Old Hall, New Hall

by Michael Innes

  ‘You think that of Jerry, do you?’ Olivia was silent for some moments, as if she had just been given matter for serious reflection. And when she spoke again it was impatiently. ‘Look here, Colin – can’t you discover something?’

  ‘What do you mean – discover something?’ Clout had meant to speak gruffly. But the magic of his own Christian name on Olivia’s lips was too much for him. ‘You know that I’d discover anything for you that I could.’

  She took her left hand from the steering-wheel and laid it for a moment on his knee. ‘And you do believe that the swap ought to be honoured? After all, it was absolutely agreed to in the presence of those two women.’

  Clout hesitated. He was making what he knew was a feeble effort to cling to common sense. ‘Certainly it was. But, even so, it wasn’t much more than an agreement to exchange stolen goods. And you were wrong, you see, in the notion that Joscelyn somehow went back on his bargain and cheated his brother. There was that panic, and the effect seems to have been that the whole thing just lapsed. Or rather, it was something more than that. The folly of Edward and his pals resulted in the girl’s death. But that wasn’t anything they intended. And there hadn’t been any proposal that the bargain should go through whether she was alive or dead. Joscelyn didn’t want a corpse. Come to think of it, he precisely didn’t want a corpse. All that sort of thing was just what he felt he was through with. It’s arguable that even if he retained control of the treasure – which is something we don’t know – there was no call on him to hand it over.’ Clout paused. ‘And, of course,’ he added rather desperately, ‘the whole thing wasn’t a bit nice. It would have been absolutely disgusting, even if it hadn’t ended in a fatality. I think we ought to consider that.’

  ‘You talk like that idiotic American professor. I suppose you’re all the same in universities and places.’ Olivia tossed her head, and the car swerved ominously towards the ditch. ‘Well, you can consider all those proprieties and decencies and delicacies when writing your idiotic Shufflebotham thing. But it’s just not the way the minds of my sort of person work.’

  ‘Then it would be a damned sight better if it was.’

  Clout had snapped this out in a manner that surprised himself. And Olivia seemed less offended than impressed. ‘Colin, darling,’ she said, ‘I suppose you may be right. But – really – do we know enough about the whole story to say positively that we ought to drop it? That’s all I’m saying, you see. There’s more to find out. More that you could find out. I know George is tremendously clever. But I don’t see why it should be he who finds out everything.’

  Clout rose to this challenge. ‘Well,’ he demanded, ‘just what is it you want me to find out?’

  ‘First, whether there really was a serious element of theft. I can’t see it in Edward’s case. One can’t believe that he really forcibly abducted that girl and carried her across Europe. It was just an ordinary – well, episode of that time. Not a bit nice, as you say. But gentlemen did take young persons under their protection – wasn’t that the term? – and nobody thought much about it. Even Professor Milder must know that, if he’s any sort of scholar. And we don’t actually know the truth about Joscelyn either. We have only a lot of surmises to go on – chiefly the interminable gabble of Sophia Jory to her old governess. I see no real evidence that anywhere in the world there was anybody who had taken the slightest exception to Joscelyn’s proprietorship of the treasure.’

  ‘You’re quite wrong.’ Clout shook his head decidedly. ‘I admit that the business of agents from Muscovy and so forth was probably sheer invention by the Duke of Nesfield. But it can only have worked as it did, producing all that wild confusion, because Joscelyn had a thoroughly guilty conscience. And then there’s the way he brought the stuff to Old Hall. That wasn’t a mere taste for play-acting. He must have been seriously concerned to elude observation. Incidentally, Edward must have had a guilty conscience too, or he wouldn’t have been so easily taken in by what the Duke put across him. But I agree there’s still a lot waiting to be found out.’

  ‘What happened afterwards.’

  ‘Exactly. I don’t think there’s much doubt about Edward. He did bolt from the country and never returned.’

  ‘He didn’t have much chance to, Colin. He died about a year afterwards.’

  ‘Yes, I know. And he wouldn’t be in a hurry to return to England, if he and his drunken companions that night actually buried the poor girl in hugger-mugger.’

  ‘And what about Joscelyn? You could easily find out, couldn’t you, whether he too really did leave England in a hurry, and whether he came back again?’

