A fussy little man had bustled into the anteroom where I stood dripping, and now he winced visibly.
“Please!” he said in a high, pained voice. “Museum of Miniatures! We do have a miniature museum, indeed, rather a splendid one, with as fine a collection of original artwork as you will ever—but do come in! Your coat and hat will do nicely on the rack, thank you, and the boots—er—I’m afraid I have no slippers to offer you—”
“It’s all right, I brought shoes. If there’s a chair—”
“My dear lady! Of course, of course! Do forgive me!” He nodded imperiously to the young woman, who scurried away and came back with a folding chair.
I studied my host covertly while I accomplished the awkward business of changing out of very muddy boots. That he was my host I had no doubt. There is an indefinable look of calcified enthusiasm, a slightly demented glitter in the eye, that characterizes the truly fanatic collector, and this tubby little man, with his rather long, flyaway white hair and his pudgy but delicate hands, had all the stigmata. I wasn’t sure whether he looked more like the first assistant elf in Santa’s workshop, minus the beard, or one of those little cartoon demons with horns, tail, and red tights. The elf, I decided, but something of a thorn in Santa’s side, perhaps. He would be good at working on tiny objects, but not fond of taking orders.
I stood, properly shod, and extended my hand. “You must be Mr.—er—Sir Mordred Brocklesby, and my name is Dorothy Martin.” Alan and I had agreed that it was more practical for me to keep my old name when we married; when an American marries an Englishman there are enough legal complications without a name change thrown in. And I’d been Dorothy Martin for over forty years; I wasn’t sure I could adjust to Nesbitt “I live in Sherebury,” I went on, “but I’ve never managed to get out here to the Hall before. I certainly could have chosen a better day, couldn’t I?”
“Not at all, not at all,” said the elf. “I shall be pleased to devote myself entirely to you. I am indeed Mordred Brocklesby, and I am delighted to meet you.” There was something so condescendingly regal about his manner I was half-surprised he didn’t refer to himself as “One.” I would have liked to meet the young woman, too, but Sir Mordred plainly considered her a part of the furniture. So I smiled at her and paid my admission fee while Sir Mordred studied the ceiling, apparently finding the exchange of money in his house to be indelicate.
He wasn’t shy, however, about turning the house into a museum. Chattering away in a fluting alto, he led me through a doorway into the great hall of the house. “As you will see, I have devoted my house, and indeed my life, to the preservation of the art of the miniature. I refer, of course, not to small paintings, as the term is often used, but to dolls’ houses and their appurtenances. You are interested in miniatures?”
“I confess, I know very little about them. I am interested in architecture, though, and I’ve heard a great deal about this house.”
I raised my head as I spoke, to examine the carved and painted ceiling with its huge crystal chandelier, and ran smack into Sir Mordred, who had stopped dead in his tracks. I started to apologize, but he waved his hands in agitated fashion.
“No, no, it was my fault, but, my dear lady! I do beg of you not to mention this house in the same breath as the word ‘architecture.’ This is not architecture! This is a nightmare, an unharmonious horror, a travesty! Just look at it!” he wailed, pointing dramatically.
I obediently looked. He was pointing to the staircase, and it was worth looking at. I had never seen anything like the plaster work that adorned that staircase and its ceiling. Draperies, tasseled ropes, garlands, cherubs, satyrs, nymphs, the odd lion here and there, all in white and gold, and all jostling for space amidst the carved wood and marble beams, balusters, railings, and stair treads, not to mention an occasional mirror or trompe l’oeil window.
There was something oddly unpleasant about the effect. Were the proportions wrong? I didn’t know enough about such things to be sure. Perhaps it was the leering expressions on the statuary, or the unexpected angles, or the streaky, rather warped mirrors. Or, more likely, I was still in my Gothic fantasy and was imagining the whole thing.
I blinked and looked back at Sir Mordred. “Yes. Well.”
He nodded, satisfied. “If it were not for the space demands of the museum, I should never live here—never. Now you must allow me to show you some genuine architecture. Just through here, and I should advise you to avert your eyes from the visual discord on all sides.”
