A Question of Inheritance (2 page)

Sir Bernard went on. ‘He’s the Cultural Attaché at the Russian Embassy in London. A recent appointment. He’s been thoroughly vetted by our people there and by Special Branch. They put a tail on him, investigated his past history, all that kind of thing. He’s been pronounced clean, but they want a final word from us in case there’s any indication he was involved in intelligence back in the thirties.’

‘What exactly do you want me to do?’

‘Do a trawl through the records. It shouldn’t take long. They’ve done a thorough job on him in London, you can be sure of that. This is just to dot the i’s and cross the t’s. So they can sign off on him.’

That meant, Hugo knew, that Mr Zherdev would be demoted from the hot list and only checked on in a routine and superficial way once or twice a year.

‘They’re being fussy, if you ask me. This man was some kind of an actor before the war. He fought in the Red Army like any other patriotic Russian and then joined their foreign service. Not likely that the MGB would want him, is it?

Hugo looked down at the photo Sir Bernard had slid across the desk. He’d never heard of Aleksandr Zherdev, but he recognised the face in the photo. The last time he’d seen him had been in Berlin in 1946 and he’d known him as Gregor Orlov. A major in the MGB, the Soviet Ministry of State Security. One of Hugo’s contacts, and one who, as far as Hugo knew, hadn’t had dealings with any other of the Western intelligence officers who were in Berlin with the Army of Occupation.

Hugo said, ‘I’ll get on to it first thing in the morning.’

Sir Bernard said, ‘No, I want you to start right away. Brief Mrs Clutton and she can get straight on to it. Tell her you want every scrap of information relating to Zherdev.’

Hugo was annoyed. ‘I’d hoped to get away early today. The new Earl will be arriving at the Castle, and I feel I should be there.’

Sir Bernard looked up at that. ‘Lord Selchester? He’s coming today, is he? You’ve met him, of course. And that’ll mean you and that sister of yours will have to move out of the Castle, I suppose.’

Sir Bernard had lodged Hugo and Georgia at the Castle in September, when Hugo came to Selchester to take up his job at Thorn Hall. Accommodation was scarce in the town, and as a trustee to the missing Lord Selchester’s estate, Sir Bernard had no qualms about billeting the Hawksworths there.

‘We’ll move out after Christmas. I don’t suppose you’ve heard of anything in the accommodation line?’ Hugo said.

‘People in the town know that if anything becomes available, we always have people working at the Hall who need a place to live. You’ll find something; don’t worry about it. In one of the outlying villages, if not in Selchester.’

And wouldn’t that be fun. Hugo, to whom England had always meant London, had got used to living in Selchester. At least Selchester was a town. But digs in some rural hamlet in the depths of the countryside? No. That was a step too far, and Georgia would hate it.

Sir Bernard tapped his blotter with the base of his pen. ‘I think I might come along and welcome Lord Selchester myself. Tell you what, you go along and get started on that stuff and we’ll drive together to the Castle.’

Scene 5

By three o’clock in the afternoon, it was getting dark. A mist was rising from the river, and on this day of the winter solstice, the shortest day of the year, sunset was early.

Freya Wryton and Dinah Lindsey were sitting at the desk in Dinah’s little bookshop in Selchester, sorting out paperwork.

‘You’ve come back looking the picture of health, while the rest of us are beginning to take on our normal English winter, living-under-a-stone appearance,’ Freya said, as the pool of light from the desk lamp illuminated Dinah’s face. ‘In your shoes, I’d have stayed in Egypt longer. The warm climate obviously suited you.’

‘That’s all very well, but I have a business to run,’ Dinah said. She waved an arm at the shelves that lined the walls from floor to ceiling. The shop was tranquil and comforting, the bright colours of the book jackets contrasting with the small black panes of the bay window. ‘I’m so grateful to you for helping out here while I was away.’

Freya said, ‘I enjoyed it.’ Which was true, although she’d be glad to get back to her writing. She opened another box file and started leafing through a stack of invoices. ‘These are all in order. Everything’s up to date, and the ones that need dealing with are clipped together. I’ve added comments if there are any queries. Some of the bills need to be paid, but there’s nothing urgent.’ She looked at the clock that was attached to one of the beams. ‘I can’t stay much longer. I need to be back at the Castle before they arrive.’

