Lord Mullion's Secret by Michael Innes Page B

company. At the library door they encountered Savine, who looked at them reproachfully. At the castle, after-dinner coffee was taken in the drawing-room. Perhaps Savine felt that it was growing cold there – or perhaps that the prescriptive interval had already passed beyond which the ladies ought not to be left to their own devices.
    â€˜Reliable man, Savine,’ Lord Mullion said to Honeybath when the door had closed behind him. ‘Strong on security, and keeps everything under his own hand. He’s a great comfort to us all – eh, Cyprian?’
    â€˜Regular nannie,’ Cyprian said sulkily. ‘He keeps a damned sight too much of an eye on things, if you ask me. If I drop into his pantry for something, he bloody well makes me feel I ought to be signing for it as if in some rotten club.’
    As by ‘something’ it was to be suspected that Lord Wyndowe meant whisky or brandy, this small demonstration a little lacked edification. His father, however, was, as usual, unruffled by what he no doubt regarded still as mere adolescent gracelessness. Being an heir in a place like this, Honeybath thought, must have its irritations and be conducive to mild frictions. Boosie as a rebel was more attractive than her brother.
    The library was a lofty and enormous room, none too well-lit at any time, and surely uncommonly chilly for much of the year. But Lord Mullion looked round it with complacency.
    â€˜Martin moles around here a great deal,’ he said to Honeybath. ‘Martin’ was the Reverend Dr Atlay. ‘Turned up a good deal of soil lately, Martin – and the family skeletons along with it?’ Lord Mullion invited innocent laughter at this pleasantry, but it appeared to take the vicar a little aback.
    â€˜There is work in progress, my dear Mullion,’ he said. ‘That is how a scholar would express the matter. And where family papers are abundant one never knows what one may turn up next. But I shall think twice before disinterring any skeletons. It is a disagreeable operation even in a churchyard. I should certainly not wish to undertake it rashly in a library.’
    â€˜But what about making dry bones live, eh?’ It appeared to be with some further whimsical intention that Lord Mullion produced this biblical reference. ‘Plenty of theology,’ he continued, as if continuing this process of associative thinking. ‘But I’ve never much looked at it. I’ll leave that to Cyprian, when he decides to take holy orders. It’s a long time since an Earl of Mullion turned himself into a bishop as well. He might begin as your curate, Martin. Lowest rung of the ladder, you know. Learn the job from the bottom, like lads the business chaps perch on high stools in their counting-houses. Think it over, Cyprian.’
    Cyprian produced another of his scowls, for which Honeybath didn’t altogether blame him. The future owner of Castle Mullion clad in purple and lawn was as bizarre a notion as the archaic one of young gentlemen of less distinguished lineage perched in front of ledgers. Henry was a man of temperate habit (probably unlike his brother Sylvanus) but inclined, it seemed, to gamesomeness after his couple of glasses of port. He had also turned a little vague, and for a moment even seemed disorientated in his own library.
    â€˜Let me see,’ he said. ‘I rather think–’
    â€˜In the window embrasure, my dear Mullion.’ Dr Atlay had taken his host by the arm. ‘The showcase with the velvet cover, you know. The cover is to ward off any direct rays from the sun.’
    â€˜To be sure – and here the little chaps are.’ Lord Mullion had whisked away the cover indicated to him. ‘Wonderful things in their way, and I can’t think how the fellow managed them. Paintbrushes like needles, he must have had. And the result, I don’t doubt, as authentic as the latest tiptop colour photography. But artistically in