The Inheritance

by Charles Finch

  “I caught it on something.”

  “That’s a fib. You’ll go to hell.”

  Leigh looked at him stonily. “Ketchworth did it, after I got ripped in old Yardley’s class.”

  Ketchworth was the bully of their year, Yardley their Greek professor. Lenox raised his eyebrows. “Ah.”

  “Can you fix it?”

  “Oh, yes, no difficulty there,” he said, bending down to the work.

  All the boys at Harrow wore the same uniform: a bluer first, brown plimsolls, gray trousers of the exact cut and shade that Mrs. Allison was currently fetching for Lenox, and a varnished straw hat with a blue band. The only difference in attire was that each boy wore the tie of his house, while monitors, like Edmund, could wear ties of their own choice, which was considered a perquisite of inestimable worth. The key point was the hat, though. It was not a boater, a point upon which all Harrovians, even the least academic among them, could become as pedantic as a Paris doctor. It was a Harrow hat.

  Leigh’s own was tilted back on his head. He sat for some time in silence as Lenox worked. “By George,” he said at last, “you’re handy with that.”

  “Noonan taught me when I was in Shells. Nobody taught you?”

  “No,” said Leigh shortly.

  By one of those happy little flukes of life, Mrs. Allison came in with Lenox’s trousers at precisely the moment when he was cutting his thread. “There, done,” she said, and the boys looked at each other and laughed. “What? What is it?”

  “Nothing, Mrs. Allison,” said Lenox, standing up and snatching his trousers from her. “Thank you! You’ve saved me a hiding!”

  They rambled home slowly through the empty country lanes that separated Mrs. Allison’s cottage from the school. Lenox found that they fell once again into easy and natural conversation. When they had gone half a mile or so, he ventured a question that had been on his mind since their last one: the identity of his fellow student’s benefactor.

  Leigh’s people were from Cornwall. He had grown up a mile or two inland of the rocky coastline at Tintagel, known as King Arthur’s castle, which many people considered the most beautiful place in all of England. Lenox had only heard descriptions, of ancient steps descending from high windswept cliffs down to a curving shore. Leigh’s mother was the niece of an earl, but her father was estranged from his brother, and relatively poor, a younger son.

  Leigh’s father too had been poor, though of high birth, as well. He had been educated at Harrow and Caius, and had put Gerald down for Harrow at birth and begun to squirrel away money from his salary as a parliamentary inspector—a berth secured for him by a distant cousin—to pay for it.

  But four years before, when Gerald had been ten, his father had been struck by a carriage near Bath and killed.

  This was tragic in itself, but especially so because of how Leigh’s face seemed to become illuminated when he spoke about his father. They had been uncommonly close, from the sound of it, spending hundreds of hours together on the heaths of Cornwall, collecting specimens of every kind, plant, mineral, animal. This was the source of Leigh’s almost preternatural knowledge of the natural world, Lenox had deduced, a knowledge that he proved again on the walk home from Mrs. Allison’s with a passing reference to the hollow-weed along the side of the road.

  After his father’s death, Gerald and his mother had moved to a smaller cottage and lived on their savings. Leigh had implied to Lenox in that first conversation that money was very close with them; and even now it was clear that some of his things were secondhand, especially his books and his clothes.

  Harrow had become, of course, out of the question. The money that Leigh’s father had put aside was needed for the basic management of their lives—his mother, the daughter of an aristocrat, niece and granddaughter of an earl, had no way of making her own. She spoke perfect French, could play a piano or draw a tree; but it was not possible to convert these attainments into cheese and bread.

  But then, a surprise. One afternoon Leigh’s mother had met him at the top of the road as he came from school, clutching a letter in her hand. (“She looked very chuffed,” Leigh recounted glumly.) It was from Harrow. His fees for the year had been paid; they would expect his arrival as a member of the Fourth Form on the fifth of September.