We passed into a dark corridor which, ignoring Sir Mordred’s advice, I studied with a sort of horrified fascination. The prevailing color scheme was dirty cream and faded blue, with murky touches of burgundy and bilious green. The ceiling was coffered, the walls were paneled below and bordered above, the arches—
Sir Mordred opened a door whose handle was so ornate it must have been excruciating to grasp, and said, “Voilà.”
The contrast could not have been greater. The room had been stripped down to plain white walls, dark plain wainscoting, dark floor. The modern track lighting looked extremely out of place until I shifted my gaze to what it was illuminating, and forgot everything else.
The entire center of the room was filled with one object behind a glass barrier. It was a model of a house, an enormous country mansion built to impress, to overwhelm, like Brocklesby Hall itself. But there the resemblance ended. This one was elaborate, yes, but gloriously, magnificently symmetrical. Towers, turrets, colonnades, windows all had a sense of rhythm, a feeling almost of poetry. The whole was executed with incredible attention to detail.
I peered through windowpanes no larger than my thumbnail, and saw draperies, tables, lighted lamps. As my amazement grew, so did a vague sense of familiarity. I looked up at Brocklesby, slightly dazed. “But this is incredible! I don’t think I’ve ever seen such delicate workmanship. And surely it’s—”
“Blenheim Palace.” Brocklesby’s face radiated pride and satisfaction. I’ve seen exactly the same look on a cat’s face when it has killed something truly spectacular. “Half-inch scale. My crowning achievement.”
“You don’t mean to say you made this beautiful thing yourself!”
“The entire structure. I had a great deal of help with the furnishings, of course.”
He moved to a wall, turned a key in an inconspicuous keyhole, and the exterior shell of the house—roof, walls, even the front steps—rose, attached to the ceiling by thin cables. The ground floor of the house lay revealed, decorated and completely furnished, down to a table set with an elaborate dinner for twelve—plates, cutlery, napkins, flowers, fruit in a silver epergne, soup in a china tureen . . .
I’ve never been to Blenheim, and have seen pictures only of the exterior, but I hadn’t the slightest doubt that Sir Mordred’s version was accurate to the smallest detail. My eyes moved from one room to another, marveling. The fireplaces were surmounted by overmantels holding lovely, tiny ornaments, and hung above with portraits, obviously in oil. Tiny tapestries adorned the walls, tiny statuary filled the corners. A gorgeous marble staircase led up to the next, hidden story.
“I have not yet furnished the upper stories completely, alas,” said Brocklesby. “I possess neither the skill nor the equipment to make such things as the silver tableware, or the crystal, nor am I an artist in oils or silk, and as you can imagine, these exquisite little things are very expensive to purchase. Unfortunately, I am not made of money, so I must go slowly. Nor have I been able, owing to considerations of space, to duplicate the kitchen and stable wings, nor the Marlborough Maze. One day, one day!” His eyes glittered as he turned the key again and the shell of the house gently subsided into place.
“As the gem of the collection, my Blenheim is normally the last display to be shown to the public, but I really could not let you suffer for one more moment the aesthetic indigestion induced by the architectural obscenity in which I am forced to live. Now, if you will follow me, we shall move to the proper beginning of the tour.”
“But I shouldn’t take your time,” I protested. “I’m sure you don’t usually show people around yourself.” Actually, having to some extent taken the measure of Sir Mordred, I wanted to meet the rest of the establishment.
“You are quite correct. My time is fully occupied with the continuing efforts of acquisition, maintenance, and restoration. I hire several young people—university students, for the most part—to serve as guides. But I told them, or rather my curator, Mrs. Cunningham, told them not to come in today. They are paid by the hour, and there was simply no reason to waste the money on a day when we would have few guests. Miss—er—the young person who opened the door to you had already left her home for work, so I’ve set her to doing other chores.”
There was real annoyance in his tone, and I marveled not only at the fact that he didn’t know the poor girl’s name, but at the ruthless thrift sometimes employed by the wealthy. That may, of course, be one reason why they’re wealthy and I’m not.
