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gatehouse; since that was what the architect had intended.
    At first she was surprised that he was so knowledgeable, a mere tennis player to be so expert? Jemima caught herself up. This was definitely elitism, or sportism (if there was such a thing) on her part. The fact that a person was particularly good at some sport hardly meant that he or she had to be an intellectual oaf . . . After a bit she realised that the truth was slightly subtler. Dan Lackland did indeed know a great deal of history - the history of the Meredith family, that is. Presumably he had boned up on it since youth, anticipating his inheritance. On general historical matters outside the world of the Merediths, on the other hand, he was quite as ignorant or indifferent as Jemima had instinctively expected. Perhaps it was just as well that the Meredith family history touched so many points of English history during its three hundred years of progress.
    "Built in the 1590's," he remarked. "A good period. Roughly the same as Montacute, if you've ever been there. According to Pevsner, it may even be by the same architect. Montacute is National Trust now, of course." And he added: "This is mine." And Dan Lackland continued with his polite little lecture. The triumphant note had vanished. "The great thing to remember about the Merediths," he continued, "is that we got the money thing right - aesthetically that is. The Merediths were fairly rich in the eighteenth century when Thomas Decimus the 8th Viscount built up the library and had himself and his wife painted by Gainsborough. But they were fairly poor in the nineteenth century, having got the railway thing all wrong, and very poor indeed by the beginning of the twentieth. So no new nasty Victorian or Edwardian wing to ruin the house."
    "You've got two Gainsboroughs!" exclaimed Jemima, Decimus temporarily forgotten, fixing by habit on an obvious point for the television cameras.
    "Good God, no. Cousin Tommy's father sold them to the Metropolitan years ago. The money was running out fast. Cousin Tommy w - uld have sold the whole bloody library if it wasn't for the entail, 'hat meant he simply had to pass it on intact. Or pretend to. My clever sister Zena, who knows about such things, thinks there may be one or two valuable books gone missing—" Dan Lackland stopped, as though aware that he had become altogether too intimate in his revelations to one who was after all in effect a total stranger. Jemima however, her curiosity aroused, was not inclined to let the matter rest.
    "But how will you manage?" she pursued. "Will you turn to the National Trust? English Heritage, as it's now called."
    "I shall manage," said the new Lord Lackland briefly. "No, no National Trust or English Heritage or whatever. As I said, this is mine." He turned to her, smiling and at his most charming. "Not the nation's, I'm afraid. Or not yet."
    The car was now drawing up beside the wide stone terrace which fended off the gravel and the grass of the forecourt from the broad stone steps of the house itself. A huge heraldic carving of stone— presumably the Meredith arms—surmounted the doorway with the motto: Amor et Honor , in Gothic lettering. Jemima also saw the date proudly preserved: 1600.
    Meanwhile a stout elderly man in a dark suit, bald, with a florid face, was clambering down the steps towards them.
    "Haygarth, Cousin Tommy's old butler. He was his soldier servant in the war but he's been here for over forty years, and knows everything about the house: but he's on the point of retiring. He married Cousin Beatrice's lady's maid after the war—a dreadful old bat who terrified me as a child, called Dorothy."
    "Then maybe I should talk to them about the Decimus Ghost. That could be useful." Jemima really made the remark out of politeness. She was not particularly interested in interviewing an aged butler and his wife on television when she had other fish to fry such as a former All England tennis player, captain of the Davis