A Change of Heir (21 page)

‘And now,’ Gadberry said to Boulter, ‘I’m going to bed.’ It is possible that he spoke a little roughly. Boulter’s continuing to keep up a bogus and butler-like distance was coming to annoy him very much.

‘Very good, sir. You will no doubt wish to be called at the usual hour. Before you retire, may I venture to inquire into the nature of your occasions this afternoon?’

‘No. You may not.’

‘Indeed, sir?’ Boulter’s eyebrows hitched themselves slightly aloft on his impassive face. ‘May I venture to suggest the desirability of a relation of confidence continuing to subsist between us?’

‘Go to hell, Boulter.’ Gadberry produced this quite pleasantly. ‘And stay there. See?’

There was a moment’s silence. Boulter replaced the claret jug thoughtfully on the sideboard. Then he took a long look at Gadberry – a look that would have done justice to Miss Bostock herself.

‘Young man,’ he said, ‘you had better keep a civil tongue in your head.’

Gadberry laughed aloud. It was something he had expected never to do again. But at last Boulter was looking ugly, and this was a great satisfaction to him.

‘Boulter,’ he said, ‘you’ve had it. Before you go to bed, I advise you to put in a quiet hour packing your bags. I shall be doing just that myself.’

Boulter – and this was more satisfactory still – turned from pink to purple between his butler’s regulation mutton-chop whiskers.

‘You young twister!’ he gasped. ‘If you think you can–’

‘As it happens, I do. I think
just
that. And it means you’ve had it. See? You’ve proposed to conspire with a young twister against a generous employer who puts implicit trust in your loyalty.’ Gadberry felt a real access of righteous indignation as he delivered himself of this. ‘You haven’t a chance of keeping your job. Not a dog’s, puppy’s, kitten’s, or furry caterpillar’s chance. Good night.’

And Gadberry rose and walked from the room – wearily, but with the sense of one good job done. With Miss Bostock, he hoped, there would be a repeat performance next day.

The walk – it might almost be called the journey – to his own quarters seemed interminable. In the cloisters a casement window was swinging to and fro on creaking hinges; it must have been blown open by the rising wind. And a rising wind, once more, there certainly was. It was beginning to put on its howling act. Against this, the senior resident owl (as it probably was) had started to complain. Gadberry paused for a moment to listen to this dismal dialogue.

It was the owl that shriek’d, the fatal bellman

Which gives the stern’st good-night…

He was through, thank goodness, with all that Thane of Cawdor stuff.

A staircase, a corridor, a staircase: all empty and very cold. And then his own corridor. He had come to think of it as that. But it was as dreary as the rest of the place. He saw no reason to suppose that any of Her Majesty’s prisons would be notably drearier. Through the long row of lancet windows there came an odd effect as of a very faint lightning operating in slow motion. The sky had continued to clear. There was a gibbous moon in it, and across this the last of the storm-clouds were racing. In the corridor there was no more than a faint light outside his rooms at the far end, so this eerie flickering had it all its own way. His own shadow came and went oddly. In front of him one of the massive cell doors swung half open. He had never seen that happen before, even in as high a wind as the one now rising.

This was the thought in Gadberry’s mind when something black and sweet-smelling was clapped over his face. He felt his legs melt beneath him. And then he passed out.

He came to slowly, and at first to no more than a consciousness that the world was revolving round him as if he were the notional centre of a top. Then with a jar like the sudden application of a powerful brake this sensation vanished, to be replaced by the astonishing discovery that he was tied up. His wrists were bound behind him; his ankles were bound; he was slumped on a floor with his shoulders against a wall.

Gadberry had often read of this sort of thing happening. It is a commonplace in certain types of romance. The victims are invariably confident they will get free again, and they always start using their wits at once. Gadberry found that he hadn’t any wits. He was aware of nothing except terror. In this helpless posture anybody could do anything to him. The thought was unbearable.

‘Well, that’s stage one.’

The voice came as from a great distance. It was cheerful, and might even have been called friendly. Gadberry closed his eyes for a moment and then opened them – suddenly determined at least not to be too frightened to
see
. He was in a corner of one of the cells. There was some light from a small electric torch in the middle of the floor.

