‘Well, then,’ he said, ‘why do you want to fix things tomorrow?’
‘Because I have arranged a luncheon party, Nicholas. The Shilbottles are coming, and it is possible – indeed likely – that Arthur Shilbottle may wish to know how the land lies.’
‘Oh, the Shilbottles. Yes, of course.’ Gadberry performed a rapid mental consultation of the late Magnus Minton’s Memoirs, but without result. ‘That will be very nice.’
‘I cannot see that you are in a position to form such a judgment. The Shilbottles are surely unknown to you as yet. Indeed, I do not possess their familiar acquaintance myself. As you must be aware, the Marquis of Aydon’s estates lie in Northumberland. Lord Arthur Shilbottle, who is his younger brother, has only recently acquired properties in our neighbourhood – and only, I may add, as a consequence of his marriage. Lady Arthur has lately inherited a large fortune. I understand it may be termed a very large fortune. Lady Arthur is of American extraction, but is nevertheless substantially presentable. And the daughters have been accorded an upbringing entirely suitable to English gentlewomen.’
‘I’m very glad to hear it.’ Gadberry made this imbecile reply out of considerable perturbation of mind. It didn’t take much acuteness to see where all this was heading for. It was the Court page of The Times, morning clothes, grey toppers, whole barns and granaries piled with wedding presents, and a marriage ceremony performed – no doubt – by the Archbishop of York. All this had lately been hovering in a nightmarish fashion in Gadberry’s consciousness. Here it really was.
‘Did you say something about daughters?’ he asked. He might as well know the worst at once.
‘Of course they are coming to lunch with us too. Alethea and Anthea. I may say that I have already had some conversation with Shirley Shilbottle.’
‘Shirley?’
‘Shirley is Lady Arthur Shilbottle. I agree that as a girl’s Christian name Shirley scarcely commends itself. However, it possibly commemorates some kinship with the Ferrers, who were earls of Derby in the thirteenth century, and must be considered as of respectable antiquity. You will recall that Laurence Shirley, who was, I think, the fourth earl, was the last English nobleman to suffer a felon’s death. He drove to Tyburn in his own carriage, and was hanged with a silken rope. This seems to make a connection with the American colonies the more probable.’
‘It clearly does.’ Gadberry was by now well practised in receiving this sort of thing. ‘But why should you already have had some conversation with Lady Arthur?’
‘My dear Nicholas, I am, as you know, a woman of a liberal turn of mind. In the sphere which we are now considering. I cannot but act in a spirit of the greatest tolerance. The miseries of enforced marriage, as the old phrase has it, shall never be laid at my door – in relation to a young man that is to say, for it is entirely proper that a girl should marry precisely according to her parents’ wish. But a young man, I repeat, must not be constrained. Particularly if he is of good family, and so possessed of those qualities of manliness and independence which only a distinguished lineage can confer.’
‘I’m sure that’s absolutely right.’ Gadberry almost blushed as he said this, for he was quite clear the old woman was talking the most awful rot. ‘That sort of young man must be let marry the girl he fancies.’
Mrs Minton looked displeased.
‘Nicholas, you are being foolish again. It is precisely his possibly behaving in that manner that I was reprehending in young Tony Hartley. What my liberal principles require me to assert is the necessity of choice – of perfectly free choice. And this is why I had to make quite sure. Fortunately, matters are entirely propitious. Lady Arthur, who controls her own fortune, is definite about it. Alethea and Anthea are to be treated strictly as co-heiresses. It is the American custom, no doubt.’
‘So that’s my free choice – between the Hon. Alethea and the equally Hon. Anthea?’
‘Pray do not be facetious, Nicholas – and particularly on such a serious subject as that of styles and titles. But you are correct as to the fact.’
‘What if these Shilbottles now have a son?’
‘It is a question you do very well to ask.’ Mrs Minton directed upon Gadberry one of those glances of high approval which were apt to disconcert him more than was anything else. ‘But Shirley Shilbottle is definitely beyond the child-bearing age, and any subsequent marriage by Arthur Shilbottle is neither here nor there. The money – or rather the land, since to talk about money is decidedly vulgar – is Shirley’s. Every penny of it. I mean, every acre.’
