Page:The Viaduct Murder (1926).pdf/16

2 seemed to have been specially adapted by an inscrutable Providence for such a niche in the scheme of things. The huge Italianate building which the fifteenth Lord Oatvile raised as a monument to his greatness (he sold judiciously early out of the South Sea Company) took fire in the nineties of last century and burned for a whole night; the help given by the local fire brigade was energetic rather than considerate, and Achelous completed the havoc which Vulcan had begun. It stands even now, an indecent skeleton, papered rooms and carved mantelpieces confronting you shamefacedly, like the inside of a doll's house whose curtain-wall has swung back on the hinge. What secrets that ball-room, those powder-closets must have witnessed in the days of an earlier gallantry, when the stuccoed façade still performed its discreet office! Poor rooms, they will never know any more secrets now. The garden, too, became involved in the contagion of decay: weeds have overgrown its paved walks, and neglected balustrades have crumbled; a few of the hardier flowers still spring there, but half-smothered in rank grass, shabby-genteel survivors of an ancien régime. For the family never attempted to rebuild; they prudently retired to the old Manor at the other end of the park, a little brick and timber paradise which had served the family for a century and a half as dower-house. In time, even this reduced splendour was judged too expensive, and the family sold.

No need, then, to mourn for Paston Oatvile;