Charles Palliser (137 page)

The sound that caught my attention came from up here. Now the family were not here but at Hougham at that time, with the single exception of Tom. He sleeps downstairs, that is, when he sleeps in the house at all. So I believed I knew what the mysterious sound was, for I had heard it once or twice before in the preceding weeks and on those occasions I had quietly opened my door and seen Mr Vamplew, whose rooms are also on this floor, going downstairs. That seemed to me to be rather strange, and I had resolved that the next time I would follow him if I could. So on this particular night I was still in my day-clothes and it seemed a good opportunity. I crept out into the passage without a candle and saw a figure descending the stairs. It was indeed Mr Vamplew. But perhaps you do not know who he is?”

“Yes. He is Tom’s tutor.”

“Well,” she replied, “that is the word used, though another might be more appropriate. Tom is well over nineteen now and hardly needs a tutor, though he does need someone to keep him in order. So Mr Vamplew is his keeper, shall we say? He is a sly creature and I suspect him of being up to no good, and so that is why I determined to follow him, though I suspected that all I would discover would be some sordid intrigue with a servant-woman. He made his way down the stairs without seeing me and once on the ground floor, he began to behave very strangely, raising the carpets, looking in cupboards, feeling beneath the side-tables in the hall, and, in brief, clearly looking for something. I watched him at .this work for ten or twenty minutes and then at last he appeared to abandon his search and went back up the stairs as if to go towards his own apartments. I followed him after a cautious interval and it was then, while I was on the first landing, that I heard a faint noise from the Great Parlour. I crept over and listened at the door. I heard voices faintly whispering.”

“Yes,” I cried. “We thought there was someone at the door just before the alarm was raised!”

“I tried the door and found it was locked. If only I could have known who it was,” she sighed. “Naturally I imagined it was an ordinary burglary. I crept downstairs to find the watchman, that odious, sottish lout Jakeman. Of course he was asleep and so drunk that I could not rouse him. I searched his pockets for his keys but could not discover them.

And so I decided to find Mr Vamplew since I knew he was awake and dressed. I went up-stairs and knocked on his door and told him of my belief that there were housebreakers in the Great Parlour. He said he would summon the men-servants and told me to return to the watchman and get his blunderbuss. He was most particular about the blunderbuss. He went below stairs to waken the men, and before he could warn them, one of them struck one of those new lucifers.”

“And our watcher saw it from the street! And that’s what made him warn us.

“Thank heavens for that!” said Miss Lydia. “Meanwhile I went back to Jakeman but still I could not find the keys. I had no intention of fetching his gun. By now I could hear the men running upstairs from the basement

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and trying to break down the door. I went up to tell Mr Vamplew that I could not get the keys and pointed out that if the housebreakers escaped through the window, our men could not get out through the street-door to pursue them without the keys to unlock it.

He swore terribly and said: ‘But that damned rascal of a watchman has them hidden somewhere.’ That was strange, was it not?”

“Yes,” I said. “And presumably it was the keys that he was looking for when you observed him.”

“That is what I assumed. Then he asked me to give him the gun and when I said I had not brought it he was very angry that I had been wasting my time, as he put it, in looking for the keys. I said I believed we had no right to take the life of our fellow-men when they were not threatening to do us any harm. He rudely suggested that I should see how Sir Perceval appreciated that sentiment. By now it was clear that the men would take a great deal of time to break down the door. So Mr Vamplew ordered two of them to stay and the rest to go through the back-door into the yard, rouse the coachman and go through the coach-house and run round the mews to cut off the burglars’ escape. He ran down with them and I followed, but met him a moment later in the hall coming back carrying the gun. At this moment Mr Thackaberry appeared from below stairs clad in his night-gown and cap and looking very frightened.” The old lady laughed. “I besought Mr Vamplew not to fire but the butler urged him on with the reflection that Sir Perceval would reward him. The ground-floor windows are all barred as you know, so that he could not fire through them, so we went back up the stairs. We must have looked very ridiculous, I trying to hold his arm and Mr Thackaberry trying to pull me away. Mr Vamplew opened a window and pushed the gun out. I managed to snatch it away once but then he did the same again despite my efforts to pull him back, for the butler held me. However, just as he fired I succeeded in jogging his elbow and spoiling his aim. He swore dreadfully.”

