The war had been over for almost two years but Ralph doubted that he had calmed down from it yet. His body was still tightly wound like a coil, ready to spring at the first sign of action or the first bark of an order, and to that end he shifted his weight between his feet as he stood waiting for the front door to be answered, thrust his hands into his pockets then brought them out again, pushed his hair back from his eyes, only for the breeze to have its way with it. In 1947, he remained Ralph E. Carlisle, Squadron Leader and dogfighter extraordinaire, and he wasn't sure that he wanted that to change. His mind processed everything far too quickly and what was a blessing in wartime was a curse in peace.
Barrow, with his measured tread, finally opened the door and admitted him.
"Is Miss Branson here," Ralph asked quickly, peering around the hallway and far too concerned with what he was going to say to her to hand his coat and hat over. Barrow, as was his disposition, eyed him wearily.
"No, sir. His Lordship, Lady Mary, Mister Branson and Miss Branson are due to return from London before luncheon."
Ralph's face suddenly creased into a smile. "All right if I wait for them, then?" His words were loud and punctuated by poorly timed breaths; Barrow was of the humble opinion that the man ought to be turned from the house and set back on the way to London but he was clearly in no fit state to drive, and the Lord knew there'd been enough car accidents in the environs of Downton to be getting on with.
He harrumphed and made a little moue of distaste. "If you'll follow me, sir, I'll show you to the-" he started but Ralph breezed past him and into the library. Barrow was left standing in the hallway, the Daimler still parked haphazardly on the drive and an excited young man ensconced in the library. Once upon a time he would have sauntered back to the servants' hall, pulled O'Brien outside for a quick smoke and stood against a brick wall leering at the young man he had just encountered; he waited a few moments, enquired as to whether or not Master Carlisle would like a pot of tea and walked softly back to his study as Carson had taught him.
Ralph Carlisle was not alone in paying house visits that morning, although Inspector Robert Bank's destination was somewhat less glamorous and his mode of transportation less refined. Ruth King's apartment was, admittedly, well-furnished and in one of the more salubrious parts of North London but those qualities themselves provoked suspicion in the Inspector's mind.
"Your home is well-furnished," he remarked in a dry tone, sitting on a replica Louis XVI chaise that was somewhat out of keeping with both the location of the apartment and the time period. More in-keeping, he suspected, with a certain house in Eaton Square, but was not the sort of man to insinuate such things without a proper build-up.
Ruth King raised a carefully sculpted eyebrow. She was almost shockingly blonde; to the best of the Inspector's limited knowledge of the intimacies of female beauty regimes, the hair colour came from a bottle and was betrayed by the brown eyebrows that faced him.
"And what of it," she asked coolly, and indeed that seemed to be the most apt way of describing Ruth Victoria King, aged 28 years and 4 months. Her manner was calculated, her posture rigid and the cup of tea that rested on a table in front of the Inspector spoke of a woman not used to domesticity.
"I wasn't aware that secretaries earned particularly large wages," he replied and Ruth smiled tightly.
"I had a generous employer." Had. Now, that was interesting. Miss King had, of course, been the first to discover Sir Richard's demise and yet, like Ralph Carlisle, she displayed none of the usual outward signs of grief or mourning.
"So it would seem. And yet not everyone, I think, would share your assessment of Sir Richard?" The Inspector continued probing and continued to be disappointed by Ruth King's lack of an emotional response. She pursed her lips and withdrew a Marlboro from a monogrammed cigarette case.
"Perhaps," she said and her words were punctuated by long, delicate drags on the ivory tipped cigarette. "But journalism is not a profession that lends itself to overt displays of affection. It's a ruthless world, Inspector, and Sir Richard was the best at what he did for a reason."
"And was Sir Richard an… affectionate man, for want of a better word, in other aspects of his life?"
Ruth King fixed him with a steely gaze, surveying him through a haze of curling smoke. "I am well aware of what you are insinuating, Inspector, but my private life and that of Sir Richard remain just that. Private."
The Inspector's social antennae bristled and as delicately as a stocky man such as himself could move, he stood and navigated between the chaise and the table, headed towards the front door. "Be that as it may, Miss King," he stated with what he supposed was an avuncular smile as she opened the door, "I will have the truth."
Ruth stared him down. "I wish you well with your investigation, Inspector," she breezed and just avoided closing the door on his overcoat. She waited until she saw him walking down the street outside before fetching the single malt whisky that Richard had always preferred and pouring herself a large measure.
Inspector Bank stopped just by the Post Office, out of view of the apartment and smelled his overcoat. Glengoyne Single Malt whisky, just as he had found in Sir Richard's office. Redressing himself, he set off down the street and was suddenly presented with the thought that the case may not have been as open and shut as he had thought after leaving Eaton Square.
Ralph thought that he was reading a Dickens book but he couldn't be sure; he looked at the pages without reading the words and George Crawley's Earl Grey tea had had a strangely soporific effect on him. He was certain that this whole torrid affair was his father's fault, although blaming Richard Carlisle for the negative happenings of his life had become somewhat a hobby. If only he hadn't been such an intolerable, archaic, bitter, conniving, despicable bastard, everything could have been avoided. His death, almost certainly, as Ralph was convinced that some other journalist, probably from the Telegraph, had finally had enough and had done what Ralph wished he'd done long ago. His sitting here, in George's library reading George's books on his own as he whiled the hours away until the family returned; Richard was undoubtedly to blame for that, too, because it was both directly and indirectly his fault that he was sitting here at all. And, over a book that may or may not have been Dickens', a cup of tea that grew more tepid by the minute and a Limoges plate of divine lemon slices, the whole sorry saga played itself out in Ralph's mind.
School years; well, they had been entirely the product of a socially conscious father. Not that Harrow had been bad for him; quite the contrary, Ralph was almost certain that his distaste for his father's lifestyle and actions had been borne from exposure to the sort of people that his father wanted to emanate. Memories of cricket under summer skies and of tuck boxes at the start of new terms were glossy and rose-tinted, until the untimely death of Linnet Scott and summer holidays endured in his father's company when he couldn't escape to the estates of school friends interrupted the pleasantries and cast a dark pall over everything. Cambridge and History had been a beautiful year but war had beckoned and the first of many rows erupted over compulsory conscription and working one's way around the system. Ralph hadn't spoken to his father for the first two years of war.
Two years when Fate had intervened and propelled him towards George Crawley, who had in turn sent him in the direction of Miss Sybil Niamh Branson…
Wheels cruising over gravel and coming to a stop more suddenly than expected jerked Ralph back to the present day and the book on his lap went flying as he flew up and hurried to the door. Hardy, not Dickens, it turned out. He didn't wait for Barrow to announce his presence; rushing out into the hallway, he collided with George and rebounded with a grin, but grew serious as the Earl of Grantham asked what the devil he was doing at Downton.
"My father's dead," he said and no one looked half as sorry as they ought to.