A Change of Heir (12 page)

‘It’s ridiculous!’ he said. ‘And it’s disgusting, too.’

‘Disgusting?’ There was something peculiarly insulting in the manner in which Miss Bostock contrived to repeat this word. She might have been implying that Gadberry was one from whom it fell quaintly and surprisingly – as it might do from some humble creature dislodged from beneath a stone.

‘Yes, disgusting. Having two indistinguishable girls – if they’re really that–’

‘They certainly are.’

‘Very well. Having them driven into a pound, and being told to choose one or the other.’

‘You mean it would be less disgusting if they were quite different?’

‘Of course it would.’ Gadberry said this with conviction. It was something he was quite clear about, although he didn’t know why.

‘Then perhaps you had better refrain from making advances to either of them.’

‘That’s exactly what I will do.’

‘Mrs Minton – who has just treated you so munificently – will scarcely be pleased.’

‘Oh, to hell with Mrs Minton! I’ve had enough.’

There was a silence – a silence into which one of the Bruton owls deftly dropped a particularly spine-chilling hoot. But to Gadberry it came with the effect of a triumphant paean. He had burnt his boats. In the words of the poet, the loathsome mask had fallen.

But something had gone wrong. Miss Bostock didn’t seem at all shocked. Only her eyes had narrowed.

‘No,’ she said, ‘that won’t do.’

‘What do you mean? What won’t do?’

‘Well – for a start, just rejecting the Misses Shilbottle. But how is your delicacy to be respected? You won’t choose
one
. You can’t marry
both
. Do you know, I can see only one solution?’

‘I don’t care twopence for your solution. I tell you, I’m packing in the whole–’

‘I consider my solution extremely simple and elegant. You shall marry one Miss Shilbottle, and the real Nicholas Comberford can have the other.’

This time the silence was prolonged. It was also hideous to Gadberry’s shattered sense. Miss Bostock sat gazing absently into the dying fire. Her attitude suggested no hint of drama. She might just have been feeling that things were growing duller even than before, and that she had better give up the day as a lost cause and get off to bed.

These appearances, disconcerting in themselves, came for some moments to Gadberry only confusedly and as if from a long way off. His mind was behaving like a television set in some advanced stage of electronic disease. Images flapped and flickered in it, dissolved into a grey chaos, formed again uncertainly as if behind some undulating flood. Then, rather to his surprise, he heard himself producing articulate speech.

‘How did you know?’ His voice was at once hoarse and trembling. ‘How did you find out?’

‘Know…find out?’ Miss Bostock removed her gaze from the fire and fixed it on Gadberry. But now it seemed not hostile, but only puzzled and a little alarmed.

‘That I’m not Comberford. Who told you? Was it Comberford himself? Are you two in on something together?’ This time, Gadberry was just aware that he was shouting – or perhaps it was screaming. The woman had unnerved him completely.

‘Not Comberford? Mr Comberford, I don’t understand you at all. I think you must be tired. Perhaps–’

‘Damn you!’ Gadberry found that he had jumped to his feet and was waving his arms foolishly. ‘You said that the real Nicholas Comberford could have one of those girls.’

‘Mr Comberford, you are ill.’ Miss Bostock spoke gently and solicitously – a thing monstrous and unnatural in itself. ‘I have judged you to be a little strained for some time. And now you are imagining things. It is a delirium. Pray heaven that your mind isn’t giving way.’

‘I tell you, you said–’

‘Dr Pollock will have got home by now. But he must return at once. I will telephone.’

Gadberry stared in stark horror at Miss Bostock. For a moment he believed what she said. The things he had heard her utter she hadn’t uttered at all. He had gone mad.

Convinced of this, Gadberry sank into his chair again. He burst into tears.

‘Good,’ Miss Bostock said calmly. ‘Now, my friend, we can talk.’

Gadberry shivered all over. He realised that what this hideous woman had said she
had
said. He had suffered no hallucination. She
did
know. The turn she had put on had been merely an ingenious trick to break his nerve. And it had succeeded – for a moment. But she damned well wasn’t going to have it all her own way. He’d fight back –
now
.

‘Very well.’ Gadberry sat up and straightened his shoulders. ‘We’ll talk. And it’s interesting that you
want
to talk. It’s interesting you haven’t sent for the police. In fact, you’re in this for what you can get.’