‘That’s right,’ said the voice. ‘Take a good look round. My guess is that it’s tolerably like something you’ll be becoming pretty familiar with.’

Gadberry’s glance had been on an indefinably sinister-looking black bag in a corner of the cell. Now he turned his head painfully towards the voice. Very oddly, somebody appeared to have brought a looking-glass into the place too. That could be the only explanation of the fact that he was staring at his own face. And then, in a flash, he realised the truth. What he was looking at was the face of the real Nicholas Comberford.

He was so astounded that his fear left him. His mind even began faintly to function again. Whatever devilry Comberford was up to, it wasn’t likely to run to unspeakable physical outrage. The man was no doubt in some sense mad. But he wasn’t an absolute maniac. He could even be conversed with.

‘Where on earth have
you
come from?’ Gadberry asked.

Comberford laughed. He appeared to find this opening amusing.

‘Well,’ he said, ‘at the moment just from the vicarage. You almost saw me arriving there.’

‘I did see you. Only I didn’t know who it was.’

‘That was too bad. It’s a convenient base. And old Grimble is a convenient spy. I know things about him, you see, that he wouldn’t like bruited abroad. Besides, he likes mischief for its own sake.’

‘I know all that. Look here, Comberford, you’d better stop this imbecile fooling, and untie me at once. The whole thing has been utterly idiotic from the start.’

‘Has it? I don’t know that I agree. It’s satisfactory, isn’t it, that the old woman has signed on those dotted lines?’

‘I don’t care a damn for her dotted lines.’

‘No more you should, old boy. They’re no concern of yours now. It’s curtains for Gadberry, you know. Of course, it’s curtains for the old girl too.’

‘What do you mean?’ This time, Gadberry had difficulty in getting the words out. His terror had returned. It was a physical thing, running in cold drops down his spine.

‘I don’t know that I’ve any call to tell you. Still, you might as well know – if only by way of passing the time.’ Comberford paused to glance at his watch. ‘Yes, better give them another half-hour. Or even an hour. There’s no hurry. I can’t, in any event, get away until the small hours. You yourself will require my individual attention again round about two o’clock.’

This time, Gadberry felt a horrible sensation at the roots of his hair. Even to repeat ‘What do you mean?’ was beyond him. He stared at Comberford dumbly.

‘Drugs are tricky things,’ Comberford said. ‘Particularly if all we want to suggest is a fellow who has lost his nerve and got hopelessly tight. And we mustn’t, of course, risk your recovering any control of yourself until the cops are on the spot and ready to collect. That means – as I say – giving you the final shot round about two. The snow’s the only worry. It may make things a little awkward. Still, I’m pretty securely in the South of France, you know. So nothing much can go wrong.’ Comberford fell silent. He seemed indisposed to talk more after all.

‘I wonder whether you’ve thought out all the details,’ Gadberry said. ‘Elaborate crimes usually go wrong. If you were as clever as you think you are, you’d have thought of something a damned sight simpler.’

‘I might beguile the odd half-hour kicking you, or something like that.’ Comberford was clearly offended. ‘What about it, old boy?’

‘Don’t be silly. Bruises would wreck your whole crackpot scheme. By the way, I think these cords, or whatever they are, are going to do that anyway. By the feel of them, they’ve raised weals already. What will your precious cops make of
that
?’

‘Damnation!’ Comberford was plainly startled. But then he recovered himself and grinned. ‘Do you know,’ he said, ‘that it’s uncommonly obliging of you to point that out? I’ll ease them for a bit. But lie down on your stomach, and then don’t move.’

Gadberry obeyed this order. He concluded, as he felt the bonds slacken, that he had won a first trick. Those on his ankles would need untying before he could stand up. But he believed that, at a pinch, he could now free his wrists with a quick twist.

‘That shows,’ he said, without raising his head from the floor. ‘Detail’s not your strong point – Comberford, old boy.’

‘Listen. I leave you here. I smother the old woman–’

‘Smother her, do you? What rot!’

‘Yes, I do. It’s going to look like a very clumsy attempt to suggest natural death in her sleep – heart-failure, or something like that. I take care to leave in her room certain tokens of your own presence, dear boy – I won’t tell you what. I come back here and give you your shots. I bundle you into your own room, get a good deal of whisky into your stomach – and that’s that. That’s the whole thing, and I depart from the dear old Abbey as I came. The body is found, the doctor comes, the police come, they pay you a not very polite call – and there you are, still snoring like a pig.’

