“Good Lord!” Joe said. “There are some strange establishments flourishing within the douce confines of St. James’s!”
“This is a long way from being the strangest! Have you enquired into the ‘Slippered Orchid’ four doors down?” He shook his shaggy head in disapproval.
“Can’t wait! Well, it was a pleasure, Superintendent. See you at the sale tomorrow perhaps? It should be quite safe. I don’t think the Minister for Mischief will be making an appearance himself. Have you met the devilish Truelove? Do you know him?”
“I wondered when you’d ask me that.” Hunnyton began to turn the brim of his bowler through his fingers, deep in thought. Joe didn’t press for a response but let him take his time, mindful that people were very much divided in their opinions of the minister and quite often took a while to think of something polite to say. “I can’t say that I know him. Though I certainly ought to. The man’s my brother.”
“Your what?” Startled, Joe dropped his fedora to the ground.
“My younger brother. Half-brother to be precise.”
Joe snorted, hurried to the door and yelled, “Landlord! Two more pints in the snug please!”
He returned to the table, glaring at Hunnyton. “I never walk about town without a pair of thumbscrews in my back pocket. Shall I need to use them?”
Hunnyton held out his hands. “I’ll come quietly. You can pull rank rather than fingernails. That’ll do.”
“I always find confessions slide down more easily with a steak pie,” Joe said. “I’m sure I heard you mention …”
Hunnyton went to the door and called, “Confirm order for ale, Mr. Pocock, and will you add to that a couple of steak pies if they’re ready? With horseradish, mustard and mash.” He settled back in his seat. “You’ll enjoy this, sir. Albert in the kitchens used to work for the Duke of Northumberland.”
CHAPTER 5
Joe had picked up some relaxed phrases and refreshing attitudes from the American officers he’d worked alongside in the later months of the war. One of his favourites was: Once is happenstance, twice is coincidence, three times is enemy action.
He reckoned he was well into the stage of enemy action.
“I’m sure I shall,” he said. “It’s a Tuesday. You save me from the Police Canteen’s version of not very Hot Pot.”
He’d decided that Hunnyton—if that was his name—had recognised him, had even perhaps been lying in wait for him, and had drawn him here for a purpose. Joe had shared his information on the superintendent’s interest in the portraits but was keeping silent on the second and more interesting record of the name Hunnyton that he’d turned up on police files recently.
The steak pie was all that had been promised, served swiftly and correctly with a flurry of starched white napery and good silver cutlery laid out on the table between them. By unspoken consent both men held off from serious conversation, content to enjoy a work of culinary art when it was offered.
“There’s lemon syllabub or Eton mess to follow, or just strawberries,” Hunnyton invited. “The Cambridge Favourites are in season at the moment. New variety.”
Joe was glad he’d taken the hint and declared for the strawberries; the plump miracles of summer magic were duly served on Delft-patterned dishes with a matching pot of yellow Devon cream so thick it had to be spooned from the jug. Finally, comfortably bloated, relaxed and unharried, Joe calculated that his subject must be feeling much the same and decided to come at him crabwise. “Tell me about your name, Adam. Truelove? Hunnyton? Should I guess at a mother in common?”
“Not that.” The idea seemed to amuse him. “No, it’s a father we share.”
Joe absorbed this and was wondering how to frame his next question without giving offence when Hunnyton continued bluntly, “Illegitimate. That’s the word you’re skating around. You could—well, perhaps not you, Commissioner—could say by-blow. Wrong side of the blanket. Baseborn. Bastard. I’ve heard them all.”
“And I’ve heard it said, Hunnyton, ‘There are no illegitimate children, just illegitimate parents.”
Hunnyton managed a smile. “Well, the guilty parties in my case were the old Sir Sidney and one of his domestic servants. Before his marriage to James’s mother, the then young and spirited Sidney had an affair with a young and spirited upstairs maid. My mother. She had red hair—a big beauty in the style of Boadicea, Queen of the Iceni, who gave the Romans such a bad time. I’m just surprised she let Sidney get away with it undamaged. No one else ever got the better of her. Sorry, sir, it all gets a bit predictable from now on and I risk boring my audience.”
“Not at all,” Joe said. “I’m all twitching ears and attention.”
“The inevitable happened. In those days, and I’m not so sure it wouldn’t happen now, the girl would have to leave the village for good or perhaps go and spend a month or two with her aunty in Ipswich. She’d return having mysteriously lost all that weight she’d been putting on. Childless, of course. But in my mother’s case, the pregnant girl was married off hurriedly to a by no means unwilling man on the estate, the whole arrangement sweetened by the offer of a cottage on the village green complete with a half-acre potato patch and bake-oven. I was a six-month baby. ‘Popped out just in time for a slice of his mother’s wedding cake,’ as they say in the village.”
“And in Westminster!” Joe chortled. “Quite a few of those about, in all ranks of society. No names, no pack-drill, but I can tell you that one or two of our politicians have surprising dates on their birth certificates.”
Hunnyton grunted. “They can keep it quiet. It’s harder to hide in a small village. Especially when the child is unfortunate enough to grow up looking the spitting image of his real father.”
“Good lord! Must have been difficult for Mr. Hunnyton, whose name I take it you bear?”
The craggy features softened in affection. “No. Nothing ever flummoxed the old feller. Head Horseman by trade. That’s a pretty stylish thing to be in Suffolk. It has a certain standing and my stepfather lived up to it. No one would be disrespectful to him or his family, whatever that consisted of. He knew what he was taking on; he loved my mother very much, I think, and he was never less than kind to us. No—he was no Mr. Murdstone.” He grinned. “Dickens would have found no inspiration for a heart-rending family saga in my early situation. Freud wouldn’t have known what to make of a child with a loving mother and two caring fathers.”
“Two? Old Truelove kept himself in the picture, did he?”
“He did. I think he took his inspiration from Charles II, whom he much resembled. Charming rogue but affectionate to all his offspring including the illegitimate ones. He had me educated. I outgrew the village school pretty quickly. When he noticed this, he put me into private tutoring alongside his other children. This led to three years at the university. Strings were pulled—perhaps money changed hands—and I was offered one of the eleven ‘poor boy’ places at Trinity. Reading a subject useful to my position in life, of course. In the good old tradition, Sir Sidney was having me raised to become steward of the estates. The land and the house were his passion and he was pleased to find, in me, an equal enthusiasm. I’d been keeping the accounts from the age of sixteen, buying stock, helping to run the farm. I was on the payroll from an early age.”
“A position which gives you access to the best pies in town?”
“It’s an honorary extended membership these days. I gave up my position of servitude—like many others—when the war broke out. I joined up.”
“The Suffolk Regiment?”
“Second battalion. It was quickly mobilised, not short of volunteers, and sent off to France. We were there from Mons to the Armistice. The army changed my perspective. By the end, my mother and stepfather were both dead. I was twenty-six. I wanted to spread my wings. There were openings everywhere for big, healthy chaps like me with a degree in economics and a commission, and I chose the police force. For much the same reasons as yourself, I expect. Once I’d done the basics, promotion was quite quick, and I enjoy the work.”