In the event of Councillor Prodding’s grisly demise, the town council decided that destruction of Hogg Hall should be postponed, at least for the time being. Which was music to the ears of Hardy Hogg-Marchmont. Meanwhile, the Sixth Earl’s file was no doubt passed once again to the Crown Prosecution Service.

The Great Moat having been so hastily excavated…

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Countess Isabella was awakened by something sitting on her face, and she was relieved to discover that it wasn’t her husband. She lifted Sidney the puppy off the bed and watched as he gleefully pissed over her slippers. Before the creature had a chance to deposit solids in the rest of her footwear, she threw on a coat, picked him up and headed for the l…

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The Muddleton Morris Men had found a body in the woods, but thankfully it was not the body of Master Keith. Forensic examination quickly revealed that the remains had been there since the late nineteenth century and were well preserved because of the high levels of peat in the forest soil. As soon as she heard of the discovery, Celestia May immediately …

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The Muddleton Morris Men picked their way through the undergrowth at the far end of the north woods. They’d been searching for the baby now since mid-morning and were determined to be the ones to find Master Keith safe and well. The six men were no strangers to search and rescue. They were the only Morris dancing team in England to double up as a lifebo…

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As the agreed time approached, family, servants and guests gathered at the clearing in the woods that was the appointed site for duelling with pistols. Steady, incessant drizzle had started around dawn and carried on late into the morning. Around midday, Melton Thornaby suggested that the duel might be ‘rained off’.

“This isn’t a cricket match at Lords,”…

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Melton Thornaby awoke in the Queen of Scots Bedroom around 7am, his mouth dry, his head pounding like it always did when he first regained consciousness from the inky void. He slid off the four-poster bed, and wearing nothing but his tartan cashmere socks, he padded his way to the Great En-Suite Bathroom. Most of his urine missed the toilet bowl and pro…

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The monks from Ghastbury Abbey had been delivering their own special brand of elderberry wine to Hogg Hall since 1803. The monastery was just over ten miles away, and the brothers painstakingly rolled the barrels to Muddleton by hand, along the sodden dirt road that ran between the Velch and Spurn valleys. By the time they arrived, their hands were call…

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Soon after breakfast, O’Donnell wished Countess Isabella many happy returns of the day. Her entire family had forgotten her birthday once again, as indeed she had herself, but at least her trusty servant had remembered. He always remembered.

“Thank you, O’Donnell,” said the Countess. “Where is my husband?”

Deeply distressed by the imminent fate of Hogg Ha…

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“You cannot christen a member of the English nobility Keith!” said the Sixth Earl. In desperation, Hogg- Marchmont had telephoned his son, as Hatcher and

Lady Labia Antoinette were driving into town to register the birth of their new arrival. Hardy’s voice boomed out through the hands-free speakers in Hatcher’s Jaguar XJR Saloon. “What does ‘Keith’ even …

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The collapse of the East Wing was far from convenient. For a start, it made the whole house look asymmetrical, the West Wing now seeming awkward and self-conscious.

Reasons for the collapse were unclear. That part of the building was so unstable, that it could have been brought about by a sparrow landing on the roof, or a rodent taking a small bite out of one of the skirting boards.

Ironically, the only structure left standing after the collapse was the scaffolding that had recently been put up in order to effect cosmetic repairs. When the builders arrived on site for the first time the following morning, they at first panicked, thinking that they were going to be expected to rebuild the entire East Wing. It was quickly explained to them that all they needed to do was collect up all the bricks and tiles and put them into a great big pile in the middle of the garden.

Luckily, none of the Hogg-Marchmont family lived in the East Wing. It was mostly inhabited by about two hundred of Lady Celestia May’s cats. These creatures have a very finely honed sixth sense, and all two hundred of them vacated the premises mere moments before the structure clattered to the ground.

The East Wing had an auspicious history. It was built by the Second Earl, who loved to entertain, and in 1830, he added ninety-seven luxurious guest bedrooms to the eastern extent of the house. People invited to stay at Hogg Hall spent their days hunting, fishing, riding horses, but mostly drinking. Legend tells that none of them were ever allowed to leave until they had downed a yard of ale, and the Second Earl had soundly bummed them on the billiard table in the Great Snooker Room.

In the evening, formal dinners would take place, followed by music and charades. The guests would then gather in the library to look at the Earl’s world-famous Great Bohemian Chandelier.

There being no television in those days, large groups of people would often stand around and simply stare at chandeliers. This particular magnificent example was gifted to the Second Earl by Prince Agra of Tandoor, and was a birthday cake-shaped crystal fixture, which had once illuminated the Royal Poobah Palace in Istanbul.

“It comprises 750 crystal candleholders,” the Second Earl would proudly tell his guests, and they would stand around for hours looking at it, while the servants offered them finger snacks and fine wines. One female guest had once been so transfixed by the ornament that she’d gone into a trance and had to be revived by means of smelling salts and brandy. On another occasion, the Belgian ambassador unwittingly ejaculated from sheer excitement, after first setting eyes upon the piece. After a couple of hours looking at the chandelier, the women would go to bed, and the men would gather in the library to smoke hundreds of cigars. It was quite common for guests to die of nicotine poisoning or asphyxiation during these sessions, and in the grounds, one could still see the remains of a small garden called ‘The Smoker’s Cemetery’. The walls and ceiling of the library are to this day still coated with a thick, mustard-coloured layer of nicotine.

In the late nineteenth century, social change and taxes began to affect the Hogg-Marchmont’s lavish lifestyle. When the Second Earl died, over £1 million in death duties became due. Nonetheless, life continued much as before. The staff at Hogg Hall at this time consisted of three butlers, three under butlers, four valets, five footmen, twelve housekeepers, seventy-three housemaids, nine sewing women, eleven cooks, six kitchen maids, three vegetable maids, twenty-four scullery maids, six dairy maids, thirteen laundry maids and the Earl’s private secretary Doris.

All of these people lived in the house with the gout-ridden Third Earl and his family, but other staff would also come in during the day, including twelve grooms, four chauffeurs, eight gamekeepers, six upholsterers, thirty-one scrubbing women, two laundry porters, three steam boiler men, a hundred and six window cleaners and a team of joiners, plumbers and electricians. In 1896, the number of gardeners peaked at fifteen hundred.

*

The Sixth Earl had a bastard of a hangover. He also had a very sore pecker, but for the life of him, he couldn’t remember why. He awoke on the Great Sofa in the Great Lounge – a particularly uncomfortable piece of furniture with hard wooden armrests and very little padding. What was it with the Victorians and sofas?

The Great Lounge was where Celestia May kept her beloved houseplants. Feeling that it was little more than common assault to prune them, the plants had become so monstrously overgrown that it was now quite hard to move around the room without tripping over a frond or banging one’s head on an overhanging branch. There were ferns; there were palms; there were grasses; and there was bamboo. Crawling menacingly across the mantelpiece was a giant trailing philodendron, and the sideboard was almost entirely engulfed in Swedish ivy.

Celestia May had once had a birthday party in the Great Lounge, and one of her friends had become lost. She finally emerged from the undergrowth two days later, her arms speared with a myriad of cactus spines, her eyes blinking painfully in the sunlight.

Just to double-check that the previous night’s disaster was not simply some alcohol-fuelled fantasy, Hardy dragged himself from the Great Sofa, and after doing battle with a Chinese evergreen and two Madagascar dragon trees, he walked along the long, portrait-lined East Corridor.

A painting of the First Earl frowned down on him as he approached the door at the far end. Taking a deep breath, he threw it open. Sure enough, the East Wing was now nothing more than a pile of bricks and tiles, surrounded by stout perimeter scaffolding.

The East Wing gone, it was now possible to see the sea from that part of the house, and Hardy stood for a while and enjoyed an uninterrupted view of the spectacular rock that balanced precariously on top of Muddleton Point. The rock had been delicately balanced there for millions of years until it was dislodged one night in 1824 by the Second Earl and a group of his mischievous companions. However, following complaints from the residents of Muddleton, for whom the rock had become a tourist attraction and source of income, the Second Earl was forced, at great expense, to restore it.

“I want a divorce,” said Countess Isabella.

“I didn’t do this,” explained Hardy, indicating the smoking ruins of the East Wing. “I wasn’t anywhere near it. We were down at the lake. A fishing trip.”

Hardy gently closed the doors so that he wouldn’t have to think about the East Wing anymore.

“Melton Thornaby is being treated for third-degree burns,” said Isabella, “Ingleby-Barwick is in casualty with three broken ribs. Gunshots were reported near the lake last night. And when I say ‘lake’, it seems that the entire ornamental lake has once again disappeared. And you call that a fishing trip?”

“What else would you call it?” asked Hogg-Marchmont.

Isabella folded her arms. “Oh, and while we’re on the subject of the lake, just whose ashes did I sprinkle down there on Friday morning?”

“Don’t leave me. I need you!” said Hardy, and then he thought hard for a moment. “Are you having an affair?” he asked.

Countess Isabella began to laugh. She laughed and she laughed until she could laugh no longer, and a little bit of pee came out. Then she started to cry. She cried and she cried until she could cry no longer, and a little bit more pee came out. When Isabella finally stopped crying, she opened her eyes and Hardy had gone. He hated a scene. The Sixth Earl had jumped into the dented Daimler and had set off to see his mistress.

When Hardy arrived at Box-Girder Abbey, Lady Prunella was trying on hats. She liked to try on hats every day and had been doing so from a very early age.

“Oh, Prunella!” said Hogg-Marchmont.

“I’m trying on hats,” replied his mistress.

“Isabella wants a divorce!” he cried, and he reached out his arms for an embrace. Lady Box-Girder glared at the Sixth Earl. “I’m trying on hats,” she repeated.

