Charles Palliser (146 page)

“I can’t understand why Assinder let me be sent out,” he kept saying. “It must be a mistake. I could make things difficult for him, and he knows it.”

“Oh everybody knows about that,” Will said. “You mean that old story of Assinder hiring out the carriage?”

“No I don’t mean that,” Bob said angrily. “I’ve got something much better agin him.”

“Don’t you know,” said Ned who had just come in, “Assinder’s been dismissed too.

He’s to be sent away fust thing tomorrer.”

“What?” Bob cried.

“Seems her la’ship and Mr David and their man of business reckoned as how he was stealing from ’em,” Ned continued; “but old Sir Parsivvle trusted him and wouldn’t let

’em do nothing agin him.”

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“So your pull on him don’t count for nothing, Bob,” Will sneered.

Bob had turned white with rage and bafflement.

“What was it, Bob?” Nellie asked curiously.

“You might as well know for all the harm it’ll do him,” he said. “It was three or four year back, one summer. This ooman — lady, I s’pose on’y she was in caggy togs — come to the street-door while I was on hall-duty. The thing was, she was in custody of a sheriff for she was being held on a warrant. In course I told her to go round the back but she said she was fambly or something. I couldn’t make much of it for I believe she had the sun in her eyes, or something worse. Well, I went and told Assinder for none of the fambly was at home. And he come and seen her in the library while the sheriff stood out in the hall. And arter a few minutes she come out and went off agin singing the Black Psalm. Then Assinder told me never to say nothing about it to nobody and give me five sovereigns.”

“five!” the others exclaimed. “Why, it must have been something important.”

I knew what it was. I hurried out of the room into the dark passage for I needed to be alone to think over what I had heard. So it seemed that Assinder had taken it upon himself to turn my mother from the house in tears without telling his employers. But why? This only made sense if he was working on behalf of the Clothiers! Then he was the agent they were believed to have in the Mompessons’ trust! What were the implications of that? And if it were true that the Mompessons had not turned my mother away, then had I the right to act against them in the way that I was intending?

At that moment Will came out of the servants’-hall and I asked him (for he was one of those being kept on board wages), what would happen to me.

“To you?” he jeered. “You’re out, too, in course, along with Bob. Bad cess to him for a mean scrub.”

Now that the household was breaking up, no-one felt constrained to conceal their real feelings.

“When is the house to be shut up?” I asked.

“He’s paid up until Saturday, but you might both be sent out of the house before then.”

He looked at me curiously and remembering that he had seen me being accosted by Vamplew, I asked no more questions but turned and hurried into the scullery.

Clearly I had to bring forward the attempt to regain the will if I was going ahead with it! My fear was that I would be dismissed that very day, for I foresaw that Bob might have high words with the butler and be sent out of the house instantly. And there was another danger: would the Mompessons take the will with them to Hougham? Clearly the quincunx had to be solved without delay.

By the time the hour came for Bob and myself to accompany the locking-up party, he was in a suppressed drunken rage and was so insolent to Mr Thackaberry that had the butler himself not been too inebriated to notice, I believe he would have been dismissed on the spot. When the two of us reached the floor on which Miss Lydia’s rooms were, I saw a pair of boots outside her door and bent to pick them up.

“Leave ’em,” said Bob. “She’s in disgrace. She’s been sent out of the house same as me.”

As I lowered them I noticed a small piece of paper in the right-hand boot.

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Bob was ahead of me, so I quickly slipped the note out and into my apron pocket.

Once I was safely alone in the hall, I read the paper by the light of the dying fire:

“Solution found. Come after midnight.”

I thrust it into the flames and as I watched it blacken and curl up felt a gathering sense of excitement. I waited until I heard Jakeman’s snores, crept up the back-stairs and in pitch darkness felt my way along the passage to Miss Lydia’s door, counting them to ensure that it was the right one. To my surprise there was no light under the one which ought to be hers. With Mr Vamplew only across the passage, I dared not risk knocking so I gently turned the handle and slipped in.

