Devil's Sonata: Evil never dies by Edmondson Elizabeth

Author:Edmondson, Elizabeth [Edmondson, Elizabeth]
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub
Tags: General Fiction
Publisher: Belsyre Books
Published: 2011-07-12T16:00:00+00:00

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Zuleika announced she was going to divide her history class into three groups. ‘Mr Zeals has asked us to provide material for an exhibition in the summer. One group will prepare all the facts and artwork for the Abbey when it was still a monastery, the second group will deal with Beauregard since it became a school, and the third group will see what they can find out about Beauregard in the eighteenth century, including when and where and how the Venetian wing came to be built.’

Harry at once co-opted his friends and announced that they were going to do the eighteenth century.

Festy pulled a face. ‘Most of the monastery stuff’s done, it’s just got to be put together. And the history of the school bit will be a breeze. Why do you land us with the period that needs the most work?’

‘Because it’s interesting, and because Dr Rathbone says if we find out anything, it will be a real contribution, there’s a kind of gap in the records then.’

‘And we’re supposed to fill the gap, how?’

‘By using our brains and showing some initiative. Christ, Festy, they’re your ancestors, aren’t you curious?’

‘No,’ Festy said. ‘Everything that turns up about the Beauregards just shows what an awful bunch they were.’

Harry and Lutz commandeered the little room off the lecture hall in the history department and they pushed four smaller tables together to make a large working surface for their efforts.

‘We will attack here, here and here,’ said Harry, stabbing at the map of the Abbey which they had persuaded a friend in the design department to copy on a large scale.

‘Shut up, Harry,’ said Caro severely. ‘This is serious, okay?’

Zuleika had given them a copy of Nicholas’s family tree. ‘It’s skeletal, just who inherited the Abbey in each generation, nothing about who they married or what other children they had, or what happened to them. By the way, do you notice anything about it?’

The four of them pored over the chart laid flat on the table.’

It only took Lutz a few seconds before he looked up, his eyebrows raised. ‘This is remarkable. This is an extraordinary pattern of inheritance.’

‘You mean it doesn’t pass from father to son, but goes to daughters and sideways?’ Caro said.

‘In a way. It is an unfortunate line, look, no elder son ever inherits from his father. Here is a second son, here the daughter inherits, here the Abbey passes to a nephew, a great nephew, a cousin.’

‘What about this one?’ Festy asked, pointing.

‘Twins,’ Lutz said. ‘One died the day he was born, and, unless it is the single exception in all that time, we can guess it was the firstborn twin that died.’

Harry’s eyes gleamed. ‘The odds against that. Actually, I’ll work it out, if I can borrow this, Dr Rathbone?’

‘Do. You’re right, Nicholas Beauregard told me that odd fact about his family.’

‘He isn’t an eldest son,’ Festy said. ‘His father was old Emily Beauregard’s cousin.’

‘Has he any children?’ Caro asked Zuleika, her eye’s darkening with worry.

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