“I think my wife might be having an affair,” said Hardy.

“Hats,” said Prunella, and she pointed towards the French windows.

Hardy went outside and leaned against the weathered, stone balustrade of the balcony, which overlooked the formal grounds of Box-Girder Abbey. The gardens had been recently attended to, and the tall, conical-shaped hedges stood proud and fiercely sharp-edged. Hardy loved topiary. There was nothing quite as sensual as a well-manicured shrubbery. The trees, also, were keenly honed and the bushes razor-sharp.

Hardy lit a cigarette. In the dressing room behind him, Lady Prunella continued to try on hats for another twenty minutes, and then she wafted out onto the balcony.

“I suppose you want to go to the Blue Bedroom?” she said.

“That would be comforting,” replied Hogg-Marchmont.

Sexual encounters between Lady Box-Girder and the Sixth Earl were well rehearsed and tightly choreographed. Since Prunella could tolerate no physical contact whatsoever, Hardy was simply allowed to watch her hitch up her skirt and display her underwear while he stood exactly eight feet away and quietly masturbated into a laundered napkin. There were two distinct flavours of this onerous ritual. Having hitched up her clothing, if Lady Box-Girder was feeling frisky she would quickly pull down the top of her pants, giving Hardy a momentary glimpse of her thicket. If she wasn’t really in the mood, as was usually the case, Prunella would simply stand very still, her skirt bunched up around her waist, her pants on display, until Hardy had gratefully emptied his seed. On one occasion, in 1998, Lady Box-Girder agreed to this procedure after drinking a full schooner of Harvey’s Bristol Cream. Her inhibitions unleashed, she lowered her underwear all the way to the floor, allowing Hogg-Marchmont an entirely uninterrupted panorama of Prunella’s pudenda. Having overenthusiastically encroached to a distance of just five feet, the Sixth Earl ejaculated with such intensity that a tiny globule of sperm landed on Lady Box-Girder’s kneecap, causing her to recoil so violently that she tripped over her own undergarments and cracked a bone in her elbow. The pair did not meet again for six months. The next time they went into the Blue Bedroom, Lady Prunella had taken the precaution of painting a white line on the floorboards, behind which Hardy would be compelled to stand during congress.

Lady Box-Girder’s intense dislike of physical contact stemmed from an experience she’d had with her geography teacher while boarding at Roebuck School during the early 1980s.

Roebuck was set in a delightful location on the cliffs overlooking the English Channel to the west of Cyrille Regis. It was an extremely expensive private college for ladies, and Prunella loved it there. The girls played vigorously, both on the hockey field and with one another after lights out, and there were many and varied opportunities for the students to expand both their minds and their blossoming genitalia.

The blue sea twinkling outside, the geography room prided itself on having one of the best views of any school in the country, and it was here, every Thursday afternoon, that Prunella and the geography teacher Mr. Winchester would wedge a chair against the door, and on two desks, pushed hastily together and covered with a duvet, they would exchange the fluids of desire.

How they loved each other. Prunella was seventeen; Mr. Winchester was seventy-three. The affair went on for six months, and then Prunella discovered that she was pregnant with twins. Mr. Winchester refused to marry her, preferring instead to stay loyal to his sixty-three-year-old wife who was blind, in a wheelchair and also happened to be the headmistress of Roebuck School.

Prunella was heartbroken. She ran away from Roebuck, and Mr. Winchester used his Diner’s Club Card to check her into a remote clinic on Bodmin Moor. Three weeks later, after brief but passionate affairs with both the caretaker at the clinic and the doctor who performed the abortion, Prunella returned to her parents at Box-Girder Abbey, vowing to never again allow herself to be touched by a man.

Mr. Winchester died of a stroke soon afterwards. He was found naked under a duvet on top of two desks pushed together in the geography room.

*

After visiting his mistress, Hardy Hogg-Marchmont went to Muddleton Cottage Hospital to visit Lord and Lady Ingleby-Barwick. Hardy found Angus in a small room adjacent to one of the wards. There was a very expensive-looking machine on a trolley next to his bed. A little screen showed that Ingleby-Barwick had no heartbeat, no brain activity and that his body temperature was zero degrees. An alarm was going off to warn the doctors.

Ingleby-Barwick sat up with a start when he heard Hardy come into the room.

“This machine says you’re dead,” observed the Sixth Earl.

“Oh, it’s been making that bleeping noise ever since I was brought in here,” Angus told his friend. “I think it’s still registering readings from the chap who was in this bed before me.”

“Should we tell someone?” asked Hardy.

“I tell them every time they come in,” said Ingleby-Barwick. “One of the nurses tried to switch it off, but it gave her an electric shock.”

“I brought you some soup,” said Hardy, and he handed the patient a Thermos flask filled with Best Cream of Broccoli. Most people take grapes to hospital, but Hardy knew that his friend’s greatest passion in life was soup. But not just any soup. Ingleby-Barwick was an obsessive compulsive and proud of it. As such, he only ate soup that began with the letter B.

Bacon Soup, Beef Noodle, Bergan Fish, Bird’s Nest, Borscht, Bouillabaisse and Brown Windsor, Angus adored them all.

“Isabella’s leaving me,” said Hardy, “she wants a divorce.”

“Never going to happen,” said Ingleby-Barwick. “The worse you behave, the more Isabella will love you. She’ll be there for the duration. She’ll stand by her man. She is your rock, your safe anchor in an almost perfect storm.”

Hardy’s phone went bleep and a text message flashed onto the screen.

“She’s moved out,” said Hardy. Then another message popped into the phone. Lady Labia has gone into labour, it said.

A stocky, tattooed male nurse came into the room. He put a thermometer under Hogg-Marchmont’s tongue and took his pulse.

“I’m not the patient,” said Hardy.

“Oh,” said the nurse, a little surprised. “Who is the patient?”

“The African gentleman,” said Hardy.

The nurse took the instrument out of Hardy’s mouth, dried it on his uniform and shoved it into Angus’s mouth.

“You should have gone private,” said Hardy.

“This is private,” shrugged Angus. The nurse wiped his nose on his sleeve and scratched his balls. “You have very small ears,” he said to Hogg-Marchmont, and then he left.

“I am about to become a grandfather,” announced Hardy.

Ingleby-Barwick jumped out of bed. “Right, that’s it, I’m out of here,” he said. “Let’s go and celebrate.”

*

Lady Labia stood legs astride, her body bent forward over the four-poster in Hatcher’s bedroom at Hogg Hall. Two midwives knelt on their hands and knees behind her and peered into her chasm like two seasoned potholers planning their descent into the Gaping Chamber at Muddleton Gorge.

“Are you sure you wouldn’t like to get onto the bed?” asked Tiffany, the younger of the two midwives.

“Don’t touch me, bitch!” screamed Lady Labia.

When her waters had broken, in the middle of the food hall at Selfridges, Hatcher had decided on the spot that his wife should have the child at home. The pair had driven, at a breakneck pace, back to Hogg Hall, speed cameras flashing them every three or four miles, Labia screaming like a hungry seagull.

It was Lady Labia’s first baby. She was not a dainty woman, and the doctor had assured her that she was ‘broad enough in the beam for the baby to pop its little head out any time it liked’.

Indeed, the locals in the Pig & Pencil Case had been able to play ‘Fat or Pregnant’ for many weeks, prior to the good news being shared in the Muddleton Gazette.

Lady Labia was now in full labour, her cervix dilated to seven centimetres.

“Stop measuring my cervix!” she screamed at Tiffany. “And get this fucking thing out of me!”

“Don’t push,” said Blodwyn, the older midwife, with a soft and reassuring Welsh accent.

“If I want to push, I will fucking well push!” yelled Labia, and she dug her nails deep into Viscount Hatcher’s hand, causing him to yelp, and for blood to gently trickle down to his wrist.

“You’re doing great,” said Hatcher.

“Fuck off and die,” said Lady Labia.

“I can see the head!” shouted Tiffany.

“No, you can’t,” replied Blodwyn.

“Well, what’s that, then?” asked Tiffany.

“Oh, yes, sorry that is the head,” said Blodwyn. “I’ll go and get the right specs from my bag.”

Still in a fully standing position, her legs akimbo, her upper body bent forward over the side of the bed, Lady Labia began to scream. This was a deafening, high-pitched, extended, scream. A primal scream. The scream of a fatally injured pterodactyl.

“Uh, oh,” said Tiffany. There was a faint tearing noise and, using nothing more than the power of gravity, the newest heir to Hogg Hall left Lady Labia’s womb and hurtled head first towards the Victorian tiles on the floor of the bedroom.

Tiffany froze. It was her first delivery. Luckily Blodwyn had delivered over seven thousand babies and was by now on her way back to Lady Labia’s side, wearing the correct glasses. She was, however, still at least five paces away when she saw the child exit Labia’s vagina and begin its short journey towards the floor. Her hands outstretched before her, the midwife launched herself forward like a scrum half playing at Twickenham. Time stood still, as the infant appeared to hover and rotate between floor and fanny. In a triumphant display of perfect timing, Blodwyn’s hands cupped the baby’s head and caught it safely, not more than a nanosecond before it smashed onto the floor. There was silence for a few seconds, and then the infant gulped its lungs full of air and began to cry. Tiffany felt a little bit of sick rise up into her throat as she surveyed the damage to Lady Labia’s curtains.

“You might need a few stitches there,” she said.

Blodwyn clambered to her feet, holding onto the baby for dear life. “Would you like to cut the cord?” she asked Viscount Hatcher, and in the time-honoured fashion he fainted, cracking his head on the floor and knocking himself cold.