  As Leigh had described it to Lenox, he had known immediately that it was a bad idea. He had been thus far an indifferent student at his local grammar school; within the family, the idea was that he might make it through the age of sixteen and then lean upon that same generous London cousin for some government sinecure upon which he could found a life.

  Now, of course, that plan had altered. Harrow! Ambitions spread out before his mother’s eyes. None of her own family, those many earls, had gone to university.

  “And I won’t, either,” Leigh had said, during their first conversation.

  “Why don’t you try harder?” Lenox had asked.

  Leigh had thought about this for a moment—a trait of his, that he received every question as if he had never considered it before. “When my father died I decided that I would never again do anything I didn’t want to.”

  “Except come to Harrow.”

  “Well; that’s different. My mother had her heart set upon it.”

  “Does she know that you’re—”

  Lenox hadn’t known how to bring this sentence to a graceful end, but Leigh had saved him the embarrassment of an attempt. “I’ve told her I won’t be sitting the exams for Cambridge. Her own grandfather stopped after Eton, so she doesn’t mind. She’s glad at least that I’m here. Among the gentlemen.”

  This last word was not uttered very kindly.

  After the mysterious letter from the school had arrived, Leigh’s mother had sat down and written them back, inquiring who had paid her son’s boarding fees. They ran to nearly a hundred pounds a year—a fortune upon which a man of the upper reaches of the lower class might easily marry and have children. (It was considered among the clerking class that a hundred and fifty pounds was the minimum sum upon which any respectable person could propose marriage to a lady. Many banks would sack any clerk who was married before reaching that salary, on the presumption that he would be tempted to steal from the cashbox.)

  Harrow had promptly replied that they had been given specific instructions should such a question be asked of them, which were to say that the fees were paid by “a friend” and would extend through the remaining years of Gerald Leigh’s schooling. The correspondent—the registrar, Higgins—added that such anonymous munificences were in fact relatively common, and added, did Master Gerald intend upon taking his place at the school?

  He did; he had. His mother had insisted.

  Lenox had learned all of this during their first conversation. Now, as they walked back from Mrs. Allison’s, each with a garment slung over his shoulder, Lenox asked whether Leigh had any idea who “a friend” might be.

  They were passing through a small, enclosed field, where three horses were grazing in the chilly mist. “The benefactor? I don’t know.”

  “Hm.”

  “How I hate him, though! You have no idea.”

  “Why?” asked Lenox.

  Leigh, his expression surly as a moment of silence passed, finally said, “He’s why I’m here.”

  “It’s not so bad as that.”

  Leigh shook his head fiercely. “And I also have some idea it’s a person whose help I don’t want—a person whose face I wish I could spit in.”

  They had walked on, quietly, this remark hanging in the air, for some time.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  From his earliest memories Lenox had found something thrilling about the idea of a crime. Perhaps it was because he had grown up in so utterly conventional a home. The most serious trespass the local village of Markethouse could offer was generally a stolen brace of rabbits on market day.

  The great shining alternative had always been London, whose name he sometimes sounded under his breath in a sighing undulation, L
ondon, where life seemed so infinitely more complex and dangerous. Once he could recall his father returning home to the country from a sojourn in the capital for a parliamentary session, and describing to his family—and the servants around the dinner table, who were very plainly listening too—that he had seen with his own two eyes the arrest of Black Calvin, a seaman wanted for murder.

  “Whom did he murder?” Lenox had asked, at all of eight.

  “That’s none of your business,” Edmund had said. “Father, was he big?”

  “He was enormous. Charlie, he murdered a fellow sailor, they say. It was quite a commotion when they found him.”

  “Where was he, Father?”

  “In Trafalgar Square. I was walking up to my club, and he was sprinting past Nelson’s Column. Apparently they’d run him to ground in a public house not far away.”

  “Will he hang?” Edmund had asked.

  Lenox’s father had frowned, his gentle face troubled. “That’s not a fit subject for the table.”

  “None of this is,” Lenox’s mother had said, and the conversation had shifted on.

