Death of a Dishonorable Gentleman by Tessa Arlen Read Free Book Online

Valentine returned, his face showed a fleeting glimpse of the cold horror he felt. He had never particularly liked Teddy and his brutal end now added considerably to his confused emotions.
    He believed his sister’s only child had been quite terribly spoiled throughout his life. When Teddy was eight years old, and his father had been killed in a shooting accident, he had become the sole focus of his mother’s life, when she had time for him at all. On her brief visits to England, Christina Mallory spent days with the boy at Montfort House in London, lavishing attention on him and including him in her busy social life. But her visits were few and far between and inevitably bored with playing mother, she increasingly returned to the sophisticated pleasures of the Marlborough set in Biarritz or Baden Baden, abandoning her son to the comparatively dull and prosaic existence of family life at uncle’s house in the country, This on-again, off-again arrangement had proved disastrous for Teddy. As the years had gone by Teddy, now at Eton, had become more isolated from his mother and had turned away from the simplicity of Talbot family life at Iyntwood. Lord Montfort thought of himself as a well-intentioned man, and as Teddy’s legal guardian he had tried hard to show patience and forbearance toward his nephew, while he daily thanked God that Teddy was not his son. As he tried to come to terms with Teddy’s death, he believed he had let his nephew down. He believed he had let his sister down, too.
    He sat down at his desk and began to make up the list of his guests, as Valentine had requested. As he wrote down their names he was aware that each of them would be severely impacted by Teddy’s death simply by staying in his house. He was finishing this task when Valentine came back from making his telephone call to the coroner’s office.
    â€œWill you tell me a little about your nephew, Lord Montfort? I know he is your sister’s only child and that he was up at Oxford … Christ Church wasn’t it? What sort of young man was he?”
    Before he answered, Lord Montfort paused in thought. What kind of young man had his nephew been? At any other time, it would have been so easy to answer this question. Now it was impossible with the image of Teddy hanging from the gibbet. It was as if his mind refused to obey direction, hopping from one inconsequential thought to another in the strangest way. With a great summoning of effort he forced himself to answer the question.
    â€œHe was on the whole rather a difficult young man; I had trouble getting through to him, which seemed to get worse as he grew older. Yesterday morning I received a letter from the proctor at Oxford in which he told me that Teddy had been expelled for cheating at cards. I heard the rest of it from Harry later on.”
    â€œOh I see. Did Teddy keep company with Lord Haversham?” Valentine asked, and Lord Montfort was grateful for Valentine’s matter-of-fact question that included his son, as it helped him focus on the reality of the situation.
    â€œThey shared few interests. Harry moved in different circles.”
    â€œWhat do you know about this cheating business?”
    â€œThe proctor’s letter was to the point with very few details. But Harry told me that Teddy had set up some sort of informal gambling club at Oxford: high stakes games and so on. It appears that there were quite a few young men involved. Teddy was caught by one of them, cheating.” He stopped for a moment; he had been appalled when his son confided this news to him yesterday.
    â€œMust have been quite a showdown.” Valentine’s voice and expression were noncommittal.
    â€œYes, I expect it was. Harry said it got quite rough, not that he was there,” he hastily added. “Of course Teddy denied it because … well he would, wouldn’t he?” Lord Montfort paused and then added, “The stakes were quite