  Clout laughed. ‘Dash it all, Olivia, I do know something. I’ve been beginning, after all, to earn the Shufflebotham dole. Joscelyn died at Old Hall in a perfectly respectable way, several years later. He travelled such a lot that the record isn’t easy to work out. But if he went abroad immediately after the catastrophe we’ve now uncovered, it wasn’t for particularly long. The impression I get is, I think, the one you already have: that Joscelyn simply went a bit dim in his last years, and then faded out. But one thing is certain. He can’t himself have sold up the treasure and enjoyed the proceeds. Money was clearly pretty tight. And it continued tight. George, the next baronet, held on for about thirty years, making various economies. Then he sold up and went off to New Hall. And if nobody on that side of the family cashed in on the treasure, it’s certain, I suppose, that nobody on your side did, either.’

  Olivia nodded. ‘Quite certain. So there we are. Don’t you see? Unless Joscelyn was so scared by the Duke’s joke that he privately made some sort of restitution of the treasure soon after, it simply must be about Old Hall still.’

  ‘Do you think so?’ Clout shook his head. ‘At the most, it’s a probability. After all, if Joscelyn lost his nerve about it, he might have found it a relief to hide it somewhere much farther away. He was trying to get it away, you remember, that night.’

  ‘And didn’t – because the horses bolted. Can’t you guess what these people would do, there and then? Precisely what Edward and his friends were doing. Get their compromising possession straight under the soil.’

  Quite suddenly, Clout realized that he was in the grip of a growing excitement. It wasn’t simply the excitement that had been with him ever since he first saw Olivia Jory, and that could still make him quite dizzy when he so much as thought of her. It was the quite distinct excitement of the hunter. Buried treasure – it came to him – must be one of those deeply emotive notions that can really get you. There was probably an interesting subject of research in it – indeed, the fascination of research itself was related to it. Probably it had exercised a great pull on Joscelyn. There might be an appendix to the Shufflebotham – like one of Milder’s appendices – on buried treasure as an archetypal image. Not that there would ever be a Shufflebotham – or not with Sir Joscelyn Jory as its subject. Clout had an obscure certainty of that. However all this business ended it would be in a fashion that entirely knocked a biography of Sir Joscelyn on the head. The University would have to shunt him on to something else.

  ‘And now you’re not even listening to me, Colin Clout.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’ Clout realized that, amazing enough, Olivia’s reproach was justified. Pursuing his own speculations, he had actually been for some seconds heedless of that marvellous voice.

  ‘I was saying that there’s another thing we want to know about. I mean that Temple of Diana. I’ve read what I could about Old Hall. One can find out quite a lot – as you’ve probably done yourself by now – about Joscelyn’s mausoleum, for instance. But I haven’t come across anything about a temple.’

  ‘I have, as a matter of fact.’ Clout was rather pleased at having got ahead of Olivia here. ‘Not that it seems important. You’re not proposing, I take it, to do any digging for that girl’s skeleton.’

  ‘No I’m not. And I’m not convinced that there is, or ever was, a skeleton. We only know that the girl fell, and that those ter
rified drunks believed she was dead. They may have been quite wrong – and let’s hope they were. Anyway, I’d like to know about that queer building – it sounds quite as queer as the mausoleum – even if it’s not particularly relevant.’

  ‘Then I’ll tell you what I found out about it – Olivia, darling.’ Clout paused on this. He had a feeling that he hadn’t brought it off particularly well. It certainly didn’t draw a glance from the girl. But then, she was having to keep her eye on the road. They were coming to a bend. ‘The Temple of Diana was a high-class early eighteenth-century folly, built – as you remember Sophia Jory knew – by Sir Arthur Jory. It was a temple in front and a small house behind. He used it for meeting women, and that sort of thing.’

  ‘So I gathered.’

  ‘And then it was used, off and on, for various purposes. But quite often it was empty; and so it fell more or less into decay. Finally, Sir George – the last Jory to live at Old Hall – knocked it down, as one of his economies.’

  ‘Is it economical to knock things down?’

  ‘I suppose he used the stone for walls and cottages and cow-houses and so forth. Anyway, there’s nothing left now but some traces of foundations in the grass. The steep drop into a lane or track is still there, of course. I recognized the place in Sophia Jory’s description.’

