Charles Palliser (60 page)

“Yes,” I said. “They do not know where we live. That is why they had to wait for us at the pawn-broker.”

And yet, I asked myself, how could they have known to find us there? I hesitated to ask my mother any questions about this.

When we burst in upon Miss Quilliam a few minutes later I could see in her expression of alarm as if in a looking-glass, how ghastly we looked. One side of my mother’s face was bruised so that it rose in a livid welt, and her lip was cut and swollen, while blood from the top of my head was running down my cheeks and neck, making it appear that my injuries were much worse than they were. We looked at each other in the light of the candle that Miss Quilliam lit and then my mother flung her arms round me weeping.

It was some time before poor Miss Quilliam could get any sense from us, but at last, while she bathed our injuries, we told her the bare facts of what had happened. To our disappointment we discovered that all but a few shillings of the money left from Mrs Purviance’s sovereign had gone, presumably dropped in the course of my mother’s attempt to produce the codicil, but the document itself was still safely in her possession.

Miss Quilliam, who of course knew nothing of

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the codicil, listened curiously as we spoke of it and must have wondered as she gathered that it had been the cause of the attack.

“I’ll never be able to get the locket back now,” my mother kept sobbing.

Seeing how over-wrought and exhausted she was, Miss Quilliam put her to bed after giving her (somewhat to my dismay) a powerful draught to make her sleep.

When my mother was asleep Miss Quilliam held a whispered conference with me at the window. As we spoke we glanced occasionally at the bed across the room where, lying with the faint moonlight upon her face, my mother looked very young, so that it was almost as if she were a sleeping child under discussion by her anxious parents.

“This was no mere robbery was it?” Miss Quilliam began.

I shook my head.

“And it was a document in your mother’s possession that they sought?”

I nodded for I believed no harm could come of confirming this.

“May I ask what it is?”

I hesitated, remembering Bissett’s betrayal. Yet surely I could trust her?

“I know very little about it,” I said, “except that it is a codicil to a will.”

She said gravely: “You’re very young to shoulder such a burden, but I must tell you that I don’t believe your mother has the strength to bear up very much longer — I mean the strength of both body and mind.”

I nodded.

“Can you think of any means of obtaining money?” Seeing me hesitate she prompted:

“Is the codicil of any value, that someone is so anxious to obtain it?”

I remembered how suspicious I had become when Mr Sancious had made the same suggestion, but surely there could be no possibility of Miss Quilliam knowing any more than she was able to guess?

“Some people once offered to buy it,” I said. “But my mother refused to sell it, although they offered a very large sum.”

“I see that you don’t mention their names. But tell me if you believe it was they who were responsible for this attack?”

I felt a particular delicacy in suppressing the names of the Mompessons since they were known to Miss Quilliam, but this was not my secret to divulge.

I said: “I don’t believe they would go so far. However, from things that my mother has let drop it seems that there is another party who is determined to get hold of it and who would gain so much by it and is so ruthless that he would use any means.”

I told her about the attempt to abduct me from the village and that I believed the same monstrously tall man was involved in both attempts. Then I went on: “My mother says that if this enemy of ours obtained it, our lives would be in danger, for he could only profit by it if she and I were both dead.”

“How very strange. I don’t understand enough about the law to know how that can be. What a pity that our legal acquaintances are no longer to hand.”

I blushed at these words for I felt embarrassed at withholding from her what I had learned from the two gentlemen.

“But then what would be the consequences,” she went on, “if the party who tried fairly to buy it, were to succeed in doing so?”

274 THE

MOMPESSONS

“My mother has told me that they would destroy it,” I answered, “for in some way that I do not understand, its existence endangers their interests.”

“Stranger and stranger,” she said. “Then why has your mother refused their offer since it would at once end your financial hardship and put you out of danger?”

“I don’t know,” I said, rather shame-facedly. I was unable to admit that it was I who had dissuaded her from taking this course of action because of what I had learned about the law of inheritance of real property.