*

It was early evening at Hogg Hall. A time for long shadows, quiet contemplation and gin and tonic. Soft, Titian light illuminated the yellow sandstone on the west facade, and it glinted on the little pointy gothic towers on the roof. An hour earlier, a text had arrived on Hogg-Marchmont’s phone which read simply, It’s a boy.

There was also an auspicious birth that day in the beehive. It was the birth of a bee called Anthogrid. This tiny bee hatched from his egg at exactly 5.04pm, and he sniffed at the air suspiciously. Three days earlier, the queen had laid about two thousand other eggs too, and now almost every one of them was hatching. In his short life, it was unlikely that Anthogrid would learn the name of his father, the names of any of his two thousand brothers and sisters, or that he would ever find out that he lived in a beehive under a servant’s bed in Hogg Hall.

Anthogrid tried to fly but nothing happened. “When will it be time for my wings?” he asked.

He could have been born as a dolphin, a lioness or a huge strutting stag with magnificent antlers. He could have been born as a goldfish or as a chartered surveyor. But Anthogrid was a humble bumble bee, and he was going to have to get used to it.

*

Thornaby, Ingleby-Barwick and the Sixth Earl sat in the library, the stained glass throwing red, blue and green light across the extendable mahogany table. The gin and tonic course duly completed, four empty bottles of celebratory Bollinger now sat on the floor, the air heavy with Cuban cigar smoke.

Above the fireplace a dark, imposing portrait of the Second Earl looked down on them. It was an artwork that told a lot about the Hogg-Marchmont dynasty. The Third Earl had carefully drawn a moustache onto the Second Earl’s face, and there was also a cock and balls, scribbled by the Fourth Earl. The Fifth Earl had made no adornments, but Hardy Hogg-Marchmont, at the age of thirteen, had written the word ‘tits’ in Biro under the artist’s signature in the bottom right-hand corner. Art experts had suggested many times that the portrait should be properly restored, but the family insisted that the graffiti of their ancestors was an integral part of the work’s provenance.

The Great Mirror, which ran along almost the entire length of the Great South Wall, was fashioned from fine glass imported by the First Earl from Mesopotamia. It was made from lead oxide, potash and silica. No one had any idea what silica or potash was, but the Great Mirror looked spectacular all the same.

Being French, Lady Labia had a great appreciation of such splendour, and when she was in the room, she spent almost all the time admiring her reflection. When a team of restorers worked on the mirror in 2014, one of them suggested that Lady Labia was in serious danger of wearing the mirror out, and for the purposes of preservation, they suggested covering it up from time to time.

Thousands of ancient, dust-covered books lined the walls of the Great Library, none of which had ever been read by a single member of the Hogg-Marchmont family. The Third Earl had once tried to read a fine old leather-bound edition of The Oresteia but he soon lost concentration and resorted instead to smoking opium. Earl Hardy had once attempted to reach Pears’ Cyclopaedia on the top shelf but had fallen off the little rosewood ladder and knocked himself out on a French porcelain mantel clock.

The Great Library was a vast, aircraft hangar of a room, and it always felt a little empty. Even when it was full of guests, it still echoed like a cathedral. But now that Countess Isabella was gone, the room felt more empty than ever. Celestia May had left with her mother. Hardy didn’t know where they’d gone, but he guessed they’d be spending some time at Isabella’s cousin’s villa in Spain.

Hatcher was out celebrating fatherhood with a group of his noisiest and most loathsome friends – his exhausted wife left alone upstairs to recuperate, the baby attended to by a well-groomed, middle-aged nanny called Alice, to whom Hardy had been introduced earlier, and with whom he had every intention of copulating.

“Don’t you want to go upstairs and see the baby?” asked Ingleby-Barwick.

“I don’t like babies,” said Hardy.

“Would sir like me to open another bottle of the Bollinger?” enquired O’Donnell.

“How many bottles are left?” asked Hogg-Marchmont.

“There are eight more,” said O’Donnell, as precise as ever.

“Just keep ’em coming,” said Thornaby.

“Very well,” said O’Donnell, and he turned to go out of the room.

“Oh, I meant to give you this, sir,” he said, and he handed a large brown envelope to his master. “It was delivered by hand this afternoon.”

Hogg-Marchmont was always very suspicious of brown envelopes. They rarely delivered good news. He reluctantly tore open the envelope and read the papers inside, of which there seemed to be many. The others watched him with interest while O’Donnell popped open another bottle and filled both their glasses with more fizz.

“Parking fine?” asked Angus.

“No,” smiled Hardy, “it’s from the council. Hogg Hall has been deemed an unsafe structure. It’s been condemned to be demolished.”

Everyone looked at everyone else.

“What utter rubbish,” boomed Melton Thornaby, thumping the table. A small piece of plaster fell from the ceiling and landed in his drink.

The door opened and Nanny Alice came in, holding a tiny bundle.

“I thought you’d like to meet your grandson,” she said, and she gently parted the blanket. The baby’s cheeks were covered in reassuringly bushy hair.

“At least that proves he’s a Hogg-Marchmont,” said Hardy.

The baby vomited, filled its nappy and began to cry. It cried like only a newborn can cry – a repetitive, insistent, invasive shrieking that eats its way into your brain and makes you want to burst into tears and rip your own head off.

“What’s it called?” asked Hardy.

Nurse Alice comforted the infant by putting her pinkie into his mouth. “Viscount Hatcher has named him Keith,” she said.

“He looks like Simon Pegg,” said the Sixth Earl, and the others gathered around to see.

“Bugger me, he does look like Simon Pegg,” agreed Thornaby and Ingleby-Barwick.

“All newborn babies look like Simon Pegg,” said the nurse, and she grinned at Hardy in a way that made his trousers twitch and momentarily allowed him to forget that his first grandson had been born just in time to see the ancestral home torn down by a council bulldozer.

Hardy suddenly felt that he needed some fresh air. “Would you excuse me,” he said, and he strode out of the room.

Ten minutes later, he sat alone in the Tithe Barn, a conspicuous landmark in the grounds of Hogg Hall which was very useful for storing tithes. The Sixth Earl looked up at the ancient curved timbers in the roof, and he tried to visualise what it would be like to watch his house being demolished. He’d let down his wife; he’d let down his son; but worst of all, he’d let down his ancestors.

A white barn owl flashed silently past and deftly plucked a field mouse from the ground. She carried it up into the rafters and perched on one of the transverse beams immediately above Hardy’s head. The owl teased the tiny creature with its claws for a while before ripping out its entrails with its beak.

At least that mouse is having a worse day than I am, thought Hardy, his eyes slowly filling with tears. Then the owl shat on his head.

Built into the wall, above the front door of Hogg Hall, was the Great Astronomical Clock. The clock was twenty feet in diameter with three separate copper dials revolving at different speeds in opposite directions. If the Sixth Earl looked at it for too long, it always made him feel dizzy, and sight of the device often gave him a nosebleed. The clock displayed the date, the month, the position of the sun in the ecliptic, the phases of the moon and the twelve signs of the zodiac. It also showed when the apples needed picking in the orchard, the menstrual cycles of the female inhabitants of the house, and when the River Turd would be at its highest point. In fact, the clock told you everything except what time it was.

O’Donnell looked at his pocket watch. It was 10.06am at Hogg Hall, and having attended her husband’s funeral the day before, Countess Isabella was naturally a little surprised when he walked into the Great Dining Room.

“Good morning,” said the Sixth Earl.

Melton Thornaby went to the toilet in his trousers. Number ones and number twos at the same time. No one said anything for at least two minutes. They’d all been through so much with Hogg-Marchmont that even this unexpected return from the grave seemed almost routine. The family simply stared at Hardy, their mouths hanging open, their eyes slowly blinking, the aroma of Melton’s anal episode slowly filling the room.

First to break the silence was O’Donnell, who respectfully bowed his head before speaking, “Will sir be joining the family for breakfast?”

“Yes, thank you, O’Donnell. I will,” said Hardy.

“I’ll lay an extra place,” said the servant, and he headed off towards the kitchen.

Countess Isabella grew suddenly very pale. She gently rose from the Earl’s seat at the head of the table and went and sat in her usual place. She arranged the cutlery in front of her and put her hands on the table to stop them from shaking.

Ingleby-Barwick jumped up, ran over to Hogg-Marchmont, grasped his face in both hands and gave him a great, big wet kiss on the mouth.

“You old cunt!” he exclaimed.

Viscount Hatcher and his wife simply stared at each other, disbelief and disappointment etched deep into their faces. Lady Labia had a deep mistrust of the English aristocracy, and she actually wasn’t in the least bit surprised at this turn of events. She felt a mild contraction in her womb and placed her hand on her stomach. “Stop that!” she said to the unborn aristocrat.

Countess Isabella finally spoke to Hardy, “I assume that you are going to offer your family some kind of explanation,” she said.

“All in good time,” said Hogg-Marchmont, and he kissed his wife on the forehead.

The Countess grabbed him around the waist and clung onto him as though she had no intention of ever letting him go. Then she suddenly released her grip and stood up, slapping her husband’s face with such force she sent him flying backwards across the room. Blood trickling from the corner of his mouth, Hardy moved back towards his wife, but she held up her hand like an NYC traffic cop. “Don’t touch me!” she said, and then she strode from the room with as much dignity as she could muster.

The Sixth Earl sat down at the head of the table and twirled the long hairs on his face. Like all the Hogg-Marchmonts, Hardy couldn’t grow sideburns or a beard but had unnaturally long hairs on his cheeks. He ran his hands over the carving on the arms of his chair, and he hoped that no one in the room had noticed that he had an erection.

“Who did we burn?” asked Hatcher, his ancestral cheek hairs twitching with rage.

“I don’t know,” replied the Sixth Earl. “I didn’t ask too many questions. I just paid a man with a van to arrange everything.”

