Lessons in Solving the Wrong Problem - Charlie Cochrane Page 0,15

perspicacity come from and refer to? One might take it as a reference to the passionate words old Will had heaped upon the beautiful boy in all the early sonnets. Words which Jonty believed may have started as more form, the execution of a commission to persuade the boy to marry and bear children, as efficient a completion of the task as Woakes’s family portraits were. From there, according to the theory which Jonty had shared on many a private—and indeed intimate occasion—the bard had fallen for his subject, life imitating art and the poems taking on a new dimension. If I could write the beauty of your eyes hardly seemed a matter of simple flattery.

“I think you’re drawing on a very deep well, there. Orlando would tell you that I could sit here for a week discussing the topic of the sonnets and what they may or may not mean. And how sly the bard was being at times.”

“I could discourse on them, too, although I fear we would possibly bore the others should we do that now. Another day and time, perhaps.”

“Indeed.”

Orlando, noting the fleeting expression of relief on his lover’s face, guessed he’d be thinking the discussion would preferably not take place before Jonty could prepare himself adequately. As he’d confessed, it was always risky discussing the sonnets when he possessed his own beautiful boy whose graces he would like to list in fresh numbers.

After that, the conversation had kept mainly to matters of the archaeological dig, although some subtle discussion of the tragedy mystery they’d been told about earlier had to be included. This was an opportunity not to be missed, so long as they were subtle and recognised when they’d probed sufficiently. By gentle questioning, and Jonty confessing his irrepressibly curious nature, he and Orlando established that the late Lady Byrd had been on her own when she’d allegedly seen the apparition of young Edward, and that there weren’t any male children on the estate of a broadly similar age, apart from the gardener’s boy and he’d been accounted for on every occasion that the sightings had allegedly taken place.

“That’s the first possibility we considered at the time, gentlemen,” Henry told them. “It could have been a stranger’s child, of course, but it seems very unlikely that one so small would be wandering on the estate.”

Beatrice sniffed loudly and markedly. “Impossible rather than unlikely. I know that my late mother-in-law was short sighted, but how can any mother mistake another child for her own?”

“Short-sighted?” Orlando asked.

“Yes. She had to wear spectacles for anything but close work.” Henry didn’t seem impressed by his wife’s intervention.

“I don’t believe it is her sight which should be under scrutiny here.” Beatrice, obviously realising she had said too much, glanced at her husband and appeared to change tack. “By which I mean it was her grief which caused her to experience these sightings. The loss of a child must play terrible tricks on the mind.”

She went on to relate a story about her second cousin, one who remained notably nameless, who’d become convinced that her sweetheart—a chap who died in a hunting accident—was communicating to her via birds from the dovecot. She’d sworn she’d caught a glimpse of him there, releasing the doves and she was certain the way they flew would contain hidden information. “Not that she was able to interpret what this information was. Quite a sensible girl up until that point, but her broken heart affected her terribly.”

“I do wonder if we should entirely discount the supernatural,” Henry observed. “I know Beatrice would have no truck with this, but I’ve known entirely sensible people—including a high court judge—who swear they’ve seen ghosts of old friends.”

Did that suggest their host believed there was a chance Edward really had returned to his old home? Interesting that his wife looked askance at such things, just as Helena Stewart would have no truck with the stories of the cat at the Old Manor. As though he had been mind-reading, Jonty launched into the tale of the large, grey tomcat which his father was convinced had been haunting the Old Manor since the days of Shakespeare and which a friend of theirs had seen when he’d been a guest at the house.

Orlando only half listened. Something in Beatrice’s tone when she’d been discussing her late mother-in-law had struck him: were he to be forced to give an opinion, he’d say that she’d been on the verge of saying the woman had, just