‘I see. So it’s pretty well in the bag?’
‘The expression is unfamiliar to me, Nicholas. But if its import is as I suppose, I give an affirmative answer with confidence.’
‘And tomorrow’s the day? I line them up and choose – like oranges and lemons?’
‘My dear Nicholas, of course les convenances must be observed. Even if your preference instantly becomes clear to you, you will upon this first occasion continue to be equally attentive to both girls. On a second meeting you may, however, make some proposal to one of them alone.’
‘A proposal of marriage, you mean?’
‘Certainly not. A proposal to go riding together, or something of the sort. After that, there should be some slight further delay. I should be inclined to say that your passion may quite properly declare itself in about three or four weeks’ time. And now, as that is settled, I will go to bed.’
In accordance with a custom which had established itself at the Abbey, Gadberry now conducted Aunt Prudence ceremoniously to her own apartments. When he returned to the drawing-room to turn out the lights – for Boulter was to be presumed by now to have signed off for the night – he found to his surprise that Miss Bostock was still in possession of it. This hadn’t happened before. Indeed Gadberry had a notion that les convenances as recently evoked were dead against it. Unmarried ladies quartered in country houses never sit up with the gentlemen unchaperoned. Or at least they don’t do so (unless they are very fast) in Victorian novels of high life. And current mores at Bruton Abbey appeared to hitch on more or less to that. But certainly Miss Bostock wasn’t discomposed. She made no move to withdraw. Instead, she sat tight, and gave Gadberry one of her celebrated looks. It was a look that didn’t seem to search into his heart so much as into his pockets; she might have been estimating to what extent he had loaded these with the Minton spoons and forks.
‘Sit down,’ Miss Bostock said.
Gadberry sat down – not without resenting something decidedly peremptory in Miss Bostock’s tone. Of course, one had to make allowances for the woman. To live in a household where the servants were required to address you as ‘Madam’ but where they regularly heard you addressed as ‘Bostock’ by your employer: this was something which would surely in time sour any temper. But she and Gadberry were, to some extent, fellow sufferers, after all. It was unreasonable that they should be at feud with one another. Gadberry decided to have another go at being conciliatory now. So he once more put on his ingenuous act.
‘I say,’ he began, ‘that was a bit of a facer, wasn’t it? Free choice, indeed! Still, I suppose one is bound to prove more attractive than the other.’
‘I think not.’
‘Oh come, Miss Bostock! Less unattractive than the other if you like. I’ve got to look on the bright side, after all.’
‘There is no bright side, there are only two identical sides.’
‘I don’t understand what you mean.’
‘Mrs Minton has a sense of humour, has she not, Mr Comberford?’
‘I can’t say I’ve much noticed it.’
‘Well, she has. But it is of a grim and private sort. In this last conversation, and while offering you your pick, as it were, between the two Shilbottle girls, she suppressed one relevant fact. They are identical twins, and it is impossible to distinguish between them.’
13
If this was really a joke, Gadberry didn’t think much of it. In fact he felt almos
t unreasonably angry – partly with Miss Bostock, whose manner he increasingly didn’t like, and partly with Mrs Minton, who suddenly stood revealed to him as unbearably arrogant and tiresomely mad. Of course he had really known the worst about Mrs Minton for some time, and it had been sheer weakness to dodge a consciousness of the fact simply because he had got into her good graces. Objectively regarded, it was humiliating that he had succeeded in this way, since it was something, surely, that only a horrid young toady could do.
‘It’s ridiculous!’ he said. ‘And it’s disgusting, too.’
‘Disgusting?’ There was something peculiarly insulting in the manner in which Miss Bostock contrived to repeat this word. She might have been implying that Gadberry was one from whom it fell quaintly and surprisingly – as it might do from some humble creature dislodged from beneath a stone.
‘Yes, disgusting. Having two indistinguishable girls – if they’re really that–’
‘They certainly are.’