“Thank heavens you did! For that saved my companion from being shot dead, I am certain. At that distance Mr Vamplew could not have missed. Yet though the shot went wide, the poor man fell onto the spikes.”

“I am grieved to learn it! Was he badly injured?”

I told her what had happened and she said: “Blood was found by the railings afterwards, but we did not see what occurred for there was the most comical struggle between the three of us when I tried to prevent Mr Vamplew from re-charging the piece.

However, before he fired he looked out of the window and I am afraid that he got a clear view of you. He described you very accurately to the constable of the watch.”

“I feared so.”

“You must be sure to keep out of his sight. He is away with Tom at present, but they are to return in a few weeks. Sir Perceval gave Mr Vamplew ten guineas for his night’s work.” She smiled mischievously: “He was very angry with me.”

“But he had no suspicion that this was anything more than an ordinary housebreaking?” I asked anxiously.

“To the best of my knowledge, none at all.”

“But why was Jakeman not dismissed?” I asked.

“Because Mr Thackaberry spoke up for him and, I suspect, paid Mr Vamplew to do the same, so that his disgraceful conduct was not known to the steward. You see, he pays a share of his wages to the butler. Many of the servants do so because 630 THE

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they are indebted to him for their places. I protested, but you see, no-one takes any notice of me. The only precaution that was taken was the blocking up of the privy-drains and the rule that the door into the back-yard was henceforth to be locked at night —

though there is no way into the back-yard save through the coach-house and stables.”

“I dare not stay longer,” I said and stood up. But I could not go away unsatisfied on one matter at least: “Will you tell me why, as you said, you wanted the will to be restored to Jeoffrey Huffam’s heir when such an event would ruin your family?”

She cast her eyes down and I wondered if I had been tactless. Then she looked up and said: “You refer to ‘my family’ as if you did not know that you and I are close kin.

The Huffams and the Mompessons were united by the marriage of Jeoffrey Huffam’s elder daughter, Alice. For she married Sir Hugo Mompesson and they were my parents.

So half of me is a Huffam.”

I started at this: “You are so close to me as that!”

She nodded: “I am your first cousin twice removed, if that is close.”

Then I remembered Mr Escreet mentioning the daughter of Sir Hugo and what a

“queer” young woman she had been. He had referred to some scandal or something involving her, but I could not call it to mind.

“And may I ask what relation you are to Sir Perceval?” I enquired.

“I am his aunt. He is the son of my younger brother, Augustus.” She paused. “For certain reasons, I had a particular affection for your grandfather, John. And a few years ago I had the opportunity to do something for him. And it was an action that gave me particular pleasure for it meant undoing some of the evil that my family had done him.

And it also meant preventing a young woman from being forced into a hideous marriage against her will for the sake of her family’s pecuniary interests.”

I was confused by her words until I realized that “a few years ago” referred to a time before I was born.

“Nobody in this family has ever trusted me enough to tell me anything. But over the years I’ve kept my ears open and I came to know how my brother and then his nevy acted to protect their interests, even though that involved the suppression of legal documents and other criminal acts. Well, at the time I am speaking of, Mr Martin Fortisquince happened to make one of his visits to the house to pay his respects to my family. And it came about that he mentioned something in my presence that made a great impression upon me.”

She broke off and I noticed her hands restlessly moving on her lap, the fingers of one intertwining with those of the other.

