Lord Mullion's Secret (20 page)

And now, instantly, Honeybath found himself wondering about Henry. Henry had described himself as having learnt from his father in a general way what had befallen Camilla in Italy. But did Henry really know at least a little more than that? It was quite possible that he did not. Doing a few rapid sums in his head, Honeybath saw that Henry could have been no more than a schoolboy (and his own fag, in fact) at the time that this deplorable family episode had taken place. It was possible that Henry had some vague suspicion of approximately what had occurred, but had judged it altogether too speculative to communicate to his wife. This would have been perfectly proper in itself. But if such was the state of the case, Henry had been a shade disingenuous in his manner of speaking about Camilla to Honeybath – and not least in that stuff about a peasant lad among the vines.

All this represented impeccable thinking, and Honeybath's imagination might have taken a further judicious flight had not Dr Hinkstone at this point got to his feet and taken his leave. Lady Mullion said ‘Cyprian, dear,' and Cyprian (who had remained lounging in a not quite courteous fashion) jumped to his feet for the purpose of escorting the doctor to his car.

‘Charles,' Lady Mullion said as soon as the drawing-room door had closed, ‘do you see an odd connection between this information about the disreputable Rupert Wyndowe and poor Camilla's fanatical insistence that she never travelled in Italy?'

‘Well, yes, Mary. I suppose I do.' Honeybath paused a shade awkwardly on this. ‘It deserves thought.'

‘And the pictures in the kitchen corridor being changed. Henry has told me about your discovery of that. But I could wish he wasn't so reticent about his family history. One just doesn't know what he knows, or what he guesses, or whether there is anything worth knowing or guessing at all.' Lady Mullion produced these thoughts with a certain impatience which she now further enforced. ‘The Wyndowes,' she said, ‘can be very tiresome people. I think it comes of never having had anything to do with matters of national and political consequence. Not even during the Civil War. All that did was to land them with a lot of useless cannon-balls and the like.'

‘I can see your point of view.'

‘But about those guesses, Charles. Is it yours that in Italy Rupert and Camilla Wyndowe formed an undesirable connection?'

‘Yes, it is.' Honeybath was perhaps disconcerted that Lady Mullion was proving herself well abreast of his own thought. ‘And it must have been uncommonly undesirable if it sent the poor young woman off her head.'

‘Do you think they had a child?'

‘They might have, I suppose. That's to say, if the connection was – well, in the direction we've been imagining.' Honeybath was conscious that this was an indecorous figure of speech. He had become a little confused before the bright speed of Lady Mullion's conjectures.

‘Little people like the Wyndowes are apt to fuss, don't you think, Charles?'

‘I really don't know. It wouldn't occur to me, Mary, to think of them as little people.'

‘Well, as what the French would think of as a provincial nobility – very anxious about their consequence, and so forth. And one has to admit that an illegitimate child both of whose parents were Wyndowes would be an awkward thing. Any family might be a little bothered by it.'

These remarks, although fascinating as representing the authentic voice of a great Whig aristocracy, were difficult for Honeybath to deal with. So at this point he confined himself to nodding his head in a comprehending manner.

‘So one can imagine them all covering up like mad,' Lady Mullion went on. ‘It's scarcely conceivable that Henry's father – who was Rupert's brother and to come into the title if Rupert died – didn't know whatever the true and full facts were. But it is just
possibly
conceivable that he knew no more than what he told Henry as a very young man: that Camilla as a girl had got into some obscure trouble when abroad.' Lady Mullion paused for a moment. ‘And one has to suppose,' she said, ‘that Camilla had covering up permanently on the brain. And that she did it once too often a few nights ago. Swapping those pictures like that in the small hours was an astonishing feat for the old creature to bring off. I'm full of admiration for her.'

‘She is certainly a most remarkable person.'

‘But, Charles, what about that other swap: the bogus Hilliard for the true one? Was that Camilla too?'

‘Good Lord!' It seemed to Honeybath that he had almost forgotten about the Hilliards. ‘I've mulled over how that can possibly hang on to things. Do you think, Mary, that it does hang on?'

‘It's much odder than anything else, Charles. And – do you know? – that makes me think that it must be quite close to the centre of Camilla's history.'

