Charles Palliser (163 page)

For a moment I had no idea whom she meant. Then I understood and saw that she was right. I left her with Henrietta, went over to the body and raised the lanthorn to look down upon it.

There were coins scattered about and I put them back in Bellringer’s pockets. This reminded me that I had very little money left — just enough, once I had paid the postilion, for my coach-fare back to the metropolis and a few shillings for Joey to make his way home on foot. I picked up the huge key and, feeling that I had every right to, I pocketed it. It was this that had led me to tell Mr Barbellion that I believed I had a chance of regaining the will. For I had recognised it while Lady Mompesson and her son were picking the dead man’s pockets. Remembering that, as Joey had told me, Bellringer was Mr Escreet’s mysterious visiter, I had realized that it was the key to the old house at Charing-cross. Perhaps, I reflected now, it was the very one that Peter Clothier had said he had found lying on the floor before the vestibule-door. But what could the link be between Bellringer and Mr Escreet? His remark about the killing of John Umphraville had confirmed that he had some secret connexion

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with my family, but what could he have meant by saying that that murder had been avenged by his own death? And was I any nearer to resolving the mystery of who had murdered my grandfather? finally, what about the will? As long as someone had it then I was in danger of being killed and Henrietta of being forced into marriage, if not with Tom then with some other unscrupulous adventurer. I believed I had a chance of regaining it, for I had remembered what Bellringer’s phrase about the will being “back where it belonged” had stirred in my memory.

I went back to Henrietta and Sukey, and called Joey over. “Henrietta,” I said, “we’ll take you back to the house now. I must return to London today so you and I, Joey, will go back to Sutton Valancy in the chaise and I’ll take the night-mail from there. I have just enough money left to travel as an outside. But I’m afraid you’ll have to make your way home as best you can from there.”

Joey and Sukey protested that I was not well enough to travel, and Joey warned me that I was still in grave danger from Barney and should not venture onto the streets of the capital alone.

“I must go back,” I said. “Something Bellringer said has given me an idea.”

“About that accursed will?” Henrietta said suddenly.

“About the mystery of my grandfather’s murder,” I returned indignantly.

“No, it’s the will you want really,” she insisted. “That’s why you tried to prevent my marriage. It wasn’t me you were pursuing but the will! That’s why you’re going back to London now.”

“Take care of her, Sukey,” I said. “She’s not well.”

Sukey gently took her arm and so we went out to the chaise — picking our way across the old terraces and the muddy parkland with increased difficulty now that it was completely dark — where we found the driver indignant on his own behalf and that of his horses.

There was only room for two and so I took leave of Sukey and then, while Joey ran behind, the chaise returned to the big house. Henrietta and I said nothing as it jolted through the darkness. When it stopped she got out and stood with her back to me at the foot of the steps but with her head turned towards the way we had come. Joey boarded the vehicle and as we rolled away I looked back and saw her standing motionless where we had left her.

The Key

Though it is true that we can understand nothing without finding a pattern, I must warn you against the course of action that our misguided friend (with whom I am now chumming again, as when we first met) advocates, for it risks imposing rather than discovering a design. (How I hope that my poor understanding has not led you into that error in helping you to comprehend your past experiences!) Now that I take my leave of you, I urge you not to impose such a pattern on the future.

Let me illustrate what I mean by taking the case of Barney Digweed in his pursuit of yourself. For Digweed, as a criminal, is the exemplary member of such a society as ours in that he seizes his opportunities where he finds them and is blinded by no prejudices as to how matters ought or ought not to be. Living in and for the moment merely, he can adapt easily to the situation as it changes.

From what you found out from him a little later that day, this is what must have happened:

He had pursued you the previous day, but you eluded him (without knowing it) by travelling down to Hougham. Learning from the servants at Brook-street that that was where you had gone, he deployed members of his company to watch out for your return and so had them hurrying from one livery-stable to another and visiting each of the inns that deal with the Great-north-road all that day and the next. This responsiveness to events was rewarded for it came about that you stumbled unwittingly into his net. But with what result, you know better than I, and so I shall leave it to you to recount.

