Skeleton-in-Waiting by Peter Dickinson Read Free Book Online

about how everybody was different … Do you still love her, Bert?”
    Albert protected himself from any direct display of emotion by going into his Father-imitation, poising the tips of his fingers together and giving a snort through his moustache.
    â€œTrick question,” he said. “When did you stop loving your wife? I love her OK, but in a different way from a few years back. Much more complex. I mean, for instance, it includes a good deal of irritation sometimes. It’s like, oh well, for instance, the shift from the intense simplicities of folk music to the interwoven diffusions of polyphony, if you follow me.”
    â€œI don’t.”
    â€œSorry. I forgot. Well, then, it’s like coming off the high moorlands where you can see for miles and there isn’t a soul in sight and the winds of heaven to breathe, to walking through close farmland with hedges and twisting lanes and business calls to make on the way.”
    â€œThat’s more like it. Perhaps Soppy’s hankering for the hill-tops.”
    â€œYou can’t stay there for ever, but monogamy still rules in my case, if that’s what you mean. That wasn’t why she sacked Bridget. I don’t think that’s the problem. For instance, she found an old snap of Aunt Kitty Bakewell in her twenties, long before she showed any sign of going off her trolley, dolled up as a man for some kind of fancy dress do in a white tie and tails and looking stunning. First glance you’d think it was Soppy herself. And she keeps dragging Kitty into conversations—not right in, just hinting and then pushing her out of sight again.”
    â€œSoppy’s always looked terrific in uniform. Piers is mad about her.”
    â€œPiers is just kinky about women in uniform. Look how he got Mother to dress up in her Irish Guards outfit last Christmas. To my mind it all goes back to his being found on that bus. His mother must have been some buxom conductress, and he’s working out his pre-natal influences.”
    â€œSeriously?”
    â€œNo. Of course not. But I’m serious about Soppy. I think her problems are mostly down to Aunt Eloise.”
    â€œDo you really? Soppy always gives the impression of being the only one who can handle her.”
    â€œAs she grew up, she evolved various strategies and techniques, but she wouldn’t have had them when she was a child. All it means is that everything’s deeper-buried, hidden from her conscious mind, so she has to blame her problems on things that are happening to her now, like not being allowed to go to Argentina. I don’t know what it is about some people’s mothers.”
    â€œAt least we’ve been lucky with our own. Did you meet Alex Romanov? His was a handful too, by the sound of her. You might’ve noticed me taking him over to woo poor Aunt Bea.”
    â€œOh, him … looked as if he was making a go of it, too. Where did you pick him up?”
    â€œHe was talking to Piers about AI. He used to correspond with Granny on a regular basis, he says. He’s got a lot of her letters, long ones, full of the sort of things she used to say about everyone.”
    â€œHas he, by God? That’s what you were telling Sir Sam? No wonder he looked a bit haunted. What’s he going to do?”
    â€œTry and con them off him somehow, I should think.”
    â€œWhy bother?”
    Louise stared. It seemed too obvious to argue about. There was no question of the Palace allowing Granny’s papers to be published as they stood. Even letting Alex Romanov get as far as trying to publish them, and then having to go to the courts to get them suppressed, would wake an absolute volcano of guesswork and rumour about what might be in them.
    â€œYou know what I think?” said Albert. “Seriously. The best way to deal with a time-bomb like this is blow it up in the open. We should help Mr Romanov get the stuff published.”
    â€œCount. Or