At this point Lord Mullion entered the room. It came to Honeybath as a point of some curiosity that he had been afforded no indication that Lady Mullion had as yet communicated to her husband any intelligence of the untoward happening which she had just suggested as being of a momentous character. And this made Honeybath feel that he had himself been wrong in not at once telling Henry about the unaccountable substitution. He had refrained out of an apprehension that awkward family issues might be involved. But this, he now feared, had been pusillanimous behaviour on his own part. He wondered whether Mary would embark upon the topic now. But Henry prevented anything of the kind by advancing a topic of his own the moment he had closed the door behind him.

‘Where's Martin Atlay?' he asked. ‘I expected to find him here.'

‘You well might, Henry dear.' Lady Mullion spoke with an unusual touch of asperity. ‘I sometimes think that Dr Atlay positively lives in our pockets. I seem to see him as often as I see Savine – or my own children for that matter.'

‘He came to see Camilla, you know.' Lord Mullion seemed unconscious of the play of any mild friction. ‘Very right and proper, his job being what it is. Only it seemed to me that the man was uncommonly upset. Charles, have you noticed anything of the kind about Atlay?'

‘Yes, I have.'

‘Bothered about Camilla, no doubt. He's always been very thick with her. In a religious way, I mean. You know the kind of thing.'

‘Well, yes. But I have a notion that something else may be involved, Henry. Something other than Miss Wyndowe's sudden illness, that is. But possibly connected with her, all the same.' Honeybath wasn't clear why he produced these remarks. That odd perturbation which the vicar had betrayed when encountered at the door of the library had no demonstrable association with Camilla, and it looked as if he had himself now spoken quite at random. He was surprised, therefore, by Lord Mullion's immediate response.

‘I believe you must be bang on the mark, Charles. The whole thing is uncommonly odd.'

‘Just what whole thing is uncommonly odd, Henry?' There was again a touch of asperity in Lady Mullion's tone.

‘Well, Martin turned up, you see, about an hour ago, asking if he could see Camilla at once. I said that Hinkstone was all for quiet, and so on, but it didn't seem to me I could press the point. If the old girl is at death's door – and that's my hunch, whatever Hinkstone may say – it's right and proper that a parson should be holding the handle, so to speak. It's only the papists who insist on it, of course, but even among ourselves it's a very edifying sort of thing. So I took Martin upstairs, and handed him over to Mrs Trumper. Only he kept on making a fuss, and it didn't seem to me to be exactly over Camilla's soul. He seemed to be saying that he'd just discovered something it was essential she should know – before any knowing had passed out of her power, poor lady. I said I'd no idea whether Camilla was in a condition to make sense of anything said to her, or would be much interested in it if she did. Then I came away. But I did expect Martin to look in on us and explain himself before going back to the vicarage. But it seems he must have bolted.'

‘It's quite possible,' Honeybath said, ‘that what he had to tell Miss Wyndowe was of a highly confidential character; that he felt, Henry, that what he'd hinted to you about it was injudicious; and that he didn't want to risk questioning before he'd thought the matter over.'

‘We really are beginning to behave quite absurdly in this house.' Lady Mullion had been pouring her husband a glass of sherry, and she now replaced the stopper in the decanter with the air, on the contrary, of one suddenly determined to let the cork out of the bottle. ‘There has been far too much mystery-mongering over Camilla Wyndowe. Here she has been, living out a blameless life in this wholly unremarkable place for I don't know how many decades, and we all go tiptoeing round her as if she were a time bomb.'

‘A time bomb, my dear'?' Lord Mullion was evidently much struck by this image. ‘I never thought of just that, you know, but I've felt the general idea. Have you noticed, Charles, that Mary has an uncommonly graphic way of putting things? Yes, I have felt that Camilla might blow something up at anytime. Accounts for my not much caring to poke around, I suppose. Take all that about never having been to Italy, for instance. We've had that ever since I can remember. No sense in it at all. Except of course, that she didn't come back precisely as she went. Women are sensitive about such things – and very rightly, too. No sort of decent life without chaste women – and not much secure transmission of property either.'