“Then don’t you think we must persuade her to sell it?”

How much did she know, I wondered as I gazed into her grey eyes — so clear that it seemed unthinkable that she could be acting on hidden motives. For more reasons than I could calculate, I believed I could not tell her what Mr Pentecost and Mr Silverlight had shewn me to be a possibility. And she was surely right that our only reasonable course of action, now that we were in want and danger, was to sell the codicil to the Mompessons.

“I suppose so,” I said.

It was now very late and we retired to rest. Sleep failed to come, however, as I lay wondering whether to trust Miss Quilliam and remembering some of the puzzles in her story. How had she obtained her post with the Mompessons? How was it that she could afford such expensive lodgings as Mrs Malatratt’s on first coming to London? And then there was the business of the trunks: she had told us when we first came to her that they contained nothing of value, but in her account had appeared to contradict this.

The next morning, which dawned fine and dry though with intimations of later rain, we rose and breakfasted late. Then Miss Quilliam and I raised with my mother the question of selling the codicil.

I asked her if she thought that the party who had once offered for it would still be interested: “Oh yes,” she replied. “More anxious than before, I imagine.”

At the suggestion, however, that we should therefore offer to sell it to them, she said in alarm: “No, Johnnie, I can’t do that.”

“But why not?” I cried.

“I made a promise to my father. He spent so much time trying to obtain it. And it cost him … it cost him his life.”

“Whatever do you mean, Mamma?”

“Don’t ask me about that!” she cried. “I shouldn’t have said anything.”

“Tell me at least, what did you promise him?”

“That I would hold it in trust and pass it on to my heir.”

“Then you mean, it’s really mine?”

“Yes, but only when you reach twenty-one.”

“But why was it so important to your father to pass it on to me?”

She looked at me reproachfully and at last said: “Oh, Johnnie, you are wrong to make me tell you. But since you’re determined to know, it’s because it could be the means of bringing us a great fortune of which our family was cheated long ago.”

“I guessed it!” I cried. So Mr Pentecost and Mr Silverlight had been right! “Tell me how!” I begged.

She shook her head: “I won’t. And anyway, I don’t understand it. It’s too complicated. There’s a letter that explains it all.”

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I knew that, for I well remembered the letter I had seen in the casket all those years ago which had first brought to my attention the name “Huffam”.

Seeing that I was wavering, Miss Quilliam said: “Johnnie and I believe you should sell it.”

Reluctantly I stood by my earlier undertaking, and so, supported by Miss Quilliam, I argued that my grandfather had had the best interests of his daughter and her heirs at heart in requiring that promise, and that in the present circumstances those interests were best served by parting with rather than retaining the codicil. Moreover, if she were holding it in trust for me then it was in a sense mine to dispose of as I chose.

She began to weaken and I followed up my attack: “Possession of it endangers us. We may be attacked again.”

This frightened her and now at last she agreed to sell it. Miss Quilliam and I exchanged a surreptitious look of triumph.

“Mamma,” I said, “will you now tell Miss Quilliam who the people are who wish to purchase it?”

“They are known to you, Helen,” she said. “They are Sir Perceval and Lady Mompesson.”

“I wondered if that were the case,” she said, to my surprise, and my suspicions came flooding back. Then she laid my fears somewhat to rest by explaining: “For I know that they are cousins of yours, and you have never told me what errand took you to Mompesson-park that day I met Johnnie.”

The problem now arose of how we should communicate with the Mompessons. My mother was terrified at the thought of either of us venturing onto the streets again because she was convinced that the whole district was being watched by agents of our enemy. This made difficulty enough, but she also feared that it would be unsafe for us to approach the Mompessons’ house in case an observer had been posted outside to watch out for us. Although this seemed to me an irrational and excessive fear, I saw that there was no reasoning with her.

“Why can you not simply send a letter?” Miss Quilliam asked.

