Read Broken Homes for Free Online Page A

home,’ said Lesley.
    ‘There must have been female practitioners even in your day,’ I said.
    ‘There were some Hedge Witches,’ said Nightingale. ‘Especially out in the countryside, there always are. But there was nobody with formal training that I knew of.’
    ‘Hogwarts was all male,’ I said.
    ‘Peter,’ said Nightingale. ‘If you’d like to spend the next three days cleaning the lab then by all means keep referring to my old school as Hogwarts.’
    ‘Casterbrook,’ I said.
    ‘That’s better,’ said Nightingale and polished off the last of his swede – if it was swede.
    ‘But it was boys only,’ I said.
    ‘Indubitably,’ said Nightingale. ‘I’m sure I would have noticed otherwise.’
    ‘And these boys came from the old wizarding families?’
    ‘You have such a delightfully quaint notion of how things were,’ said Nightingale. ‘There were a number of families who generally sent one or more of their sons to the school. That’s all.’
    Traditionally, the landed gentry had kept the first son at home to inherit the estate, the second went for a soldier, the third to the clergy or the law. I asked Nightingale where the profession of magic stood in that list.
    ‘The Folly was never that popular amongst the aristocracy,’ said Nightingale. ‘We were all much more proudly bourgeoisie than that. It would be best to think of us as professionals – like doctors or lawyers. It was common for a son to follow in his father’s footsteps.’
    ‘But not his daughter?’
    Nightingale shrugged. ‘It was a different age,’ he said.
    ‘Was your father a wizard?’ I asked.
    ‘Good Lord no,’ said Nightingale. ‘It was my Uncle Stanley who carried on the tradition in that generation – it was he who suggested that I attend Cosgrove Hall.’
    ‘He didn’t have sons of his own?’ I asked.
    ‘He never married,’ said Nightingale. ‘I had four brothers and two sisters so I believe my father felt he could spare me. Mama always said I was a curious child, asking far too many questions at the most inopportune times. I’m sure they were relieved to have someone else take up the responsibility of answering them.’
    He caught me and Lesley exchanging looks.
    ‘I’m amazed you find this at all interesting,’ he said.
    ‘You’ve never talked about your family before,’ I said.
    ‘I’m sure I must have,’ he said.
    ‘Nope,’ said Lesley.
    ‘Oh,’ said Nightingale and promptly changed the subject. ‘Tomorrow I want the pair of you to practise on the range in the morning,’ he said. ‘Then it’s Latin in the afternoon.’
    ‘Shoot me now,’ I said.
    ‘Isn’t there some police work we should be doing?’ asked Lesley.
    Pudding arrived, a jam suet pudding, red and steaming. Molly put it down in front of us with way more confidence than she’d offered up the lamb shanks.
    ‘Did everyone make their own staff?’ asked Lesley.
    ‘Everyone who?’ asked Nightingale.
    ‘In the old days,’ she said and gestured around the dining room. ‘Everyone who was a member of this place?’
    ‘No,’ said Nightingale. ‘In the first instance, very few of us needed one for everyday use. So to speak. And in the second, the making of them became something of a speciality. A group of wizards in Manchester, of all places, who styled themselves the Sons of Weyland would construct them to order. Luckily for you, I considered myself a modern day renaissance man – ready to turn my hand to every art and science.’
    Nightingale had gone to Manchester, where he had learnt the weird of the Sons of Weyland, or at least those bits of the weird that were appropriate to a gentleman. When I asked what had happened to the people who trained him, Nightingale’s face clouded and I knew the answer. Ettersberg. Everyone, the cream of British wizardry, had gone to Ettersberg. And only a few had come back.
    ‘Did Geoffrey Wheatcroft learn the weird way of the Weylands?’ asked Lesley.
    Nightingale gave her a