“I tried to have a peep at it once, when Cousin Dolly had been doing a reading and seemed to have forgotten to lock it away afterwards. But she came back and caught me and asked if I’d read any of it. I said I hadn’t, and she said she was glad about that, because one of the things it predicted was that any little boy who read it would be locked in the cellar and left there until the rats ate him, and wouldn’t that be a pity for a pretty little boy like me? And she pinched my arm until my eyes watered.”
Julia, much distressed, refilled Terry’s wineglass and was rewarded with a Leonardo smile.
“I’d stayed with them several times and was beginning to think of it as a regular feature of my school holidays, when there was a terrible row between my mother and Aunt Izzie — I’ve no idea what it was about. But they never spoke to each other again and of course I didn’t go and stay anymore. Even when I grew up and came to live in London, I didn’t try to get in touch again — I’d have felt I was being disloyal to my mother. Aunt Izzie sent us a card when Cousin Dolly died, and another with her new address when she moved down to Sussex, but my mother never answered. Then my mother died and I thought I ought to write and tell Aunt Izzie, but she didn’t write back.”
“And so,” said Ragwort, “you never saw her again?”
“Well, only once, and I’m afraid I wished I hadn’t. I suppose it was mostly curiosity, but — well, after a while it occurred to me that Aunt Izzie was the only close relative I had left and she’d been quite nice to me and I ought to find out if she were starving or anything. So I rang her up and suggested I might come and see her. She seemed quite keen on the idea, and down I went to Parsons Haver.
“She’d sent Daphne out for the evening and not told her I was coming — she seemed to think that Daphne would be jealous if she knew. So there were just the two of us, plus a rather disagreeable vulture, drinking champagne and trying to pretend this was just like the old days. Which of course it wasn’t. She’d put on a lot of weight and her clothes were rather dirty and her stories were all about people who didn’t matter anymore. The horrible thing was that she seemed to have got so much more like Cousin Dolly — not just the way she looked but the way she talked. She’d decided that she had psychic powers as well and she obviously took it all seriously. It was as if, when Dolly died, Izzie had somehow inherited her personality.”
“Still,” said Julia, “at least you didn’t think she was going to eat you?”
“Well, no, I didn’t exactly think that, but — well, you see, she’d always sort of flirted with me a bit — it didn’t mean anything, it was a kind of game. And she was still doing it, but somehow I felt it wasn’t quite a game anymore — she seemed to keep wanting to touch me. And I didn’t want her to.
“Still, I did my best to be amusing and she evidently enjoyed the evening and expected me to come back again. I was still wondering how long I could leave it without hurting her feelings when I saw that she’d died — Daphne didn’t write to me, I saw it in the newspaper. Poor Aunt Izzie, I’m afraid I felt rather relieved. So I thought the least I could do was go to her funeral.
“I didn’t particularly think about what I’d say to Daphne — I suppose I meant to go up to her at some point and say, ‘Hello, I’m your cousin Terry’ But for some reason she seemed to take an instant dislike to me — she was simply radiating hostility all through the service. I don’t know why — it can’t have been that she recognised me, I’d changed far too much. So I thought the best thing would be to slip away quietly. But then there was this clergyman, you see, with a face like an eagle and the most beautiful voice I’d ever heard, and I—” He sighed. “Silly, isn’t it?
“When it was all over, he came over to talk to me and asked who I was. I’d just begun to tell him when I realised that Daphne was only a few feet away, still oozing hostility from every pore, and if I said ‘Terry Carver’ she’d know I was her cousin and everything would be spoilt. So I said my name was Arkwright — I’d seen it on one of the tombstones. As I say, it was just an impulse — I’m sorry if it makes things difficult.”
“We can all understand,” said Ragwort magnanimously, “that sometimes on the spur of the moment one does things one afterwards regrets. But surely, once you and the Reverend Maurice were on terms of friendship, you could have explained the position?”