‘Very well. Having them driven into a pound, and being told to choose one or the other.’
‘You mean it would be less disgusting if they were quite different?’
‘Of course it would.’ Gadberry said this with conviction. It was something he was quite clear about, although he didn’t know why.
‘Then perhaps you had better refrain from making advances to either of them.’
‘That’s exactly what I will do.’
‘Mrs Minton – who has just treated you so munificently – will scarcely be pleased.’
‘Oh, to hell with Mrs Minton! I’ve had enough.’
There was a silence – a silence into which one of the Bruton owls deftly dropped a particularly spine-chilling hoot. But to Gadberry it came with the effect of a triumphant paean. He had burnt his boats. In the words of the poet, the loathsome mask had fallen.
But something had gone wrong. Miss Bostock didn’t seem at all shocked. Only her eyes had narrowed.
‘No,’ she said, ‘that won’t do.’
‘What do you mean? What won’t do?’
‘Well – for a start, just rejecting the Misses Shilbottle. But how is your delicacy to be respected? You won’t choose one. You can’t marry both. Do you know, I can see only one solution?’
‘I don’t care twopence for your solution. I tell you, I’m packing in the whole–’
‘I consider my solution extremely simple and elegant. You shall marry one Miss Shilbottle, and the real Nicholas Comberford can have the other.’
This time the silence was prolonged. It was also hideous to Gadberry’s shattered sense. Miss Bostock sat gazing absently into the dying fire. Her attitude suggested no hint of drama. She might just have been feeling that things were growing duller even than before, and that she had better give up the day as a lost cause and get off to bed.
These appearances, disconcerting in themselves, came for some moments to Gadberry only confusedly and as if from a long way off. His mind was behaving like a television set in some advanced stage of electronic disease. Images flapped and flickered in it, dissolved into a grey chaos, formed again uncertainly as if behind some undulating flood. Then, rather to his surprise, he heard himself producing articulate speech.
‘How did you know?’ His voice was at once hoarse and trembling. ‘How did you find out?’
‘Know…find out?’ Miss Bostock removed her gaze from the fire and fixed it on Gadberry. But now it seemed not hostile, but only puzzled and a little alarmed.
‘That I’m not Comberford. Who told you? Was it Comberford himself? Are you two in on something together?’ This time, Gadberry was just aware that he was shouting – or perhaps it was screaming. The woman had unnerved him completely.
‘Not Comberford? Mr Comberford, I don’t understand you at all. I think you must be tired. Perhaps–’
‘Damn you!’ Gadberry found that he had jumped to his feet and was waving his arms foolishly. ‘You said that the real Nicholas Comberford could have one of those girls.’
‘Mr Comberford, you are ill.’ Miss Bostock spoke gently and solicitously – a thing monstrous and unnatural in itself. ‘I have judged you to be a little strained for some time. And now you are imagining things. It is a delirium. Pray heaven that your mind isn’t giving way.’
‘I tell you, you said–’
‘Dr Pollock will have got home by now. But he must return at once. I will telephone.’
Gadberry stared in stark horror at Miss Bostock. For a moment he believed what she said. The things he had heard her utter she hadn’t uttered at all. He had gone mad.
Convinced of this, Gadberry sank into his chair again. He burst into tears.
‘Good,’ Miss Bostock said calmly. ‘Now, my friend, we can talk.’
Gadberry shivered all over. He realised that what this hideous woman had said she had said. He had suffered no hallucination. She did know. The turn she had put on had been merely an ingenious trick to break his nerve. And it had succeeded – for a moment. But she damned well wasn’t going to have it all her own way. He’d fight back – now.
‘Very well.’ Gadberry sat up and straightened his shoulders. ‘We’ll talk. And it’s interesting that you want to talk. It’s interesting you haven’t sent for the police. In fact, you’re in this for what you can get.’
‘Now you are talking.’ Miss Bostock nodded approvingly. ‘I’ll be surprised if we don’t get along famously.’
‘I still want to know how you found out. What did I do wrong?’
‘Nothing very wrong, I’d say.’ Miss Bostock appeared to consider the question dispassionately. ‘But everything a little wrong. That’s almost inevitable.’