The only illumination came from a faint glowing amongst the embers of the dying fire and there was no light under the door of the bed-chamber, either. The sitting-room reeked of a candle that had burnt itself out. Knowing that there were usually candles on the mantelpiece, I took the fire-tongs and picked up a glowing coal. By its light I found one, held the ember to it and, while I waited for it to catch, listened to the absolute silence around me.

Then the candle-flame flickered into life and with a stab of ice in my innards, I saw that there was someone sitting in the chair by the fire. In the next moment I recognised the figure as that of the old lady, though the rapid thudding of my heart hardly grew less at this realization. She must be very deeply asleep not to have been awakened by my entrance.

“Miss Lydia,” I said softly, but still startling myself with the sound of my own voice.

When there was no response I spoke a little louder: “Great-aunt Lydia?”

I moved closer and touched her arm. Instantly, her head lolled forward and I started back. In horror I realized that I was after all alone in the room.

I moved forward again as my first moment of terror passed. There was no reason why I should be frightened. I touched her hand and found that it was quite cold. She had sat here waiting for me to arrive, as the fire died down and the candle guttered and drowned in its own wax, so that she could supply the final element needed in order to bring about the consummation she had desired for so long; and at the last she had been cheated by a few hours. Perhaps even she had died of excitement at the prospect of succeeding at last.

I studied her face. The expression seemed peaceful. I tried to imagine what she had been like as a young woman and I could not think that she had ever been a beauty.

I looked round the little room in which she had passed her wretched, narrow life.

After more than eighty years of living, how much would her absence be noticed in the upheaval now taking place in the household? Henrietta alone would be saddened by the death of her only friend and ally, the only person she loved. And the old woman had loved her — I was sure of that — had loved her like her lost child; though her love for her must have seemed a mere tail-piece at the end of so long a life. Surely what had mattered to her had been the acts of injustice against herself and those she had loved —

Anna Mompesson and John Umphraville — that had blighted and embittered her youth.

Was it her desire for revenge or her love for Henrietta — for the child she should have had — that had made her so determined that I should regain the will? I was sure she had sold her life-interest, which was a charge on the estate, at Doctors’ Commons. Well, since she could not give me the solution to the quincunx, I now had no chance of doing what she had hoped.

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I was about to leave the room when I noticed that there was a battered old hat-box, whose lid had been removed, on the floor at her feet. Glancing inside it I saw a heap of bric-à-brac: a bouquet of flowers that had been dried to preserve it, some paste-board tickets granting admission to ancient balls, and underneath them a christening-robe trimmed with lace that was now yellowed and which had been made, I suspected, for a child which did not live to be baptised. (Perhaps if the old lady had lived I might have asked her about the words she had attributed to her Aunt Anna, but probably not. For I understood now that I could continue for ever to hear new and more complicated versions of the past without ever attaining to a final truth.) Clearly she had been going through her most cherished possessions. And now I noticed that there was something on the old lady’s lap which she must have been holding when she died, and which had slipped from her fingers. I picked it up and held it close to the candle.

My heart began to beat faster as I examined it: a faded piece of printed silk stretched over a rectangle of paste-board and adorned with a silken tassle which declared itself to be an invitation to a ball given by Sir Hugo Mompesson to celebrate his marriage to Miss Alice Huffam. Embossed on the front was a sentence in Latin:
“Quid Quincunce
speciosius, qui, in quamcunque partent spectaveris, rectus est?”
I smiled for the words were a boast that the pattern of quincunxes represented rectitude, Tightness, and justice. Well, I thought, I would do my best. I opened the invitation and there was the very design which we had laboured over a few days before, except that here the three tinctures — white, black, and red — were indicated! As we had anticipated, the arrangement was symmetrical with the first and the fifth, like the second and the fourth, elements exactly reflecting each other, and the Huffam motif was indeed the first as I had suggested it should be. The crucial central quincunx was identical to the second and the fourth, except that the bud of the middle quatre-foil appeared — as predicted — not to be white. But what was it? I held the candle closer and peered at it, wishing I had a lanthorn. The tincture gules was represented, as on the design that Miss Lydia had drawn, by dots and it was very difficult to make out whether the central bud was filled with dots or was entirely black — or was even white after all but marked with slight discolourations of the paper. After staring at it for a few moments in the flickering lume of the candle I was sure it was black. It had to be so for the sake of the pattern of the whole.

