Read Online Lord Mullion's Secret by Michael Innes - Free Book Online

friendly.’
    â€˜Glad to hear it, Charles. Was it Gore, did you say? A promising lad, I believe, and certainly not morose like so many of them. Willing, if not particularly bright, I imagine.’
    â€˜Swithin Gore is very bright indeed, papa.’ Patty had come out with this swiftly – and struck Honeybath as instantly surprised, and perhaps annoyed, that she had done so.
    â€˜Agreed,’ Boosie said. ‘I’ve flirted with Swithin like mad, and his heart is quite gorgeously adamant. He’s amused, but he knows everything not to do or say. Which doesn’t hold of all Eton and King’s – or not in my experience.’
    This extravagance didn’t please young Lord Wyndowe, who said something crude about pig-tailed brats looking for kicks from clod-hoppers. Honeybath suspected it didn’t please Patty either. It certainly didn’t please her mother, who changed the subject.
    â€˜I’m so glad, Mr Honeybath, that you have turned up today and not tomorrow. Wednesdays are terribly restless, and Saturdays are, too.’
    â€˜Ah, yes, Charles!’ Lord Mullion broke in. ‘I was going to tell you, wasn’t I? The place is open to the public on those days, and at this time of year they pile in like mad. It’s quite a problem. We can’t hide in the attics, because that’s where Prince Rupert lodged his officers and held his councils of war. There are maps on the walls and cannon-balls in the fireplaces and even plumed hats on the clothes pegs. So they all have to be shown, and we have to skulk where we can.’
    â€˜Or be shown ourselves,’ Boosie said.
    â€˜Just so, my dear. I sometimes wish we’d remained papists for longer than we did, and had provided the castle with a clutch of priest’s holes. They’d come in handy.’ This was evidently one of Lord Mullion’s well-worn jokes. ‘However, I think we can hide you away, Charles.’
    â€˜Perhaps,’ Cyprian said, ‘Mr Honeybath would like to pay at the turnstile and be taken round.’
    For the first time since his arrival, Honeybath observed Lord Mullion to frown. Rightly or wrongly, he had regarded this sally of his son’s as hinting insolence.
    â€˜Don’t be foolish, Cyprian. And, by the way, please don’t do just that again yourself. Once or twice was a passable joke, but after that it involves a lack of consideration to the people who are good enough to help us run the thing.’
    â€˜Very well, sir.’ Cyprian, although not pleased at being publicly rebuked, looked at his father without resentment. Honeybath told himself that here was a household getting along with no more than moderate friction. If anyone went in for belligerency it was probably Boosie. And, indeed, Boosie had a fling now.
    â€˜Cyprian,’ she explained to Honeybath, ‘paid at the door, and attached himself to a party, and kept on asking silly questions. It was an old friend of the family, Miss Kinder-Scout, who was taking round that particular lot, and of course she knew Cyprian perfectly well. She must have been rather upset.’
    â€˜It must certainly have been a little surprising.’
    â€˜But he did something sillier still.’ Lady Lucy Wyndowe (to give Boosie her proper name) seemed not a particularly tactful child, and she had a sisterly indictment to press home. ‘He’d taken care to leave his own silver cigarette case on a table in the library, and when he thought that Miss Kinder-Scout wasn’t looking and that several visitors were, he put out a stealthy hand and pocketed the thing. One flinches from the thought of peering inside the head of anybody who could put on so idiotic a turn.’
    â€˜It was an experiment in the psychology of crowd behaviour,’ Cyprian said calmly. ‘You know what one reads about it. Half a dozen people see a silver-haired old gentleman being robbed, or a blind beggar being beaten up, or a