to it. The manor house was the ancestral home of Mickey, Viscount Quillington, and commanded magnificent views over the rolling countryside of Oxfordshire, although a grey January afternoon was not the best of settings. The fabric of the building charted the chaotic progress of an ancient aristocratic family and was mostly William and Mary or Victorian with a hint of Tudor in the wing nearest the tiny chapel, but of the twentieth century there was little sign.
The damp seemed to follow him into the rough and tumble of the large entrance hall filled with tangled hunting dogs, mucky Wellington boots and a variety of anoraks and outer garments all struggling to dry. The floor tiles were badly chipped and there was not a hint of central-heating anywhere. It was the type of house which in many other parts had been rescued from decay by an expanding Japanese hotel group or golf-course consortium, but not here, not yet. He was glad he had declined the invitation to stay the night.
The Quillingtons traced their line back to the time when one of their ancestors had travelled to Ireland with Cromwell, collected his estates for bloody services rendered, and returned to England at the time of the Restoration to make a second fortune. It was a fine history, on which the current generation of Quillingtons, impoverished by time, misfortune and inadequate tax planning, reflected with awe. The estates had gradually been whittled away,
the ties with Ireland finally broken, many of the paintings sold, the best pieces of furniture and silver auctioned, the large staff pared. This was old money, and it was growing increasingly short.
Meeting the other guests proved something of a trial for the businessman. They were all old friends, some dating from nursery days and displaying the type of public-school clannishness boys from Bethnal Green find impossible to penetrate. His clothes hadn't helped. 'Country casual' he'd been told. He had turned up in a check two-piece with waistcoat and brown shoes; they were all wearing jeans. Not until Princess Charlotte greeted him warmly did he begin to feel less defensive.
The weekend had been built around the Princess. Arranged by Quillington's younger brother, David, it was an opportunity for her to relax amongst old friends away from the petty intrigues of London's socialites and gossip columnists. Here they were almost all scions of old families, some older than the Windsors, and to them she was a friend with a job to do, still the 'Beany' of childhood squabbles in the swimming pool and fancy-dress parties organized by po-faced nannies. She had insisted on a private bedroom well away from other guests and David had seen to all the arrangements, tidying the two detectives and chauffeur of the Royal Protection Group well away at the back of the house. The Princess had the Chinese Room, not so much a suite but more a single vast room on the first floor of the East Wing, with David occupying the only other bedroom on the floor. Her privacy was ensured.
There was a certain sadness in surveying the house with its ancient wiring, frayed edges, dank corners and one wing almost completely closed down, yet it had character and a great sense of history, and the dining room was magnificent. Fifty feet long, oak-panelled, lit by two fern-like chandeliers whose lights shone deep into a burnished table constructed from the timbers of an old Man o' War and crafted by prisoners from Napoleon's navy. The silver was old and monogrammed, the crystal assorted, the effect timeless. Old money, even in short supply, certainly knew how to eat. Quillington presided at the head of the table, on his right the Princess and on his left Landless, with others further down, and they listened politely to the publisher's stories of City life as their ancestors might have listened to explorer's tales of the South Sea islands.
After dinner they took their port and cognac into the Old Library, where the ceiling was high and the winter air clung tenaciously to the far corners, where leather-clad books were piled along endless shelves and smoke-darkened oil paintings covered the one free wall. Landless thought he could see marks on the wall where paintings had been removed, presumably for auction, with the remainder spread around a little more thinly. The furniture seemed as old as any part of the house. One of the two large sofas crowding around the roaring log fire was covered in a car rug to hide the ravages