I had the solution after all! All that remained unclear was whether the black or the white bolts should be withdrawn, and it would not take long to try it both ways, though I was concerned at the warning Miss Lydia had given me. The decision had been made for me: I would make my attempt that very night! It might be my last opportunity, for the next day anything might happen. I only wished I had some way of getting a message to Joey to tell him to meet me early tomorrow instead of next Monday.

Thrusting the paste-board into the lining of my jacket, I left the room, crept downstairs and, listening to the deep snores of the nightwatchman, stole along the passage and retrieved my bit of candle and the tinder-box from Bob’s little pantry.

Very cautiously I made my way to the hearth of the scullery, dislodged the brick I had seen Jakeman remove, and found the keys. I took a knife from the drawer where I had hidden it earlier that day and then, feeling my way step by 672 THE

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step through the absolute darkness, I climbed the stairs and unlocked the door of the Great Parlour. (So I did not need the “spider” after all.) As I turned the handle and pushed one half of the lofty door open, it gave way and I stepped inside the room.

I felt a profound impulse to light the candle and begin work immediately, but I resisted it. I must keep my head and think carefully or everything might still be lost since there was no way out of the house until daylight and Mr Vamplew — or anyone else —

might be prowling about. So I should lock this door again in case anyone tried it while I was inside. As I made to thrust the stolen key into the lock I found that there was a key already there. Of course! I had forgotten that there was one permanently here to enable the door to be locked from the inside. An idea came to me. I could appropriate this key to lock the door behind me when I left, and this meant that I could return Jakeman’s keys to their hiding-place now.

I removed the key from inside the door, locked it behind me and made my way back towards the scullery. As I passed the back-door I recalled the advice given by the housebreakers whom Mr Digweed and I had consulted, concerning the importance of securing one’s escape as soon as one entered a house. I hated the thought of being trapped inside for the next few hours and so, although my reason told me it was pointless since I could not get out of the yard until the coach-house was opened, I unlocked the back-door before replacing the keys.

Then I returned to the Great Parlour, and only when I had locked the door on the inside did I light my bit of candle. Now I was sure the central bolt was black. I knew it could not be white. And red seemed highly unlikely. So it was surely black. The only problem now was whether “white” indicated that the bolts be withdrawn or “black”

meant that. I decided to withdraw the four “white” bolts first, since that would be quicker than trying the twenty-one “black” ones. Using the blade of the knife, I slid the two top ones out and then, not daring to breathe as I watched for signs of movement, pulled out the two lower ones wondering if I had indeed found the “Open, sesame” of Al Adeen that would give me possession of what I sought.

It worked! To my delight the central slab of marble dropped smoothly down and a space was revealed behind it. I brought the candle closer and peered in. Inside were a small bundle of bank-notes, some gold coins wrapped up in tissue-paper, some jewel-cases, a number of letters and documents, and two tin deed-boxes stamped with the Mompesson arms. Foolishly, I had not anticipated that I would have to search through so many items and I wondered where to begin.

Then I saw a small packet of soft leather beneath the bank-notes. I lifted it out, unwrapped it and in the dim light of the candle-stub which I stood on the edge of the mantelpiece, I read: “I, Jeoffrey Huffam, being of sound mind … ” It seems strange to me, now that I look back, that I felt so little at this moment. But perhaps it was because I knew I had so much to do if I was to secure my acquisition. I merely pushed it into the lining of my jacket from which it stuck out, intending to conceal it more effectively in a moment when I had restored the hiding-place so that the fact that it had been opened could not be detected.