‘Now you
are
talking.’ Miss Bostock nodded approvingly. ‘I’ll be surprised if we don’t get along famously.’

‘I still want to know how you found out. What did I do wrong?’

‘Nothing
very
wrong, I’d say.’ Miss Bostock appeared to consider the question dispassionately. ‘But everything a little wrong. That’s almost inevitable.’

‘I suppose it is. But I don’t see why you in particular–’

‘A certain professional expertness was involved, young man. But never mind that. There’s a much more important question – and it’s for me to put it to you. Where is the real Nicholas Comberford?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Ah!’ Without haste, Miss Bostock got to her feet, picked up a poker, and stirred the embers to a quick flare. ‘Does he exist?’

‘Of course he exists. How can I be a false Comberford if there isn’t a true one?’

‘Does he
still
exist? You haven’t made away with him?’

‘Made away with him!’ Gadberry stared at Miss Bostock in simple astonishment. ‘How could I have made away with him?’

‘It’s the natural presumption. By the way, what’s your real name?’

‘I won’t tell you.’

‘You will quite soon. But never mind that now. The obvious way of reading the facts is this: you have murdered Comberford and taken his place. Otherwise, he’d be here himself, happily collecting his inheritance.’

‘It isn’t so. Comberford’s alive. Only–’

‘But you say you don’t know where he is. That means you couldn’t produce him if you had to. What would a judge and jury, I wonder, think of
that
? I doubt whether they’d be troubled by the fact that the police couldn’t produce the body.’

‘You’re trying to frighten me. Just as you did a few minutes ago, pretending I’d gone mad.’

‘My dear young man, it’s the facts that are frightening you. And well they may. By the way, you must have an uncanny resemblance to the real Nicholas. Are you an illegitimate brother or something?’

‘I’m–’ Almost in the vein of Mrs Minton herself, Gadberry was about to assert the honourable lineage of the Gadberrys. But he had the wit to realise that this would be a mistake. He mustn’t trade a scrap of information to this woman without some exchange in the shape of security in one form or another. ‘I may be,’ he said, ‘or I may not. That’s all for you to find out.’

‘Is that kind of attitude going to take us far?’ Miss Bostock glanced almost indulgently at Gadberry. ‘And far, you know, is precisely where we have to get ourselves taken. This thing isn’t nearly as simple as you seem to have been imagining. You’ve had all the luck for a start, but nothing’s yet in the bag. And it isn’t going to be tomorrow either, however many documents your supposed great-aunt signs for Mr Middleweek. The hazards go on and on and on. Let’s make no mistake about that.’

‘When I said I’m going to pack it in I meant it. And not just because you’ve found me out. The whole thing’s too stupid. I don’t want to end my life as a Minton-Minton, or whatever it is, married to a Shilbottle-Shilbottle. Mind you, I don’t think there’s anything particularly wrong about it. The idea was to give satisfaction all round. But it’s not going to give
me
any satisfaction. I’d rather be navvying. I’ve done it before.’

‘Your eyes, in fact, are opened?’

‘Just that.’

‘Then you’d better close them again. You see, you can’t get away.’

‘Yes I can. I can go back to being who I really am.’

‘I don’t think so. I agree that as the authentic Nicholas Comberford you could simply clear out. The police would have no interest in tracing you, for you wouldn’t have broken the law. But once they’d been told you were an impostor – told by me, for example – they just wouldn’t let the trail go. They’d find you, all right.’

Gadberry was silent. He saw that this was true. The dreadful woman had the whip hand of him. And she was going to use him for her own purposes.

‘Look,’ he said. ‘There’s really very little in this. That’s where I’ve been sold. The old woman’s going to live till she’s a hundred. Your share would be no more than pin money. It certainly wouldn’t be worth the risk of your becoming an accomplice in a conspiracy. You’d better forget about your precious discovery, and just let me quit.’

‘I seem to remember that Mrs Minton rebuked you this evening for teaching other people their business. And it does seem to be a weakness of yours. I think you’d better go and sleep on the whole thing. Your position has its hazards, I agree. But it also has possibilities that you don’t seem to have got the hang of. Perhaps you’ll be clearer-headed when you wake up.’ Miss Bostock, who had continued standing before the dying fire, now moved towards the door. ‘Certainly we’ll have another quiet chat quite soon. Good night.’

