west towards Barkston, but he had to swing left now towards Towton. The country was flat hereabouts, but now they were pointed in the right direction Canny could see the hills that shielded Cockayne in the distance, and the moors forming the horizon behind them.
“It’s a bigger county than Daddy seems to think,” he assured the butler. “If it were necessary to go as far into the untracked wilderness of Bradford or York, it could be done without the aid of native trackers. Richmond might be difficult, though. I’m sorry he’s been on at you. I suppose people of his antiquity are entitled to get bees in their bonnets, but they shouldn’t used them to sting the people around them. It’s my business, and I really don’t know why he cares so much about something so ridiculously old-fashioned as the succession, but we’ll just have to keep stalling.”
“It might make him feel better if you were prepared to pretend,” the butler suggested. “Or at least to make it clear to him, if Miss Lo does accept your invitation, that you were merely making polite reparation for her kind offer of assistance in returning home more speedily.”
“I’ll do the second bit,” Canny promised, “but I’m not going to start spinning him a line abut some hypothetical Yorkshire lass I’ve got me eye on. Mind you, there’s bound to be someone eligible in the village. There’s a girl I was at primary school with—Ellen, the oldest of the Proffitt sisters, it was—who showed me her knickers once. She married Jack Ormondroyd, who runs the fish and chip shop and captains the cricket eleven. Her eldest daughter Marie must be sixteen going on seventeen now, just about ripe. Another four or five months and she’ll be exactly half my age. She’d do, I dare say. Handsome family, the Proffitts. Maybe we ought to invite her up for tea.”
“The fact that a young lady’s mother indulged in a little harmless exhibitionism when you were five years old is hardly a basis for lifelong commitment, sir,” Bentley observed, lowering his baritone voice a little further, “although I dare say that Mr. and Mrs. Ormondroyd would be very proud indeed to know that the gesture had enhanced their daughter’s desirability.”
“Oh, stop pretending to be John Gielgud in that third-rate American movie,” Canny said. “It’s bad enough when you come over all Jeeves-y, without taking it to silly extremes. Anyway, how is the old fart, apart from his neurotic anxieties about the succession?”
Bentley dropped his act immediately. “He’s not good, sir,” he said. “The relapse took us all by surprise. He knew that the chemotherapy hadn’t worked, apparently, but he gave firm instructions to Dr. Hale and the consultant at St. James’s to say nothing, even to me. He decided that the power of positive thinking was his only hope. He was probably pushing himself a little too hard, pretending even to himself that if he only put on a good enough act he night actually get well again. When the illusion was punctured he went from one extreme to the other, although he has rallied a little in anticipation of your return. I’m sorry we had to call you back from your holiday.”
“It used to be a lifestyle,” Canny complained. “Now a trip to the Riviera only qualifies as a holiday?”
“Things have changed, sir,” Bentley said, meaning that Canny’s lifestyle would have to change, whether Canny liked it or not. “Your mother really is going to need your support—the staff can only do so much.”
“I know,” Canny said. “I’m her son. It’s my job, not yours. And even if it weren’t my job, I’m her son. He fooled me, too. I thought he really was getting better, at least sufficiently for me to risk one last fling. We Kilcannons get into the habit of taking our legendary luck a little too much for granted.” He could talk relatively freely to Bentley about the Kilcannon luck, even though Bentley didn’t know the whole truth, or even the half of it. Bentley was the kind of family retainer who never worried about how much of the truth he knew and didn’t know, and would never say a word out of place, even—perhaps especially—if he knew more than he ought to.
The Bentley swept majestically through Towton, but the natives didn’t bat an eyelid. If asked what they thought, they’d probably have opined that Bentleys weren’t really Bentleys any more, now that they had to be manufactured by Rolls Royce. They’d probably have felt the same even if Rolls Royce hadn’t been taken over in its turn by Germans. Canny couldn’t help wondering whether the Bentley driving the Bentley was any more authentic than the car, in a world where servants were an anachronistic affectation rather than a necessity of civilized existence, but it would have been churlish to voice the thought.
“Did you have good luck in Monte Carlo, sir?” the butler enquired, innocently, as the car went over the Cock Beck Bridge and began to climb towards the ridge of the dale that hid the Crede.
“Swings and roundabouts,” Canny said tersely. “Look—I might be getting a phone call or two from a guy named Henri Meurdon about a matter of considerable delicacy. I’d rather Mummy and Daddy didn’t get to hear about it. There was an incident—a robbery. It was nothing serious, and I don’t want anyone worrying about it. The Union Corse will take care of it, if there’s anything that can be done.”
“The Union Corse, sir?” Bentley echoed, the question mark at the end of the sentence was hardly perceptible.
“It’s a kind of insurance company,” Canny told him, although he had no doubt that Bentley could easily come by a more accurate account, if he cared to take the trouble. The butler’s computer had a broadband connection, just like the one in the library. “It’s also possible,” Canny added, “that a story might get reported in the gossip columns involving Stevie Larkin, Lissa Lo and a little flutter on a roulette wheel. It might be better if Daddy didn’t get to hear about that either. I’ll warn Mummy not to say anything if she comes across it in one of her magazines.”
“That would be Mr Larkin the football player?” Bentley said. “The one who’s reported to be coming back to England?”
“Yes, it would—although he didn’t say anything to me about leaving Milan. And no, I don’t know him well enough to get his autograph for any of your multitudinous nephews, or to put in a good word for Leeds United if he is thinking about a transfer. We just happened to be sitting next to one another in Monte, right across the table from Lissa Lo, and we all happened to bet on the same number. Pure coincidence—but you know what the papers are like when an opportunity comes up to get two celebrities’ names in the same sentence, especially if one’s male, the other’s female and they’re both sexy.”
“If only you were five years younger, sir,” Bentley observed, flippantly, “you would doubtless have sparked rumors of a fascinating ménage à trois. Were there no film stars present to add spice to the mix? Members of the royal family, perhaps?”
“I’m afraid not—unless you count royal families from the United Arab Emirates. I know you don’t usually, but as they’re moving Royal Ascot to York next year, I thought you might be prepared to be flexible.”
“Very amusing, sir.” Bentley had slipped back deep into mock-Wodehousian mode, if not all the way back to American sitcom parody, but Canny didn’t mind. He had said what he needed to say, and he knew that the butler would have taken note of the salient points.
The car was already turning into the driveway of Credesdale House. The early morning sun was lighting the Great Skull from the side, making its shadowed eyes seem even more sinister than usual; Stevie Larkin would doubtless have thought its symbolism horribly excessive.
Canny got out in front of the house before Bentley took the car around to the old stables. He let himself in, and paused in the hallway to hug and kiss his mother. He was in no hurry to rush upstairs, but his mother was so enthusiastic not to delay him that he felt obliged to set aside all other possibilities.
“He’s been asking for you for hours, Canny,” Lady Credesdale said. “Hasn’t slept a wink. You mustn’t mind if he curses you a little—he wouldn’t take his morphine until he’d seen you, and now he’s in dreadful pain. Ring as soon as he decides to take it—Bentley will give him the shot.”
“It’s okay, Mummy,” Canny said. “I don’t suppose he’s got anything