“Oh no!” she exclaimed. “That would not serve. It might be intercepted. I am sure he has an agent in the Mompessons’ household. So any communication from myself must be taken by someone whom I can trust absolutely.”

There was a short silence which was ended by Miss Quilliam saying reflectively: “I suppose
I
could take a message.”

My mother clasped her hand and said: “Oh Helen, would you? But it would have to be placed directly in the hands of Sir Perceval or Lady Mompesson.”

Miss Quilliam nodded.

My suspicions of her smouldered into life again.

“But Mamma,” I cried, “it’s too much to ask Miss Quilliam to do that. You forget how she was humiliated and persecuted by them.”

They looked at me in surprise and I blushed to think how close I had come to revealing that I had overheard her story.

“Hush, Johnnie,” Miss Quilliam said. “It will be hard to appear before them, but I will do it since I see it is the only way.”

While my mother expressed her thanks, Miss Quilliam and I looked at each other and the thought tormented me: what were her motives?

In order to secure her admission to the house, my mother, with advice from Miss Quilliam and myself, wrote the following letter to the baronet: 276 THE

MOMPESSONS

“The 16th. of July 18--.

“Sir Perceval Mompesson:

“I am now prepared to sell the Codicil for the figure previously discussed between us.

The Bearer of this will tell you where I am to be found. I urge you not to delay, for the other interested Party is close upon my Track.

“M. C
.”

I was intrigued to notice the initials with which my mother had signed the note. What
was
our real name?

Miss Quilliam looked out of window and seeing that the sky was clouding over, picked up the single ancient umbrella that our little household possessed and, in a hail of thanks and good wishes, left the room. It was now the middle of the morning and since we could not expect her to return for several hours, an anxious, restless period began.

“Mamma,” I asked, “will the Mompessons really destroy the codicil?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know if I should tell you,” she answered, twisting her hands in her anxiety.

“But then, what harm can it do now? Well, I will tell you. As far as I understand it —

and, as you know, I have no head for legal matters — it casts doubt on the legality of their ownership of the estate at Hougham.”

“And does it,” I asked in excitement, “give you and me any right to the estate instead?”

The question caused her obvious pain: “Not in itself, but under certain circumstances it could. But they are so remote! Oh Johnnie, don’t force me to tell you any more. I am betraying the trust my father laid upon me for your sake by selling it. Don’t remind me of my guilt.”

“But I have encouraged you to sell it,” I said. “I am not reproaching you. I am only curious. May I not at least be permitted to read it before it is lost for ever?”

She wrung her hands in anguish. “Oh I don’t know what to do.”

Though I felt that I was being cruel, something beyond mere curiosity made me go on: “I think you should allow me to make a copy of it, Mamma.”

“Very well,” she said at last and drew out the package of soft-leather from which she removed the much-folded piece of parchment.

She handed it to me and when I tried to read it I saw that it was engrossed in a style of legal hand which I had never seen before and which, with the strange terminology, made it very difficult to understand.

Although it was much too soon for any result, my mother now took up her station at the window to watch for the return of Miss Quilliam and, perhaps, a representative of the Mompessons. Meanwhile I sat at the table and began to copy the codicil. Although the date it bore was so remote, it was in such good condition — apart from the fold-marks — that it might have been written that morning. Copying it was a laborious business since at first I could not interpret the letters but simply transcribed them slavishly without understanding. Gradually, however, the hand became familiar to me and I was able to make sense of it — of the words at least if not their meaning:

“I, Jeoffrey Huffam, do this day annex to this my last Will and Testament these Presents in witness whereto I set my hand and seal. Namely that I hereby create an Entail upon all the lands and hereditaments,

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tenements, messuages, and holdings: which Entail is vested in my Son, James, and the Heirs of his Body. In default of such Heirs the Entail shall pass to my only Grandson, Silas Clothier, on condition that he be alive at the determination of the aforementioned line. In the event of this Condition not being fulfilled, then the Entail shall pass to my Nephew, George Maliphant, and the Heirs of his Body.