Oh, well, might as well make the best of it. If I was to be honored, or burdened, with Sir Mordred’s undivided attention for the rest of the afternoon, I’d find out what I could—guilefully. Until I had a better idea whether this was a case for Miss Marple, Sherlock Holmes, or Mata Hari, a devious approach seemed wise.
Flattery was almost always a good way to begin. “Well, I got the best of the bargain, then. I’m sure you know far more about the collection than any of the hired help.”
He giggled, and expanded visibly. “I should do, shouldn’t I, since I built or acquired every stick of it myself, over the course of the last thirty years. Now in this first room are the oldest houses of the collection, some of them quite crude, but of very great historic interest.
“This first house is German, probably made in the mid-sixteenth century, shortly after the very first dolls’ house on record, the Duke Albrecht house. That one is no longer in existence, so that mine is quite possibly the oldest dolls’ house in the world—certainly older than the 1617 Hainhofer farmyard or the 1600 Nuremberg house; in any case, the contents of that one are not all original. This is not the earliest known collection of miniatures, of course. For that we would have to go to the Egyptians and their models of boats, houses, furniture, and so on, made for the royal tombs. You can see some of those in the British Museum; none, unfortunately, are in the hands of private collectors.”
Unfortunate, presumably, because that way Sir Mordred would never be able to buy them.
We went on from room to room of the mansion, seeing everything from complete dollhouses to cabinets with small furniture arranged on the shelves. German houses, Dutch houses, English houses. There were the room settings Jane had described, everything so perfectly to scale that I forgot I was looking at miniatures. There were wooden houses with rather primitive furniture, tin houses with the furniture painted on the walls. There were farms and stables and garages and shops, zoos and circuses, and one exquisite little church.
Sir Mordred prattled on enthusiastically about dates, owners, and historic significance. I stopped listening and simply gazed in astonishment. It had never before occurred to me that dollhouses could be so detailed, so crammed with minute objects. The kitchens, especially, fascinated me, with their dozens of plates, pots, ladles, molds, utensils, all in copper or pewter or brass, all shining.
“How in the world do you keep them polished?” I asked, interrupting a scholarly lecture on the Nuremberg guilds of the eighteenth century.
“Keep them—oh. The metal objects. They are lacquered, I am sorry to say. It is not proper practice, from the standpoint of verisimilitude. Mrs. Cunningham scolds me, but there is no other way to preserve them from oxidation. They can be polished only with very harsh chemicals, which is unthinkable, of course, or a polishing cloth, which would be impracticable, given their size and the quantity of objects we have. Now, as I was saying . . .”
He droned his way on, but eventually we arrived at the crossing of two hallways, with a few chairs against the walls. Sir Mordred had progressed to the subject of English miniatures. I ignored his hand, pointing the way down yet another interminable corridor, and sank into a rather hard chair, barely managing to suppress a sigh. He stood, still talking, bouncing on the balls of his feet. “Of course, the finest English house is unavailable to the private collector: Queen Mary’s Dolls’ House, on display at Windsor Castle. You really must see it. It is overelaborate, true, and quite new, twentieth century, you know, but there are some very fine pieces—furniture, books, and so on—especially commissioned for Her Majesty.
“And speaking of very fine houses, you are American, are you not, my dear lady?”
An unnecessary question; my accent is unmistakable. I nodded, with a questioning frown.
“Do you live anywhere near Chicago?” He pronounced the Ch as in cheese.
“I live in Sherebury now.” I’d already told him that, but people don’t always pay attention. “I used to live in Indiana, not too far from Chicago.” About 200 miles, but I never say that; to an Englishman accustomed to an island something over 700 miles long, 200 miles doesn’t sound like “not too far.”
“Ah, well, then you must know the Thorne Miniature Rooms and Colleen Moore’s Fairy Castle.” He looked so expectant that I hated to disappoint him. His face crumpled when I shook my head.
“I’m afraid we—my late husband and I—didn’t get in to Chicago very often.” A lie, but well-meant.
“But surely you know the Chicago Art Institute!”
