Geoff laughed. 'Not really? Well, if he makes Archbishop of Canterbury he'll certainly turn some heads, won't he?'

'I don't think he's that ambitious. Tom likes the country life. Anyhow, I'm getting off the subject. What happened to the priory?'

'Well, the monks did just fine until Henry the Eighth decided to nationalize the monasteries. The last prior was hanged for resisting royal authority.'

'He's one of the ghosts, isn't he?' Vivien asked.

'Supposedly. Quite a few people have reported seeing a ghostly monk floating around in the hallways, but whether it's the prior's ghost is open to speculation.' He spoke with surprising frankness, as if seeing a ghost in one's hallway were an everyday occurrence. 'At any rate,' he carried on, checking his notes, 'the property was sold in 1547 to Sir James Crofton, who started building a house on the site of the ruined monastery. The house gets its name from him. In the old maps it's referred to as Crofton's Hall, and as time went on, people just began leaving off the s. He only lived there fourteen years, before selling the place to Nicholas Hatch, who gave it to his son Edmund as a wedding present.

'Edmund Hatch didn't have much time to enjoy the house, either, because he died in 1594. Some sort of shooting accident, apparently. He left the estate to his wife, Ann, and she, bless her heart, promptly married my forefather, William de Mornay.'

'What did William do for a living?' I asked.

'He was a retired soldier. I don't know why she married him—she was barely out of mourning, and the old codger was twice her age.'

'Maybe he was rich,' Iain suggested.

'Possibly.'

I was inclined to disagree. If Geoff’s charm and looks were at all inherited from his ancestors, then I thought I knew exactly why the widowed Ann Hatch had hastened to marry William de Mornay.

'Ann and William had one son, also named William, just to add to the confusion. Dad had an awful time trying to sort out which papers were talking about William the Elder and which ones were about William Junior. William Junior, any rate, was a bit of an interesting character. During the Civil War, when the country was divided between King Charles the First's followers and those who supported Cromwell's Parliament, William Junior made the fatal, if noble, mistake of siding with his king.

'When the king lost his head, William Junior lost his manor, and was thrown in the Tower for his troubles. He was let out of prison in 1660, when Charles the Second was restored to the throne, and his lands were given back to him, but he never regained his health. He died within the year. There's quite a good portrait of him in the dining room at the Hall—I think I've got a photograph of it, here ... yes, here it is. That's William Junior.'

He slid the photograph across the table to me, and I leaned closer for a better look. My earlier supposition had been correct. The good looks were definitely inherited. William de Mornay cut a dashing figure in his vibrant portrait, with his curling dark hair and Vandyke beard, and languid dark eyes that hinted at a sensual nature. In his scarlet coat and breeches, one hand upon his sword hilt and the other resting defiantly on his hip, he looked every inch the gallant cavalier.

I handed the picture back, reluctantly. 'It's a marvelous portrait.'

'Yes. We've never been able to find a record of any of his children, but he must have had some, because the manor passed to his grandson, Arthur de Mornay. Bit of a mistake, that. Arthur seems to have been something of a compulsive gambler, and not only lost the family fortune but ended up selling off the manor itself, to pay his debts. So the de Mornays lost their land a second time. We didn't get it back until my father bought the Hall in 1964.' He turned a few more pages with an absent frown. 'I really ought to get back to this, you know, one of these days. My father had a passion for genealogy—spent days shut up in the Public Record Office, looking for wills and things. But he rather lost interest in it, toward the end, and I just never seem to have the time

Iain shifted in his seat. 'Gets a bit boring after old Arthur, don't you think, Geoff? Why don't you find us something about Julia's house?'

'What?' Geoff looked up blankly, then smiled. 'Oh, right. Just a minute, I'll have to look around a little.

I watched his hands, fascinated, as he shuffled the papers round. He had beautiful hands, lean and strong and suntanned, and there was a certain casual elegance in the way they moved.

'Aha!' He pulled a sheet of paper from the pile. 'Here it is. Greywethers. According to the surveys, it was built in 1587 by a man named Stephen Sharington, a farmer who rented his land from our old friend Edmund Hatch. The house was inherited by Stephen's son John, who sold it in 1626 to one Robert Howard, merchant. You all right?' I nodded. 'Just a chill. Please, go on.'

'The Howards kept the house until the early 1800's, when they sold it to Lawrence Alleyn. He was kind of a fun character—fought with Wellington at the battle of Waterloo, no less, and spent a few years out in India. He only had one child, his daughter, Mary, who was a little ahead of her time. Wore trousers and wrote novels.'

'Horrible novels,' Vivien elaborated with a slight shudder. 'I read one, once. Typical Victorian stuff. Full of long descriptive passages and dry as a bone.'

'Nevertheless.' Geoff smiled indulgently. 'She died in 1896, and the house was sold to Captain James Guthrie.'

'That was the "Captain Somebody" the lads were telling you about, the other day,' Vivien said. 'I asked my aunt about him. She said he was a naval officer, or something, sort of mysterious. Some people thought he was a spy. He ran the house like it was one of his ships, apparently. Had three daughters, who were hardly ever allowed to go out, poor things.'