Free Enter Pale Death by Barbara Cleverly Page A

hurried to the door and yelled, “Landlord! Two more pints in the snug please!”
    He returned to the table, glaring at Hunnyton. “I never walk about town without a pair of thumbscrews in my back pocket. Shall I need to use them?”
    Hunnyton held out his hands. “I’ll come quietly. You can pull rank rather than fingernails. That’ll do.”
    “I always find confessions slide down more easily with a steak pie,” Joe said. “I’m sure I heard you mention …”
    Hunnyton went to the door and called, “Confirm order for ale, Mr. Pocock, and will you add to that a couple of steak pies if they’re ready? With horseradish, mustard and mash.” He settled back in his seat. “You’ll enjoy this, sir. Albert in the kitchens used to work for the Duke of Northumberland.”

CHAPTER 5
    Joe had picked up some relaxed phrases and refreshing attitudes from the American officers he’d worked alongside in the later months of the war. One of his favourites was: Once is happenstance, twice is coincidence, three times is enemy action.
    He reckoned he was well into the stage of enemy action.
    “I’m sure I shall,” he said. “It’s a Tuesday. You save me from the Police Canteen’s version of not very Hot Pot.”
    He’d decided that Hunnyton—if that was his name—had recognised him, had even perhaps been lying in wait for him, and had drawn him here for a purpose. Joe had shared his information on the superintendent’s interest in the portraits but was keeping silent on the second and more interesting record of the name Hunnyton that he’d turned up on police files recently.
    The steak pie was all that had been promised, served swiftly and correctly with a flurry of starched white napery and good silver cutlery laid out on the table between them. By unspoken consent both men held off from serious conversation, content to enjoy a work of culinary art when it was offered.
    “There’s lemon syllabub or Eton mess to follow, or just strawberries,” Hunnyton invited. “The Cambridge Favourites are in season at the moment. New variety.”
    Joe was glad he’d taken the hint and declared for thestrawberries; the plump miracles of summer magic were duly served on Delft-patterned dishes with a matching pot of yellow Devon cream so thick it had to be spooned from the jug. Finally, comfortably bloated, relaxed and unharried, Joe calculated that his subject must be feeling much the same and decided to come at him crabwise. “Tell me about your name, Adam. Truelove? Hunnyton? Should I guess at a mother in common?”
    “Not that.” The idea seemed to amuse him. “No, it’s a father we share.”
    Joe absorbed this and was wondering how to frame his next question without giving offence when Hunnyton continued bluntly, “Illegitimate. That’s the word you’re skating around. You could—well, perhaps not you , Commissioner—could say by-blow. Wrong side of the blanket. Baseborn. Bastard. I’ve heard them all.”
    “And I’ve heard it said, Hunnyton, ‘There are no illegitimate children, just illegitimate parents.”
    Hunnyton managed a smile. “Well, the guilty parties in my case were the old Sir Sidney and one of his domestic servants. Before his marriage to James’s mother, the then young and spirited Sidney had an affair with a young and spirited upstairs maid. My mother. She had red hair—a big beauty in the style of Boadicea, Queen of the Iceni, who gave the Romans such a bad time. I’m just surprised she let Sidney get away with it undamaged. No one else ever got the better of her. Sorry, sir, it all gets a bit predictable from now on and I risk boring my audience.”
    “Not at all,” Joe said. “I’m all twitching ears and attention.”
    “The inevitable happened. In those days, and I’m not so sure it wouldn’t happen now, the girl would have to leave the village for good or perhaps go and spend a month or two with her aunty in Ipswich. She’d return having mysteriously lost all that weight she’d