  In his schooldays, Lenox became an obsessive reader of the penny adventure stories you could buy on the train platform. They described desperadoes in the wilderness of California, or mysterious castles in the dark reaches of Prussia, or Scottish Highlanders on the hunt for an escaped convict. There was a healthy trade in these publications at Harrow, and seemingly always a new one available. The best of them for Lenox’s money was about a detective: it was called “The Murders in the Rue Morgue,” and had several heart-chilling illustrations. He never traded it away. There was another story about the same character, called “The Mystery of Marie Roget,” but it wasn’t quite as good. According to a fellow named Mitchell in the Sixth Form there was a third story in the sequence, “The Purloined Letter,” which was better than both of them. But he had lost it at home over summer holidays, and by whatever vicissitude of fate their own newsagent never got it.

  When Leigh said that he had an idea about who his benefactor might be, Lenox felt a small prick of excitement in the same part of his mind that was so drawn to the stories he read.

  “Why, who do you think it is?” he asked.

  Leigh waved a hand. “Oh, I don’t know.”

  “You don’t have to say.”

  They had crossed the paddock and come within view of the gates of the school. Leigh glanced at them with obvious dread—all of the freedom of his personality sank back within him, and he simply muttered something about it not mattering anyhow.

  Lenox glanced at his watch. “There’s two hours till evening service,” he said. “Why don’t we find some tea? I’m starved.”

  Leigh glanced at him in surprise. “Don’t you have anything to do?”

  He did—he was meant to walk to town with his friends—but he felt a mixture of pity for Leigh, who was not a bad fellow and certainly not as stupid as he seemed, and curiosity about his history, which nobody else in the school had winkled out yet. “Not especially.”

  Leigh hesitated, then said, “You could come to my room.”

  “Lead the way.”

  By pure chance, Lenox soon learned, Leigh had an exceptionally good room. It was high up at a corner, with windows on either side, and better still had a little alcove behind a secret door. Leigh opened this door and Lenox saw a tray with a kerosene stove on it, and a teakettle on top of that. To the side were a whole host of biscuits and chocolates, along with half a loaf of bread and a plate with softening butter on it. Most boys had food, but few anything like this much. There was a pitcher of cream, too.

  Leigh put the kettle on. “How dark do you take it? I like it pretty well black, myself.”

  “It doesn’t matter to me. I say, you do yourself not too shabbily up here! I have to go down to the scullery to fix tea. The monitors are dreadful about it too, if it gets cold when you’re taking it back upstairs.”

  “Oh? Yes. My scout is from Cornwall, as it happens. He’s a very nice chap. Found me the kettle.”

  “And what about the food?”

  “My mother sends that.”

  Lenox whistled admiringly. Food was one of the most discussed and beloved subjects at their school—at all schools, perhaps. “Well done by your mother.”

  Leigh, bent over the teacups, shrugged. “Hall is abysmal. I never saw meat so gray.”

  Lenox almost smiled. Somehow this fellow hadn’t internalized—well, what the rest of them had, that you couldn’t complain, that it was all bad, the studying and the smashing a ball around in freezing rain and being away from home, but that you didn’t say any of that, that you got on with it. “The mash isn’t bad,” he said.

  “Come visit home with me sometime and I’ll give you proper mash. With cow’s cream.”

  Lenox rolled his eyes. “I’ve had that.” Then he realized there had been an invitation buried in this further complaint. “But not from Cornwall, thanks. Wretched, though, how you do your tea down there.”

  “No it’s not!” said Leigh, turning back with an angry look. “It’s a sight better than what you get round here! I would give half my term’s pocket money for two decent scones with clotted cream and jam, like we get back home. Dixon would, too. His wife can’t make them at all.”

  Dixon must have been the Cornish scout. Lenox shook his head doubtfully. “We have cakes in Sussex. I’d take that any day.”