“A man with a van?” screamed Lady Labia. “Is it now possible to fake one’s own death simply by hiring a man with a van?”

“Actually, he didn’t use the van,” said Hardy. “He arranged the whole thing on the internet.”

“I assume this is about life insurance,” said Melton, always a master of stating the bleeding obvious.

“Well how else are we going to keep this place from falling down?” replied Hogg-Marchmont, grabbing a piece of burnt toast from the toast rack and then immediately putting it back.

“But everyone in Muddleton believes you’re dead,” said Hatcher. “You can’t just hide indoors for the rest of your life.”

“Nonsense,” said his father. “After a few days, everyone will simply have forgotten that I died at all. No one round here pays any real attention to anything.”

“People do not forget who is alive and who is dead,” insisted Lady Labia.

“OK,” said Hardy, “Lady Clemency Trott-Clemence. Alive or dead?”

“Alive,” buzzed in Hatcher.

“Wrong,” corrected Hogg-Marchmont. “We went to her funeral five years ago.”

“Are you sure?” asked his son.

“Positive,” said the Sixth Earl. “She died at the age of ninety-four from a rare beak and feather disease that she contracted from her pet cockatoo.”

“Oh, now I remember,” said Hatcher.

“Lord Beaver-Santander? Dead or alive?” asked Hardy.

“He is dead,” said Lady Labia.

“Alive,” grinned the Sixth Earl. “He was only here last week playing bridge with the Countess. He has a patch over one eye.”

“Oh merde,” said Lady Labia.

“You see,” said Hardy, “no one cares if one is dead or alive. I might pop into the Pig & Pencil Case this evening and see if anyone even notices me.”

Celestia May spoke at last, “Daddy, where have you actually been for the past two weeks?”

Hardy smiled. “Skegness,” he said.

Melton Thornaby shifted back and forth in his faeces-filled corduroys. “But the horse, the fall, the ambulance, the doctors…” he said.

“I can’t tell you any more,” said Hogg-Marchmont. “The less you know the better. All that matters is that when the insurance money arrives, we can prop this place up for a few more years.”

Hardy was always coming up with schemes like this. He once went missing for three months in the Gobi Desert, hoping that his wife would eventually give up hope, report him dead and claim on the insurance. Unfortunately, during the exact same ninety days, the Countess also disappeared, and no one reported either of them missing. The pair both returned home on the same day, slightly embarrassed and wishing they’d co-ordinated their efforts more carefully.

The door to the Great Dining Room slammed open, and a nineteenth-century painting of a kitten in a wedding dress fell off the wall. Countess Isabella stood framed in the doorway, her face flushed, her teeth gritted. In her right hand was an envelope and in her left hand a letter. She placed the document on the breakfast table in front of the Sixth Earl, and he took a few moments to read it.

“Oh, fudge!” said Hardy.

“What’s that, old man?” asked Melton.

Hardy said nothing.

“Go on, tell them,” said the Countess. “Tell your brainless, lettuce-headed friends that you’re smart enough to fake your own death but not clever enough to check to see if the life insurance policy is paid up before you do it!”

O’Donnell came into the room with a plate of eggs and bacon and put it down in front of Hogg-Marchmont.

“Red sauce or brown, sir?” asked the servant.

“Red, I think,” answered the Sixth Earl, and he dipped a piece of bacon into his egg yolk.

“You idiot!” yelled Hatcher.

“Don’t speak to your father like that!” hissed Isabella, as O’Donnell placed a silver vessel of Heinz Ketchup, and a tiny silver spoon, in front of his master.

Hatcher continued with his rant, “This was your best chance to save Hogg Hall, and you buggered it up. Just like you bugger up everything. Jesus H. Christmas on a stick, Father, you’re a complete addle brain! You can’t even be trusted to die properly! What are you going to do now?”

Hogg-Marchmont put a dollop of sauce on his plate and looked at his son. “I tell you what I’m going to do, my boy. I’m going to finish my breakfast.”

Hatcher laughed. “Then what?” he asked.

“Then,” said Hogg-Marchmont, “I’m going fishing!”

Things often went hopelessly wrong at Hogg Hall, and when they did, Earl Hardy Hogg-Marchmont would invariably go fishing. But fishing at Hogg Hall was unlike fishing anywhere else. It was a bizarre, brutal and often dangerous ritual. First, Hardy would instruct O’Donnell to prepare the lake, and the old servant would ride his bicycle down to the river. Turning a huge, rusty handle, he would open the Great Sluice Gates, and the water level in the lake would slowly drop as it drained away into the river. Fine metal grills would prevent the trout from being swept downstream, and when the water was little more than a few inches deep, Hogg-Marchmont and his companions would put on their wellington boots, wade out into the centre of the lake and kill as many of the flailing, stranded fish as they could by beating them about the heads with cricket bats. But first, they would get drunk. Thoroughly, excessively, irresponsibly drunk.

The Sixth Earl strode across the north lawn towards the lake, accompanied by Melton Thornaby and Lord and Lady Ingleby-Barwick. Thornaby led the way, pushing a stolen Tesco trolley which was laden with boxes of beer, mixed crates of wine and clinking, clanking plastic bags full of spirits.

Ingleby-Barwick struggled along behind, a kitbag full of cricket bats clasped precariously in his bony arms. One of Hogg-Marchmont’s favourite old bats was in the bag. He’d owned it since he was at Eton, and it had been repaired with sticky tape many times. The bat was signed by Ian Botham and Geoffrey Boycott, but Hardy had never used it for playing cricket. This was his fishing bat. Being the youngest at fifty-nine, Hogg-Marchmont carried the heaviest and most valuable bag. The one with the cocaine in it.

Ingleby-Barwick loved these little expeditions with his old friend Hardy, and he relished the opportunity to exchange anecdotes about the pair’s glory days.

“I am reminded of an occasion,” Ingleby-Barwick intoned, “many moons ago, when Hardy and I were on a hunting trip on my father’s ancestral land in Kenya. Those were simpler times. In those days you could kill a tiger, a lion, a rhino or an elephant without being criticised and harangued by a bunch of do-gooding, long-haired, vegetarian trolls.”

“Hear, hear!” Melton agreed.

Ingleby-Barwick continued. “Hardy shot many elephants in his day and now here he was again, standing on the roof of a Land Rover, his huge H&H Magnum rifle aimed directly at the forehead of the largest elephant you’ve ever seen. It was a female. She was old, and tired, and she was standing only a few yards away from us. The beast knew that her time had come. She stood quite calmly, quietly making peace with her maker and readying herself to go to that great, steaming pool of mud in the sky. She closed her eyes and prepared to receive Hogg-Marchmont’s bullet.

“‘It’s no good,’ Hardy said suddenly, ‘I can’t do it.’ The beast slowly opened her eyes. Hardy turned to me and smiled. ‘Angus old chap,’ he said, ‘you and I have known each other for many years, and I know for a fact that you’ve never managed to bag an elephant. This one’s all yours.’ He handed me the gun, and without a moment’s hesitation, I blasted the bugger’s brains out!”

*

As Hardy, Melton and Ingleby-Barwick reached the edge of the lake, the water level was already falling. Within a couple of hours, it would be low enough for battle to commence, so there would be plenty of time for what Melton Thornaby liked to call a Liquid Picnic.

Thornaby unpacked the wine first, and while the others were pulling on their wellies, he poured three large glasses of Napa Valley 2008 Cabernet Sauvignon. This wine is normally around £150 a bottle, but Melton had slipped this particular bottle into the pocket of his overcoat while covering a wine tasting at Harrods for the Daily Telegraph.

Lord and Lady Ingleby-Barwick raised his glass and proposed a toast. “To life after death!” he announced, and the three men downed their plonk in a single gulp. Meanwhile, O’Donnell strained every muscle in his old body to turn the handle of the Great Sluice Gates on the far side of the lake.

Melton took a swipe at a plump bee that seemed to be taking an unhealthy interest in the dregs at the bottom of his glass.

“Bloody pests,” he said, “I thought we’d got rid of those buggers years ago.”

The plump bee, whose name was Arvid, spiralled upwards and joined his foraging co-worker Egil, who had already banked southwards above the lake and was on his way back towards Hogg Hall.

“I hear the queen’s pregnant,” said Arvid.

“Who’s the father?” replied Egil.

The pair swooped in through O’Donnell’s bedroom window and disappeared into the beehive under his bed. Queen bees only have sex once in their lifetime, but during this singular act of congress, they receive enough sperm to fertilise two thousand eggs per day for five years. Which is a horrible thought.

Two house bees appeared and helped the foragers unload. The pair had a healthy haul of nectar and pollen. Arvid held on firmly to the walls of the hive while the house bees licked the pollen from his hairy back legs, a process that usually took about three days and that Arvid thoroughly enjoyed. House bees are always eager to help unload the foraging bees that bring in the pollen, as they secretly wish they were foraging bees too, and they love to hear little stories about the outside world.

“What’s the weather like outside?” asked one of the house bees.

Egil spun around and gave the skunk eye to his leg licker. “Just button it and get that gunk off my legs!” he said.

Back at the lake, the bottle of Napa Valley was gone within minutes. Melton Thornaby loved Californian reds. He also loved French reds, Spanish reds, Chilean reds and South African reds. Any red at all, in fact, as long as it wasn’t Italian.

Melton’s hatred for Italians all stemmed from a bad experience he’d had with a raven-haired grape picker in Northern Tuscany. He’d fallen head over heels in love with the woman, and the pair had enjoyed a short but passionate affair. Melton returned to England, and six weeks later, he plucked up the courage to telephone the woman and propose marriage. To his surprise, she told him that the affair was over, and when he asked why, she explained that a month after he left, she had found a condom inside her vagina. Melton desperately tried to explain that he had never used a condom in his life, but it was too late. He’d lost the love of his life forever.

