Charles Palliser (149 page)

At his words a great tiredness fell upon me. It was as if at this moment all that I had striven for was achieved and the strength that had borne me up for so long failed now.

“I must sleep,” I said.

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“Then you shall,” he said. “And while you’re doing so, I’ll con over this a few more times and decide on the best course of action.”

He said it with such a bright-eyed, trustful expression that I felt ashamed of the powerful reluctance I felt welling up inside me to relinquish my hold on the document.

Unwilling though I was, I was about to insist that he return it to me, but he had perceived my hesitation for he went on: “No, you’re quite right, old chap. Don’t let it out of your sight. We’ll look at it together when you awake.”

He handed it back to me and I took it with a deep sense of shame. Had I become so suspicious that I could trust no-one?

“I’ve an idea,” he said with a smile. “My bed-chamber will be infernally cold. So why don’t you sleep on the sopha in here? You won’t disturb me.”

I thanked him and he began to re-arrange the furniture : “You’ll be too close to the fire there. I’ll move the sopha back.”

He did so and I protested: “But now it’s jammed against the door.”

“No matter for that,” he answered cheerfully. “I’m going nowhere.”

I was still smarting from embarrassment at letting him see my suspicion, and now it occurred to me that I could make some amends since I could sleep secure in the knowledge that no-one could leave the chambers without waking me.

“Would you like to look at it while I sleep?”

“Yes, that’s a good idea,” he replied.

So I handed it to him and made ready to sleep on the sopha. It was the middle of the morning now, though on account of the thickening fog, only a feeble yellowish light crept in through the small grimy windows. My last memory before sleep engulphed me was of Henry sitting at the table and busily writing.

I slept without dreams. Once I awoke, or half-awoke, and saw Henry sitting at his desk with his back to me just as I had last seen him. I drifted into sleep again and when I woke up was still wondering where I was when I felt something by my head. I reached for it and found that it was the package. Instantly, remembrance flooded back. Glancing up and satisfying myself that Henry was sitting with his head averted from me, I quickly looked inside it. No miser ever greeted his gold with as much delight as I recognised the will. I raised my head and, seeing that Henry had turned round and was smiling at me, blushed to think that he had seen and understood my act.

“Well, what do you think?” I said standing up.

“Your case is iron-cast for the terms of the entail are perfectly clear,” he said and I saw that there was a reddish spot in each of his cheeks. “If the will is genuine — as I am satisfied that it is — then it will be set up in place of the other one. Equity recognises no statute of limitations in such a matter.”

“I believe you’re as excited as I am,” I said.

“The prospect of resolving this ancient suit quite takes my breath away,” he said.

Indeed, he was breathing rapidly as he smiled at me. “My dear John, all you have to do is to issue a writ of right to the land and you’ll soon be the owner of the Hougham estate.

May I be the first to congratulate you?”

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He reached out his hand and shook mine so warmly and generously that I was deeply moved.

“There is at least one obstacle,” I said.

I explained that there was doubt about the marriage of my grandfather’s parents and therefore the legitimacy of my grandfather, and Henry acknowledged that this might be an impediment. I told him, however, that I believed I now had the solution to that, though I did not bother to tell him that it was based upon what Miss Lydia had said about the wedding in the chapel at the Old Hall.

My repose had lasted so long that already the wintry dark was returning, all the darker for the fog that was even thickening. Now, once we had moved the sopha back to its position and seated ourselves before the fire, we made our dinner of some potatoes and two small beef-steaks he had purchased the day before. Then Henry, apologising for the meanness of the hospitality he had to offer me, brought out a bottle of claret which he insisted upon opening in my honour, though neither of us drank more than a glass.

When we had eaten he said: “What I propose is this: I will go this very evening to the private house of a very high official of the Court of Chancery. Insisting that I am speaking to him in the utmost confidence, I will tell him merely that an extremely important document has come to light and that the party in whose possession it now is wishes to place it directly in his hands in the presence of a witness, namely myself. I will impress upon him the need for absolute secrecy. And I will suggest that we come to him at his own residence tomorrow for this purpose. What do you say to that?”

