could no more have refused to listen to him than a child could walk away from a sweet-shop window. The need to earn money was strong, but curiosity stronger. So that was how I first came to hear about the Brinkburn brothers, although Disraeli didn’t mention their names until at last I’d agreed to consider taking on the case.
‘It’s an old family,’ he said. ‘They’ve been living on their estates in Northumberland since the Conqueror. Until quite recently they had no money to speak of; they’ve made good marriages in the last couple of generations so they own considerable property near Newcastle, including four or five coal mines. With the railways coming up so fast, that’s almost as good as gold. Then there’s a smaller estate on the Thames in Buckinghamshire. The heir will be more than comfortably placed.’
‘But the family are unhappy?’
‘By most accounts, the father, the old lord, is happy enough in his way. He’s sixty or so, hale and hearty until recently, but the word is that he’s been out of his mind for some months. He spent quite a lot of his life travelling and had a villa in Rome. Apparently he now believes he’s the Emperor Hadrian. They’ve stored him in a private asylum near Kingston upon Thames and I’m told he’s perfectly easy to manage, provided the attendants drape themselves in bed sheets and remember to say good morning in Latin.’
‘Is he likely to recover?’
‘No. I understand he’s paying the penalty for being too ardent a worshipper of Venus in his youth and is not expected to live long.’
So the mind of the old lord had been eaten away by syphilis. Even though Disraeli and I talked pretty freely, he couldn’t say that outright.
‘And the wife?’
‘She lives mostly on the Buckinghamshire estate. She’s twenty years younger than he is. It was never a love match. The present lord’s father had gambled away quite a lot of the money he’d married, so the son had to do his duty and marry some of it back again. I gather he was reasonably good looking in his day and there was the title, of course. He married a woman from his own part of the world. She was considered a beauty by local standards; amiable, although inclined to be bookish. She inherited fifty thousand a year and the four or five coal mines, so it seemed suitable enough.’
He pretended not to see the grimace I was making. When it came to old families and new money, the usually irreverent Disraeli came too close to being serious for my liking.
‘So were there children of this perfectly suitable union?’ I said.
‘Two sons. One of the sons is twenty-two now and the other’s twenty. That’s where the problem lies.’
‘Sowing wild oats?’
If so, I couldn’t see how I was expected to trail a young man, or two of them, through the gambling clubs and brothels of London.
‘Nothing like that, no. The elder one’s sober as a judge. The other’s probably had his moments, but nothing out of the way.’
A thin woman in ill-advised purple wandered our way, peering short-sightedly at the picture through a lorgnette. Disraeli greeted her politely and they held a meandering conversation about apparently mutual acquaintances before she drifted away.
‘Who was that?’ I said.
‘I haven’t an idea in the world. Nobody important, or I’d have known her. So, may I tell him you’ll take it on?’
‘Tell whom I’ll take on what?’
He was deliberately teasing me, trying to provoke my curiosity.
‘Oh, haven’t I explained?’
‘A twenty-two-year-old man who’s as sober as a judge is about to inherit a title and a fortune. I can’t see how that poses a unique problem,’ I said.
‘It might be if his claim to the title were in question.’
‘How is it in question?’
‘The usual way–that he might not be his father’s son.’
‘This sounds even worse than the divorce case. Am I meant to be going through rumpled sheets from twenty-three years ago?’
‘If only it were that easy. It’s a matter of hints, gossip–nothing tangible.’
‘So people have been hinting and gossiping for twenty-three years?’
‘No, that’s the strange part. The hints and gossip have only begun quite recently.’
‘Since people knew the old lord was going to die soon?’
‘Yes.’
‘Do we know who started the gossip?’
‘We have a very good idea.’
‘Who?’
‘The young men’s mother.’
I nearly dropped my teacup.
‘The elder boy’s own mother is saying he’s not her husband’s son?’
Disraeli nodded.
‘But why should she admit it after all these years? And what about the younger one?’
‘She’s quite adamant that the younger son’s legitimate.’
‘But that doesn’t make sense. If a woman’s going to be unfaithful, it’s usually the later children who…’
I didn’t finish the sentence because it was straying into things that should not be said.
‘Indeed.’
‘Does she say who the father was, if he’s not her husband?’
‘As far as I’m told, she takes a somewhat legendary line,’ Disraeli said. ‘There was a storm one night on their honeymoon tour. She was alone in her room in a tower by a lake in Italy, waiting for her husband to return from a visit. A man entered, at the height of the storm, without lighting a candle. She naturally assumed it was her lord and master come home and…well, you can guess the rest. In the morning, his place in the bed is empty and she thinks he’s gone out early to admire the view. Imagine her horror when her husband arrives some hours later, mud-splattered on horseback, explaining that he decided to stay the night with friends because of the storm.’
‘It’s like something from a bad Gothick novel.’
‘I gather the lady in question is fond of novels. She also paints and writes poetry.’
I stared at him, still disbelieving.
‘Of course, there is precedent for it,’ Disraeli said.
‘Precedent?’
‘You may remember that something very similar happened to the lady in the Greek myth of Amphitryon. And our own King Arthur was born of just such a visit by Uther Pendragon.’
‘May we please keep to the
