'Heir to the Dukedom of Ripon,' Lord Alexander had said immediately, 'from one of the old Catholic families of England. Not a clever man, and it's rumoured the family has monetary troubles. They were once very rich, exceedingly so, with estates in Cumberland, Yorkshire, Cheshire, Hertfordshire, Kent and Sussex, but father and son are both gamblers so the rumours may well be true. He was a reasonable bat at Eton, but can't bowl. Why do you ask?'
'Lord Robin Holloway?'
'Youngest son of the Marquess of Bleasby and a thoroughly nasty boy who takes after his father. Has plenty of money, no brains and he killed a man in a duel last year. No cricketer, I fear.'
'Did he fight the duel with swords or pistols?'
'Swords, as it happened. It was fought in France. Are you going to make enquiries about the whole of the aristocracy?'
'Lord Eagleton?'
'A fop, but a useful left hand batsman who sometimes plays for Viscount Barchester's team, but is otherwise utterly undistinguished. A bore indeed, despite being a passable cricketer.'
'The sort of man who might appeal to Eleanor?'
Alexander stared at Sandman in astonishment. 'Don't be absurd, Rider,' he said, lighting another pipe. 'She wouldn't stand him for two minutes!' He frowned as if trying to remember something, but whatever it was did not come to mind.
'Your friend Lord Christopher,' Sandman had said, 'is convinced his father committed the murder.'
'Or had someone else commit it,' Alexander said. 'It seems likely. Kit sought me out when he heard you were investigating the matter and I applaud him for doing so. He, like me, is avid that no injustice should occur next Monday. Now, do you think I might go back to my conversation with Miss Hood?'
'Tell me what you know about the Seraphim Club first.'
'I have never heard of it, but it sounds like an association of high-minded clergymen.'
'It isn't, believe me. Is there any significance in the word seraphim?'
Lord Alexander had sighed. 'The seraphim, Rider, are reckoned to be the highest order of angels. The credulous believe there to be nine such orders; seraphim, cherubim, thrones, dominions, virtues, powers, principalities, archangels and, at the very bottom, mere common angels. This is not, I hasten to assure you, the creed of the Church of England. The word seraphim is thought to derive from a Hebrew word meaning serpent, the association is obscure yet suggestive. In the singular it is a seraph, a glorious creature that has a bite like fire. It is also believed that the seraphim are the patrons of love. Why they should be such I have no idea, but so it is said, just as it is claimed that the cherubim are patrons of knowledge. I momentarily forget what the other orders do. Have I satisfied your curiosity or do you wish this lecture to continue?'
'The seraphim are angels of love and poison?'
'A crude, but apt summary,' Lord Alexander had said grandly, then insisted they go back to the taproom where he had again been struck dumb by Sally's presence. He stayed till past midnight, became drunk and verbose, then left with Lord Christopher, who had drunk little and had to support his friend, who staggered from the Wheatsheaf declaring his undying love for Sally in a voice slurred by brandy.
Sally had frowned as Lord Alexander's coach had left. 'Why did he call me stupid?'
'He didn't,' Sandman had said, 'he just said you were the
'Bloody hell, what's the matter with him?'
'He's frightened of your beauty,' Sandman had said, and she had liked that and Sandman had gone to bed wondering how he would ever wake in time to catch the mail coach, yet here he was, rattling through as glorious a summer's day as any a man could dream of.
The road ran alongside a canal and Sandman admired the narrow painted barges that were hauled by great horses with ribboned manes and brass-hung harnesses. A child bowled a hoop along the towpath, ducks paddled, God was in His heaven and it took a keen eye to see that all was not quite as well as it looked. The thatch of many roofs was threadbare and in every village there were two or three cottages that had collapsed and were now overgrown with bindweed. There were too many tramps on the roads, too many beggars by the churchyards, and Sandman knew a good number of them had been redcoats, riflemen or sailors. There was hardship here, hardship among plenty, the hardship of rising prices and too few jobs, and hidden behind the cottages and the ancient churches and the heavy elm trees were parish workhouses that were filled with refugees from the bread riots that had flared in England's bigger cities, yet still it was all so heart breakingly beautiful. The foxgloves made thickets of scarlet beneath the pink roses in the hedgerows. Sandman could not take his eyes from the view. He had not been in London a full month, yet already it seemed too long.
