Corpse in a Gilded Cage (27 page)

‘Every great family has it's skeletons.'

‘Too bloody right. As I walk the corridors I can hear dem dry bones rattling. That charming Victorian Earl who trailed Gladstone through the streets of London, hoping to catch him going into brothels. The one who
shot his son—or was that the same one? The one whose wife arranged phoney séances for people who'd lost their sons in the First World War. The one who cleared half a million during the Marconi scandals. Don't tell me we're any different from them, mate, because I won't take it. We do the same sort of things. We just do them in a different accent, that's all.'

And the thirteenth Earl of Ellesmere nodded a curt farewell to his man of business and stomped across the lawns to join his children.

Copyright © 1984 Robert Barnard
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