Read Online Christmas at Candleshoe by Michael Innes - Free Book Online

To obtain further information here, however, requires some delicacy of approach. She waits until her hostess, with a solicitude incumbent upon the owner of the peccant hound, makes further reference to the absent Grant. She then embarks upon some general observation about her son.
    ‘Grant won’t at all mind that mite of attention from your dog – certainly not from a fine dog like that. Grant can take some hard knocks without complaining. He’s an open-air boy, although fond of his books as well. Grant has a fancy to be a writer. And I’m prepared to back him in that. Only I do wish I had another son to take control of some of the family concerns.’
    ‘ Some of the family concerns?’ Miss Candleshoe is gratifyingly interrogative.
    ‘Not perhaps the railroad interests. Nor even the oil. But I did have a fancy he might spend a year or two looking after the ranches. The Feathers have always enjoyed raising cattle. They pack more of it than most other folk, but they’ve always preferred to deal with it when still on the hoof. Coming myself from people who have never gone outside steel, I find that attractive. When my husband was alive, we used to spend weeks in the saddle, getting round one place or another.’
    Miss Candleshoe’s glance goes to the decanter. She is conceivably reflecting that her visitor is worth another glass. But she contents herself with regretting her own lack of acquaintance with the American colonies.
    Mrs Feather accepts this as an entirely gracious observation. ‘And until this present generation there always have been Feathers to take over. And that’s a great thing. Property – landed property, say – must always mean less when there isn’t an heir.’
    Miss Candleshoe remarks that commonly there is an heir somewhere. When an heir seems to be lacking in England, one generally turns up from across the Atlantic. Persons of rustic or menial conditions have been known so to turn up – she believes from what Mrs Feather would call the prairies – and make successful claims on earldoms and baronies. But such episodes, which are on the whole to be deprecated, rarely occur among the landed gentry. It is clear to Mrs Feather that Miss Candleshoe takes a poor view of the nobility. Mrs Feather makes a note to suppress her own devious connection with an Irish peerage – a circumstance upon which she has at times found it advantageous to touch – and to bring in the Buckinghamshire squires when opportunity offers. Meanwhile she sets out upon a further exploratory movement. ‘I do know, of course, how things are very different over here. I mean with the sale of family properties and matters of that sort. Some of our lawyers reckon to be pretty good at tying things up, and there are more trusts and the like in our family than I’d care to count. But here these matters are still on a feudal basis, and a lot of your places are pretty elaborately entailed. I’ve heard that even when two generations see eye to eye in such a business a really strict entail can be hard to break.’
    Miss Candleshoe now definitely reaches for the Madeira. Her own property, she offers, is an instance in point. Although not extensive, nor at all certainly associated with the Candleshoes until after the Norman Conquest, its tenure is believed to be a matter of the most amazing intricacy. Her brother Sir James – who reluctantly accepted the convention of knighthood on becoming Solicitor-General – used frequently to discuss it in her hearing with fellow lawyers deeply versed in conveyancing. Miss Candleshoe believes that if the property were to be disposed of there would certainly be a question of Crown prerogative. Moreover she positively knows – what is very vexatious – that she has mislaid the deeds of both home paddocks. But neither of these obstacles, perhaps, would prove insurmountable should sufficient – abundantly sufficient – occasion be presented for tackling them.
    Mrs Feather, who is far from an