A Family Affair Read Free Page B

father. He’s an old-fashioned character, by the way. And we’re landed with rather a large house, you know. A useless great place, crammed with every sort of junk. Bobby, isn’t that right? You’ve been and had a look at us.’
    ‘Entirely right,’ Bobby said. ‘Lywards must have been magpies for generations.’
    Appleby noted the name. It rang some sort of bell. A muted Field or Country Life sort of bell. The youth called Oswyn, he conjectured, must be Lord Oswyn Lyward.
    ‘Different sorts of magpie,’ Oswyn said, ‘from generation to generation. Some quite early ones were pretty hot, I’d say. Tended to find themselves possessed of bits and pieces by Cellini–’
    ‘Cellini?’ somebody interrupted with interest. ‘Didn’t he write a dirty book?’
    ‘Very moderately so, Robin. You’re probably thinking of Casanova. Bits and pieces by Cellini, as I was saying, or a few nice little family miniatures by Nicholas Hilliard. But then we’d revert to type – you people must stop me if I get boring in a family way – and accumulate the most frightful things – or at least the just-not-good-enough things. My great-grandfather, for instance, went in for Etty.’
    ‘Etty’s all right,’ somebody protested. ‘I’d like an Etty.’
    ‘My dear Charles, a nude lady by Etty, belly-forward and standing chastely in the middle of a waterfall, is not the same thing as a nude lady by Boucher, splayed bottom-up on a sofa. Sancta simplicitas .’
    ‘ Mais tous les deux ,’ Bobby murmured, ‘ ont senti la chair .’
    ‘Isn’t this rather losing direction?’ Mr Moyle asked.
    ‘Only because Bobby’s showing off,’ Oswyn said. ‘Anyway, the point is that my father, unlike quite a number of my family a bit nearer to Noah’s Ark, is no sort of virtuoso or curioso . He spent a lot of time in India, you know, but his morals were at least wholly uncorrupted by all that shocking sculpture and so on. He went out with a simple taste for shooting, and with a simple taste for shooting he returned.’
    ‘Natives?’ the host of the evening asked with serious interest. ‘I mean, was it one of the periods for that sort of thing?’
    ‘Not in the least. My father was extravagantly liberal-minded and humane. He simply went into jungles and places in a big way, and shot all sorts of lions and tigers. He brought them home – either stuffed or decapitated or flattened out as rugs – and we have them all over the place. Not that they have much to do with what I’m telling you. They just serve to sketch in my father.’
    ‘Is he what is called a backwoods peer?’ somebody asked politely.
    ‘Yes, that’s exactly him. And it’s an important part of the story, as a matter of fact. You see, in spite of India and all that, my father has never much taken up with people. Hardly ever goes to Town, really. Always been very much one for the private life. He did High Sheriff once, and found it awful. Particularly the Assize Judges. Old gentlemen dressed up like Father Christmas, and hanging people right and left. They never did that in India, he says. As for Lord Lieutenant, he turned it down flat, although it created a bit of a stink. Family always has done the job, I suppose. But he just said wandering royalty would be a bit too much. Not what you might call a Buck House type, my father. That’s where the story begins, as a matter of fact.’
    ‘We perceive,’ the man who had been interested in Cellini said, ‘that we are to make an incursion into high life.’
    ‘Pretty dubious high life, as you’ll hear in a minute.’ Oswyn turned to Appleby. ‘I don’t know, sir, if you’ve ever taken time off to look at the amateur side of your job – Sherlock Holmes, and all that?’
    ‘I think I know my Holmes pretty well.’ Appleby was amused by this reference to his career. ‘But I’m not so good on his successors.’
    ‘Well, it’s Holmes I’m thinking of. You remember how, every now and then, he’d receive an emissary