“Coming!” she called gaily.
And she set off toward buffalo woman like a lost lamb to her ewe.
I saw Sir Teddy had abandoned young Heywood just as quick and I went back to join her.
“The way yon pair jump, the old lass must really know where the bodies are buried,” I said.
“I think it’s more where the money is banked,” she replied.
“Oh aye? Thought it ’ud be summat like that. They’re brother and sister, right? And set on getting their share of the family fortune when auntie dies?”
“She’s only an aunt by marriage, so I suppose it’s understandable they feel they’ve got to work at it,” she said.
“Sounds like you’re on their side,” I said. “Or is it just hunky Teddy’s side?”
“No. I am being objective and analytical. I’m a psychologist.”
I had to laugh. Seen nowt, done nowt, and she were a psychologist!
“What’s so funny?” she demanded, getting angry again.
I knew better than to tell her, so I said, “I were just thinking, I bet old Stompy were chuffed to buggery when he found out he’d sired one of them.”
She gave me an old-fashioned look, then grinned.
“I see you knew my father quite well, Mr. Dalziel,” she said.
“Well enough. How come Teddy’s so hard up he needs to suck up to auntie?” I asked. “His sister were saying the old house, and presumably all this land, used to belong to her family. Must have made a fortune when they sold it on to Avalon.”
“It did, but not for the Denhams, alas,” said a familiar voice.
I looked down to see Roote smiling up at me. The skinny lass had been sucked back into her aunt’s orbit, or mebbe the sight of the young Denhams dancing attendance had made her decide she’d better keep her end up.
“Oh aye? Who then?” I said to him.
He smiled and lowered his voice so that I had to lower my head to hear him. The lass too. I got the impression she didn’t want to miss owt.
“As I understand it,” he murmured, “the story is that one result of the unfortunate if appropriate demise of Hog Hollis was a rapprochement between his widow and Sir Harry Denham, who had not been on the best of terms for some years. He held her responsible for sending the sweet odor of pigs wafting through his drawing room window whenever he took afternoon tea.”
“This going to be a long tale?” I asked. “If it is, I thought mebbe I’d go off somewhere quiet to read War and Peace, then come back for the climax.”
“Forgive me,” he said. “I have fallen into rustic ways. Let me cut to the chase. Sir Harry, now close to insolvency, devised a cunning plan to solve both his financial and his olfactory problems at a stroke. He proposed to her. He was personable, reputedly virile-an important consideration for the dear lady-and of course he had what only money could buy, a title. This, I believe, was the clincher. She accepted.”
“Brings a tear to your eye, doesn’t it?” said young Heywood.
I gave her a look. Don’t care for cynicism in the young. If they don’t have romantic delusions, what are old farts like me going to kick out of them?
Roote went rambling on. Cut to the chase, he’d said. More like verbal runs! Wieldy would have had it all spelt out, typed up, and on my desk half an hour back!
“As the wedding approached, he suggested that all that lacked to make them both happy was an odor-free threshold for him to carry her over. Now that Denham Park was to be her stately home too, perhaps the time had come to relocate the pig farm. She appeared to agree, only objecting that she would have to find a suitable site first. There was some spare capacity on the land belonging to Millstone Farm, the old Hollis farm, but she was reluctant to use that…”
“Knowing that if she snuffed it before her brother-in-law, the farm and everything on it would fall to Hen,” chipped in young Heywood.
Roote smiled appreciatively.
“Clearly psychology really is the listening profession,” he said. “Yes, dear Lady D did not care for the thought of Hen benefiting more than he had to in the event of her death. She is, I believe, a very good hater. The upshot was, she proposed to Sir Harry that this parcel of Denham land here on South Cliff would make an ideal site, well away from Denham Park, and too high above the town for any nuisance to be caused there. The old house could be adapted as an excellent administrative center for the business.”
“If this is quick, I’m Speedy Gonzales,” I said.
“I’ve heard the rumors,” said Roote. “Be patient, the end is near. Sir Harry was delighted, and even more so when she insisted on a proper business transaction, with Hollis’s Ham Limited formally purchasing the land. The deal was made, both deals, with the marriage given top billing in all the Yorkshire glossies. They went on a leisurely Caribbean cruise for their honeymoon, financed, local tradition says, by the money Hollis’s Ham had paid for the South Cliff property. That must have made Sir Harry smile. His wife’s money paying for their honeymoon, setting what he hoped would be the pattern for many years to come. Imagine his dismay when they returned some months later to discover the bulldozers had moved in here and with a true American swiftness the Avalon Clinic was already beginning to rise.”
“You mean she’d got all this sorted afore they went off on honeymoon?” I said.
“Clearly so,” said Roote admiringly. “Of course, after his initial shock, he must have consoled himself with the thought of the large profit made in the transaction. But I gather he was disappointed in this too. Victorian marital property laws had long since been repealed. The land had been signed over to Hollis’s Ham, his wife’s company, and all that he was going to get of her money was what she cared to allow him. He huffed and puffed but soon learned the lesson that huffing and puffing meant going to bed without any supper. No longer master in his own house, he was at least still master of the hunt until the government banned hunting with dogs. He is said to have roared, ‘Over my dead body!’ On the first day of the season, he went out with the hounds and when they started a fox, he set out after them at a mad gallop, clipped the top of a wall, and ended in a ditch with a broken neck. He was, if nothing else, a man of his word.”
“And she walked away from the funeral with a title on her letterhead and the Avalon money in her purse,” said Heywood.
“So all this land and the old house used to belong to the Denhams,” I said. “No wonder that poor lass Esther looks so pissed off.”
That got me a surprised glance from Heywood, who said, “Oh, she always looks like that, except when she’s sucking up to Lady D.”
I said, “Must be nice to have a smart understanding chap like Stompy for your dad so you don’t have to go sucking up to any bugger.”
Roote laughed and said, “Bravo, Andy. Your compassion does you credit.”
“It’s got limits,” I said. “So Lady Denham’s got the chinks, and Sir Teddy and sis are sticking close as shit to a blanket in the hope some of it rolls their way when she topples off the twig?”
“I think that sums it up,” said Roote.