Next to be opened was a rare 1999 Howell Mountain Cabernet Sauvignon at around £130. Melton had been saving this for a special occasion and he could think of no more important event than celebrating the death and resurrection of his oldest friend. Vivid, nuanced and well structured, the wine had a softer approach than the Napa Valley and definitely benefited from being laid down for the past seventeen years.

“I dare you to drink the whole bottle in one go,” goaded Hogg-Marchmont, and Thornaby was so caught up in the excitement of the day, that he rather unwisely attempted it. Two thirds of the way through the bottle, he lost his rhythm and was forced to projectile vomit the whole lot over Ingleby-Barwick’s wellingtons.

About two hours later, the group felt they were drunk enough to go fishing. An orange sun was starting to dip behind the moorlands, and the water in the lake had settled at just the right depth – not so shallow that it might completely ground the trout and yet not so deep that the fish were too difficult to thwack. O’Donnell was an artist when it came to the sluice gates.

Lord and Lady Ingleby-Barwick went first. The sport was not just about how many helpless fish you could dispatch, but like a bullfight, it was about the finesse and elegance with which the slaughter took place. Angus caught sight of a semi-grounded trout and carefully slid his cricket bat underneath it. With the skill that only comes from many years of practice, he flicked the trout out of the water. It rose high into the air, and as it came down, he swung his bat and hit the fish for six.

“Well played, sir,” applauded Melton Thornaby, and he splashed towards shallower water. Melton’s technique was a lot more direct. Spying an almost motionless and half-dead trout, he smashed its head in, with a single blow.

Ingleby-Barwick was enjoying himself. This was beginning to remind him of his hunting trips with his father at Saiwa Swamp in the Rift Valley. Of course, in those days, they would have been accompanied by at least a dozen servants, who would carry and load their guns and keep them topped up with boozy Dawa cocktails.

Angus spied two trout trying to swim in the deathly shallows near the Great Ornamental Bridge, and he crept through the water, making as little sound as possible. He deftly flipped the first trout out of the lake, and while it was still in the air above him, he flicked the second trout upwards. Then he span elegantly around on his own axis and batted both fish, one after the other, high into the trees.

“Bravo!” cried Hogg-Marchmont, and he went looking for a fish of his own. About ten feet away, a handsome rainbow trout poked up its head. It had found a small area of deeper water and was one of the few fish in the lake that still had enough depth to swim. Hardy moved gently towards it, his boots slowly filling up as they got out of their depth. He raised his bat, as if awaiting a fast delivery from Flintoff at The Oval. As the trout swam closer, he thrashed out, making a huge splash, but missing the fish by several feet. Furious, the Sixth Earl reached into his jacket pocket, pulled out a pistol and shot the creature dead.

“Bad show!” cried Melton.

“Oh dear, oh dear, that really isn’t cricket at all,” insisted Ingleby-Barwick. “I’m going to have to confiscate that weapon, you wicked boy.”

“It’s a fair cop,” growled Hogg-Marchmont, and he tossed the handgun towards the African. In trying to catch it, he accidentally pulled the trigger and the weapon discharged, narrowly missing Thornaby and simultaneously removing the corks from two of the wine bottles on the bank.

“Nice shooting!” applauded Hogg-Marchmont. At that point, the weapon slipped out of Angus’s hand and fell into the water. He fished it out, and to see if it was still working, pointed it at Hogg-Marchmont and pulled the trigger. The gun misfired with a harmless click. Bored, he threw it onto the bank and once again began thrashing away at the trout with his cricket bat.

The Hogg-Marchmont family had a long history of alcoholism. The Second Earl drank twelve bottles of wine a day and yet still seemed to continue to function adequately. He was a passionate traveller, builder, gardener and art collector who transformed Hogg Hall. He inherited the title in 1811, along with twelve other major estates covering a total of 850,000 acres. This made him one of the richest men in England. It was the Second Earl who added the now famous ninety-nine pig gargoyles which adorned the entire length of the north facade. The creatures were intended to ward off evil spirits and bring good luck to Hogg Hall, but history tells that this was sadly not the case. He also built the Great Folly, an imposing tower on the north-west corner of the lake. It was seventy-five feet tall and could be seen from the village on a clear day. Topped with a turret, this cylindrical edifice contained many rooms for entertaining, including the Fingering Room, the Fisting Room and the Earl’s notorious Circular Bedroom. It also housed the splendid, velvet-lined Great Card Room. The Second Earl loved to play cards, but he wasn’t particularly good at it. It took just six months for him to lose all of his property with the exception of Hogg Hall.

Like most of England’s country houses, the house was put to institutional use during the Second World War. The West Wing was converted into barracks by the Fourth Earl, and a large anti-aircraft gun was set up on the croquet lawn. Unfortunately, condensation from the breath of over six hundred sleeping soldiers caused thick green fungus to grow on the walls, and as a result, the Fourth Earl had no choice but to evict the troops. This made him extremely unpopular with Winston Churchill, who also disliked him because he was both a confessed fascist and a homosexual. He was forced to switch sides and join the Luftwaffe, and he flew with great bravery during the Battle of Britain. His Messerschmitt 109 was shot down over the White Cliffs of Dover.

The Fourth Earl’s untimely demise led to death duties being charged at eighty per cent on the entire Hogg Hall estate. The amount due was £12 million. The family’s accountants proposed converting the house into a museum and safari park. Instead, the Fifth Earl resolved to retain his family home if he could, and he sold many valuable works of art. But it wasn’t enough.

In the mid-1950s, the Fifth Earl drank a bottle of brandy, then took a double-barrelled shotgun and held up the post office in Lower Muddleton. He went on the run for sixteen weeks but was finally apprehended by the police, charged with armed robbery and sentenced to ten years in prison.

Hardy Hogg-Marchmont inherited the title when, at the age of seventy, the Fifth Earl was killed by an elk. There was no money in the bank, and Hogg Hall was slowly crumbing into ruins. The cost of running the house was around £3 million per year. The fact that the Sixth Earl had managed to keep the house from falling down ever since was something of a miracle. He did it using a combination of determination, cunning and wit. But mostly, he kept the lawyers and debtors at bay by means of lying, cheating, embezzlement and fraud.

Hardy even managed to add to Hogg Hall in 2008 by building a formal flower garden around the West Wing and a small, domed observatory on the south-east bank of the lake. Being a child of the space race in the sixties, the Sixth Earl knew quite a lot about astronomy. He would retire to the observatory for days on end, making snacks with a Breville Deep Fill Sandwich Toaster, looking at the stars through his reflecting telescope and occasionally watching hardcore pornography on his MacBook.

But back to the fishing trip. By now, there was a large pile of dead trout by the side of the lake.

“We need to make a fire and cook this lot,” slurred Ingleby-Barwick.

“I’m all over it,” said Melton, and he reached into the shopping trolley.

“What’s that?” asked Hogg-Marchmont.

“Petrol,” replied Thornaby, waving a big metal can. He poured a generous amount of the fuel over the fish and casually threw on a match. The resulting explosion blew all three men about nine feet away from the fire, setting Hogg-Marchmont’s hair alight and neatly removing the eyebrows of Lord and Lady Ingleby-Barwick. Thornaby appeared unharmed, but as he wandered back towards the shopping trolley, it was clear that his bottom was on fire. The heady smell of cooking fish and gasoline filled the air.

“Trout for dinner!” enthused Hogg-Marchmont, pouring a glass of Hungarian Malbec over his head to put out the flames.

An hour later, the party began to sag rather. The fish supper had been disappointing to say the least, and Melton’s style of al fresco cooking had received mixed reviews from the others.

Ingleby-Barwick had twice nearly choked on a fish bone, and when Hogg-Marchmont performed the Heimlich manoeuvre on him, he broke several of his friend’s ribs.

“Is it just me,” whispered Melton, “or has Hogg-Marchmont got a great big raging stiffy in his pants?”

“I thought I was imagining it,” heaved Ingleby-Barwick, wincing from the pain in his side, “I didn’t like to say anything.”

The pair were not imagining it. Unwisely thinking that his wife would be uncontrollably delighted to see him when he returned from the dead, Hogg-Marchmont had taken two Viagra tablets before entering the library that morning. The resulting erection had since stubbornly refused to subside, and even after half a dozen bottles of wine, the Sixth Earl was still walking around like a tripod. As the trio sat on the grass to recover from the traumas of dinner, Hogg-Marchmont, in sheer desperation, suddenly began punching his penis.

“Get down, you bastard!” he cried. “Your presence is not required at this moment in time.”

Ingleby-Barwick watched in silence for a while and then he offered a suggestion. “Why don’t you hit it with a cricket bat?” he said.

“That’s not a bad idea,” agreed Melton, “put the poor thing out of its misery.”

“I’ve had this erection since 9am this morning,” slurred Hogg-Marchmont. “It reminds me of sitting on the school bus and having to hide my hard-on under a satchel.”

“Ah, we’ve all trodden that path,” daydreamed Melton, skilfully snorting a line of cocaine from the back of his hand, and then sneezing the whole lot into a bush. When he was that age, Melton had owned a special lunch tin with a circular hole in the bottom. While he was on the bus, he would put his erection through the hole, and if he became too aroused, he would raise the lid of the tin, slip his hand inside and quietly pay homage to himself.

“I didn’t get an erection until I was thirty,” confessed Ingleby-Barwick. “I thought it was a tumour.”

Melton took the situation by the scruff of the neck. “So, do you want us to hit your joystick with cricket bats, or not?”

