finally responded by having the room's doorway bricked up… with Berto's trumpet still inside.
There was a less frivolous side to Berto too. She knew he had secrets; there were times when she detected shame in his voice when she innocently enquired where he'd been. She wondered if there were things about this unusual family that he still had not told her.
'Where's Tatty?' Berto asked abruptly, hoping for some more sympathetic company.
'She's out playing with the spaniels,' Daisy replied. 'I think she's looking for a way to sneak in and see the beast.'
'I think I'll go and join her.'
'Just let me finish your shoes first.'
He was a devil to draw. He fidgeted constantly and kept heaving great sighs. Looking over at her, he tilted his head to one side. She glanced up at him and then back at the paper. The drawing was almost finished. It wasn't one of her best.
'I know what you're thinking,' he said.
'I have no doubt.'
'You're thinking that Nate had something to do with Marcus's death,' Berto told her solemnly. 'He hadn't.'
Daisy laid the board on her lap and met her husband's gaze.
'I wasn't thinking that,' she said. 'But now that you've brought it up, perhaps we should talk about it. You have a rather…
'I like to think so.'
'You know what I mean,' she retorted impatiently. 'There aren't many families that encourage murder. They say Marcus's death was an accident, but who really knows? Isn't that what you do here? Somebody does away with somebody else and it's all covered up? Your so-called 'Rules of Ascension'?'
'That's old hat.' Berto waved his hand dismissively. 'It hasn't happened in years… decades.'
'How do you know?' she persisted. 'How many of your relatives have kicked the bucket under mysterious circumstances? But that's not the point, Berto. The point is that this is Marcus we're talking about. He was the Heir. He dies, and the whole family changes. And who benefits most? Nathaniel, that's who. Everybody knew he'd be put in charge of things if anything happened to Marcus. How can you not be suspicious?'
'But I'm the Heir now!' Berto protested. 'And Nate just wouldn't… he just wouldn't do that, Daisy. I was next in line, so I had most to gain. You might as well be suspicious of me!'
'Oh, Berto, who's going to suspect you of murder?' She put the drawing board down, gathered the bulky folds of her tiered skirt and moved over to the chair next to him, taking his hand. 'You wouldn't hurt a fly.'
'I might,' he sniffed.
Daisy smiled despite herself, but she worried that Berto's loyalty to his brother might be blinding him. He always took Nate's side when she criticized him.
'Nate's not like you,' she said softly. 'He's cut from the same cloth as the rest of this family. They're all-'
'We're all dastardly sinners, bent on villainy!' Gerald declared, striding into the room.
He flopped into the chair beside Daisy, giving her a friendly peck on the cheek. Tatiana followed him in with two gormless-looking King Charles spaniels trotting at her heels.
'There's only so long you can look at a velocycle lounging in a stable,' Gerald sighed. 'I've tried to explain why I'm a scientific genius, but the audience only wanted to hear about the action. Without the star himself, they lost interest. Where's he got to?'
Roberto pointed at the ceiling. 'I'm to handle the Irish estates,' he said glumly 'It's a brush-off, thank God. I'm sure he's going to get lumbered with the business in America.'
'That'll go down well-'
Gerald was cut off by the snarl of an engine from outside. There came the sound of panicking horses and a door slammed against a wall. They all rushed to the French windows. Nathaniel was racing from the stables on the back of his velocycle, tearing along the cobbled road that led around to the front of the house. In seconds he had disappeared from sight, a light cloud of dust settling in his wake, and the roar of his mount fading into the distance.
'He took the news well, then,' Daisy commented.
'My God,' Gerald breathed. 'He took off like the hounds of hell were at his heels.'
'Well, he had been talking to the old man,' Berto said.
'Where do you think he's going?' Daisy wondered aloud.
'If I were him,' Berto replied, turning away from the window, 'I'd go straight back to bloody Africa.'
'He still hasn't given us our presents,' Tatiana said.
Nathaniel squinted into the wind, urging Flash on ever faster. Gritting his teeth, he ached to put as much distance as possible between himself and his home. He would not become a slave to his father's wishes. If he had to leave Ireland and spend the rest of his life as a wanderer, then so be it. The velocycle revelled in its speed, its engine bellowing in the fresh morning air. They sped down from the hills, through the villages of Woodtown and Ballyboden, towards Rathfarnham, past dry-stone walls, cabins and country houses, overtaking coaches and wagons, and frightening horses. Mud spattered in their wake; young boys looked on, shouting and whooping. Men leaned on their shovels or against their carts, shaking their heads at the reckless, rich young scoundrel on his extravagant toy. Women tutted in disgusted fashion, and girls gazed on with a mixture of shock and wonder.
It was too much of a coincidence that he had come back on the same day that Marcus had been killed. Nobody would believe that he didn't have a hand in it. Memories of his brother sent a wave of bitterness through him and he leaned forward, the wind whipping the breath from his mouth.
Through Rathgar and Rathmines the rider and his mount raced, sending people running from their path, the machine cornering dangerously and accelerating so hard its front wheel lifted. And it reared as it rolled, roaring down the street on its back wheel.
He should have ignored Gerald's letter and stayed with Herne in Africa. He had been happier there than at any other time in his life. Maybe Roberto would have been given the business if he hadn't come back. If Daisy had been involved in the murder, had that been her plan all along? Had she counted on the fact that he wouldn't come home? The family had never been short of conniving women who achieved their ambitions through their menfolk; she certainly had Berto wrapped around her little finger.
At the Grand Canal they turned right, following it towards the river. They skirted past the horses drawing the barges of freight, turning left over the bridge at Grand Canal Quay and along by the feet of the factories and warehouses that lined the dock. They slowed here, struggling to get through the throng of stevedores unloading the barges. The men here were not the types to be intimidated by some young strip of a lad on a fancy engimal. Nate weaved carefully through the workers, around wagons and stacks of crates and barrels, and piles of coal.
Daisy was not the only one he suspected. The family was full of back-stabbing curs who would stop at nothing to advance their position. His Uncle Gideon, Edgar's only remaining brother, was one of the worst. He wanted control of the business so badly it drove him mad. He hated Marcus and had always been jealous of him. But Gideon was a coward at heart and Nate found it hard to believe he would dare to take on Edgar's eldest son… he was scared of Marcus and absolutely terrified of Edgar. The same went for Gideon's scheming wife. If they were involved, they couldn't have done it on their own.
Nathaniel and Flash followed a muddy alley through a fish market to the quays that lined the Liffey, where ships that came in from the sea along Dublin's river moored to disgorge their cargoes. Nate wrinkled his nose. The docks had lost none of their stink. He found it hard to believe anybody could work their whole lives here. There were a hundred smells; but above the pungent odour of fish, damp wood and fresh tar, there was the ever- present stench of the sewage-ridden river itself.
The cobbled streets in this part of town attracted all kinds. Businessmen checked their deliveries of freight while customs officers inspected their manifests; vagabond sailors drunk on beer or grog wandered from one brown-brick pub to the next, looking for work or looking to avoid it. Nate's velocycle drew attention wherever he went. He knew that they had never seen its like in this town. There were a few domestic engimals to be seen along the quays, but nothing compared to Flash. As he passed each ship, sailors and dockers turned to gaze at him and his machine. Gulls and crows and other opportunistic birds circled overhead, hard shapes against a murky grey sky, waiting to pounce on scraps of fish or whatever else they could find.
The tarred-wood hulls of the boats creaked and groaned gently, and Nate could see men on the decks and in