‘I suppose it is. But I don’t see why you in particular–’
‘A certain professional expertness was involved, young man. But never mind that. There’s a much more important question – and it’s for me to put it to you. Where is the real Nicholas Comberford?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Ah!’ Without haste, Miss Bostock got to her feet, picked up a poker, and stirred the embers to a quick flare. ‘Does he exist?’
‘Of course he exists. How can I be a false Comberford if there isn’t a true one?’
‘Does he still exist? You haven’t made away with him?’
‘Made away with him!’ Gadberry stared at Miss Bostock in simple astonishment. ‘How could I have made away with him?’
‘It’s the natural presumption. By the way, what’s your real name?’
‘I won’t tell you.’
‘You will quite soon. But never mind that now. The obvious way of reading the facts is this: you have murdered Comberford and taken his place. Otherwise, he’d be here himself, happily collecting his inheritance.’
‘It isn’t so. Comberford’s alive. Only–’
‘But you say you don’t know where he is. That means you couldn’t produce him if you had to. What would a judge and jury, I wonder, think of that? I doubt whether they’d be troubled by the fact that the police couldn’t produce the body.’
‘You’re trying to frighten me. Just as you did a few minutes ago, pretending I’d gone mad.’
‘My dear young man, it’s the facts that are frightening you. And well they may. By the way, you must have an uncanny resemblance to the real Nicholas. Are you an illegitimate brother or something?’
‘I’m–’ Almost in the vein of Mrs Minton herself, Gadberry was about to assert the honourable lineage of the Gadberrys. But he had the wit to realise that this would be a mistake. He mustn’t trade a scrap of information to this woman without some exchange in the shape of security in one form or another. ‘I may be,’ he said, ‘or I may not. That’s all for you to find out.’
‘Is that kind of attitude going to take us far?’ Miss Bostock glanced almost indulgently at Gadberry. ‘And far, you know, is precisely where we have to get ourselves taken. This thing isn’t nearly as simple as you seem to have been imagining. You’ve had all the luck for a start, but nothing’s yet
in the bag. And it isn’t going to be tomorrow either, however many documents your supposed great-aunt signs for Mr Middleweek. The hazards go on and on and on. Let’s make no mistake about that.’
‘When I said I’m going to pack it in I meant it. And not just because you’ve found me out. The whole thing’s too stupid. I don’t want to end my life as a Minton-Minton, or whatever it is, married to a Shilbottle-Shilbottle. Mind you, I don’t think there’s anything particularly wrong about it. The idea was to give satisfaction all round. But it’s not going to give me any satisfaction. I’d rather be navvying. I’ve done it before.’
‘Your eyes, in fact, are opened?’
‘Just that.’
‘Then you’d better close them again. You see, you can’t get away.’
‘Yes I can. I can go back to being who I really am.’
‘I don’t think so. I agree that as the authentic Nicholas Comberford you could simply clear out. The police would have no interest in tracing you, for you wouldn’t have broken the law. But once they’d been told you were an impostor – told by me, for example – they just wouldn’t let the trail go. They’d find you, all right.’
Gadberry was silent. He saw that this was true. The dreadful woman had the whip hand of him. And she was going to use him for her own purposes.
‘Look,’ he said. ‘There’s really very little in this. That’s where I’ve been sold. The old woman’s going to live till she’s a hundred. Your share would be no more than pin money. It certainly wouldn’t be worth the risk of your becoming an accomplice in a conspiracy. You’d better forget about your precious discovery, and just let me quit.’
‘I seem to remember that Mrs Minton rebuked you this evening for teaching other people their business. And it does seem to be a weakness of yours. I think you’d better go and sleep on the whole thing. Your position has its hazards, I agree. But it also has possibilities that you don’t seem to have got the hang of. Perhaps you’ll be clearer-headed when you wake up.’ Miss Bostock, who had continued standing before the dying fire, now moved towards the door. ‘Certainly we’ll have another quiet chat quite soon. Good night.’
A Change of Heir Page 9