It was almost dark now, and Hogg-Marchmont had had a very long and problematic day. He’d returned from the dead, been attacked by his wife, and he’d just spent a full innings beating trout. He felt tired, drunk and defeated, and he had a tent pole in his trousers the size of Moby Dick.

“Hell,” he said, “it just might work. What harm can it do?”

Melton and Ingleby-Barwick stood either side of Hogg-Marchmont.

“Are you going to take it out of your trousers?” asked the African. Melton looked a little green around the gills.

“Is that really necessary?” asked Hardy. “Can’t you see where it is?”

“Oh, we can see it,” giggled Ingleby-Barwick, “I just think this exercise might be more effective if you were to unleash it.”

Straight from the bottle, Hogg-Marchmont took a healthy slug of Koonunga Hill Shiraz, and then he whipped out the offending member. As soon as he set eyes upon it, Melton Thornaby was sick. Then there was a blinding flash as Ingleby-Barwick took a photograph. The Sixth Earl leapt to his feet, fell over and then leapt to his feet again.

A full moon was beginning to rise over the lake, and in a profound, primal expression of frustration, anger and desperation, Hogg-Marchmont howled at it. Then he looked down and realised that his erection was gone. Before the Sixth Earl had time to howl at the moon again, there was a massive crash, followed by the sound of falling masonry and breaking glass. The three men slowly turned around to look at Hogg Hall, which was brightly illuminated in the moonlight.

“Where’s the East Wing?” asked Melton Thornaby.

“Oh, bollocks!” said Hogg-Marchmont.

Colossal waves crashed against the jagged rocks of the Cape, and rain thrashed down in the manicured grounds of Muddleton Crematorium.

“Who comes to a funeral dressed as a chicken?” asked Melton Thornaby.

Dr. Dreyfuss looked down at his bright yellow costume and blushed. “But Hardy always said that if anything happened to him, he wanted me to come to his funeral dressed as a chicken.”

“He said that to everyone,” said Thornaby.

“I know,” replied Dr. Dreyfuss, “that’s why I thought everyone else would be dressed as a chicken as well.”

Sheltering from the driving rain, Melton Thornaby and Dr. Dreyfuss stood outside the drab chapel smoking two soggy cigarettes.

“The family tried not to take anything the Sixth Earl said too seriously,” said Melton. “Marvellous chap, salt of the earth, but he was as mad as a haddock. You should know, you were his doctor.”

“Actually,” said Dr. Dreyfuss, “I was his dentist.”

There was a flash of lightning, and a couple of drenched ravens squawked and sheltered under a hedge.

“I feel a bit of an idiot now,” mumbled the dentist, his chicken suit now completely sodden.

“Don’t worry about it,” shrugged Thornaby, “I went to a bar mitzvah once dressed as a strawberry.”

Thornaby and Dr. Dreyfuss were there for the funeral of the late Hardy Hogg-Marchmont, Sixth Earl of Hogg Earl. In ancient times they might have burned the Earl’s body on a huge, blazing funeral pyre, the roar of the flames mixed with a great howling chorus of weeping – hunting dogs, war horses and a dozen or so Trojan slaves tossed onto the fire for good measure.

But this was Muddleton on a wet Tuesday afternoon, and there was to be no such pomp and circumstance for Hardy Hogg-Marchmont.

To say it was wet was something of an understatement. The sky was as black as a Blues Brother’s hat, the rain horizontal. Giant waves crashed against the jagged rocks at Muddleton Point. Ancient oaks came crashing to the ground; roads were blocked; whole villages cut off. Henley-on-Thames became Henley-under-the-Thames.

Giant hailstones lashed against the stained-glass windows in the chapel, as a plain larchwood coffin was slowly carried past. Hogg-Marchmont had once attended a funeral in New Orleans where one of the pall-bearers was a midget. The chap had been unable to reach the handles on the casket, so he’d simply shuffled along sulkily, his hands shoved into his pockets. Never one to forget an engaging incident, and ever keen to enhance and improve what he witnessed, Hogg-Marchmont’s Last Will and Testament had left strict instructions that there should be six pall-bearers at his own funeral, and that five of them should be midgets.

The sixth pall-bearer, the document went on, must be a man of at least six feet, nine inches in height, who must simply walk alongside the coffin, his hand resting awkwardly on the lid.

Above the noise of the storm, Hardy’s only son Viscount Hatcher and his French wife Lady Labia Antoinette could be heard furiously copulating behind a pair of heavy purple drapes, to the rear of the congregation. Despite being eight and a half months pregnant, Lady Labia was strongly aroused by funerals, and as soon as she began to moisten, her husband was only too happy to satiate her needs. He was, after all, now the Seventh Earl of Hogg Hall, and he could do whatever he sodding well liked.

Sheet lightning illuminating the trees outside, the coffin came to a standstill at the front of the chapel, and Hardy’s handsome wife Countess Isabella placed a single orchid on top of it, along with a vinyl copy of ‘Green Door’ by Shakin’ Stevens. Isabella was helped back to her seat by her thin, frail and sad young daughter Celestia May.

Celestia May did thin, frail and sad very well. Even on a bright summer’s day, when all the world was happy and smiling, Celestia May was thin, frail and sad, her face pale, and deep pools of darkness in her eyes. On an ugly day, Celestia May would cut herself; on a bad day she would starve herself; and on a good day she would go and get a tattoo.

“Who is that black man over there?” whispered one of the locals from the Pig & Pencil Case, but no one else in the church had any trouble at all recognising Lord and Lady Angus Ingleby-Barwick. He was sitting next to Celestia May and was one of the Sixth Earl’s oldest and dearest friends.

Lord and Lady Angus Ingleby-Barwick was a handsome, slim and eloquent African gentleman in his mid-fifties, and he was wearing a bright, full-length, multicoloured tribal costume, with tall, matching headwear. Ingleby-Barwick had famously been born with male and female genitals – both organs furiously competing for attention in his underpants. Even Debrett’s and Burke’s Peerage listed him as ‘Lord and Lady’, and it was a purely arbitrary decision on Angus’s part that his pronouns were ‘he’ and ‘his’. Angus’s father was Obateru Mantfombi Nnamdi Azikiwe – an African prince from Nairobi. His British stepmother, meanwhile, was Beatrice-Allegra Ingleby-Barwick, an aristocrat from a very old and morbidly double-barrelled English family.

At his father’s insistence, Angus was sent from his home in Kenya to study mechanical engineering at university in England. He took with him his stepmother’s, rather than his father’s, family name, which was felt might ease his path in the sacrosanct and repulsively inbred social circles of Cambridge. Angus quickly acquired a ridiculously theatrical Oxbridge accent, perfecting the kind of vocal delivery that eased graduates into top jobs at the BBC and the Home Office, and enabled meaningful social intercourse in the watering holes of Sloan Square and Henley.

He was first dubbed Lord and Lady Ingleby-Barwick while appearing in a Footlights Revue called ‘Whoops Vicar, Is That Your Dick?’. This may have been considered by some to be a cruel nickname, but it suited Angus so perfectly that it stuck like glue, even when he played Othello in his final year at Cambridge. The African did not, however, pursue a stage career, or enter the media or the civil service. Instead, he used his first-class degree in mechanical engineering to become an inventor, and already had over three hundred patents to his name. He was most renowned for his Self-Ventilating Top Hat® and his Expandable Rotating Corset®.

*

Many people had been invited to the funeral, but very few had shown up. Hardy’s bookmaker was there of course, and some of the monks who delivered wine to Hogg Hall. There was also a smattering of dishevelled regulars from the Pig & Pencil Case, including the landlord and a temporary barmaid with whom Hogg-Marchmont had recently made the beast with two backs, after a gruelling session of after-hours supping in the snug.

All six members of the Muddleton Morris Men were there, in their full dancing regalia of tatter coats, breeches, bowler hats and armbands. As the coffin had passed their oldest dancer, Ben Dunn, he had ceremonially hit it with a pig’s bladder on a stick.

The local amateur dramatic society was well represented. The Sixth Earl had been a keen patron of the society and had often performed in their productions. His rendition of ‘If I Were a Rich Man’ in Fiddler on the Roof had moved many to tears, and his suitably cross-gartered Malvolio received good reviews in the Muddleton Chronicle. Although the Gazette had dared to suggest that his performance was, like a pissed Oliver Reed, trying to do Shakespeare.

Notable by their absence were Hardy’s first wife Lady Pip Fox-Trumpton, and his second wife Marjorie Gusset, two women to whom he’d been married at the same time, and who had only met each other during Hardy’s long and drawn-out trial for bigamy at the Old Bailey.

Other absentees were Tristram and Odysseus, twin sons from his marriage to Lady Pip, and Rothman, his older brother with whom he’d fallen out after a bitter argument. Neither man could now remember what the argument was about, and they hadn’t spoken a word to each other since 1983.

In the second row of the chapel sat Lady Prunella and her husband Lord Patch Box-Girder. Prunella was as plain as a Manila envelope. She’d been Hardy’s mistress for the past twenty years, but the pair had never consummated their rather unusual and illicit affair.

Prunella, it seemed, disliked physical contact of any kind. The more politically incorrect among us might suggest that this would make her an extremely unlikely candidate to be a mistress, but Hardy had clearly found some kind of solace in her cold and frosty countenance. Meanwhile, the Countess remained at home, missing her husband terribly and occasionally relieving her growing sexual frustration by touching herself in a special way.

Smelling strongly of damp and nicotine, Melton Thornaby and Dr. Dreyfuss came in from the rain and sat down next to the Box-Girders. Cremation is rarely a religious affair these days. It’s simply the combustion, vaporisation and oxidation of a dead body in a furnace. This is usually preceded by a few flip words read by a civil celebrant who never actually met the deceased, and has somewhere far less depressing to rush off to straight afterwards.

