Only Time Will Tell (The Clifton Chronicles, #1)(53)

Hugo had wanted two sons, an heir and a spare. Emma was an inconvenience, which meant he’d have to try again. His father had been a second child and lost his older brother fighting the Boers in South Africa. Hugo’s older brother had been killed at Ypres, along with half his regiment. So, in time, Hugo could expect to succeed his father as chairman of the company and, when his father died, to inherit the title and the family fortune.

So he and Elizabeth would have to try again. Not that making love to his wife was a pleasure any more. In fact, he couldn’t remember if it ever had been. Recently he’d been looking for distractions elsewhere.

‘Yours is a marriage made in heaven,’ his mother used to say. His father was more practical. He had felt that bringing together his elder son and the only daughter of Lord Harvey was more of a merger than a marriage. When Hugo’s brother was killed on the Western Front, his fiancée was passed on to Hugo. No longer a merger, more of a takeover. Hugo wasn’t surprised to discover on his wedding night that Elizabeth was a virgin; his second virgin, in fact.

Elizabeth finally emerged from the dressing room, apologizing, as she always did, for keeping him waiting. The journey from the Manor House to Barrington Hall was only a couple of miles, and all the land in between the two houses belonged to the family. By the time Hugo and Elizabeth entered his parents’ drawing room at a few minutes past eight, Lord Harvey was already on his second sherry. Hugo glanced around the room at the other guests. There was only one couple he didn’t recognize.

His father immediately took him across and introduced him to Colonel Danvers, the recently appointed chief constable of the county. Hugo decided not to mention his meeting that morning with Detective Inspector Blakemore to the colonel, but just before they sat down for dinner, he took his father on one side to bring him up to date on the theft, never once mentioning the name of Arthur Clifton.

Over a dinner of game soup, succulent lamb and green beans, followed by crème br?lée, the conversation ranged from the Prince of Wales’s visit to Cardiff and his less than helpful remarks about sympathizing with the mine workers, to Lloyd George’s latest import tariffs and the effect they would have on the shipping industry, and George Bernard Shaw’s Heartbreak House, which had recently opened to mixed reviews at the Old Vic Theatre, before returning to the Prince of Wales and the vexed question of how to find him a suitable wife.

When the servants had cleared the table after dessert, the ladies retired to the drawing room to enjoy coffee, while the butler offered the gentlemen brandy or port.

‘Shipped by me and imported by you,’ said Sir Walter, raising a glass to Lord Harvey while the butler circled the table offering cigars to the guests. Once Lord Harvey’s Romeo y Julieta had been lit to his satisfaction, he turned to his son-in-law and said, ‘Your father tells me that some blighter broke into your office and stole a large amount of cash.’

‘Yes, that’s correct,’ Hugo replied. ‘But I’m pleased to say they’ve caught the thief. Sadly he turned out to be one of our stevedores.’

‘Is that right, Danvers?’ asked Sir Walter. ‘You’ve caught the man?’

‘I did hear something about it,’ responded the chief constable, ‘but I wasn’t told that anybody had been charged yet.’

‘Why not?’ demanded Lord Harvey.

‘Because the man is saying that I gave him the money,’ Hugo interjected. ‘In fact, when the detective inspector questioned me this morning, I began to wonder which one of us was the criminal, and which the injured party.’

‘I’m sorry to hear you feel that way,’ said Colonel Danvers. ‘May I ask who the officer in charge of the investigation was?’

‘Detective Inspector Blakemore,’ said Hugo, before adding, ‘I got the impression he might have a grudge against our family.’

‘When you employ as many people as we do,’ said Sir Walter, placing his glass back on the table, ‘there’s bound to be the odd person who bears a grudge.’

‘I must admit,’ said Danvers, ‘that Blakemore’s not known for his tact. But I’ll look into the matter, and if I feel he’s overstepped the mark I’ll assign someone else to the case.’





22


SCHOOLDAYS ARE THE happiest days of your life, claimed R.C. Sherriff, but that had not been Hugo Barrington’s experience. Although he had a feeling that Giles would, as his father put it, ‘make a better fist of things’.

Hugo tried to forget what had happened on his first day at school, some twenty-four years ago. He’d been driven to St Bede’s in a hansom carriage, accompanied by his father, mother and elder brother Nicholas, who had just been appointed school captain. Hugo had burst into tears when another new bug had innocently asked, ‘Is it true your grandfather was a docker?’ Sir Walter was proud his father had ‘pulled himself up by his bootstraps’, but with eight-year-olds, first impressions stick. ‘Grandpa was a docker! Grandpa was a docker! Cry baby! Cry baby!’ chanted the rest of the dorm.

Today his son Giles would be driven to St Bede’s in Sir Walter Barrington’s Rolls-Royce. Hugo had wanted to take his son to school in his own car, but his father wouldn’t hear of it. ‘Three generations of Barringtons have been educated at St Bede’s and Eton. My heir must arrive in style.’