Page 39 of The Impossible Fortune (Thursday Murder Club Mysteries #5)

There are no appointments in his diary. No one is calling. No one needs help from an old man whose skills are blunt.

The last people to ask for his help were Holly Lewis and Nick Silver, and look how that’s going.

He can sit and wait and feel sorry for himself, or he can get off his backside and actually do something.

He looks up at the family crest, with its Latin motto beneath.

Is Robert to be the last of his family in this house?

On this land? Of all the fools who have gone before perhaps none had been as foolish as him.

Robert struggles to think of anything he has ever been good at.

Mediocre at school, but still the place at Oxford awaited him.

A degree in Classics about which he had little clue then, and less clue now.

Then straight into the suit and into the bank.

Was he any good at that? No better than the next man, he’s sure of that.

Robert had been born on a path with no obstacles, other than those he conjured up himself.

A life of absolute ease, during which he cannot recall having proved himself even once.

There used to be people to keep this place clean, and money to keep it warm.

The two ladies who came to visit him today, Elizabeth and Joyce.

What must they have thought? What a sight he must be these days, in his old clothes, with his old hair and his old smell.

Sometimes Robert goes into Fairhaven to the cinema.

It’s half price for seniors on a Wednesday.

He sees people his age wearing all sorts.

Jeans, hoodies, trainers. He can’t imagine himself doing the same.

And so he takes the same clothes from the same wardrobes, and polishes the same shoes every day, with nowhere to wear them to.

There are so many couples at the cinema too. Robert has never really got the hang of anything. Has never needed to get the hang of anything.

A life without worry or want, that’s been Robert’s downfall.

How might he have coped under different circumstances?

Had he been born into an ordinary house, in an ordinary town, with ordinary parents who didn’t pack him off to school at the age of seven?

Robert suspects he would have fared badly.

Not bright enough, not funny enough, not handsome enough.

Not anything enough. Robert feels he has ended up exactly where he deserves.

Cold and alone in a house that mocks him, surrounded by portraits that judge him.

Not that they’re in any position to. So many of those stern faces were fools; they were just fortunate not to still be around when the money finally ran out.

Robert was not only mediocre; he was also unlucky.

No, not unlucky. He had simply outlived his luck.

So what to do? With no one to help him, no one to clear his path? There had always been teachers and bosses and wives and mechanics and travel agents and physicians to tell Robert exactly what was expected of him. But now?

Robert gazes up at the family crest. He remembers looking at it the day he left for school.

His father had sent his mother from the room; they were to have a chat ‘man to man’.

Robert wasn’t a man then and, looking up at the crest now, realizes he still isn’t.

Masculinity is forged in hardship, isn’t it? No such luck for Robert.

His father had stood behind him and taken him by the shoulders. ‘The family motto, Robert, that’s all you’ll ever need to know. Stick to that and you won’t stray too far from the path.’

Aut neca aut necare .

Kill or be killed.

It had not helped Robert a single whit over these many years. If he thought of it at all, it was just as a memory of his father, and of his father’s furious cruelty, hacking his way through life.

But what if his father was right? His father had died old and wealthy and unrepentant. And look at Robert. Kill or be killed . What if that was the trick he’d always failed to grasp?

Enough is enough. Robert Townes needs to take charge of his situation. It’s all very well sitting and waiting if you’re in a comfortable chair, with a good cigar, but what’s the use in sitting and waiting if you’re cold and lonely, and no one is coming to save you?

Which is why Robert Townes picked up the phone yesterday and rang The Compound.

There’s still time to change his mind, of course, but Robert doesn’t think he will. After a lifetime of stepping to the side, it’s finally time to step forward.

Wednesday morning, then? Kill or be killed.

Let’s see if his father was right all along.

For the first time since Holly Lewis and Nick Silver came to see him, Lord Townes feels in control.