A Mansion and its Murder Read Online Free Page B

turning and looking at me, astonished.
    ‘I overheard,’ I said truthfully. ‘Does it?’
    ‘Miss Coverdale, Miss Blackett, Miss Waddington-Phipps, Miss This-or-That – what does it matter who? It may as well be Miss Coverdale as any other. Yes, I suppose so. They’llwin in the end, and Blakemere will demand an heir, to prevent the dreadful fate of its falling into female hands.’
    ‘Yes, I overheard that, too.’
    ‘Do you mind?’ he asked, turning and looking into my face.
    ‘You having a son? Not at all. Daddy sort of asked me, and I had to say girls ought to be the same as boys, of course—’
    ‘Of course ,’ Uncle Frank said gravely.
    ‘But really I can’t imagine anything more horrible than inheriting Blakemere, though I didn’t tell Papa that.’ I thought, and then added, ‘But I think you should marry who you want to marry.’
    ‘Not too easy, that, if you don’t care to marry at all. But if that is to be my fate, I rather think I’ll have a little fling first – no, a great big one!’
    ‘Another of your expeditions, do you mean?’
    ‘Another of them, yes. Crossing the Sahara. Or maybe the Gobi Desert.’
    ‘Are all expeditions terribly costly?’
    ‘Mine are! And this one will be terribly, terribly so. One day I’ll take you with me on one.’
    The prospect thrilled me indescribably. ‘ Will you ? Across the Gobi Desert?’
    ‘Maybe not that. I don’t think the Gobi Desert is the sort of place for a lady to go to. We’ll stick to Europe. I’ll take you to Eastern Europe – Athens, Tirana, Sofia, Bucharest: places where the Ottomans used to hold sway.’
    I frowned.
    ‘I thought an Ottoman was a funny sort of sofa.’
    ‘Turks, then. The emperors who rule from Constantinople, a vast Moslem empire.’
    ‘Moslem? Does that mean they are heretics?’
    ‘They are heretics to us, and we are heretics to them. Remember that.’
    I considered the thought.
    ‘Do all religions consider other religions here – he-re—’
    ‘Heretical. Yes, I’m afraid so. It says very little for religious people, in my opinion. Before we in our family use words like that, we should remember that your grandmama’s father was a heretic before he … came over to Christianity.’
    There was a strong implication, which I caught, that my great-grandfather had become a Christian for unworthy and self-interested motives, and that he would have done very much better to stay where he was as far as religion was concerned. This is one of my dear uncle Frank’sopinions which has remained with me for life, though I have never ceased to be a Christian of sorts myself.
    ‘I don’t suppose,’ I said wistfully, as we gathered up our bait and tackle and started back to our marble prison, ‘that you will be able to send me letters from the Gobi Desert?’
    ‘I’m afraid not,’ said Uncle Frank gently. ‘Not even one of these picture postcards you are so fond of.’
    ‘What will I do , all those months when you’re away?’
    ‘Perhaps you could get Miss Roxby to plot a course across the Gobi Desert from Kanchow to Ulan Bator, at about twenty miles a day. Then you can stick pins into it every morning and imagine roughly where we are and roughly when we shall start back. But remember, Sarah Jane—’
    ‘Yes?’
    ‘Not a word to anyone till I set off. It’s a secret, little rabbit.’ We were rounding the below-stairs part of Blakemere, the prison’s dungeon, so to speak, but one from which delicious smells often emanated. ‘Twitch your nose, little rabbit.’
    It was the reason for his nickname for me. That day the smell was wonderful.
    ‘How lucky you are, to eat something thatsmells like that,’ I said. ‘In the nursery it will certainly be boiled mince and a milk pudding.’
    It was. But I was nourishing in my childish bosom the secret which he had entrusted to me, so I ate it stoically. It was typical of Uncle Frank that he should lighten the burden of his absence by making it a delightful secret,