T A Williams - Secrets at Toplingham Manor

‘So, if you’re not an academic, what do you do for a living, Douglas?’ Tina found she liked the look of this one. She had always had a thing for tough guys. The faint scars on Douglas Scott’s face spoke of an eventful life. ‘Nightclub bouncer, maybe?’ His hand was still on her shoulder. She didn’t mind.

‘Call me Duggie. Everybody does. No, far worse than that, I’m afraid. I sell houses.’

She grimaced. ‘Oh God, that’s disgusting!’ She gave him a broad smile. ‘And I thought this was a posh establishment.’

‘Nothing posh about me, darling.’ He was grinning too.

At that moment, a burst of applause told him that the speech was over.

‘Tina, I’m afraid I have to leave you for a short while. You won’t go anywhere now, will you?’

He slipped regretfully back towards the stage. Tina watched his muscular back depart and reflected how refreshing it was to meet somebody fun for a change. Somehow, most of the folk she met in the Geography Department were so terribly earnest. She decided that this particular bad boy merited closer inspection.

Roger was already off the stage and in the middle of some bumbling apology to Linda for something or other. Duggie cut him short.

‘Come on, Rog, let’s get some more champagne open and get you rat-arsed.’

Linda giggled at the thought, and accompanied the two men across the room. This time Roger managed to behave almost normally. All three of them made a point of stopping to talk to the guests. Both the mayor and the vice-chancellor received the attentions of the man himself. By the time they reached the bar, Linda was feeling more like the hostess than the personal assistant of the host.

As if reading her thoughts, Roger leant over, laid his hand on her arm and whispered, ‘I don’t know what I’d do without you, Linda.’

She beamed and waited for more. But that was it. This rare moment of natural human affection would, she knew full well, probably have to do her for the next six months. Tomorrow or the next day, he would once more plunge into his labyrinthine world of medieval politics and power struggles. She gave a mental shrug and returned to the task in hand, oblivious to the face of Rosie Barnes in the crowd to their left. The girl was staring bleakly at Roger as he clasped Linda’s arm. The expression of adoration on Roger’s face said it all. Her hopes dashed, Rosie turned back into the crowd, tears in her eyes. She was so upset, she didn’t even register the effect her audacious décolleté was having on every other man in the room.

‘I haven’t seen any of your family, Roger. Have you? Did any of your relations come?’

Linda had been responsible for sending out the invitations, so she knew that the few relatives who had been invited were of the very distant variety.

‘I haven’t seen any.’ Roger took another good look round, just in case. ‘Mind you, I’m not sure I would recognise any of them, even if they did decide to come.’

Duggie appeared with glasses of champagne. He knew Roger and his family better than most. As boys, the two of them had been inseparable. ‘They’re probably miffed that old Uncle Eustace left it all to you. You did have some pretty weird relatives though, didn’t you? What was your cousin’s name? William, wasn’t it? The one who looked like Dracula. He must be hopping mad. Mind you, thinking about it, he’d be like a hundred years old by now. I imagine he’s no longer with us.’

Linda looked across at Roger’s face. He still hadn’t fully come to terms with his great good fortune. Being left a thirty-six room mansion, along with the rental income from a street of Georgian houses in Hampstead, had turned him into a very wealthy man. But he wasn’t making plans to buy a Caribbean island, or a villa in St Tropez. Professor Roger Dalby had other things on his mind. Predictably, his intention was to concentrate entirely on his research into the life of Saint Bernard. Linda was not in the least surprised to hear the B-word on her boss’s lips at that very moment.

‘Champagne was the cradle of civilisation in Bernard’s day, you know. And yet, they never got round to making the sparkling wine itself till the later Middle Ages.’ He was staring down into his full glass of champagne, musing out loud to nobody in particular.

Determined not to let him retreat into the past, Duggie was quick to snap him out of it. ‘Bloody hell, Rog, can’t you think about anything else? So tell me something. Why did they call those big hairy dogs after the old boy then? Surely he didn’t have a tail and a barrel round his neck?’

‘No, of course not. It was the abbey…’ He stopped. Even Professor Roger Dalby knew when he was being made fun of.

‘You could do with a dog in the new house, you know.’ Duggie drained his champagne glass just in time to slip it onto a passing tray and replace it with another. Chivalrously he offered it to Linda, but she waved it away with a light shake of the head. He remembered that she rarely drank. This was something else she had in common with her boss. She turned back to Roger, catching his arm in her eagerness.

‘Oh yes, Roger, get a dog please. It would be such great company.’ Her eyes sparkled and her hand on his arm felt good. Eager to please her, he immediately agreed. In fact, if she had suggested getting a giraffe, his reaction would probably have been the same.

‘Of course. We must have a dog. There is so much land at the new place, we could have a whole pack of them.’

She thrilled at the use of the pronoun we , but made no comment.

‘Will you help me select one, please?’ Delighted to see her nod, he carried on. ‘I suppose we could even consider a Saint Bernard…’ This time both of them groaned as one, so he hastily qualified it with a vague ‘or whatever…’.

Then, to the surprise of both of them, he did not dive back into the Middle Ages.

‘I hardly knew Uncle Eustace at all, you know.’ His voice was low.

‘Did you ever meet him?’ Linda prompted him gently, conscious that personal revelations did not come easy to him. She was rewarded by an unambiguous answer.

‘Only at the funeral.’ He paused to clear his throat. ‘My parents were both killed in a car crash. I was only nineteen. I was halfway through my first year at Cambridge when they had the accident. It all seemed so surreal somehow. One moment I was a normal student in the process of breaking away from my parents and then, overnight, they were dead.’

He swallowed the glass of champagne in one gulp before carrying on. The expression on his face was bleak. It took the thirty-five years of rigorous training in the suppression of her emotions by her Methodist parents to stop Linda from sweeping him into her arms and clutching him to her breast. She did at least grip his arm tightly. Duggie reached out to a passing waitress and replaced the empty glass with another full one. Roger didn’t even notice. He carried on.

‘I didn’t see him in the church. It was outside in the churchyard in the pouring rain. After that awful bit, where you pick up a handful of earth and drop it into the grave, I suddenly felt an arm around my shoulders. A flask of brandy was pushed into my hand. I took a mouthful and turned to see him; a mane of black hair and a beard and moustache like one of the Merovingian kings.’

There was a pause, during which both Linda and Duggie waited for him to veer off, and take refuge in his own private medieval world. But, to their surprise and gratification, he persevered in the modern era.

‘He gave me a hug and told me he was the black sheep of the family. That’s what he said, “the black sheep”. He said he had loved his sister very dearly and regretted the fact he had seen so little of her. Then he kissed me on both cheeks and left without another word. Can’t have been with me for more than thirty seconds. It was only that night I found the hipflask in my pocket. It had McKinnon Marine etched in the side. That was my mother’s maiden name: McKinnon.’ He paused awkwardly, as if regretting this rare glimpse into his personal life.