Free The Affair of the Thirty-Nine Cufflinks by James Anderson

you.'
    'That's more like it,' said Clara with a satisfied air. 'And if you like I'll tell everybody that you've got a bad cold or a sore throat or something. Would you prefer that?'
    Agatha took a deep breath. 'Tell them what you bloody well like,' she said. And she strode from the room.
    Clara gave a screech of horror.

Chapter Twelve
    'I've worked it all out,' said Lord Burford.
    'What?' Gerry, sprawled inelegantly on the sofa, looked up from her copy of the new Edgar Wallace mystery.
    'The family relationships you asked about.' He brandished a sheet of paper, covered with handwriting.
    'Oh, you shouldn't have bothered. It wasn't all that important.'
    'You asked about it and you're going to hear it. Make room.'
    Gerry moved up about six inches and the Earl flopped down beside her. 'I've just concentrated on the people who are in the will and their immediate families, so this isn't complete, by any means.'
    'What a bitter disappointment.'
    'Just shut up and listen.' He cleared his throat. 'My great grandfather, the ninth Earl, had three boys and a girl. The eldest was Aylwin, my grandfather, who became the tenth Earl. You know all about him. The second son was Bertie and you also know about him.'
    'Yes, and about Florrie and John and Emma and Clara and Agatha and Dorothy and Old Uncle Tom Cobley and all.'
    'Right. We can now proceed. The third brother, after Aylwin and Bertie, was Thomas. He had a daughter, Phyllis, and a son, Harry. Phyllis married a man called Carstairs and had a son, Gregory, and a daughter, whose name I've forgotten and who won't be here for the reading.'
    'I thought you were only bothering with the ones who will be here.'
    'Quite correct. My mistake. Forget Phyllis' daughter.'
    'And I was just getting fond of her.'
    'Gregory, an MP, is married to a woman called Alexandra but has no children. Harry had a son, Timothy, a KC, who is a widower and has one child, a daughter, Penelope, who will be here. Finally, Aylwin's, Bertie's and Thomas's younger sister, Margaret, married someone named Lambert and had a daughter, Henrietta, and a son, Philip. Henrietta married a Mr Simmons and had Stella, who lived a good number of years in America, working on some New York fashion magazine, but who's presumably home now. Philip had a son, Tommy. All those branches of the family tended to marry late, incidentally, which makes all the ages out of alignment with us; my father and I both married young, as you know. Is that all clear?'
    'Oh, absolutely.' Gerry picked up her book again.
    'Now,' said the Earl, deftly removing it from her hand and at the same time consulting his piece of paper, 'Bertie and Thomas being my great uncles, and Margaret my great aunt, means the following - I think I've got the terminology right: John, Phyllis, Harry, Henrietta and Philip were my first cousins once removed upwards, making their children, Agatha, Dorothy, Gregory, Timothy, Stella and Tommy my second cousins, and your second cousins once removed upwards, even though Tommy, at least, is probably a bit younger than you. Penelope is my second cousin once removed downwards, so of course your third cousin.'
    'I feel so close to her already.'
    'Clara, as will be obvious, being the second wife of my first cousin once removed upwards, is the second wife of your second cousin once removed upwards, or, in other words, your second cousin once removed upwards by marriage - meaning, I believe, that you can legitimately call her your second-cousin-once-removed-in-law.'
    'Gosh, can I really? How exciting!'
    He frowned. 'Or should that be twice removed? Anyway, as I said, there're lots of other relatives but they won't be here, so we can safely ignore them.'
    'It's so nice to feel safe. To summarise, then, we can say that the people who are going to be staying here are a bunch of distant relations.'
    'You could put it like that.'
    'Rest assured, Daddy, that is how I shall think of them, now and always.'
    'You have no sense of family history,' said Lord