“You’re perfectly right, Desmond, as of course you always are — that’s what I ought to have done. But you see, I rather enjoyed being Derek Arkwright. I somehow thought of him as someone slightly different from me — someone travelling light, with no past, no responsibilities, no bookcases to make, no VAT forms to fill in. It was rather delicious. And I felt that it was part of my — what was that discreet phrase of yours? — my being on terms of friendship with Maurice. I felt that as long as I was Derek I could keep it as something secret and special, but if I turned back into Terry I’d somehow be breaking the spell. And as it turned out, I was absolutely right.
“Poor Maurice, I didn’t really mean to mislead him about the kind of person I was. I never told him anything about myself that wasn’t true — I just didn’t tell him very much at all. But he must have built up some extraordinary fantasy about me as someone terribly glamorous and interesting — God knows exactly what. And when he found out that I was just an ordinary, boring sort of chap doing an ordinary boring sort of job, he felt terribly hurt and disillusioned.”
“My dear Terry,” said Julia, “no one could conceivably think you either ordinary or boring.”
“Your profession is one,” said Ragwort, “which a clergyman should hold in particular esteem. And Benjamin thinks you one of the finest craftsmen in London.”
The young man shrugged his shoulders and smiled his satirical smile.
“It was my impression,” I said, “that the Reverend Maurice never knew any more about you than you had told him yourself. How did his disillusionment come about?”
“I don’t know — I just know that it happened. I mean, I don’t know who told him about me or what they said exactly. We’d been away on holiday together and everything was marvellous — at least I thought it was. I did have a few anxious moments, because it turned out that Selena was staying at the house opposite. I was afraid we might run into her in one of the cafés or somewhere and she’d say, ‘Hello, Terry, why aren’t you working on bookcases?’ before I had a chance to ask her not to.”
“Yes,” said Ragwort. “Yes, I dare say she would have said that.”
“But she wasn’t there very long and she seemed to be working the whole time, so it didn’t happen. And the weekend after we got back to England I went and stayed with Maurice again and everything was still marvellous, or at least I still thought it was. I was beginning to feel quite serious and long-term about things. And then two days later I had a letter from him — it was the only one he ever sent me. It was a terrible letter, all about me deceiving him and not being the person he thought I was — he practically made it sound as if I’d done something criminal.”
“But he didn’t make any specific accusation?”
“No, I suppose not — but he made it clear enough that he didn’t want to see me again.”
“He made no mention of the Virgil frontispiece?”
“No,” said the young man, with every appearance of bewilderment. “Why should he mention that?”
As frequently happens when the heart’s affections are engaged, there seemed to have been a misunderstanding: Terry until now had known nothing of the theft of the frontispiece.
Nor was he able, after hearing Julia’s account of the matter, to suggest any explanation for its disappearance. He had a perfectly clear recollection of the last evening he had spent at the Vicarage: he remembered seeing Maurice put it back in the drawer where it was usually kept.
“And I can’t be mixing it up with another evening, because I remember him putting the photographs in the same drawer — the ones he’d taken while we were on holiday — and we’d only collected them that day. And ther
e was no one else in the house, so if the frontispiece was missing next morning — poor Maurice, no wonder he was upset with me. And I’ve no idea how it can have happened — I only know I didn’t take it.”
“It’s extraordinary,” said Julia. “But there must be some explanation.”
“Julia dear, from everyone’s point of view except mine, the explanation is perfectly simple — I took the frontispiece and now I’m lying about it.”
The Leonardo smile was infinitely disarming.
16
“I DON’T SUPPOSE,” said Selena wistfully, “that you felt able, at any stage of this conversation, to allude to the bookcase question?”
“Just sort of casually,” said Cantrip. “You know, like saying you couldn’t advise Terry about his case because you couldn’t find the right books and why you couldn’t find them was because all our books are in chaos and why they’re in chaos is that we haven’t got any bookcases to put them in.”
In the coffeehouse on the following morning, Ragwort’s account of our meeting with the young carpenter was proving something of a disappointment to an audience who had evidently had high hopes of it: there was in the air a sense of not quite unspoken reproach.