  ‘I see.’ Olivia was silent for some time. She appeared to have lost interest in the Temple of Diana. ‘Colin,’ she asked presently, ‘what do you think they’ll all do now?’

  ‘All those people we were having tea with? How should I know? They’re not my sort of person, as you’ve said. I mustn’t presume to guess about them.’

  ‘How funny you are.’ This time Olivia did glance at him – and in her very most dazzling way. ‘At least you can tell me about the professors.’

  ‘Gingrass will be wondering if he can’t track down the treasure himself. Not to nobble it. He hasn’t the guts for that. But just to get in on it in a learned archaeological way – doing a special article for The Times, and generally gaining merit with the local notabilities who boss the University. As for the frightful bore of a Yank, he’ll want permission to copy out as much of Sophia’s stuff as doesn’t infringe his moral code: all about Joscelyn’s loot, but nothing about Edward’s trollop.’

  ‘And George Lumb and his trollop?’

  ‘You mustn’t speak of Sadie like that.’ Clout found himself seriously shocked. ‘Sadie’s a very decent kid.’

  ‘Of course she is – and it was disgusting of me.’ Olivia’s penitence was charming. ‘But what will they do?’

  ‘Just what you’ve suggested, I’m afraid. They’ll do all they can for the New Hall Jorys. Lumb’s view will be that we must presume the treasure to have been Joscelyn’s legal property until we positively know otherwise; and that the swap involved far too valuable a consideration to be held valid out of hand. You remember his suggestion that Joscelyn might well have been mentally deranged.’

  The ancient car was labouring up a mild incline. Olivia changed gear viciously. ‘You could trust George Lumb to think up something like that,’ she said. ‘I think he’s a beastly little man. You’d never think he’d been at a decent public school.’

  ‘You can talk the most awful rubbish, Olivia Jory!’ Clout, although he knew himself to be suddenly enraged, listened with amazement to his own voice. ‘It goes terribly against Lumb’s wishes to embrace Sir John’s side. He’s absolutely cracked on you, as you know.’

  ‘Cracked?’ Olivia’s voice was cold. ‘Just what do you mean by that vulgar expression?’

  ‘Don’t be silly. Lumb’s devoted to you. He’s as much devoted to you as I am.’

  ‘How absolutely absurd.’ Olivia had spoken so quickly that Clout’s final words were drowned. ‘George Lumb! Me! I never heard such nonsense.’

  In strict logic, Clout ought to have found these words comforting. But there was something in their tone, on the contrary, that would have made them sound ominous even to a much less intelligent young man. He managed, however, to repress too vivid a consciousness of this. ‘What about your father?’ he asked abruptly. ‘Will he back you in all this? Or will he take a slipper to you?’

  Olivia laughed. ‘You must come from a very funny world,’ she said – and this time, astoundingly, she spoke in a way that made Clout’s heart pound as it had never pounded before. It suggested what precisely they hadn’t had: achieved months of steadily growing affection, of progressively confident approaches to the condition of confessed lovers. ‘I suppose’, she went on, ‘you’d enjoy beating me savagely if there was something not quite to your liking about the tripe and onions or the beans on toast?’

  ‘I don’t know what we’re talking about.’ Clout was aware that this was a singularly feeble response to Olivia’s swift change of mood. He now felt that he had said something outrageous to her, and its having prompted her only to this intoxicating raillery was confusing.

  ‘Talking about!’ She turned her head – at hazard of imminent disaster on the Queen’s highway – in sudden, vivid challenge. ‘We’re talking – aren’t we? – about an enormous treasure, dead in front of our noses! Think, Colin! Grub about, if you can, in any further records you can find. But – above all – think! I know you can. But I know George Lumb can too. You’re the ablest people that your absurd University has turned out for ages, I expect. And you’re rivals! Aren’t you?’

  ‘Well, yes – I suppose we are.’ Clout’s confusion continued. He wasn’t at all sure in what sphere it was that Olivia envisaged this rivalry as operating.

  ‘Then, you must beat him. We must beat him.’ Olivia Jory seemed all on fire. ‘We must beat him – do you hear? And that perfectly nice Miss Sackett. And that tiresome young F.O. type.’

