Lord Mullion's Secret

by Michael Innes

  For a moment it was Honeybath’s strong impulse to blow this ignorance sky-high there and then. But he saw that this, even if desirable, was not really feasible – if only because the present evidence was too absurdly thin. Swithin Gore must have studied himself in his looking-glass often enough, even if nowadays it was only for the purpose of shaving. If he had never glimpsed what Honeybath had clearly seen there was no good in inviting him to repeat the exercise now. There was of course the much more mysterious fact that Swithin had inherited not merely a Wyndowe nose or chin but certain impalpable endowments as well. This too seemed to Honeybath a plain truth. But most people would regard any notions of this sort as mere superstition, and Swithin himself might well be among them.

  But at least Swithin, just because he was completely unaware of any mystery attending his birth, could be questioned a little further without any more present awkwardness than that small one of the menial condition of Grandmother Pipton. So Honeybath ventured on this now.

  ‘And what happened to your grandmother Pipton,’ he asked, ‘after she had gone travelling with Miss Wyndowe?’

  ‘She came back to Mullion and married my grandfather, Abel Gore. Almost at once, I think. My father, Ammon Gore, was their only child. He didn’t live long after my birth. And my mother didn’t, either. In fact, I don’t remember her.’ Swithin paused for a moment on this. ‘She was a servant at the castle, too,’ he said. ‘A housemaid.’

  ‘So that’s your family history.’ Honeybath said – and tried to convey by his tone that he had no wish to continue what might seem an impertinent inquisition.

  ‘Yes, that’s it. The short and simple annals of the poor.’ Swithin’s own tone had changed, and for the first time hinted something very like dejection. ‘It’s a medieval set-up, and you can’t get away from it. We’re in real life – aren’t we? – and not in some stupid fairy-tale. The young hero goes out into the world, makes a fortune, and comes back again with everybody applauding like mad. That’s not me. I don’t want a fortune. There are just some things I want to know about and be effective at, apart from coping with begonias. And one thing I want very much.’

  Honeybath got to his feet, prompted by an obscure feeling that the moment hadn’t yet quite come for further confidential talk with Swithin Gore.

  ‘I don’t much care for begonias myself,’ he said. And then, on a sudden impulse, he added, ‘But I’m all for good luck with wallflowers, Swithin.’

  For a moment Swithin made no reply. He had been startled, but now he gave Honeybath his long straight look.

  ‘It was nice of you to come,’ he then said. And he yanked up the trapdoor and offered Honeybath a hand down. It was rather like the business, Honeybath thought, of getting Miss Wyndowe in or out of her lift.

  17

  Dr Hinkstone, being a medical practitioner of the old school, called on his patient twice a day, sat at the bedside feeling her pulse for five minutes on end, and then put in further time writing out prescriptions rather in the meditative and pausing way of a poet tackling a difficult stanzaic form: the effect of this being an impression that something deeply innovatory in this branch of treatment was in hand. When these rituals had been performed he would proceed to the drawing-room, report his latest conclusions to whatever member of the family was waiting to receive them, and accept a cup of coffee or a glass of sherry according to the hour of the day. On the present occasion Honeybath, having returned to the castle and donned his black tie and its accessories, found him thus closeted with Lady Mullion and Cyprian. Over the sherry there hung a slight air of illicit consumption. The mice, in fact, were at play, the cat being confined to her bedchamber.

  Dr Hinkstone had every appearance of being a hale and hearty octogenarian. He carried around with him (at least among the upper classes) a graceful but easy professional manner; and like the vicar he had the air of one content to take his well-merited ease in agreeable society at the close of his day’s labours.

  ‘Camilla is holding on famously,’ he was saying – and this mode of reference obliged Honeybath to conclude that he had been the aged patient’s medical attendant virtually in her childhood. ‘With a bit of luck – for there’s always luck in the matter, you know, as well as the right nostrums – she’ll be thrown neither at this fence nor the next one. She’s as tough as I recall her father to have been. And nobody was tougher than Sylvanus.’

  ‘Sylvanus?’ Cyprian repeated. ‘That must be the antique Sylvanus.’

  ‘The antique Sylvanus if you like, my boy. And why don’t you get married, by the way? Nothing builds up a sound constitution in a man more surely than early marriage. Impress that on your son, my dear Lady Mullion.’

  ‘I don’t consider Cyprian’s constitution much at risk, Dr Hinkstone.’ The Countess of Mullion, being no Wyndowe, had seemingly to be formally addressed. ‘But there’s no doubt much to be said for settling those things early. I certainly hope to see Cyprian’s heir.’

  ‘So do I, and to have the circumcising of him, if need be. If a lad holds his fire too long, you know, he may never bring down his bird at all. Things may go wrong with him. Just think of your Great-uncle Rupert, Cyprian.’

  ‘We never think of my Great-uncle Rupert, Doctor. It’s not encouraged, and I don’t believe my mother knows anything more about him than I do. He’s treated as the black sheep of the family – which is unfair, if you ask me. If he hadn’t held his fire, as you call it, he’d have picked up a wife and kids before he died, and none of us would be perched in Mullion Castle now. My father would be plain Mr Wyndowe, picking up a living in some office in the city. We ought all to be grateful to whatever disreputable courses Rupert took to. And what were they, anyway? Was he gay, or something like that?’

  ‘Cyprian, dear,’ Lady Mullion said.

  ‘Oh, come off it, mama. I’m sure Dr Hinkstone knows, and can come clean about it after all this time, without any rot about violating professional confidence, and all that.’

  ‘That’s as may be, Cyprian.’ Dr Hinkstone was comfortably amused by the turn the conversation had taken. ‘But I scarcely attended your great-uncle, and possess no secrets about him whatever. It’s certainly no secret that he was without the sexual inclination you suggest. It was very distinctly otherwise with him.’

  ‘He was more of the current Sylvanus’ sort, was he?’ As he asked this question Cyprian glanced wickedly at Honeybath. It was clear that he took pleasure in airing these improper curiosities before a stray guest in the castle. But Lady Mullion was now definitely displeased, and Dr Hinkstone responded to a perception of this at once.

  ‘I’ve really nothing to tell you about him, Cyprian. Try Atlay, if you must be so curious. As I said, Rupert Wyndowe scarcely came my way. He was virtually an expatriate, you know. He spent almost all his adult days abroad. In Italy for the most part, I believe.’

  Nobody familiar with the mental constitution of Charles Honeybath will be surprised to learn that at this juncture a splendidly amazing idea came to him. It was less an idea, indeed, than a perception – and a perception that almost instantly gained the status of a conviction. The young Camilla Wyndowe, sketchbook in hand, had not been overthrown (whether literally or otherwise) by a contadino disguised as a demigod in a vineyard. She had been seduced by her own first cousin, Rupert Wyndowe, son and heir of the head of their family, the then Earl of Mullion. And since the thus sullied virgin had taken up a permanent residence in Mullion Castle long before the present earl’s children were born, it was unsurprising that these children, Cyprian included, had never been told of so scandalous a piece of family history. But what of Lady Mullion? It seemed almost certain to Honeybath that she had not been dissimulating her better knowledge when she had expressed herself as owning no more than a vague sense of some mysterious element in Camilla’s history.

  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 ar
e 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.’