But on that day, the eulogy was to be read by Thornaby – wine critic, adventurer and Hardy’s oldest and least trusted friend. The pair had met in Her Majesty’s open prison, Castle Huntly. Both had been wrongly arrested for poaching ducks and were awaiting appearances at the magistrates’ court. They spent many happy evenings together drinking Australian Merlot, cleverly smuggled into the prison inside the wheelchair of Melton’s elderly mother.

Had the funeral been on a Monday, this would not have been the case, because on Mondays, Thornaby was far too drunk to leave the house. But on that day of days, he was almost entirely sober – alcohol free, save for three steadying gins before breakfast and a couple of cheeky swigs from his hip flask on the way to the crematorium.

Thornaby adjusted his bow tie, buttoned his tweed waistcoat and walked slowly to the lectern, concentrating hard not to pass wind – an event which nowadays took place almost every time he moved a muscle and often resulted in soiling. He unfolded a piece of A4, lined paper from his pocket and read aloud in a deep, calm and sombre voice.

*

“Today we say goodbye to the youngest child of Sidney and Beatrice Hogg-Marchmont,” he intoned. “The world will long remember their son Hardy, as the heir to a weighty legacy.”

Accompanied by a low-level, but very distinct, squelching noise, Viscount Hatcher and his wife slipped back into the congregation and sat down near the back. The vigorous coitus was now producing mild contractions in Lady Labia’s cervix, but it was more than likely a false alarm. Having said that, Hatcher’s wife would have been only too delighted to upstage her deceased father-in-law by giving birth at exactly the same time as he was being incinerated.

In the front row, Countess Isabella dabbed her dazzling green eyes as Thornaby continued with her husband’s eulogy. “There have been many challenges for the Hogg-Marchmont family,” he said. “It can’t have been at all easy for Hardy at Eton. He was a poor rugby player, an undiagnosed dyslexic and, by all accounts, a bit of an all-round arse.”

An awkward titter rang out from among the mourners. Lord and Lady Ingleby-Barwick took off his spectacles and wiped them uncomfortably. Melton was well known for his gallows humour, but on this occasion, he was in severe danger of hanging himself.

“He also had the smallest ears I’ve ever seen,” ad-libbed Melton, trying to break the ice. Hardy did indeed have extremely small ears, and from certain angles you could not see them at all. He’d once been refused admission to the Groucho Club for having such small ears, and he’d seriously considered having cosmetic surgery to have them enlarged.

Melton went back to his script. “Down through the mists of years long dead, the Hogg-Marchmonts have been accused of many things,” he said. “Theft, murder, blasphemy, bestiality, incest… While all of this is true, the family have always shown great dignity and fortitude in the face of overwhelming hardship and dogged pursuance by the Crown Prosecution Service.”

Melton paused briefly for effect and then his cultured RADA-like tones boomed out once again, “In particular the upkeep of Hogg Hall has proved to be far more expensive than anyone could possibly have anticipated when it was built by the First Earl in the eighteenth century.”

“Only this morning, I know that part of the roof fell down, killing a ginger cat, and last weekend, gaping cracks began to appear in the floor of the Great Orangery. While the Hogg-Marchmont family are aristocrats, they are not rich, and at the end of this service, I would urge you all to dig deep when the big silver plate is passed around. All money raised today will be used to temporarily prop up the ceiling in the snooker room and to fish dead pigeons out of the water tank in the attic of the East Wing.”

Celestia May squeezed her mother’s hand for comfort, and the Countess smiled at her daughter in a way that said, “I’m sure your father is looking down on us.”

After a brief pause, Melton Thornaby continued with his eulogy for the Sixth Earl. “I first met Hardy Hogg-Marchmont at a garden party at Buckingham Palace. He had gatecrashed the event disguised as a member of the Household Cavalry and was flitting from table to table, draining half-finished wine glasses that had been discarded by the guests.

“Hardy and I shared a love of many, many things: playing cards, horse racing, greyhound racing, roulette tables… Through these shared interests, I became dear friends with Hardy, and later with his wonderful family, some of whom I see gathered here today.”

Lady Labia adjusted her clingy black skirt and slid her chubby, gloved fingers onto her husband’s private member, which she liked to call Monsieur Sniffles. Meanwhile, Lord Box-Girder tried to take hold of his wife’s hand, but she swatted it away as though it were an unwelcome wasp. Then her eyes narrowed.

“Why is that man dressed as a chicken?” she asked her husband.

“Dentist,” he said.

“We will never know,” continued Melton, “if the Sixth Earl was, as he so frequently claimed, abducted by aliens in 1994, 1998 and again in 2004. It’s also unclear whether he genuinely reached the summit of Everest in 1981, or whether his brief friendship with Helena Bonham Carter was indeed as platonic as he claimed.

“It was also never proved,” Melton went on, “that the Sixth Earl murdered that chartered accountant in Market Harborough. Nor that he assaulted those two belly dancing teachers in Finsbury Park. We should remember him not for his high-profile trials and legal battles, but for the kind, caring, loving man that he was.”

Melton Thornaby took a deep breath, swallowed hard, and he delivered the next few lines like a heavyweight voiceover for a TV commercial. “No man is perfect,” he said. “Some men are more imperfect than others. Hardy may have been more imperfect than most men, but he was more perfect than many other men who were less perfect than he was.” Orson Welles could not have read it better.

As if in respect for this moment, the storm outside suddenly waned, and the chapel fell perfectly still. Melton’s bottom spoke quietly. The merest, gentle puff. He ignored it and continued. You could hear a pin drop.

“All through his life,” Melton told the congregation, “Hardy Hogg-Marchmont had a recurring dream. He dreamt that it was a snowy Christmas morning, and that he was riding in the Muddleton Hunt. At the end of the chase, when the fox was cornered and the hounds were closing in for the kill, he would suddenly become aware that he was not a man at all but, like his prey, was a four-legged beast. But Hardy did not dream that he was a fox. He dreamt that he was a hog. A proud warthog, seated on a thoroughbred horse and dressed in a bright, scarlet fox hunter’s jacket. When he awoke, he would often wonder if he was, in reality, a hog, and that his whole life was a dream. A hog’s dream about being a man.”

“Oh, for Christ’s sake,” said Hatcher under his breath. Curtains gradually closed around the coffin, which then began its final journey to the furnaces, according to the latest British Code of Cremation Practice. While this was happening, Thornaby said a few final words of farewell.

“Earl Hardy Hogg-Marchmont is going home now, guided by a heavenly light, and by the spirits of those he has cherished, adored and loved. Perhaps even now, his spirit is wondering if his whole life at Hogg Hall was a dream.”

While these words were being spoken in the chapel, a tall man with a slight limp appeared behind the scenes and prepared the body for cremation. It was the seventh body he’d burnt that day. He wasn’t allowed to smoke while he was doing it, but he was permitted to listen to the radio.

*

After the funeral, the mourners drove back to Hogg Hall, which was about three and a half miles north-east of Muddleton, and half a mile from the rocky coastline surrounding Muddleton Point. The house sat close to the leafy banks of the River Turd, and the north side looked out across the low hills that divided the Velch and Spurn valleys. The contours of the land in this area meant that the house and grounds had their own unique climate, and even when the weather in the surrounding area was fair, it was generally raining at Hogg Hall.

The house had been the seat of the Hogg-Marchmont family since 1793. It was set in expansive, heavily overgrown parkland and backed by wooded, rocky hills rising to heather moorland. The First Earl selected this site so that he could divert part of the river to form a large, decorative lake.

The East Wing of Hogg Hall smelt of damp and urine, and the West Wing smelt of urine and damp. The bit in the middle smelt mostly of mould and contained a collection of paintings, furniture, sculptures, books and other artefacts, few of which had any value as the majority of them were extremely poorly executed fakes – the originals having been sold to raise money for repairs to the house. The most famous painting in the collection was ‘Young Man Holding a Cock’ by Jean-Antoine Piquet.

People who famously stayed at Hogg Hall included Queen Victoria, Charles Dickens and Alan Titchmarsh. The Hogg-Marchmonts also claimed that Mary Queen of Scots stayed there several times. Mary died 176 years before Hogg Hall was completed, but despite this fact, one of the apartments on the first floor was named the Queen of Scots Bedroom. It could be reached via the Titchmarsh Corridor.

Drinks and nibbles for the funeral were provided by the family’s long-serving housekeeper and cook Mrs. Frapp. No one knew Nelly Frapp’s age, but it was clear that she should have retired many decades ago.

“I’m only doing sandwiches,” she’d told Countess Isabella earlier that morning. “If they want hot food, they can pick up a kebab or a Chinese on the way back from the funeral.”

“Don’t worry,” Isabella assured her, “I’m sure no one will ask for hot food.”

“Where’s the hot food?” said Melton Thornaby, his purple snout twitching greedily. “I’m starving.”

Countess Isabella ignored him. She had never been able to stand the man and wished that he’d die as well.

The Great Library at Hogg Hall was generally used for important functions. Everything at Hogg Hall was called the Great Something. The Great Bathroom, the Great Utility Room, the Great En-Suite Bathroom…

However, the Great Library was genuinely the grandest and most impressive room in the house. It had a sea view and much of the ornate, decorative plaster was adorned with wafer-thin gold leaf, large sections of it now peeling off. There was a magnificent marble fireplace, with carvings of woodland sprites, bunches of grapes and roasting piglets. The room leaked badly when it rained and usually featured a plastic bucket in the middle of the nineteenth-century Persian rug.

A log fire crackled and popped in the grate, and playing quietly, via a pair of cleverly concealed speakers, was ‘Cantata No.208, Sheep May Safely Graze’. Isabella found this piece very calming, but everyone else in the room was finding it a bit depressing. A man from the village asked Hatcher if they had any Abba.

