Free Corpse in a Gilded Cage by Robert Barnard Page B

Countess.
    â€˜Not to mention us,’ said Trevor.
    â€˜I do think,’ said Joan, with the infuriating primness she had learned at an evangelically-inclined teachers’ college, ‘that Dixie’s got a cheek. I mean, this is something that only concerns the family.’
    â€˜What the bloody hell do you think I am, then?’
    â€˜Not family,’ said Joan, firmly.
    â€˜Here, that’s enough of that,’ said the Earl. ‘Let’s all have a drink. This is a birthday party.’
    And much though some of the family would have enjoyed bringing thething out into the open, they all looked at each other, swallowed, and trooped towards the bottles. After all, it was his party.
    Against all the odds, the rapidly diminishing contents of the old Earl’s cocktail bar did wonders for the family party. The present Earl played his part, for he was temperamentally sunny, and a born smoother over of awkwardnesses. Dixie slowly put her claws back in, pleased that she had put the question of Phil’s rights on the agenda, if no more. Joan and Trevor, though still in suspense, had been reassured by their father’s obvious sense of the fairness of things: they would not, if he had his way, be crushed under the chariot wheels of the elder son’s rights.
    So before very long things became quite jolly. Clutching their glasses, and talking at the tops of their voices, it became possible to ignore the fact that some were not talking to others. Sam, it was discovered, could play the piano, and play he did—blues numbers first, then some popular songs of the ’thirties.
    â€˜ That brings it all back,’ said the Countess when Sam launched into ‘Don’t Get Around Much Any More’, throwing the whole of the upper half of his body into the song, wooing the ill-humour out of his audience. What it was that the tune brought back for the Countess nobody liked to ask (the Earl said it had no particular message for him), but before long she was smiling benignly at the figures of Trevor and Michele, dancing at the far end of the Drawing-Room. And not long after that she was deep in conversation on the green satin sofa with her old antagonist Chokey.
    â€˜I well remember,’ she reminisced, ‘when you and Phil were planning your first job—what was it, seven years ago?’
    â€˜Eight,’ said Chokey.
    â€˜Plans all over the table, stopwatches everywhere, everything timed down to the last second.’
    â€˜You never quite recapture the thrill of your first job,’ said Chokey, his eyes more watery than ever.
    â€˜I thought it was all a big joke,’ said the Countess disingenuously.
    â€˜Go on.’
    â€˜I did. Like boys, planning the raid of the century, all on paper. I never thought you meant to do it.’
    â€˜Didn’t think we had it in us, eh?’ said Chokey, getting up the courage to look her straight in the eye.
    â€˜I wish to God you hadn’t had it in you.’
    â€˜Can’t keep a good partnership down.’
    â€˜Only pity was, you got caught.’
    â€˜Yes, well—’
    â€˜Seems getting caught was all you ever were good at.’
    â€˜We weren’t always caught. Not on the—not on several of the jobs. Otherwise we wouldn’t have stayed in business.’
    â€˜Hmmm. What are you doing now?’
    â€˜Me? I’m going straight.’
    â€˜What are you going straight at?’
    â€˜Oh, a bit of this and a bit of that.’
    Chokey did not mention that one of the bits of this and that had been a house not twenty miles from Chetton, which he and a new partner had tried to relieve of its collection of eighteenth-century china. In any case, the Countess’s attention was distracted. Digby and Joan had decorously taken the floor, but Trevor and Michele had got tired of dancing and were slipping out of the far door. The Countess’s good mood seemed in danger of evaporating.
    â€˜Look