“I know something about the way young women can be forced into marriage. Well, Mr Fortisquince told us, merely in the way of conversation, how your mother was at loggerheads with her father because he was determined that she should marry someone whom she detested. I was very concerned. And surprised, too, for your grandfather had seemed such a nice boy that time I met him. But then Mr Fortisquince mentioned that the intended groom was the elder son of Mr Silas Clothier. (He was the son of Abraham Clothier — or Nicholas as he later called himself — who was a money-lender who had battened upon my grandfather and forced him into marrying one of his daughters to him.) My nevy and his wife were very put about at this, for the idea of a marriage between two of their enemies appalled them, though nothing was said before me or Mr Fortisquince. I took him aside as he was

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leaving and asked him about it and he confirmed what I had suspected: that it was all to do with that wretched suit. I gathered that your grandfather and Mr Silas Clothier were forming some kind of combination which was being ratified by the sacrifice, as it were, of your mother. Well, I knew a very sure way of upsetting any such alliance between the Huffam heir and the Clothier remainderman. And I saw my way clear since I knew which was the drawer of his bureau where my nevy kept his title-deeds and other important documents. So I wrote to your grandfather.”

I stared at her. “Do you mean to say that … ?”

She smiled. “Yes. I decided that very instant that I would regain that document that you and I spoke of just now, from the possession of my nevy.”

At last I knew the identity of my grandfather’s mysterious friend inside the Mompesson household who had written the letter that had so excited him, and in learning this I had discovered something that not even my mother or Martin Fortisquince had ever known.

The old lady continued : “I knew that Perceval and his wife would be abroad the following Monday, so I decided that on that day I would go into his closet and force the drawer.”

“And,” I interrupted, “you told Mr Fortisquince to come that day and receive a gift to give to my grandfather!”

“Yes!” She smiled delightedly. “But however did you know?”

I explained how Mr Nolloth had recounted to me Peter Clothier’s story of the events of that fatal day.

“I had to be so devious,” she said, “for dear Martin would have been dreadfully shocked if he had known how I planned to involve him in what I believe he, with his scrupulousness, would have regarded as a crime.”

“Then what happened?” I asked in excitement.

“I obtained the will exactly according to my plan,” the old lady replied.

“But then did not your nephew suspect that you were … ?” I asked and broke off in embarrassment.

“The person who removed the will?” she said quickly. “He did indeed, and accused me of it in the most dreadful scene. But I denied it and he had no proof. And only think what a perplexing position he found himself in. He could not reveal the nature of the document he was missing since he had neither a moral nor a legal right to possession of it. But he and Isabella themselves searched my rooms and my person.”

“And they did not find it?” I asked.

She stared. “But you must know that they did not. For all went exactly as I had arranged with your grandfather. Right here in my nevy’s house, I passed it to Martin.”

“And so what went amiss?” I asked.

“Amiss?” she said in surprise. “Why nothing went amiss.”

“Then why did Mr Fortisquince not give it to my grandfather?”

She looked at me thoughtfully. “Now I understand the misconception you are under.

Why do you believe that he did not?”

I looked at her in amazement: “Because Peter Clothier’s account of that night’s events makes it clear that Mr Fortisquince did not pass the will to my grandfather for it was not in the package he received from him when he opened it at an inn in Hertford later that night.”

“But only reflect,” she said, “on whose word your father had for believing 632 THE

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that Martin had not given your grandfather the will. Only that of Mr Escreet. Now I know that Martin did in fact pass the will to your grandfather, for I questioned him about this without letting him guess why I was so interested. He suspected nothing of what he had been involved in. He never knew that Sir Perceval had lost the will —

indeed, he never believed that it ever existed except in John Huffam’s imagination.”

Suddenly I realized something: “So that means Sir Perceval does not have it!” I cried.

“Then everything has been in vain: Mr Digweed’s injury and my working here. All gone for nothing!”

A bitter rage welled up inside me. The will had vanished and I had no chance of ever regaining my rights!

Miss Lydia seemed about to speak but at that moment there came a knock at the door.

“That must be my great-niece,” she said.

I rose in alarm for I had no idea who she could be referring to and it occurred to me that it might be Lady Mompesson.