At noon the coach swung across a stone bridge and clattered up a brief hill into the great wide main street of Marlborough, with its twin churches and capacious inns. A small crowd was waiting for the mail and Sandman pushed through the folk and out under the tavern's arch. A carrier's cart was plodding eastwards and Sandman asked the man where he might find the Earl of Avebury's estate. Carne Manor was not far, the carrier said, just over the river and up the hill and on the edge of Savernake. A half-hour's walk, he thought, and Sandman, hunger gnawing at his belly, walked south towards the deep trees of Savernake Forest.
He was hot. He had been carrying his coat, a garment that was not needed on this warm day though he had been grateful for it when he left the Wheatsheaf at dawn. He asked for more directions in a hamlet and was sent down a long lane that twisted between beech woods until he came to Carne Manor's great brick wall, which he followed until he reached a lodge and a pair of cast iron gates hung from stone pillars surmounted with carved griffins. A gravel drive, thick with weeds, led from the locked gates. A bell hung by the lodge, but though Sandman tolled it a dozen times no one answered. Nor could he see anyone inside the estate. Either side of the drive was parkland, a sward of grass dotted by fine elms, beeches and oaks, but no cattle or deer grazed the grass that grew lank and was thick with cornflowers and poppies. Sandman gave the bell a last forlorn tug and, when its sound had faded into the warm afternoon, he stepped back and looked at the spikes on top of the gates. They looked formidable, so he went back up the lane until he came to a place where an elm, growing too close to the wall, had buckled the bricks. The tree's proximity to the wall made it easy to climb. He paused a second on the mortared coping, then dropped down into the park. The grass was long enough to conceal a spring trap set against poachers and so he moved carefully until he reached the gravel drive and then turned towards the house that was hidden beyond some woods growing along the crest of a low hill.
He walked slowly, half expecting a gamekeeper or some other servant to intercept him, but he saw no one as he followed the drive though a fine stand of beeches in the centre of which was an overgrown glade surrounding a mossy statue of a naked woman hoisting a biblical water jar onto her shoulder. Sandman walked on and, from the far side of the beeches, he could at last see Carne Manor a half-mile away. It was a fine stone building with a facade of three high gables on which ivy grew about mullioned windows. Stables, coach houses and a brick-walled kitchen garden lay to the west, while behind the house were terraced lawns dropping to a placid stream. He walked on down the long drive. It suddenly seemed a futile expedition, futile and expensive, for the Earl's reputation as a recluse suggested that Sandman would most likely be greeted with a horsewhip.
The sound of his steps seemed extraordinarily loud as he crossed the great sweep of gravel where carriages could turn in front of the house, though the weeds, grass and moss growing so thick among the stones suggested that few coaches ever did. Sandman climbed the entrance steps. Two glazed lanterns were mounted either side of the porch, though one had a glass pane missing and a bird's nest was smothering its candle holder. He hauled on the bell chain and, when he heard no sound, pulled again and waited. The wooden door had gone grey with age and was stained with rust that had leaked from its decorative metal studs. Bees drifted into the shallow porch. A young cuckoo, looking uncannily like a hawk, flew across the drive. The afternoon was warm and Sandman wished he could abandon this search for a reclusive earl and just go down by the stream and sleep in the shade of some great tree.
Then a harsh banging to his right made Sandman step back to see that a man was trying to open a leaded window in the room closest to the porch. The window was evidently jammed, for the man struck it so hard that Sandman was certain the leaded lights would smash, but then it jarred open and the man leant out. He was in late middle age, had a very pale face and unkempt hair, which suggested he had just woken from a deep sleep. 'The house,' he said testily, 'is not open to visitors.'
'I hadn't supposed it was,' Sandman said, though it had occurred to him to ask the housekeeper, if such a
