A Mansion and its Murder by Robert Barnard

when he said this. Cousin Anselm was what we today would call smarmy.
    ‘Tried that. Didn’t work,’ said Uncle Frank, with a return to more satirical tones. ‘Too much of each other just shows us how hopeless it is.’
    ‘Not us,’ said Mary.
    ‘Me.’
    ‘The truth of the matter is,’ came the impatient tones of my grandfather, ‘that the boy made no effort to fulfil his side of the agreement.’
    I think all this talk of love, of relationships, was inimical to Grandpapa. Contracts, bargains, agreements were more in his line.
    ‘I made every effort to fulfil my side of the agreement, and did so,’ Uncle Frank said now.
    ‘Then how does it happen that the marriage has come to the sorry state it is now in? Husband and wife separate in the same house. It’s unnatural.’
    ‘No, it was the marriage itself that was unnatural.’
    ‘You are an unmanly cad to describe it so in the presence of your wife.’
    ‘Mary knows my feelings. She had no illusions.’
    His wife’s voice rang out.
    ‘I have feelings! Do you think you don’t cruelly hurt me when you talk about our marriage like this in front of people?’
    ‘I thought it was precisely to talk about our marriage that this whole confabulation was set up.’
    ‘My feelings have never been thought about, not from the very first. You say you were pressured into the marriage. But a marriage is a union of two persons. What about me? What about what I was led to expect? The position I would occupy? Is it any wonder I’m dissatisfied with what I actually got?’
    ‘No. No wonder at all. So let’s end it.’
    ‘Think, Frank dear,’ came the voice of Aunt Clare ‘how children may alter things, as Jane has said. They would bring you together.’
    ‘We have a child. He has driven us further apart.’
    ‘How can you compare that … that child with the children we might have?’ demanded Mary. She was getting on to dangerous ground, but seemed totally reckless.
    ‘How can I? Because I love him.’
    ‘You don’t love him. You can’t. Nobody could. You pretend to love him to annoy me , tomake people think I am an unnatural mother.’
    ‘I don’t care in the slightest how people think of you. I love Richard. I have an idea that when he grows up he will be a better person than any of us.’
    ‘That’s just silly fantasy,’ came Mary’s contemptuous voice.
    ‘Better than us,’ insisted Uncle Frank. ‘Because some of the things that make us what we are won’t develop in him: greed, jealousy, love of status and position.’
    ‘They won’t develop in him because he is an idiot.’
    There was a second of silence, then Uncle Frank hissed, ‘Don’t use that word!’
    ‘He’s a cretin, then.’
    Another silence, then a carefully controlled Frank seemed to turn on the whole assembly around him.
    ‘All right. He’s a cretin. Shall I tell you why he is a cretin? Either it’s because my family insisted on using an expensive nincompoop at the birth, or else it’s because Nature, having created generation after generation of covetous, pushing individuals – greedy gentry, greedy bankers, it makes no great difference – finally said: “We’ve got to strike a balance. We’ve got to show thathuman beings can be something else, too.” And so it gave us Richard. A wonderful gift.’
    Mary’s voice was hard and ungiving as rock.
    ‘You’re talking fantasy. He’s only a baby. And when he grows up he will be the mock of the neighbourhood.’
    ‘Not if I have anything to do with it.’
    ‘A rich idiot. Pointed at by everyone.’ The venom in her voice was palpable even outside in the chill night air. She hated the son who had been born to her, perhaps because she regarded his birth as personal shame.
    ‘You really enjoy saying things like that, don’t you? Idiot, cretin. You cold, unfeeling bitch!’
    ‘Frank!’ It was Grandmama’s voice again.
    ‘I enjoy the truth,’ said Mary, her voice rising higher. ‘He’ll be a moron, and he’ll have to