I nodded, and, unable to speak for a moment for my gratitude, took his hand and pressed it.

“Thank God,” I managed to say at last. “I will not feel safe until this is done. Beg him to let us come tonight. I don’t wish to pass another day with this burden upon me.”

“My dear fellow, for a Chancery lawyer next year would seem precipitate. But I promise you I will do my best. You are safe here, and I think I need hardly tell you to open the door to no-one while I am gone.”

I shuddered at the thought and he put on his hat and coat, remarking: “While I am away, you may read the precedents I have found. I have left papers in the books to mark the places.”

He took his leave and only when I had barred the outer door behind him and locked the inner one, did I feel safe enough to sit before the fire with the will before me and read it. One clause I noticed stipulated that “Mr Jeoffrey Escreet” be left merely fifty pounds, and I was sure that I recalled my mother mentioning that he had inherited the house at Charing-cross under the original will. Could that be of any significance? When I had read it over several times I began to study the tomes Henry had indicated. As far as I understood them, the relevant judgements appeared to be very encouraging.

No-one came to the door. There were footsteps on the stair but they all stopped at the landing below ours and no-one ventured up the last narrow flight to the single door of Henry’s garret-chamber.

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So it was virtually all over and I had nothing to do but wait until the time came for me to enter into my inheritance!

When, however, a couple of hours had passed I began to grow worried. Surely it could not be taking Henry so long? Was I right to trust him? If not, should I flee from there now? Might he return with Barney? Yet how could that be? There was no connexion between him and anyone else involved in my story, was there?

At last, very late that evening, I started at hearing someone on the stair outside.

Whoever it was had a key and unlocked the oak. Then to my relief Henry’s voice called out to me to release the bolts on the inner door.

When he came hurrying in I saw that he was in high spirits. He was carrying several parcels which he flung down on the sopha as he removed his coat.

“All is arranged,” he cried. “We are to see my principal later tonight at his own residence.”

“That is excellent news!” I answered. Yet I could not help wondering why he had been so long.

“There is more,” he gasped. “Only let me get my breath back. The fog is in my lungs and it’s getting so thick that you have to walk like a blind man and that is slow going, I can assure you.”

He hung up his hat and coat and turned to me with a bright smile: “And I stopped at Oxford-market to buy these: two bottles of wine, a couple of hot meat-pies, and a plum-pudding.”

He began to arrange these articles, putting the meat pies and the pudding on the hob and starting to open the bottles.

“My principal was intrigued by my story and I had a capital time teazing him. It can’t be often that one of his junior clerks has known so much more than he. His eyes grew quite round when I told him the matter concerned the ownership of a vast estate and the fortunes of one of the most respected families in the land.” He poured out two glasses of wine: “He lives in Harley-street and is expecting us there between eleven o’clock and midnight.”

“So late!”

“My dear John, what time do you imagine it is now? It’s already past eight o’clock. We must leave within the hour. But the reason why I was so long is that I called on a friend of mine in Great-Titchfield-street on the way back.”

“You have been busy,” I commented, my suspicions lulled.

“He is on his way here now. We will eat now so that we may depart as soon as he arrives.”

“Do you mean that he will be accompanying us?” I asked.

“Precisely. For it occurred to me as highly desirable that another individual should be present at our interview.”

I looked doubtful at this.

“My dear John, consider it for a moment from my principal’s point of view. Here is a junior clerk of his, a young rapscallion of whom he knows little good — though equally little harm — who turns up late at night claiming to have with him the heir to a large fortune and the long-lost will which proves his claim. And who does this fortunate individual turn out to be? Now don’t take offence if I say that he is a very young gentleman indeed and hardly presents an appearance calculated to inspire confidence in the breast of one who has worked all his days in the legal dust-mill.”