For some time Gadberry sat staring blindly into the dying fire. He didn’t stir even when the bats (who usually took possession of the drawing-room at about this hour) began resentful manoeuvres in the vaulting. It was only when an extreme chill had overtaken him that he dragged himself to his feet, turned off the lights, and left the room. In the cloisters there was even more rattling and banging going on than before, for the wind was now rising to a gale. He could hear it whistling and roaring in the ruins of the Abbey church to the north of the house. It might have been a pack of wild creatures that was in synod there. Savage howlings filled the sacred choirs.

Something stirred in the shadows ahead of him as he began to make his way to his room. It was probably no more than one of the Abbey’s ghosts, so he paid no attention. Indeed, being fed up with Bruton he was fed up with its sideshows as well, and in no mood to be respectful to some monkish figment. Coming up with this appearance, he steered a course straight through it. But this act of disrespect didn’t come off. Gadberry found that he had bumped into Boulter, who was in consequence making dignified apologies in a justifiably reproachful tone.

This was an alarming encounter. Gadberry had supposed that Boulter, with the rest of the household, had withdrawn long ago to whatever obscure quarters were his. Perhaps he had been eavesdropping on that ghastly interview with Miss Bostock. Perhaps, in consequence, here was somebody else now in on his guilty secret.

‘Security, sir,’ Boulter said – as if it had occurred to him that he ought to justify his prowling presence. ‘It poses its problems at Bruton, and particular in inclement weather. I could wish that Mrs Minton would install an efficient modern system of burglar-alarms. It may be done one day.’

Gadberry received this unenthusiastically. It referred, he supposed, to his own future proprietorship of the Abbey. And that was something that just wasn’t going to happen now. He was going to employ all his cunning to get away. After that, an army of burglars was welcome to the lot.

‘Boulter, I suppose you know the Shilbottles?’ It wasn’t quite clear to Gadberry why he asked this, since the subject didn’t in the least interest him. But the sudden encounter with Boulter was an awkward one, and he had spoken more or less at random.

‘Certainly, sir. I understand that the family is coming to luncheon tomorrow.’

‘What are the daughters like?’

‘Very pleasant young ladies, sir. Very pleasant young ladies, indeed. I understand their main interest to be the breeding of dogs. Rather large dogs. Bloodhounds and St Bernards, I have been given to understand. But then the Misses Shilbottle are rather large themselves. Yes, sir – well-built girls.’

‘Are they good-looking?’

‘I would hardly venture to assert so. It could not readily be claimed that they are well favoured, sir. “Homely” would be the appropriate expression. And the word would be employed rather in its American than in its English signification.’

‘I see. Well, good night, Boulter.’

‘Good night, sir.’

Gadberry moved off. It might be fair to say that he shuffled off, for his gait reflected his dispirited condition. Then another and more sensible topic of inquiry struck him, and he turned round.

‘I say – Boulter!’

‘Yes, sir?’

‘How long has Miss Bostock been about the place?’

‘Off hand, sir, I should estimate the period at about five years.’

‘Don’t you think it extraordinary that any woman would want to hold down such a job for all that time?’

‘I’m sure it is not for me to say, sir.’ Boulter’s features had taken on the wooden expression of an offended servant.

‘Well – dash it, man – you know what I mean.’

‘I confess that I have an inkling, sir.’ Boulter allowed himself a little to thaw – which was handsome of him, considering the air temperature at which this untimely colloquy was being conducted.

‘She’s a ghastly woman, you know.’

‘That must be as you say, sir.’ Not unnaturally, Boulter withdrew again into a discreet reserve. At the same time, he was looking at Gadberry a little oddly. But Gadberry wasn’t disconcerted; for the present, at least, he was past caring whether his conduct appeared bizarre or not.

‘Where did she come from, anyway?’ he asked. ‘How did…did my great-aunt pick her up?’

‘I have been given to understand, sir, that Miss Bostock was formerly in the police.’

‘The police?’ It was with a kind of nervous jump that Gadberry repeated this. ‘What awful nonsense! Policewomen, or whatever they are called, just don’t become ladies’ companions. The idea simply isn’t sensible.’