Lessons in Solving the Wrong Problem - Charlie Cochrane Page 0,47

rumoured to keep a mistress in the time running up to his death?”

“That I don’t know. We clearly weren’t encouraged to discuss such things, although that didn’t stop people doing so when the butler and housekeeper weren’t to hand. One of the grooms, who’d been with the Byrds since time immemorial, reckoned his late lord turned a new leaf when first wedded but then the old Adam had reared its head. There’d been a woman in London he’d been to see on occasions, although that had happened several years before he died.”

“So it’s not impossible that he succumbed to temptation once more?” Jonty asked.

“Not impossible at all, if the account of his character is true. But if he did take another mistress, he’d been sufficiently discreet about it not to let her name slip out.”

Or those who guessed the name hadn’t readily shared it with a new member of staff.

Orlando raised an eyebrow, made a note, then said, “There’s one other matter we’d like to ask about and, again, this will be something you can only cover with hearsay. Your predecessor had a brother whom we’ve heard was a troublemaker. Do you know anything about him?”

Mrs Cadmore rolled her eyes. “Oh, yes. He was a suitable subject for conversation. I don’t suppose there was a young footman who wasn’t reminded time and again what could happen to a man if he didn’t keep to the straight and narrow. He’d worked at the estate, at some point. Manual work, not in the house.”

“We knew he was employed as a labourer. Would you have any idea what he actually did?” Orlando asked.

“Anything that required brute force, I suppose. Moving things. Building walls. Digging foundations.” She regarded him quizzically. “Why do you ask?”

“Just an idea,” Orlando replied, with a triumphant glance at Jonty. “You’ve been most helpful, thank you.”

***

“Our hostess was most helpful indeed,” Jonty said, once they were out of the house. “Shall we find a convenient hostelry, where we can talk in confidence over a pint of beer? I have a theory I want to air and I think you have one, as well.”

“I have. Lay on, Macduff.”

Hostelry found, beers purchased, quiet nook located, Jonty wiped a touch of froth from his upper lip then said, “From the very start I’ve been convinced that Edward’s supposed ghost was a key to the mystery.”

“So you’ve confessed. Several times.” Orlando rolled his eyes and sipped his beer.

“And I was right. There was another child, one who resembled Edward more closely than the gardener’s boy did. One who perhaps liked to wander in or near the old chapel, where Edward and his father saw him and were both—here I admit I’m partly speculating—upset at the fact.” Jonty traced his fingers along the table top. “I’m saying both because I believe the other boy they spotted, the same boy that the nurse mistakenly followed and the one whom Henry’s mother subsequently observed, was Edward’s half-brother. A Byrd by-blow got on his lordship’s mistress.”

“Well.” Orlando, as ever torn between congratulating his lover on a dazzling bit of deduction and anger at himself for not having come to the same conclusion quicker, decided on magnanimity. He raised his glass in salute. “Do you have an idea for who the mistress was? An idea that you’d like to impress me with?”

“Yes, although you might like to work it out for yourself. I’ll give you a clue. What would induce a man to go out on a foul night? Surely not simply a game of billiards, no matter how sacred the promise to play.”

“Oh, of course.” Orlando would certainly have laughed off riding through a storm if Jonty had been at the end of it. “He went to see his mistress, the billiard game simply being an alibi provided by a close friend. No wonder the dying man asked that William Saggers be looked after, if he’d shown that degree of loyalty. So where was he that night, if not at Saggers’s house?”

Jonty threw up his hands. “Orlando. Thy much learning is turning thee mad. Or at least affecting your ability to make logical deductions. Of course he was at Saggers’s house.”

“Christine.” Blindingly obvious, now. Perhaps it should have been all along. “We have no proof for it, though.”

“Don’t we? If you recall, Mama practically told us. Her pal Eliza Billings averred that Christine had been thin—gaunt, I think was the word—when she’d lived in London but was flourishing in the country. Does that mean she was putting on