Dance to Your Daddy

'I am sorry, but you can scarcely expect me to interest myself in the affair.'

'You have at least persuaded me that Romilly may have some right to his surname, and that is progress of a kind.'

'You have already said that you think he may be Felix Napoleon's natural son, but that gives him no right to call himself Lestrange.'

'I have never seen why a natural son should have no right to his father's name when that name is known and the claim acknowledged.'

'Opinions differ, and I must say that I think you are unwise to have mixed yourself up in the affair.'

'It is too long a story to tell you, and I doubt whether you would be interested in it, but I had no option.'

'Because of the fortune?'

'No. Because Romilly called me in in my professional capacity as a psychiatrist.'

'You mean that the man is mad?'

'No. He was hoping I would say that the heiress presumptive is incapable of managing her own affairs. If I did so, her expectations, for all practical purposes, would cease to exist.'

'It seems that, as usual, you have got yourself mixed up in villainy.'

'That is what I think. Before I go, I must try your exemplary patience a little further. Do the names Willoughby, Corin and Corinna mean anything to you?'

'Corin and Corinna are Sally's children, and therefore are my grandchildren. Their father thought it better that they did not use his name, as they are on the stage in some dubious kind of way, so, to my great annoyance, they have taken their mother's maiden name of Lestrange.'

'I thought Sally's children were named Montmorency and Clotilda. I was present at their christening, if you remember.'

'Those would scarcely be names which could be used for the kind of act which I believe they perpetrate.'

'No, I see that. Oh, well, that accounts for them. What about Willoughby?'

'I have never heard of him.'

'He has disappeared. As he is Hubert's brother, I am wondering whether he also has been murdered.'

'You mean that this clergyman was murdered?'

'The police appear to think so. I do not know yet what evidence they have. One more question, and then I will go. Do you know anything about a family named Provost?'

'Provost? Do you mean the Marshall-Provosts? They are some sort of connections of Sally's husband, John Ponsonby-Marshall, I believe, but they are rather poor and obscure and are not really recognised as relatives by John's family. Why?'

'They seem to be well known to Romilly Lestrange, that is all, but they seem to be called, simply, Provost.'

'I will ring for tea,' said Lady Selina in a tone which indicated, beyond all reasonable doubt, that this nuisance must now cease.

(2)

Armed with such information as Lady Selina had been able to supply, Dame Beatrice rang up her son on Lady Selina's telephone and was invited to dinner and asked to stay for the night.

'Well, mother,' said the eminent man, when dinner was over and he had taken her off to his study for a private chat, 'what mischief have you been getting into this time?'

'I seem to be mixed up, to some extent, in the murder of a member of the family.'

'Don't tell me that somebody has had the public spirit and general goodwill to bump off Aunt Selina!'

'No. I came here from her house and she appears to be alive and well.'

'Who's been murdered, then?'

'A young man-well, I assume that he is young, or comparatively so-named the Reverend Hubert Lestrange.'

'A parson murdered? Rather unusual, what? What did he do? Rush in where angels fear to tread, and get himself clobbered?'

'I have no idea what he did. I have a feeling, however, that he was killed because of something he knew.'

'That sounds as though he'd uncovered the family skeleton. Have we one?'

'I hoped you would be able and willing to tell me that. What do you know of Felix Napoleon?'

'Oh, that old rip! I got him off on a charge of fraud once, but haven't seen or heard of him for ages.'

'When was this?'

'Oh, donkey's years ago, of course. It was before I was called to the Bar, as a matter of fact. I was up at Cambridge. How the old boy had found out I was reading law I've never discovered, or even how he knew where I was, but he wrote to me and asked me to suggest a line of defence, as he trusted neither his solicitor nor the chap who was to be briefed on his behalf. He told me his side of the story, I saw a loophole, pointed it out and the result was that the case never came up for trial. The beaks threw it out, and quite right, too, on the evidence, although, personally, I wouldn't be surprised if the old reprobate was guilty.'

'How did Selina come to hear of all this?'

'The man who was to be briefed was old John Marshall-Provost, Sally's father-in-law.'

'It seems to be a family affair all round.'

'Yes, all sorts of daddies involved. Where do you come in, though?'

Dame Beatrice gave him an account of Romilly's letter and of what had happened, and outlined the course she had followed since she had received the letter.

'I'm afraid for the girl,' she said in conclusion. 'When I heard that she was the heiress and was made cognisant of the conditions which were attached to the inheritance, and when I realised that Romilly (who, by his virtual incarceration of her, must be a resolute and unscrupulous man) was the next in line according to Felix Napoleon's Will, I removed the child from Galliard Hall and have despatched her, with Laura's help, to a place of safety. When I learned of Hubert's death...'

'If I may butt in at this point, mother, I think you should keep an eye lifting on your own account, you know. Some people can't be all that pleased with your machinations, and yet-'

'I shall take precautions, particularly as I am returning tomorrow to Galliard Hall. All the same, so far as anybody is aware, I am simply keeping the girl under treatment.'

'Well, beware of how you enter the cockatrice's den, that's all. A man with his eye on a fortune is not going to be too nice about the methods he uses to get his hooks on it, you know, especially if he's old Felix Napoleon's natural son. For one thing, he may well feel that, as the first-born, and of an earlier generation than the girl, he has the prior claim, and, for another, he may now take after his father, who struck me as a plausible and blackhearted scoundrel, if ever there was one.'

'Yet you did him a very great favour.'

'Oh, no, it certainly wasn't meant as a favour. It was just a very young man's conceit. I spotted the flaw and nothing pleased me better than to point it out to him and his solicitor. It was just one of those odd things which come along when one's looking up something quite different. I was in love with my own cleverness in those days and, after all, the old villain was a Lestrange.'

'Exactly what I feel about Rosamund, La famille oblige. Selina had some story that he had murdered his mistress.'

'One of his mistresses, she meant. He was notorious for his harem, I believe. I never heard that he murdered anybody, though. I think Aunt Selina must have got the wires crossed. She probably heard of this fraud thing I mentioned, and stepped up the details.'

'Did you ever hear of an illegitimate son?'

'He had two, but I don't know whether they had the same mother.'

'Would you know their names?'

'Yes, of course.'

'Why "of course"?'

'Well, because I knew them both at Cambridge. Romilly was my year and happened to be on my staircase, and Caesar came up when Romilly had gone down and I was at the beginning of my fourth year. I didn't have a lot to do with them, but when I found their name was Lestrange I felt I had to be civil. It was Romilly who put his father's case before me, as a matter of fact, and asked me what I thought, as he knew my intended profession.'