“Not so much as a warm crumpet?” Thornaby whispered to Lord and Lady Ingleby-Barwick, who was still resplendent in his gleeful tribal gown.

“Fear not,” he replied, “I happen to have procured the keys to Hardy’s wine cellar, and I’m about to poodle down there and pop a cork or two. Fancy a scoop?”

“I like the way you do business,” slobbered Thornaby, and the pair slipped from the room like a couple of guilty Year 10s heading to the rear of the bike sheds to polish their trouser rifles and share an Embassy No.6.

*

Meanwhile, in the library, the family’s appropriately hunched manservant Quinn O’Donnell was passing among the guests, with a tray of curled and crumpled sandwiches.

“What is in the sandwiches?” enquired Lady Labia Antoinette.

“Egg,” replied the servant.

“Who laid the egg? The dentist?” giggled Labia. Dr. Dreyfuss could take it no more and quickly excused himself from the proceedings. It was the last time he would ever go to a funeral in fancy dress.

“You must excuse my wife, she is with child,” said Hatcher, laying his hand on Lady Labia’s considerable bulge. While his palm rested there, the baby kicked out violently and, disgusted by this occurrence, Hatcher snatched his hand away.

O’Donnell held out a plate for the Countess. “Sandwich, milady?”

“No thank you, O’Donnell,” replied Isabella, her cheeks a little flushed and freshly damp from crying, “I really couldn’t eat a thing. But do thank Mrs. Frapp for all her hard work.”

“I shall,” replied O’Donnell, knowing that even making eleven sandwiches and a pot of tea had exhausted poor Nelly to the point of collapse. She was now having a lie-down on the kitchen floor – two ammonia ampules thrust into her nostrils in an attempt to summon up enough energy to go upstairs to bed.

Hospitality was not what it was at Hogg Hall. In the old days, honoured guests were served with mouth-watering home-grown honey, freshly taken from Hogg Hall’s world-famous Great Hive. Three generations of skilled beekeepers had tended the hive, until Lady Celestia May was stung in 2011 and almost died from a severe allergic reaction. As a result of this incident, Countess Isabella ordered the hive to be set alight, and it was assumed that the bees had perished in the fire. This was far from the truth. In fact, amid all the smoke, flames and confusion, the bees had performed a well-practised fire drill and escaped. Two days later, all thirty thousand of them were discovered by Mr. O’Donnell living in the feather mattress in his bedroom. The servant was awakened at 6am by an alarming droning sound, and not really knowing what else to do, he drove into town and purchased a beehive. As soon as he installed it under his bed, the bees moved in, and their vast colony had been secretly living there ever since.

In the privacy of his room, O’Donnell dined on fresh honey every morning, and he was never stung once – the creatures seeming to know instinctively that he had saved their lives. As far as he knew, he was the only man in the world with a beehive under his bed, and he found the buzzing quite comforting when he was trying to get to sleep.

Coincidentally, one of the bees had also died that day. There’d been a fight between a worker bee and a particularly mouthy drone.

“Leave it, it’s not worth it!” the other bees had shouted as the scuffle escalated, but the worker took no notice, and the drone was gruesomely dispatched by his opponent. Two undertaker bees quickly removed the deceased by manhandling its crumpled carcass to the entrance of the hive. Then the body was airlifted by four forager bees, out through the bedroom window and across the north courtyard, before being dropped unceremoniously into the lake. We shall hear more about O’Donnell’s bees in due course.

Down in the wine cellar, Lord and Lady Ingleby-Barwick slowly and ceremonially removed the cork from a dust-covered bottle of Michel Laroche 2005 Shiraz, and poured two jumbo-sized glasses for himself and Melton Thornaby.

Melton raised his glass. “Here’s to Hogg-Marchmont,” he boomed, then he took a healthy slug and perched his glass on the convenient little shelf at the top of his enormous stomach.

“Who’d have thought old trout face would meet his maker by falling off a horse,” he said. “I had him down for liver failure or a heart attack.”

“My money was on a stroke,” grimaced the African.

“Excellent bet,” laughed Thornaby.

“No dear, my money was literally on a stroke,” explained Angus. “William Hill took the bet in 2004.”

“Well, I’ll be buggered,” exclaimed Melton. “What price did they give you?”

“I think it was 8-1,” said Ingleby-Barwick, checking in his little black book. Like many African princes, Angus’s father in Kenya had owned several racehorses, and the boy had grown up in the hazardous world of sub-Saharan gambling. He used to frequent what were known as ‘gambling dens’, which were unregulated, and where children could also place bets. He won his first wager at the age of seven, and he had never looked back.

“Well, you’ve lost that,” said Thornaby, taking another swig of Shiraz and immediately topping up his glass.

“How do we know he didn’t have a stroke somewhere between leaving the horse and hitting the ground?” puzzled Angus.

“What did the inquest say?” asked Melton.

“There was no inquest,” shrugged Ingleby-Barwick. “Bit fishy if you ask me.”

In the library, Countess Isabella was sat in a quiet corner being comforted by Lady Prunella – the last person in the world she actually wanted to be anywhere near. But the Countess was always painfully polite in these situations. She’d known about her husband’s affair with Lady Box-Girder for about ten years and had chosen not to raise it in polite company. Isabella’s son, Viscount Hatcher, had other ideas.

“You’ve got a damned cheek showing your face at Father’s funeral,” he snapped, his cold eyes flashing, his large lower jaw twitching like the rear leg of a sleeping dog. “You’re not welcome at Hogg Hall.”

“I will be the judge of who is welcome in this house,” the Countess told her son.

“You seem to have forgotten, Mother,” said Hatcher, “that I am now the Seventh Earl.”

“Go to your room,” snapped the Countess. She had not spoken to her son like that since he was eight. Hatcher used his congenital underbite to chomp on his top lip, then he and his wife flounced out of the library, slamming the tall, panelled doors behind them. A moment later, he came back into the room, picked up his hat from the table and flounced back out again.

Three days later, Celestia May accompanied her mother to the crematorium, and they collected Hogg-Marchmont’s ashes, which were to be scattered near the lake at Hogg Hall. The urn was a lot bigger and heavier than the Countess had expected.

“Heavens, this weighs a ton!” Isabella said to the undertaker, Mr. Mosely. “Are you sure this is only Hardy in here?”

“Many people imagine that the human body becomes little more than a small handful of ash after cremation,” explained Mosely, “but this is far from the truth. The weight can vary from three pounds all the way up to ten pounds, depending on the size and density of the deceased’s bones.”

This was already too much information, but the undertaker went on, “Organ tissue, fat and fluids burn away completely during cremation, leaving only bones behind when the incineration’s completed. So, the weight of the ashes depends on how heavy the Sixth Earl’s bones were. Was he a big-boned man?”

The Countess chose to ignore the question, considering it impudent. “Well, there must be at least twenty pounds of ashes here,” she said, “I’m not scattering all that by the lake, it’ll make an awful mess.”

Celestia May had an idea. “Can you just let us have a few spoonfuls?” she asked.

“Teaspoons or tablespoons?” asked the undertaker.

“I’m not sure,” said Isabella. “What do you think, Celestia May?”

“I’d say around six level tablespoons would probably be about the right amount for scattering,” her daughter replied. Celestia May knew about these sorts of things. She was a white witch and had scattered many ashes in her time.

“We have some little Tupperware containers for that very purpose,” said Mosely. He went away and, a few moments later, came back with a small plastic tub. “Is this what you had in mind?” he asked.

“Yes, that’s lovely,” replied the Countess. “Do you want the container back?”

“Only if you’re passing,” smiled Mosely.

“I wonder what they’ll do with the rest of Father,” Celestia May pondered, as the pair drove back to Hogg Hall in Hardy’s dented Daimler.

“Probably put him on the roses,” said the Countess.

*

Next morning, there was sullen silence as O’Donnell served breakfast to the family. At the long oak table in the Great Dining Room, Melton Thornaby sat next to Lord and Lady Ingleby-Barwick, now dressed in a short-sleeved, patterned beach shirt and Bermuda shorts. The pair had invited themselves to sleep over at Hogg Hall, following their excessive night raid on the Sixth Earl’s wine cellar.

“I could eat a horse,” blurted Thornaby suddenly, his cheeks ruddy and swollen with inebriate.

“Oh God, are you still here?” replied Hatcher. “We rather hoped that you and the African Queen had drunk yourselves to death.”

“Manners, Hatcher!” yelled the Countess.

Isabella was sat at the head of the table, in a chair that had always been reserved for her husband. It was a magnificent piece of furniture, almost a throne, with a long, ornate back and two large sows’ heads carved into the walnut armrests.

“Shouldn’t my husband be sitting in that chair?” sneered Lady Labia, as she daintily transferred a devilled kidney from plate to mouth. The baby kicked her, and Viscount Hatcher fidgeted uncomfortably. As much as he was desperate to take up the role of Seventh Earl, he did not really want to lock horns with his mother again that morning. Better to let a little more of his father’s dust settle first.

“I think we should leave the chair empty,” whispered Celestia May, as she sipped her caffeine-free tea. “Father would be furious if he knew someone was sitting in his place.”

O’Donnell placed a plate of button mushrooms and scrambled egg in front of the Countess, but she politely pushed it away.

“I couldn’t bear to look at an empty chair,” she said. “I still haven’t really come to terms with Hardy’s death.”

Isabella turned her head and looked towards the heavy oak door that led into the Great Dining Room. “I still keep expecting him to walk into the room,” she said.

At that exact moment, the door swung open, and a man walked into the Great Dining Room. It was Hardy Hogg-Marchmont, Sixth Earl of Hogg Hall.