  “Then you don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  But Leigh’s anger didn’t last. He divvied up the biscuits and the tea, and a few minutes later they were each seated, legs crossed, on the broad sills of Leigh’s windows, wordlessly and ferociously consuming their repast. When Lenox’s was done he sighed happily and took a sip of tea. He turned to the window. The panes were cold to the touch. Below them was a sweeping view of the school’s playing fields and houses, a few people on its old paths, a beak with academic gowns billowing behind him.

  “There’s Ward,” said Lenox.

  Leigh flexed his left hand. “He caned my palm last week, the bugger.”

  Lenox laughed. “You have to study harder.”

  “They can whistle.”

  Lenox turned back to the slight, stubborn chap opposite him on the windowsill. “Go on, then. Who do you think he is, your anonymous friend?”

  Though neither knew it then, this was the subject that they would spend many long hours discussing in this very room over the Michaelmas term, sharing out Leigh’s Cornwall-bestowed riches and sitting in these same windows. They would draw up lists, debate clues. Once or twice they would argue. Leigh never became part of Lenox’s circle of friends, but at least three or four times a week Lenox would slip away and come over to Leigh’s, and as best he could, he tried to draw him into conversations at hall, at chapel services, in games. It never quite worked.

  But their friendship did—they told each other more and more over the succeeding months, achieving that peculiar intimacy that is possible on ships and in schools and in monasteries, places enclosed or formal, battened or strict.

  Leigh started to answer the question; then, haltingly, another, before finally saying, “When my father was killed, there was no trial.”

  Lenox frowned. “There was an inquest, surely.”

  “Yes, of course. It was ruled an accident at the inquest. He was killed at a crossroads just inside the city of Bath, where he was working. He had just gotten off the coach himself.”

  Leigh screwed up his face angrily, and Lenox realized he was trying not to cry. Another lesson he hadn’t learned, apparently: you never, ever cried. Lenox took a lingering sip of his tea. “Rotten luck,” he said.

  “I think it was reckless driving, you see. It was a farmer from that part of the world. I say farmer, but he owns several hundred acres, and lets out some of it to tenants.”

  “A squire.”

  Leigh shook his head. “No. He’s a rough fellow—a new man. Townsend’s his name. Made his money in lending.”

  Len
ox nodded. The word “squire” had no technical meaning, but nearly every Englishman understood it implicitly. There was a single squire associated with each English village. He mattered. He held land; was on visiting terms with the local aristocrat, though unquestionably beneath him in station; might have a curacy in his hands; was expected to do good works in town, and sit in the first row at the church. His family had likely been in the same place since the Domesday Book. He was probably not much for London.

  “And so?” said Lenox.

  “Some of his land was in the process of being bought from the local squire at the time, Brittney, a chap who was in financial troubles. Three guesses who was in charge of the inquest?”

  Lenox’s heart fell. This might easily be another of the squire’s duties, even if he had reduced his holdings in land. “Brittney.”

  “Yes. Never went to criminal court, even though Townsend was drunk as a bishop when he barreled over my father.”

  “That’s awful, Leigh.”

  “Yes, I’ll say.”

  “But I still don’t understand the connection to—”

  “I think he’s the ‘friend.’ Townsend. He doesn’t want to admit his guilt, but he feels guilty nevertheless, so that is how he’s handled it. I can’t tell my mother. I know she would refuse it if she thought the money came from Townsend, and she had her heart set on my coming here.”

  Lenox widened his eyes. “Do you think so? A coarse fellow like that, caring if you went to Harrow or not?”

  “Yes, I do. Who else could it be?”

  Lenox pondered that for a second, taking a sip of tea. “Well,” he said, “I have one thought. Your uncle.”

  Leigh, to Lenox’s astonishment, looked as if he had never even considered this possibility, so fixated had he been upon the idea of his father’s murderer paying his way here. He opened his mouth to speak, then shut it again, then opened it, then lapsed into silence.

  “I say,” he offered finally, “I wonder if we could figure it out?”

  “I bet we could.”