Let me conclude by advising you to learn at least this lesson from Digweed : the concatenation of events is always more complicated and inexplicable than we like to imagine. We must remember that a pattern — whether of the past or the future — is always arbitrary or partial in that there could always be a different one or a further elaboration of the same one. In the end we have to make a guess or hazard all upon the throw of the dice, just as you did when you chose to withdraw that particular combination of bolts in Chapter 100.

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And therefore, as I fondly take my leave, I beg you, my dear young friend, not to trust too much to Justice and Equity in your designs for the future.

We reached the inn at Sutton Valancy within a couple of hours. Learning that the night-mail was due in an hour, I purchased my ticket and gave my remaining money to Joey —

except for my last shilling with which I bought us some food and drink in the travellers’-

room. The coach arrived on time to the minute and we took leave of each other.

My outer garments were inadequate to keep off the driving rain as I sat on the roof during the long journey South. Exhausted, I fell asleep against the broad shoulder of a fellow-traveller and awoke to a grey, cold dawn as if the storm were wearily recuperating before another onslaught. All that endless day and the next I revolved in my mind the mysteries that surrounded me and the question of what I should do when I reached my destination. I recalled the last time I had traversed this road in the same direction, walking the weary miles or riding a cart at the invitation of a friendly carrier. And I remembered the occasion before that when I had been safely inside the coach with my mother. This memory returned to me with particular force as we approached Hertford that evening and I recalled what I had learned since then about my mother’s experiences there. All day I had felt weaker and weaker and now, when I left the coach during the change of horses at the Blue Dragon, I fainted in the yard. I was picked up and borne inside by one of the ostlers and ordered to bed by the landlady, despite my protests.

Even my insistence that I had not a penny upon me had no effect except to produce the accusation that I was half-starved, which was followed by a bowl of broth. So I stayed there overnight, regretting that I had lost the initiative and might not now reach Town ahead of the news of Bellringer’s death and Mompesson’s flight.

The storm overtook me that night and roared above my head. The landlady would not permit me to go on the next morning and, besides, I did not feel strong enough. I slept most of the time but awoke in the evening feeling refreshed and well again. Now I insisted on continuing my journey and late in the evening boarded the very night-mail which I had been on the previous day. The storm was still blustering, but by the time we clattered under the arch of the Golden-Cross-inn a couple of hours past midnight, it had almost blown over. I was so preoccupied that it did not occur to me to look out for anyone who might be watching for me, and I could not have evaded detection even if I had — though perhaps if I had guessed, I would have requested to be put down on the outskirts of the metropolis and have made my way from there on foot.

So it was about half past two o’clock when I reached the old house at Charing-cross that I thought of — rightly or wrongly — as my grandfather’s. It was in darkness and, reflecting that in both law and justice it had belonged to my mother’s father and that since I was the heir-at-law of his heir, the house was mine, I took out the great key and gently turned it in the lock of the street-door. The wards clicked and I passed in. The vestibule-door was unlocked so, first locking the street-door again, I found myself a moment later in the front hall.

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Suddenly, to my horror, I heard a loud banging noise. For a moment I believed it came from my own heart, but then I realized that someone was hammering at the street-door. I froze. Had I been pursued? The knocking was repeated and then I heard an answering noise from upstairs. I moved swiftly round to the lobby at the side of the staircase where I would be hidden from the street-door. The moonlight coming through the windows cast enough light for me to see with a shudder that the sword and halberd were still hanging on the wall —
back where they’ve always belonged
— as Mr Escreet had said to my mother. Pressing myself back into the shadows, I was just able to see Mr Escreet, carrying a candle and clad in a dressing-gown worn over his night-shirt, reaching the bottom of the stairs. On his face was an expression of terrible, harrowing sorrow and his bulbous features seemed to me to resemble nothing so much as a weathered piece of sculpture. As he descended I moved round in the shadows towards the door of the plate-room to keep out of his line of vision.

