Death by Sheer Torture by Robert Barnard Page A

mischief-making.’
    ‘Of which your late papa knew a thing or two. Precisely. Anyway I did a bit of work on it, from the family papersand that, but by then it had all begun to die down and I dropped it. I might have done more if Uncle Lawrence had been willing to pay me, but that would have been out of the question, knowing the dear old phoney.’
    ‘Are the family finances rocky?’
    Mordred turned his eyes in the direction of the horizon: we could see Thornwick in the distance, and some prosperous housing estates of a private kind in between.
    ‘I don’t see how they can be, do you? It’s all ours, all that. Still ours. Lawrence should be bathing in the stuff.’
    ‘That’s not quite the impression given.’
    ‘You noticed the inclination to pinch the odd penny, did you?’
    ‘I never expected supermarket sherry in this house.’
    ‘Precisely. Though we’re all good children and say we prefer it. If you’d like a guess at the reason for all this, I’d say it’s because he hasn’t been able to bring himself to make the house and all the doings over to Pete.’
    ‘Of course!’ I said. ‘So the death duties —’
    ‘Will be colossal. The only time I ever remember the subject coming up, he muttered: “Heed the Bard. Remember King Lear.” I suppose he foresees himself being turned out into a Corporation old people’s home—our modern equivalent of the heath. I imagine he’s penny-pinching in anticipation of death duties—though that doesn’t quite make sense either, unless he’s salting it away somewhere secret. The fact is, Uncle Lawrence is only passing fond of Peter, but he absolutely dotes on the Squealies.’
    ‘So I noticed. He’s totally senile, I take it.’
    ‘Only so-so. He can tell a hawk from a handsaw when the wind’s southerly. Anyway, the fact is, it could be Lawrence putting the pictures up for sale, as is his perfect right.’
    ‘And being too embarrassed to say?’
    ‘Exactly. So what you’ve got here is either a fine old canof worms, or conceivably a storm in a teacup.
    ‘Had all this caused much trouble—for example, between my father and Uncle Lawrence?’
    ‘Not that I noticed. There was no more than the normal quota of sniping, heavy ironies, double-edged innuendoes and so on—the usual currency of communication in this house.’
    We had been walking through the golden trees, under falling leaves, and we now arrived back at the lawn behind the house. Mordred paused in the shade of a tree.
    ‘See that window in the Elizabethan wing?’ he said. ‘That’s Peter’s sitting-room.’
    ‘I know. I spied on him last night. I saw Maria-Luisa clock him with a whisky glass.’
    ‘Good for her. Now, in that window is my cousin—our cousin—Pete. And I bet you anything you like that if you walk across this lawn alone he will call you in and pump you for all you’re worth.’
    ‘How do you know?’
    ‘I know Cousin Pete. Inheritor of Harpenden House, and future head of the Trethowan family.’
    He started off in the direction of the Florentine wing, but I caught his arm and kept him a moment longer in the shadow.
    ‘Morrie—if my wife comes here, can I rely on you?’
    ‘What? To see they all behave themselves?’
    ‘No—to make sure they don’t. I want her to see them at their worst. I couldn’t bear a big reconciliation, with family visits in the summer hols.’
    ‘I’ll do my best, but I should hardly think it will be necessary. With nerves all tensed up as they are now, anything can happen.’
    With which prophecy of ferment Morrie trotted off happily in the direction of the Florentine wing—his tie as straight as when he had emerged, his shoes as spick and dust-free. There are some men nature can’t touch.
    But he was dead right about Pete. Because I was just strolling, oh so casual, in the direction of the main block, when he appeared in his sitting-room window.
    ‘Oh, I say, Perry—’ I turned coolly. ‘I say, are you at leisure, or on the beat, as