. It will be an interesting little diversion, don’t you think?” he said. “I am a gentleman-detective, after all.” Adelia had said she was bored. This would surely fill any gaps that the parties could not. And it wouldn’t be as potentially risky as investigating a murder. Perhaps it was a good compromise, he thought.
“But we must be careful,” she said. “If we are to expose Mr Nettles, we must keep our own family name out of it. And that is supposing we can succeed. As they themselves said, this Digby Nettles is a man of connections and influence and considerable intellect.”
“True. Let us start small. We can start to visit galleries and ask around.”
She laughed. “We cannot simply walk into a gallery and ask if Mr Nettles is corrupt. Anyway, we are well known ourselves.”
“We can go in disguise!” Theodore said.
“Impossible. You have had too much sugar and cream and you are not thinking straight. We could perhaps use proxies.”
“That is far less fun. This is the season of festivity. Normal rules do not apply!”
She shook her head at him and gave him a very stern look. “What is it about this time of year that make people just a little insane?”
“It is the season of misrule!”
She didn’t answer him. She rang the bell for a maid to clear the tea things away before he could eat the last cake.
Four
A little later, Robert’s father and mother paid them a seasonal call of good wishes. The Earl of Mareham, Patrick Lassiter, was a tall and strong man, unstooped even in his old age, with a shock of white hair and yellowing skin. He was still fully employed as a judge and expected to die in service, possibly during a trial for maximum dramatic effect. His wife, Constance, was in contrast a tiny, dark-haired woman with a pointed nose and an unfortunately hooked chin which made her look more and more like a seventeenth century woodcut of a witch as she aged. She was warm and delightful, however, and there was a great deal of embracing and general chatter when they entered the room. Theodore excused himself after the first round of greetings as he had a book in his room that he intended to give to Mareham, and he dashed off