Dinah didn’t need to ask who ‘they’ were. ‘How strange to discover that you’ve a cousin you knew nothing about. Although not half as nerve-wracking for you as for Sonia to discover she has a half-brother she didn’t know existed.’

Freya said, ‘Sonia’s not taking the news awfully well. Of course, there’s nothing she can do about it. Her half-brother inherits, and that’s that.’

Dinah thrust the last of the bills onto a spike and sat back. ‘I’ll go through the rest of these later. Tell me about the new Earl. When I left, the mystery of Selchester’s murder hadn’t been cleared up. The Earldom was due to lapse, Sonia was going to sell the Castle to a hotel group and all our lives were going to be turned upside down. I come back from six weeks among the pyramids and, lo and behold, a new Lord Selchester has popped up out of nowhere. How did it all come about?’

Freya said, ‘Some brilliant detective work by Hugo and me. And a lot of help from Hugo’s Uncle Leo. You never met him; you were in London when he arrived and then you went off to Egypt. You’ll get to know him soon enough, because he’s coming here for Christmas.’

‘It must be a bit of an upset for you at the Castle, having the new Earl come for Christmas. And I gather it’s not just him. Don’t look at me like that, I didn’t rush out the moment I got back to catch up on the gossip. As it happens, I’d hardly unlocked the door before Jamie came running over from the Daffodil Tearooms. Loud kisses, tut-tuts about my tan, “Nothing worse than the sun for the complexion, I’ll recommend a super cream,” and then to the heart of the matter.’

This didn’t surprise Freya; Jamie thrived on gossip. ‘He must be delighted to have someone who doesn’t know all about it. Although I dare say Jamie’s version won’t be accurate. He loves to embroider.’

‘No invalid wife, no five daughters?’

Freya laughed. ‘Jamie is outrageous. The new Lord Selchester is a widower. He has two daughters. One nearly grown-up, I think she’s seventeen, and a younger one who’s thirteen.’

‘It isn’t premature for them to move in? There’s no question about it? Has his claim to the title been proved? After all, it isn’t just the Earldom, there’s the land and money and the Castle.’

Freya said, ‘There’s no question of the inheritance; it’s now just a matter now of getting all the formalities dealt with. There’s the complication of his being an American. He can’t swear an oath of allegiance to the Crown if he’s an American citizen, and he can’t take a seat in the Lords without doing that. The lawyers are on the job and it will get sorted out soon. He’s rather bemused by it all, but really behaving very well.’

‘So now you’ll have to move out of the Castle. It’ll be a wrench for you to leave your tower. Any plans?’

Freya said, ‘I’m trying not think about it until Christmas is over. Gus has kindly said I can stay on for as long as I like, but it won’t do. And then there are Hugo and Georgia as well. We were rather hoping that Nightingale Cottage might come free. It would suit them perfectly, but . . .’

Dinah said, ‘That’s still going on, is it? But what about you? You could do with a cottage.’

‘I’ll find somewhere. If the worst comes to the worst, I expect that Eileen will give me a room. She won’t be doing B&B much before Easter.’

‘Come here. I’ve got a spare room. We can clear all the clutter and the books out, and you can install yourself with your typewriter. It isn’t the Castle, and it isn’t the Tower, but I promise I won’t expect you to work in the shop. You can get on with your own writing. I assume you’re still going to finish the family history?’

Freya was touched. ‘That’s decent of you, Dinah. I might have to take you up on it. But I need to find a place of my own. Don’t forget, there’s Magnus as well. Cats make you sneeze.’

The door opened and a delivery man came in with a box. ‘Two more in the van,’ he said breezily, as he dumped the box at Dinah’s feet. He was back in a few moments, stacked the other boxes and waited for Dinah to sign the docket.

Even as the delivery man was going out of the door, Dinah was opening the top box. ‘Thank goodness, the new Rosina Wyndhams. Just in time for Christmas – they’ll sell like hot cakes.’

She removed several copies of the book and began to stack them on a display table. She held one up to admire the cover, which depicted a Restoration beauty in a tight-waisted, low-cut crimson gown. ‘
Spoils of War
. Good title. I shall tuck one away for myself; the perfect Christmas read.’

‘You don’t think the cover’s a bit vulgar?’ Freya said.

‘No. And her stories may be racy, like the cover, but never vulgar.’