I’ll gild the faces of the grooms withal,

For it must seem their guilt…

The icy drops were coursing down Gadberry’s spine once more. This time, they seemed each to explode with a tiny splash deep in his loins. He had been rash to think that the world of
Macbeth
was safely behind him.

‘It won’t do
you
any good,’ he said. ‘It just can’t.’

Comberford looked at his watch again.

‘Don’t be silly,’ he said. ‘In my little Riviera nest – where I have a cast-iron alibi now – the sad news of this foul deed reaches me. I turn up. I have reason to suspect, I say, that a letter written to me by my great-aunt some months ago was intercepted. And intercepted by
you
, old boy. There’s a story waiting to make a plausible job of that. You turned up at the Abbey. You waited – and only just waited – until the will and what not were signed–’

‘You bloody fool!’ Risking something unpleasant, Gadberry rolled over on his back. ‘You don’t think those precious documents will be valid, do you?’

‘Of course they’ll be valid, old boy. The impostor is out of the picture – hanged or at least jugged for good. But the heir remains the man intended: the authentic Nicholas Comberford. And that’s me. I get what I’ve always meant to get – without ever coming near this place, and without waiting until the old girl
does
die a natural death – at about a hundred and two. It’s in the bag, George my lad. It’s all in the beautiful bag.’

‘
I think not
.’

Suddenly, there was another and more powerful torch at play in the cell. It was in the left hand of Miss Bostock, who stood in the door. In her right hand there was a gun.

‘May I introduce you to Miss Bostock?’ Gadberry said. At the same time he gave a quick tug at his wrists. He had been right. They came free quite easily. He sat up, stretched his arms – it was already a painful process – and untied the knots at his ankles. Nobody hindered him. Comberford and Miss Bostock were too much at gaze, so to speak, to notice. Gadberry contented himself with wriggling into a corner in his sitting posture, and there a little taking his ease. He had a notion that the situation remained on the tricky side.

‘An
embarras de richesses
,’ Miss Bostock said. ‘One Nicholas Comberford too many. The question is, which is to survive? Perhaps we might hold an auction. No – don’t move.’ She had said this in response to a threatening gesture by Comberford. ‘Unless you want the problem resolved out of hand.’

‘
Permit me, madam.
’

With the effect of a conjuring trick, a dark-sleeved arm had appeared behind Miss Bostock, and the small pistol had been snatched from her hand. In the same moment she was given a not very respectful impetus from behind – indeed, on the behind, and from a powerful knee. She was thus jolted into the cell. And Boulter was commanding it from the doorway.

‘All the conspirators,’ Gadberry said. For
Macbeth
was out. It seemed reasonable to switch to
Julius Caesar
.

Or even – Gadberry was to reflect afterwards – to
A Comedy of Errors
or
All’s Well that Ends Well
. Abruptly, that is to say, the situation had modulated into the absurd. Unfortunately, as it turned out, nobody except himself appeared aware of this possible change of key. His three companions were glaring at each other – and at him, for that matter – with undisguised malignity. As it was, he made one forlorn gesture in the direction of a certain lightness of air.

‘Couldn’t we,’ he asked, ‘have Grimble along? It would seem the tidy thing to do.’

‘I’ve got the gun,’ Boulter said.

‘You have, indeed.’ Miss Bostock simultaneously recovered her physical equilibrium and her nervous poise. ‘Only, it isn’t loaded.’

There was a pregnant silence, while Boulter verified this. The stillness was broken only by the flapping of an intrusive bat. From somewhere outside – perhaps from the tower itself – one of the resident owls hooted. It was on a satirical note.

‘Thank you, madam.’ Boulter handed the useless weapon back to its owner. He had returned to his most wooden manner. ‘It would appear that some accommodation must be arrived at.’

‘Accommodation to hell,’ Gadberry said – still from his seat on the floor. ‘From now on it’s going to be the truth.’ He glanced at each of his companions in turn. ‘The whole bloody truth, and nothing but the bloody truth,’ he added by way of emphasis.