“Yes, of course.”
“And you truly didn’t know that it houses a very fine collection of miniature room settings? Nor that the Museum of Science and Industry has perhaps the most elaborate dolls’ house in the world?” Overcome with shock, he sank into a chair, shaking his head.
“Have pity on my ignorance, Sir Mordred! I thought dollhouses were something for children to play with; I didn’t know they could be works of art.”
He beamed and forgave me. “We must see to your education, then. When we finish with the museum, perhaps you would care to see my work in progress. I don’t usually show my workrooms to the public, but—”
I jumped at it. “Your workrooms! How exciting! Do you have some marvelous new project going?”
“Not at the moment, alas. Routine maintenance, for the most part. The antique houses, you see, need constant care. They tend to come to bits as glues dry over the years, so I must rehang wallpaper, relay floor coverings, replace table legs, and so forth. In addition, many articles of furniture have gone missing, some by the natural attrition of the ages and some, I regret to say, to pilfering.”
“Really?” I packed as much incredulity into the word as I could muster. “I wouldn’t have thought that was possible, what with the barriers and so on. And surely not worth the trouble and risk. I mean, as fascinating as these little things are, they can’t be worth all that—”
I stopped at the look of horror on Sir Mordred’s face. His eyes bulged; his cheeks turned purple. I thought he was ill.
“Are you all right? Shall I—”
“My dear madam!” he gasped. “I cannot believe . . . you do want educating! I am forbidden by my insurers to divulge the value of my collection, but if I tell you that I have seen items of miniature furniture offered for sale in London—new work, mind you—at close to one thousand pounds—”
It was my turn to gasp.
“—you may have some idea of the value of exquisite antique miniatures. I think I may be allowed to give you one small example. I have in my collection”—he hesitated a moment and then went on—”a French tea set, Sèvres porcelain with silver spoons, complete and in perfect condition. It was made in 1770 as a wedding present for Marie Antoinette. I—um—feared that it had gone missing, and had that been the case, I should have had to make a— well, let us simply say, a very substantial claim on my insurance. Not, of course, that the tea set would have been replaceable at any price—it is documented to be the only one of its kind in existe
nce, not to mention its history— but you do see, don’t you?”
He had gone on talking long enough for me to get my breath back. “Sir Mordred, I’m—I’m flabbergasted. I simply had no idea! But what a good thing it wasn’t missing after all! Had it been misplaced, or—?”
“No, no,” he said quickly. “A misunderstanding, quickly cleared up. But as I was saying, most of the missing furnishings have simply disappeared over the many, many years that the houses have been in existence. It does leave the rooms rather bare in some instances, and so, for the sake of the children who come to see my treasures, I attempt to fill in the gaps with pieces of my own manufacture, in the proper period, of course. I am very careful always to mark them conspicuously with my own hallmark, so that there will be no question in future about their provenance.” He sat up, reached into his breast pocket, and drew out a small object. “This is one I’ve only just completed for one of the eighteenth-century French houses. I was about to put it in its place when you arrived.”
He dropped an object in my hand and I marveled. It was a clock, a grandfather clock in an elaborately carved case, about seven inches long by an inch or so in cross section. At the top a fretwork of wooden lace surrounded the carefully painted and gilded clock face with its minute Roman numerals and tiny, fragile hands. Below, weights hung from slender golden chains and an elaborate pendulum swung free.
I handed it back to him, afraid to hold it, awe stamped on my face.
He smiled. “It doesn’t keep time, of course. I’m not a watchmaker. I might have put in a quartz movement, but I rebelled at the anachronism. The hands are properly mounted, however, so I can set them to any time I choose. Shall we say teatime?” He adjusted the hands with one delicate finger to four o’clock.
“Now, my dear lady, perhaps we should continue. There is a great deal still to see, the miniature museum, and—”
A door banged somewhere nearby. Sir Mordred stopped talking as if a switch had been flipped, peered down the hall, and then stood, quickly replacing the little clock in his pocket. Heavy footsteps sounded and a woman appeared at the corner.
Malice in Miniature Page 3