“One must remember,” said Julia, “that the making of bookcases is a creative process, similar to painting a picture or writing a poem. You can’t expect Terry to work on it when he’s still so upset about Maurice.”
“Quite so,” said Ragwort. “And I’m afraid the recovery of his usual spirits is being impeded by this unpleasantness about the will. Until it’s resolved, I doubt very much whether he will be able to concentrate properly on our bookcases.”
“But Ragwort,” said Selena, turning pale, “contested probate proceedings might take years.”
“He assured us,” said Ragwort, “that the will was not made in his presence and indeed that until about two weeks ago he had no idea of its provisions. I would hope to persuade the executors, in these circumstances, that any suggestion of undue influence is manifestly absurd and they can safely disregard it, without the expense and delay of a full-scale probate action.”
“Right,” said Cantrip. “And I suppose they’re professional executors, so before they decide if they can or not they’ll spend two years looking up their insurance policies and getting Counsel’s opinion from everyone in sight and in the meantime we still won’t have any bookcases. No, what we’ve got to do is shut up this Daphne bird. So what you’ve got to do, young Larwood, is write and tell her she’s talking codswallop and if she doesn’t stop she’ll get put in prison for slander.”
“I have a feeling,” said Julia apologetically, “that it might not be entirely proper for me to write to her in quite those terms. I’m proposing to tell her that Derek Arkwright turns out to be someone I know and that means I can’t advise on the matter, even on an informal basis. Moreover, I think that you underestimate the difficulty of making Daphne shut up about anything — she’s the sort of girl who tends, once started, to go on. And indeed on. I had a letter this morning from my aunt which you may all find instructive.”
24 High Street
Parsons Haver
West Sussex
Thursday, 3rd February
Dear Julia,
I do wish people wouldn’t die, it makes things so complicated. Poor Maurice was always such a considerate person, but his will is causing all sorts of trouble.
It leaves everything — well, not everything, because there are legacies and so on, but everything left over — to “the person whom I know by the name of Derek Arkwright”—so it looks as though he knew or suspected that that wasn’t Derek’s real name. Apparently he’s really called Terence Carver, and the solicitors in charge want me to go up to London to meet him at their offices and sign something confirming that he’s the right person. They’ve suggested the 17th or 18th of this month — I thought we could meet for lunch, so do let me know which would suit you better.
That’s not what I mean by trouble, of course — I’m rather looking forward to it. What I mean by trouble is the effect on Daphne, who’s worked herself into a quite appalling state about it. She disliked Derek enough, heaven knows, simply as Derek Arkwright — as Terence Carver she detests him even more, because he turns out to be her second cousin. I did once tell you, didn’t I, about Isabella having had a sister, whom she’d quarrelled with and never spoken to again? The sister died and Terence is her son, and Daphne seems determined to keep the quarrel going.
They hadn’t met since they were children, so it isn’t surprising that Daphne didn’t recognise him. Perhaps subconsciously she did — I suppose that might account for her taking such an instant dislike to him. Anyway, she’s now more convinced than ever that her dislike was justified — he was a horrible, sly, deceitful boy, she says, and it just shows how right she was when she said he was that kind of person.
And she simply won’t believe that Maurice meant to leave him everything he had. She’s got some idea in her head that Maurice was somehow tricked or hoodwinked into doing it and she keeps saying that we owe it to his memory to make sure Derek doesn’t get away with it. It’s all complete nonsense — the will was drawn up by Maurice’s solicitors in London and signed and witnessed in their office — but she’s quite beyond reasoning with on the subject. She’s already written the solicitors a very silly letter — she didn’t show it to me before she sent it — implying that she knows a lot of things they don’t about the background and telling them that they mustn’t apply for probate. I’m hoping that they’ll ignore it, but I suppose they’ll probably think they have to investigate.