  ‘Jerry?’

  ‘Yes.’ Olivia’s laughter rang out. ‘Jerry, or Terry, or Berry, or whatever he calls himself. We must whack the whole lot. Mustn’t we?’

  ‘Yes!’ Overwhelmingly, two distinct streams of excitement had met and were mingling in Clout. ‘We must, Olivia. And we shall.’

  2

  A couple of mornings later, Sadie Sackett visited Clout in his attic. As she didn’t much trouble herself with the formality of pausing after she had knocked on the door, she entered just in time to see the Shufflebotham Student diving into what appeared to be a cupboard. ‘All right, all right,’ she said dryly. ‘All young women aren’t pathologically predatory, you know. You needn’t bolt from me.’

  Clout turned back into the room with as much dignity as he could manage. ‘I can’t think what you’re talking about,’ he said. ‘If you mean Miss Jory, you’re being thoroughly stupid. She’s not in the least predatory.’

  ‘Miss Jory?’ Very tiresomely, Sadie affected to be momentarily at a loss. ‘Oh – I see. I’m to refer to your grand friends in a respectful way. Thanks for reminding me.’

  ‘Don’t be an idiot, Sadie.’ Clout was really exasperated. Hadn’t he, quite lately, pulled up Olivia for speaking disrespectfully of Sadie? And this was all the thanks he got! ‘If you want to know what I call predatory,’ he said, ‘it’s dancing before George Lumb, in the name of studying Eng. Lang. and Lit. Lawrence, indeed! It would have made Lawrence sick.’

  ‘I think that’s absolutely the most childish thing I ever heard said.’

  ‘So it is.’ Clout sat suddenly down on his table and looked at Sadie in dismay. ‘I’m sorry. I must be catching something.’

  Sadie smiled cheerfully. ‘All right, all right. If you’re sorry, then I take back what I said about Olivia Jory being predatory. At least, she’s not predatory in relation to you, Colin Clout. You’re not her quarry.’ And without pausing on this ambiguous remark, Sadie went on: ‘Why were you diving in there, anyway?’

  ‘Milder.’ Remembering the duties of hospitality, Clout pointed to a chair at the other end of the table. ‘Sit down.’

  ‘Is that where all those girls sit to read you their absurd essays on epics and lyrics and things?’

&nbs
p; ‘Yes.’

  ‘Then I don’t think I will.’ Still very cheerful, Sadie swung herself on to the table too. ‘Milder badgers you?’

  ‘He’s a complete blight – convinced I know far more about Sir Joscelyn than I do, and determined that we should get on the track of the treasure together. He sees Joscelyn as taking a rather more prominent place in his idiotic book than he had intended for him. And he thinks that a big photograph of this purloined Caucasian stuff would make a swell frontispiece for the whole thing. And he’s very disturbed, conversely, because some workmen have appeared in the park, and are laying a drain or a cable or something right down that lane where the Temple of Diana used to be.’

  ‘Why ever should that worry Milder?’

  ‘He feels they may come on the skeleton of Edward’s unfortunate girl, and that that would be a highly indelicate thing to do.’

  Sadie laughed. ‘What about Joscelyn’s mummy, or whatever it was called? If the treasure really is buried somewhere about the place, presumably that’s buried along with it.’

  ‘Of course. But the Caucasian lady was already an old-established corpse before Joscelyn began trapesing her across Europe. So Milder’s moral sense isn’t offended. I suppose that in America you can take corpses across state boundaries with impunity.’

  ‘Do you know, Colin, I don’t quite believe in Milder?’ Sadie stared thoughtfully at the rows of Clout’s books on one side of the room. She might have been noticing that the works of Kafka had been moved down to an unobtrusive corner.

  ‘You’d believe in him, all right, if he had constituted himself a sort of incubus on you.’

  ‘I’m sure Milder would consider being an incubus highly indelicate.’

  ‘Well, he’s been up here once already this morning. Mostly talking and asking questions about Joscelyn. But he managed to get in a short history of this University, and – more briefly – a sketch of the English educational system as a whole. When that man’s about, one’s only wish is not to attend to him.’