I heard him speaking through the judas-hole and then the door opened. There were voices, one of them surely a woman’s, and then the sound of several people. They passed through the vestibule and then stood in the hall at the foot of the stairs, just out of my sight.

“Come, we know you have it.”

To my astonishment I recognised the voice as that of Sancious — the attorney who had cheated my mother and whom we had later encountered at Mrs Fortisquince’s in his disguise as Steplight, and whom I had believed I saw while ill at the house of Daniel Porteous.

“How can you say that?” Mr Escreet protested. “You know that it was destroyed when the boy was drowned.”

“We believed that at first just as we believed that wretched boy had died,” Sancious sneered.

So, as I had guessed, Sally had told Barney about seeing me that night when I had noticed her staring at me in the Haymarket, and he had gone to Sancious and been instructed to kill me. Presumably they were here because Barney had told them that I had said the will still existed when he had attacked me outside my lodgings a few days ago. But why had Sancious come here to get the will? And why was he so anxious for my death now that Silas Clothier was dead and so his heirs could not profit by it?

There was a long sigh from the old man. “If only he had.”

Then Mr Escreet knew that I had not drowned ! How could he have learned that?

From Bellringer, presumably! The more I learned, the more puzzled I became.

“Leave us alone for that,” Sancious said brutally, and I slunk further into the shadows.

“But for that, we need the will.”

“Why do you think I should have it?”

“We know that Bellringer got it from the boy by a trick. And one of our people followed him to this house not long ago. We assume he gave it to you for safe-keeping.”

Bewilderment and enlightenment flooded in upon me. How did they know so much?

Why had they had Bellringer followed?

“To me?” the old man exclaimed. “Why should he have given it to me?”

This was what puzzled me: what was the connexion between him and Bellringer?

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“Don’t play with us,” said a woman’s voice.

I stifled a cry of amazement. I was truly going mad. My wits had turned.

Then she spoke again:

“We know everything. You had the will originally. You were involved in its theft.”

It was indeed she! It was Mrs Fortisquince! Why was she there? What was her connexion with Sancious? What interest could she have in the will? And what did she mean by accusing the old man of having stolen it? He had told me the thief was Paternoster. Was he lying about that?

“What do you know about it?” exclaimed the old man. “You weren’t even born when it happened.”

“Mrs Sancious knows a great deal about it,” said the attorney.

Mrs Sancious!
I was astounded. Why should the proud, wealthy widow ally herself with a pettifogging attorney?

Mrs Fortisquince — or Mrs Sancious as I now had to think of her — spoke again: “I do. Above all, I know of the child that was born in secret to Anna Mompesson more than ninety years ago.”

I heard the old man gasp.

“Born as the consequence of a shameful and illicit intrigue,” Mrs Fortisquince went on. “And I know that the child was taken from her by its father, Jeoffrey Huffam, and given to his attorney, Paternoster, to be put out to adoption. I know how Paternoster conceived the design of blackmailing Huffam, and to that end had the child adopted by one of his own clerks. I know that he instructed that it be baptised in the name of its natural father: Jeoffrey.”

She paused and suddenly the name I had seen mentioned in the purloined will when I had read it at Bellringer’s lodgings flashed before me: Jeoffrey Escreet!

This affair between Jeoffrey Huffam and Anna Mompesson was the story Miss Lydia had recounted. Yet even she had not known the fate of the child — or had perhaps confused it with the fate of another such inconvenient infant.

And then, confirming my surmise, Mrs Sancious went on, speaking very deliberately:

“And I know that that clerk’s name was Escreet.”

Of course ! Escreet was the founder of an illegitimate line combining the two families of Huffam and Mompesson!