Which was praise as good as any glowing review, in Freya’s opinion.

‘I do wonder who she is. It’s a pseudonym, of course. I suspect they’re written by a vicar, with a remote parish in Lincolnshire.’

‘A vicar? Why?’

‘Because of the secrecy. It’s not natural for a bestselling author to remain so reticent; there must be a reason for it.’

Freya had a reason. Apart from an innate sense of privacy, she knew that her diplomat father, a conventional man of whom she was very fond, would be horrified to find out how she supported herself. As would the rest of her family. And as for the rewards of fame, she wanted none of them.

She looked at the clock again. ‘Lord, I must rush. Back to the family gathering. It’s not going to be the easiest of times. Mrs Partridge is in a state over them coming, so we’ve great preparations going on in the kitchen, and Georgia’s in a sulk. She likes being at the Castle and I think she’d started to feel settled and secure there. But she and Hugo would have to move in any case, if Sonia had inherited and sold the Castle.’ She pulled on her gloves and crammed a felt hat on her head. ‘I’ll try and get down tomorrow and tell you about it.’

Scene 6

Hugo thought about Orlov, aka Zherdev, as he went back to his office. Should he have come out with it to Sir Bernard? No. It was a poor photo, whose subject, if he was right, was a professional, accustomed to screen his face from any watching cameras. He might be mistaken; Zherdev could be someone else and clean as a whistle.

Or he might not.

Hugo’s mind went back to Berlin 1945. A ruined city, on the edge of chaos. The German civilian population was living in a state of borderline starvation with all kinds of occupying troops in Berlin who were involved in everything from organising the gangs of women clearing the rubble, to the de-Nazification of key scientists, to black market smuggling. There were rich pickings to be had in Berlin in those days.

Food, drugs – the medicinal kind; tobacco, whisky.

And art, which was how he’d met Orlov.

The Russian had arranged a meeting through an intermediary and Hugo, wary but curious, had duly turned up at the bar that Orlov had specified.

Orlov came swiftly to the point in excellent English. He had information to impart and had decided that Hugo was the best man to deal with it.

‘Let us understand one another. We do the same job, but we are essentially enemies. Our ideals are opposed. You believe in democracy; I know that the future lies with communism. However, there are some areas where we share values. I hate the Nazis, with a hatred as vast and deep as is my love for Mother Russia. I fought them in the war, and I am still fighting them now.’

‘The war is over.’

‘Please do not be flippant. I know that your detestation of Nazism and all it stands for is as strong as mine. That is why I’ve made contact with you. I want to tell you about some bronzes.’

‘Bronzes?’ What had bronzes – what kind of bronzes? – to do with him? Or with an MGB major, although Hugo was beginning to wonder if the man really was what he appeared to be.

‘Be patient. I am not here to waste your time. I’m talking about a collection of Italian bronzes. Unique works of art, which are exquisite and worth a fortune.’

As they both knew, when the Russian army took Berlin, they removed anything that wasn’t nailed down and sent it back to the Soviet Union. This included everything from everyday objects, which admittedly were hard to find in the Soviet Union, to art treasures. There were stories of vaults in Russia filled with famous paintings, of mines stuffed with antiquities, of packing cases of priceless porcelain stored in the cellars of drab official buildings.

None of this was within Hugo’s remit. He waited for Orlov to explain.

‘For reasons I shall not go into, I had to acquire these bronzes. No, I am not dealing in the black market. I was obeying orders.’

Orders from some more senior officer in the MGB who collected bronzes? Hugo doubted it. Such a request would give Orlov too much power over his boss.

‘These bronzes had not been looted by the Nazis. There was nothing suspect about how they came to be in Germany. They’d long been in the possession of an aristocratic family, one of the
von und zu
lot. The family came through the war comparatively unscathed, which duly brought the eye of authority on them: had they been Nazis?’

‘Even so, you bought these bronzes from them?’

‘No, because they no longer owned them.’

There was nothing unusual in that. Families brought to poverty would have sold their grandmothers if there’d been a market for them.

‘So who did?’

‘A certain British Army officer.’

Distasteful, but not criminal. A rich Army officer could do well if he had a collector’s habit.

‘After we had concluded our deal, I did some asking around and that’s when I put two and two together. This officer was one of the team involved with de-Nazification.’