‘Yes, Henry, I am sure that is so.' Lady Mullion was unperturbed by this equating of a virtuous wife with a reliable banker or solicitor. ‘But do tell us this. When Dr Hinkstone told us that Rupert Wyndowe spent most of his adult life in Italy, was that entirely news to you?'

‘News to me? Of course it was. Rupert Wyndowe must have died when I was a mere youngster. My father never mentioned him.'

‘Not even in connection with what he
did
mention: Camilla's having had an unfortunate experience there?'

‘Good God, Mary, you can't mean–'

‘Charles and I have been discussing the matter. And we agree that Camilla may have been as badly affected as she was simply because her lover was her cousin, and a known libertine as well, so that the entanglement would have been a terrible family scandal. We've even considered that there may have been a child.'

‘A child!' Lord Mullion was aghast.

‘Which, I suppose, would have had to be abandoned to foster-parents in Italy, or something of the kind. And that would be enough to send any woman mad.'

‘I simply don't know where we're getting to!' Lord Mullion, whose bewilderment was without doubt totally unfeigned, looked almost wildly round the drawing-room – perhaps with the dim hope that Savine would call a halt to this disturbing episode by announcing dinner. ‘You don't think, do you, that Atlay has such ideas in his head?'

‘I think it likely that he has a good deal of solid knowledge in his head. Everything that Camilla could tell him, in fact, during an extremely confidential relationship. Charles, would you agree?'

‘I'm rather new to the whole situation, Mary, and don't think my impression can count for much.' Honeybath paused on this, and judged it ignobly evasive. ‘But, yes – I suspect that Miss Wyndowe has told Atlay a great deal. But now Atlay has felt that he has something he must tell Miss Wyndowe – and particularly if, as is to be feared, she is near death. The real puzzle is there.'

‘Something he has just discovered, you mean?' the harassed Lord Mullion demanded. ‘How could he have discovered something about Camilla she didn't know herself?'

‘I can't guess, Henry. But you'd better ask him. For Mary is quite right. There has come to be too much mystery blowing about your household.'

‘Well, of course, I'm quite intimate with Martin Atlay, as you'll have observed. There's even a family connection of sorts, although I've forgotten what it is. But it would still be dashed impertinent to ask him what private talk he'd been holding with another of his parishioners.'

‘Shall I do the asking for you?'

‘My dear Charles!' It could be seen that Lord Mullion was far from offended by this suggestion.

‘A thoroughly good idea,' Lady Mullion said with decision. ‘If Charles simply says, Henry, that you have asked him, as a very old friend, to have a quiet talk about these matters, Dr Atlay is unlikely to object. And some sort of clear-headed discussion may result.'

If there was in this some hint of a doubt about the clarity of Lord Mullion's own mind, it was now given no time to make its mark. For as Lord Wyndowe and his sisters entered at one end of the drawing-room Savine appeared at the other and called them all to dine. It was while they dined, as it happened, that Camilla Wyndowe died.

 

 

Having conducted a successful whirlwind courtship (achieved, indeed, within the narrow temporal bounds of our narrative) Swithin Gore was the happiest of men. Or he would have been the happiest of men if the stout strain of realism in him had not been keeping steadily in the picture the balancing fact that he was also the very junior assistant of the Earl of Mullion's head gardener. The problem here was one that he felt couldn't just be left to Patty, although Patty appeared to see it that way. And it was far from simplified by that rash appearance he had put in before Lord Mullion, since Lord Mullion's immediate generosity of intent made him feel deceitful and treacherous whenever he thought of it. And now old Miss Wyndowe had died; Lord Mullion's flag had been flown at half-mast on Saturday; it was Monday and the funeral was to be that afternoon.

Swithin wouldn't have supposed that the funeral was any business of his. But a puzzling thing had happened, and although he had decided that secret meetings with his beloved ought to be ruled out until Miss Wyndowe was decently buried (for it is to be observed that Swithin's sense of the punctilios is anxious because uninstructed; although clever he is a very simply bred boy; it is all going to be very difficult in endless small ways) – although Swithin had decided this he had now been obliged to change his mind. And this is why he and Patty were now standing on either side of a rose-bed in the walled garden, with every appearance of consulting together about the last of the summer's blooms.