‘Why, inquisitive about you, Lady Lucy. Remember, my youngest sister, Lady Eleanor, has never met you. She will be consumed with curiosity, far worse than the Cheshire Cat.’
‘I think I shall be able to manage, thank you,’ Lady Lucy smiled. ‘At least it won’t be as bad as four brothers shouting at you over Christmas dinner about why you haven’t found a husband yet. One of them even told me I was over the hill. Fancy such a thing. But seriously, Lord Francis, I am flattered and pleased that you have seen fit to invite me to dinner this evening. Does this mean that you now consider me to be one of the family?’
Powerscourt was growing accustomed to her teasing. ‘My dear Lady Lucy,’ he laughed, ‘I am delighted to welcome you into the bosom of my family. But beware of the perils that lurk within.’
There she was now, looking perfectly at home as she talked to William Burke by the fireside, her blue eyes sparkling in the flames. At the other end of the room, the conversation had moved on from curtains. Powerscourt knew it would.
‘So where did you say Francis met her, Rosalind?’ Eleanor, like her brother, was beginning her investigations, pursuing them steadily, amassing evidence.
‘Why, they met here, I think. Lady Lucy came to dinner one evening and I believe it all started then. Pembridge claims he heard them fixing up an assignation at the National Gallery.’
‘Is she artistic, then? That would be good for Francis. But is she practical? Some of these artistic women make a point of neglecting their houses and their husbands.’ A vision of some sordid dwelling in Hampstead or Soho, filled with unfinished canvases and opened jars of paint, passed through Eleanor’s mind.
‘Oh, I think she’s practical enough,’ said Rosalind, looking across at the slim figure by the fire. ‘She’s got a little boy from her first marriage. The husband was killed with Gordon at Khartoum, you know.’
‘Really, really.’ Lady Eleanor, being married to a naval captain, currently on manoeuvres in the Mediterranean, was impressed. Clouds of glory were attached to this particular widow. ‘But tell me this, Rosalind.’ Eleanor also glanced over at Lady Lucy, a look intercepted with amusement and resignation by her brother. ‘Are they, you know, are they serious about each other?’
‘I think they might be very serious,’ said Rosalind thoughtfully, ‘there’s something about the way they look at each other now. As if there isn’t anybody else in the room.’
Further discussion was interrupted by the dinner bell. Powerscourt observed that Lady Lucy had been placed at the opposite end of the table from him, flanked by Eleanor on the right of Lord Pembridge and Mary on his left. He himself was surrounded by Rosalind and the good William Burke, conversational rescue missions in the direction of Lady Lucy difficult, if not impossible, to undertake.
Portraits of Pembridge ancestors lined the walls, bouncing off the huge mirror over the fireplace: a Restoration Pembridge, dressed in flamboyant red, his hat at a rakish angle, looking every inch the successful cavalier, a late eighteenth-century Pembridge with flesh-coloured hose and a black jacket and a puffy, dissipated face. Powerscourt remembered Burke telling him that this particular Pembridge had lost a great fortune gambling with Charles James Fox. There was a slightly later Earl, now the master of all the acres he surveyed, gun in hand, dog at his heels, probably repairing with hard work and good husbandry the damage done to the family fortunes by his predecessor. Family gossip, so much more vicious than any other, swirled round the table. Powerscourt had always been amazed at the way in which family members were prepared to say the most terrible things about each other, things that they would never countenance coming from an outsider.
‘There he was. I mean, there he was.’ William Burke was telling the story of a cousin, recently fallen on wicked times. ‘At breakfast he was married. Had been for twenty years, in fact. He had the normal breakfast, two kippers, strong coffee, a mountain of toast. He was always very particular about the marmalade, wasn’t he, my dear?’ He smiled at his wife, in search of confirmation of his cousin’s strange habits at the breakfast table. ‘It had to be that thick stuff with lots of bits of rind or whatever they call it piled very high on the toast so you could hardly see the bread.
‘Anyway, that was breakfast. By lunchtime he was gone. He never came back. He simply disappeared. Word came a few days later that he had been seen crossing the Channel with a young lady. Then he was reported in the South of France with the same young lady in Cannes or Antibes, one of those places. No questions asked in the hotels, no sign of him ever returning. He just fled at fifty and abandoned the whole lot of them.’
‘I suppose they’ll save on the marmalade bills.’ Powerscourt was unable to resist the aside.
‘Francis, you are awful! There is this poor woman, William’s cousin’s wife, deserted at her age. And all you can think of is the marmalade,’ said his eldest sister, never happier than when telling her brother off.
‘But was it Cooper’s Oxford marmalade? Or that stuff in the funny jars, Tiptree I think it’s called. It comes from somewhere in Essex.’
‘Do shut up, Francis!’ All three sisters joined forces to berate him. Witches, thought Powerscourt bitterly, remembering the days when they had ganged up on him as a boy and stolen his catapults. As he looked for assistance to Lady Lucy he thought he saw a sudden conspiratorial smile flash down the table to him. A private smile from Lady Lucy was worth the whole cauldron of his sisters’ wrath.
The last servants had cleared the last plates and the last glasses from the table. The doors were closed.
Pembridge, looking every inch the paterfamilias, coughed meaningfully and tapped his fingers loudly on the table.
‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ he began, smiling at them one by one round the table, an extra strong smile for the pretty Lady Lucy. Francis has asked us here this evening because he wants to enlist our help. Francis, the floor is yours.’
All evening Powerscourt had wondered about the tone he should adopt in addressing this particular gathering. After his marmalade gaffe he knew he couldn’t be flippant. No jokes, he said to himself. For God’s sake, no jokes. He knew that his two brothers-in-law were likely to take him much more seriously than his sisters, however dearly they loved him. The witches, he remembered, had always thought of his investigations as yet another male hobby, not to be taken seriously.
‘I need your help,’ he began, deciding that a policy of abasement might be the best tactic. Throw yourself on their mercy. ‘I am engaged at present on a most difficult and important investigation. Two days ago I saw the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police. He has promised me all the assistance at his command. I have in my pocket,’ he paused to draw out one of his letters from No. 10 Downing Street, ‘a number of letters from the Prime Minister. The recipient is left blank for me to fill in as I choose. The letter instructs that every possible assistance is to be given to Lord Francis Powerscourt who is engaged on a mission of the utmost national importance.’
He paused, looking round the table. They had fallen silent and rather serious, Pembridge looking like some hearty squire from the Pembridge past, William Burke the man of affairs, serious about his duty to Queen and country, Rosalind impassive, Mary and Eleanor curious, Lady Lucy suddenly looking rather frightened on Powerscourt’s behalf. Maybe this is all going to be very dangerous, she thought suddenly.
‘Francis, can you tell us anything of what this matter is about? Anything at all?’ Asked Lady Rosalind.
‘I am afraid that I cannot. It would not help matters and it might make life more difficult for everybody involved. Especially me.’ He gave a self-deprecating shrug.
‘But you can’t expect us all to help if we don’t know what it’s about.’ Lady Eleanor neatly fulfilled her brother’s prophecy about her curiosity.
‘What is it that you would have us do, Francis?’ asked Lady Mary, practical wife of a practical man.