Oxfordshire, 1929.
“That’s Augustus House, sir.” The chauffeur intoned politely
with a nod towards the sprawling residence that had finally come into view. Fleets
Lane shifted slightly in his seat in order to gain a better look and then let out a
small breath of surprise. The house was imposing in its ugliness. Its stone was
weathered to a grim grey and the effect was left unsoftened by a lack of surrounding
foliage. Lane was reminded of Shelley’s Frankenstein for as the motor-car drew
closer it became clear that the house had been cobbled together from different
parts over the centuries. A medieval great hall was sandwiched between
neoclassical columns, whilst this was all flanked by great curvilinear wings that
were currently the height of fashion.
“It’s not hard to believe that the family will soon be suffering
financial woes looking at that heap of bricks.” Lane’s companion remarked quietly.
Tyler Hill was a bit of a mathematics genius and Lane had little doubt that his
mind had already calculated the cost of each of those bricks and subtracted it
from the annual income of the estate. It was perhaps as a result of this
analytical approach that Lane could detect none of his own admiration on the
young man’s face. Hill saw only the decaying edifice that would slowly bleed
away profit margins, whilst Lane was old enough to appreciate the family
heritage preserved within each cracked stone.
“How bad have they been affected?” Lane kept his voice low
so that their probing of the family’s private affairs was kept from the
liveried chauffeur. Lord Bowles, the owner of Augustus House, was an American
and only a month before the American stock market at Wall Street had crashed. Hill
had calculated that in a worst case scenario the effects would be felt by
economies all over the world for at least a decade. For Augustus House and its
inhabitants, however, the effect would likely be far worse.
“It’s serious. They’ll probably need to sell the house and
estate to recoup their losses.” Lane shook his head, his dark eyes solemn.
“Yet another old family who will be forced to sell their
ancestral home. The world is changing.” He murmured more to himself than Hill.
He could remember a time before the war, before the world had been turned
upside down. Lane had grown up on an estate like Augustus House. On his
return from the Front he had gone back, but the farm where his family had lived
and worked was gone, along with the family and servants up at the big house. The
war had of course changed everything, including the direction of his own life.
The injury he had sustained for King and Country ultimately forced him to
retire from the police force and to set up his own practice as a private investigator.
“It’s only tenuously an ancestral home now though, sir.”
Hill’s logic drew Lane’s attention back to the present. “The current Lord
Bowles was a very distant cousin of the late Lord Bowles, and it was the
marriage between the cousin and the daughter which meant that the title and the
estate could remain intact.” Hill was too young to remember the war and the
unreserved respect that had previously been thought owing to the aristocratic
class. Despite any youthful inexperience, Hill’s precise reasoning and talent
for detecting patterns and connections made him an invaluable assistant to
Lane’s investigations.
“The Bowles’ are a relation of Lady Granchester, I believe.
We recovered her diamonds last year, which is presumably why Lord Bowles contacted
us particularly.” Lane mused as he thought of the terse telegram that had
requested their immediate presence in Oxfordshire. Yet there had been no
mention of the matter which actually required their professional services. There
was, however, little time for any further speculation by the pair for the
chauffeur was pulling around the large turning circle.
Lane and Hill had arrived.
No comments:
Post a Comment