I never found out what he thought about that, because Alexander Prescott rose to his feet. ‘This has been a most delightful interlude,’ he told Lady Radcliffe. ‘So refreshing to be away from home for a little while.’
‘Not your home yet,’ Jerald muttered beside me. There was real venom in his voice. His uncle’s strictures on his way of life must really have stung.
‘Now, we must be on our way before we outstay our welcome.’
Out they all trooped, the ladies assuring Lady Radcliffe that they were sure she would transform the house into a perfectly delightful residence and begging her to call again before we returned to London.
When they had gone we collapsed in less elegant postures and finished off the cake while we caught up with what each of us had gleaned from the conversation.
‘There is something very much amiss with Jerald,’ I said and recounted what Adrien had told me about the family friction and then his uneasiness about revealing where he had been staying in London.
‘Shepherds Market,’ James mused. ‘And a Desmond Pitt…’
‘Do you know the man?’ Luc asked. ‘I’ve never heard of him.’
‘Neither have I,’ James said. ‘But I know a public house in Shepherd Market called The Pitt’s Head.’
‘Do you think Jerald told his family he was staying with a friend so they didn’t ask any questions, but he was actually staying in this tavern?’ I asked. ‘I suppose if he was sick of his Uncle Alexander’s disapproval and his father taking offence over it, that was one way of making his escape. They all think he was in a friend’s respectable lodgings while, in fact, he was in some seedy inn.’
‘Where nobody would question his movements,’ Lady Radcliffe observed. Then she shrugged, an elegant twist of slender, lace-covered shoulders. ‘He is a young man. I see nothing suspicious in him trying to escape family scrutiny.’
‘True,’ Luc agreed. ‘But I think I will write to Garrick and have him investigate. I dislike loose ends and mysterious young men.’
‘It will prove to be some opera dancer or another,’ said Lady Radcliffe.
Was that all it was? I wondered. An immature young man’s resentment of family pressures? But there was something else as well, and I was beginning to think Jerald was not as interested in opera dancers as he was in Arabella Jordan. There had been something in the vehemence with which he had lashed out at his brother a few minutes ago… They had been childhood friends – had it turned into a love affaire? I shook my head: Arabella had shown no signs of regarding Jerald as anything other than an old friend and she certainly had not the air of a woman released to marry her true love.
What I find interesting,’ Lady Radcliffe was observing when
I paid attention once more, ‘is that Mr Alexander Prescott is already acting like the head of the family, with his nephew hardly in his tomb and his own older brother still alive. Is it insensitivity or worse?’
‘You mean is it the arrogance of a man whose scheme is coming to fulfilment?’ Luc looked grim. ‘He is the most obvious suspect. He could easily have done it if we suppose that he arranges for that note at the reception, he makes no bones about his actions, which is a good way to disarm suspicion, and then he adds to that appearance of innocence by asking for my help.’
‘The Horace Prescotts were also at the Palace,’ I said. ‘All of them. But not Adrien’s brothers. Not that it gets us any further forward. The Horace clan had the best opportunity to drop that note for the footman to find, but Alexander’s elder sons were unaccounted for and could have committed the murder, either singly or together. Certainly the Horace Prescotts have a far less compelling motive,’ I added.
‘I am not so sure about that,’ Lady Radcliffe said slowly. ‘Luc, if Alexander murdered his nephew and was convicted, who would inherit?’
‘You are thinking of a bill of attainder?’ He sat up alertly and put down his tea cup. ‘It used to be that the guilty man’s property and titles passed to the Crown and his heirs were disbarred from inheriting land or title. There have been cases where the Crown has granted the lands and titles back to an heir, but it is by no means certain that they would. I am trying to recall when it was last used.’
‘Lord Edward Fitzgerald,’ James said. ‘It was in seventy eight or nine, I think. He was trying to foment rebellion in Ireland,’ he told me. ‘I think the son has got the lands back now.’
‘So it sounds as though, if Horace attempted to frame Alexander for this, it wouldn’t be a certainty that the land and the title would be his. They might be kept by the Crown or they might be allowed to go to Marcus, if he could be shown to have had no involvement in the crime,’ I argued.
‘I agree,’ Luc said. ‘It would be exceedingly risky to count on it. They could have ended up committing murder and gaining nothing but a few thousand in legacies, and there is no whisper that I have heard that Horace is in any financial difficulty and needs money urgently.’
‘And that is supposing that he is of such depraved character that he would murder his nephew and implicate his own brother in the crime,’ Lady Radcliffe said firmly. ‘Do you not agree, Cassandra?’
‘What? Oh, sorry, I was chasing the tail of a vague memory. Someone said something today that is nagging at me, but I cannot, for the life of me, recall what it is. But yes, I agree, I cannot see Mr Horace Prescott or any of his family embarking on such a Machiavellian plot.’
We sat around digesting the results of too much cake and insufficient murder inspiration. Then Lady Radcliffe said, ‘If the weather is fine tomorrow I propose that Cassandra and I take the landau, collect Miss Jordan and Miss McNeil and take them for a drive.’
‘Will it not appear strange to the Prescotts that you are singling them out from the other ladies?’ James asked.
His mother raised one immaculately groomed eyebrow. ‘Let them think what they like,’ she said, every inch the Countess.
‘It sounds like an excellent idea,’ I agreed vaguely, still chasing the elusive wisp of conversation.
We gave up on crime-solving after that and spent the rest of the day playing outside with the boys, who were still intent on wheedling a boat out of Luc.