I have a feeling, from one or two things she said, that she may try to persuade you to advise her about all this — if she does, do for heaven’s sake do your best to discourage her.
The fact is, when one tries to pin down exactly what it is that she’s accusing Derek of, that it comes down to nothing more than pretending to be nicer than he really is. I’ve told her that a great many people (including me and I dare say you as well) spend most of their time pretending to be nicer than they really are. A very good thing too — if they didn’t life would be quite impossible. Daphne seems to think this very cynical of me.
Poor Daphne, I suppose what’s really upsetting her is not being mentioned in the will. I don’t mean that she’s mercenary, just that it is rather wounding for her. It was made quite recently — last October, when she was spending a lot of time with Maurice and doing all his shopping and so on — and it does seem rather strange that he didn’t think of giving her anything. It almost looks like a deliberate unkindness — after all, he left legacies of two thousand pounds each to Griselda and Mrs. Tyrrell, and I’d have thought he’d have realised how hurt Daphne would be — but it would be so unlike him to be deliberately unkind to anyone.
Some people might also find it odd of him to leave everything to Derek just after that beastly business about the Virgil frontispiece, but as a matter of fact I don’t think it was. Maurice was an incurable romantic — even worse than you — and I can just imagine him wanting to make some sort of gesture to show that he cared more about Derek than anyone else, however badly he had behaved. After all, he didn’t really have anyone else to leave it to — his earlier will left everything to various charities — and it wasn’t an enormous amount, I think about twenty-five thousand pounds, mostly in building societies.
I suppose Derek really did take the frontispiece — I wish that I could think it was all some kind of mistake, but I don’t see how it can have been.
What I got under the will was Maurice’s personal chattels, as defined by Section whatever-it-is of some Act or other, and that’s another complication. You see, we had an arrangement. Maurice didn’t like the idea of a stranger going through his personal things after he was dead, and he asked me ages ago if he could leave them all to me, so that I could sort through them and do what I thought was best. I said yes, thinking it would all be quite straightforward. He gave me a list of things he w
anted particular people to have, and from time to time he’d say, “I’d like so-and-so to have such and such when I die,” and I’d add it to the list. But I didn’t really expect it to happen, not for years — after all, Maurice wasn’t old, only a year or two older than me.
You wouldn’t believe how much trouble I’ve had over that wretched list. I thought it was all perfectly clear and businesslike, but when you start trying to work out whether “clock on the mantelpiece” means the one in the study or the one in the dining room, and exactly how many glasses Ricky’s supposed to get with the cut-glass decanter, it turns out not to be easy at all. Several people one would have expected to know better have really been quite unpleasant. Mr. Williams who plays the organ and Mrs. Jarvis from the library who helps with the flowers have practically come to blows over the record player and—
Well, I didn’t mean to bother you with all that. What I meant to tell you was that Maurice had a rather nice little rococo looking glass, not really valuable but very pretty, which he’d inherited from a great-aunt and wanted you to have. But then Daphne was looking so hurt and miserable about not being mentioned in the will that I just couldn’t bear to tell her that there wasn’t anything on the list for her either, so I told her he wanted her to have the rococo looking glass. I’m sorry, I should have asked you first, of course, but I had to say something right away or it would have seemed odd, and the looking glass was the only thing I could think of. I do hope you don’t mind too much — I’ll find something nice for you in the antique shop to make up for it.
Daphne seems to be here most of the time at the moment. She comes round in the morning and asks me if I want any shopping done and if I say yes she goes out and does it and brings it back and stays until lunchtime. And if I say no, she just stays until lunchtime. So, one way or the other, it always ends with my feeling that I have to offer her lunch, and she always accepts. Poor girl, I can’t really blame her — I know she can’t afford to feed herself properly — but the fact is, of course, that making a meal for someone else is always more trouble than making it just for oneself. And somehow or other, by the time we’ve finished, the best part of the day has gone and I haven’t really done anything with it — haven’t painted anything or read anything or even written any letters. And yet I feel quite tired.
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