The Surplus Siblings

Suspects: Master Galahad and Miss Clelia Welford, reluctant brother and sister

Age: 39 and 36 respectively

 

            "I've always been excess. Surplus to requirement," says Galahad, the  youngest Welford son and middle child. "So has Clelia, haven't you, sister dearest?" Referring to their parents, he claims, "They only needed an heir. Lord knows why they had us too."

            Since he has little responsibility or incentive in his life, Galahad drifts along from one aimless pleasure to another. He is a profligate gambler, and not a very lucky one. The need for money is the only reason he comes home to Welford Hall occasionally, but his parents are growing less inclined to  pay off his debts these days.

   

         In fact, on the Sunday of his mother's annual garden party, he was heard asking for money, yet again, first from his father and then his mother.  He was witnessed storming out of the house in a foul mood, shortly before his mother's dead body was discovered in the conservatory. Known to be an irreverent, roguish fellow, who never takes anything seriously unless it threatens his unchallenging, self-absorbed existence, could it be possible that he lashed out that day when his mother put her foot down and refused to give him money?

            Now he's anxious to get back to London and his usual entertainments for Welford Hall, in his opinion, is no better than a mausoleum. He has no love for his elder brother and sister-in-law, no respect for his father and very little tolerance or understanding for his meek sister. Oddly enough, he is a favorite of the cook, Bess Duckworth, who still thinks of him as a cheeky little boy stealing jam tarts from her kitchen. Galahad possesses a certain charm with the ladies when he cares to use it— if he has the energy to put in any effort. But all those years wasted in pointless pursuits have left him directionless, tired with no cause to be and bitter with no real reason.

            There is one thing he prides himself on, however. Galahad Welford is no hypocrite and never hesitates to tell people what he truly thinks of them. Including the members of his family.

 

* * * *

 

            Clelia is the only daughter of the Welfords. At thirty-six she is considered an old maid, well beyond her prime and with no hope of building her own life outside the house in which she has grown up under her mother's watchful, demanding eye. She is very much aware of the fact that everybody in the family regards her as a disappointment, as a plain spinster with no particular purpose. To her brothers she is an inconvenience at best; an embarrassment at worst.    

            She has no formal education, other than training in the skills expected of a society wife and hostess— including music, dancing and light conversation; subjects in which she never excelled and was only ever deemed barely adequate. In her early twenties, there were a few hopes of her finding a husband, but those days are long gone and now she drifts about the house like a lost ghost, preferring, most of the time, not to be noticed.

            Very recently, however, Clelia Welford's life has taken a slight, shy, surprising turn for the better. Afraid that her family might interfere and spoil it for her, she's managed to keep this change a secret. Until her brothers find out and, on the day of the garden party, one of them decides to tell her mother all about it.

            Lady Isolda was a woman who went to great lengths to keep her family away from scandal. So how did she react to the news of her daughter's shocking act of rebellion? And what did Clelia do when confronted? Was she finally pushed to the edge, desperate to end the dreariness of her life as a woman overlooked in that house?

            The Welford siblings may have been raised with every luxury and comfort that great wealth can provide, but they know nothing of parental love and compassion. Their father is mostly disinterested and so absent from their lives that he knows and cares about nothing going on in them. Their mother, however, tried to manage everything and, since she had a hand on the purse-strings, she usually succeeded in curbing their freedom— completely in Clelia's case, and to a certain degree in Galahad's.

            They both dreamed of escaping her reins, but they were chained to her; Galahad by greed, Clelia by fear of the outside world. With the death of Lady Isolda, their lives are about to change, some of those ties to Welford Hall being ripped asunder.

            Did one of them engineer it that way out of desperation? Perhaps they were even in it together?

 

* * * *

 

Look out for "BESPOKE" coming officially to an online bookstore near you on February 20th, 2019. available HERE FOR PRE-ORDER.

 

(Images used here: Portrait of a Young Gentleman by George Dawe 1819 and A Song Without Words by George Hamilton Barrable 1880)