He said it so charmingly that I smiled to show that I was not offended.

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“But now consider his feelings if these two are accompanied by a gentleman of the most unimpeachable respectability — an ordained clergyman, no less! Now the case presents itself in a very different light, does it not?”

“A clergyman?”

“The Reverend Mr Charles Pamplin. An excellent fellow who holds a fine living down in the North.”

I could not imagine any way in which this addition to our party could be a cause of concern, and yet I felt a slight unease.

“And from your point of view,” Henry continued as he laid out knives and forks, “he will be a witness of the handing over of the will — not that there is really any need to worry about that.”

We addressed ourselves to the good things that my host had brought and made a pleasant, lively meal of it. We had “done justice” to the meat-pies, as Henry expressed it, and were close to a “judgement” on the pudding when there came a knock at the oak.

Henry jumped up to let the newcomer in and he entered glancing round the room with an air of slightly condescending amusement. I stood up and he held out to me a pale, scented hand studded with rings. He had a fleshy face which, though he was still a little under thirty, was already heavy-jowled. His eyes were black and very bright and had a lazy, spoiled way of resting on one as if he were bored by what he saw but it were too much of an effort to shift to a more interesting prospect. His gaze fell to my feet and then languidly elevated itself back to my face. He was wearing a clerical shovel-hat and a magnificent great-coat which he removed (handing it, with his hat and fine kid gloves, to Henry rather as if he were a footman) to reveal a beautiful coat with a great deal of fine linen showing, an embroidered waist-coat and white trowsers.

“So you,” he began, holding my hand in his own pale and rather damp one, “are the young man who …” Here he broke off and turned to Henry, relinquishing my hand:

“But then I have not been told enough to say quite what, except that it is something very important. It’s all very mysterious, Bellringer. Am I to be permitted to know nothing more?”

“Nothing, Pamplin. But I don’t see that you have any grounds for complaining.

You’re a clergyman so mystery is your province. You’ll have to take it from me that I can say no more. But you must have taken more implausible things on trust before now or you wouldn’t be in orders.”

“You’re a damned infidel, Bellringer, and I promise you’ll go to Hell for it,” the clergyman replied affably.

“Mind your tongue, Pamplin, or you’ll spoil your role in this evening’s proceedings which is to vouch for our respectability. Though that’s like one beggar offering to stand surety for another.”

“Your respectability! Well, if you’re expecting me to perjure myself you’ll have to bring out that ’09 you promised me.”

He seated himself at the table and Henry poured each of us some of the port.

“We must leave soon,” he warned.

“It’s a damnable night to go out in and you shan’t get me down those confounded narrow stairs of yours until I’ve prepared myself with some of this.”

The wine was too thick and soup-like for me, but the two gentlemen — particularly Mr Pamplin — drank a considerable amount, though it seemed to have no effect upon them.

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“Before I forget,” the clergyman said. “Sir Thomas is up. I saw him at Crockfords last night and he gave me a message for you.”

“None of that now,” Henry said and looked frowningly at me.

“By Jove! I wasn’t going to say any harm.”

“Where that gentleman is concerned, to mention his name is to do harm.”

“Now Bellringer,” Mr Pamplin said affably, “you can’t expect me to listen to my patron being scandalized.”

The conversation turned to other topics and as the other two spoke Mr Pamplin occasionally turned his heavy-lidded gaze upon me with a speculative BOOK II

Caught in the Web

I have to bring you once more back to the old counting-house beside the tumbledown wharf. Mr Clothier is in his private closet with his managing-clerk and is obviously in high spirits. He rubs his hands and suddenly chuckles, then dances a few steps off the ground. Mr Vulliamy keeps glancing at him curiously, as if wondering what the old gentleman has to be so pleased about.

“Who was that who came here while I was at supper, Mr Clothier? I saw him leaving as I was returning just now?”

“Never you mind!” the old gentleman cries gleefully.