A Change of Heir (18 page)

Gadberry finished his coffee – which he had neglected to do during this absorbing conversation – and fell momentarily into a muse. When he emerged from it, it might have been said that Sir Galahad was in control again. It had been, after all, one of the prime tenets of chivalry that a lady’s eyes, favourably bent upon a knight, could inspire him to fight like mad. Gadberry had more than a hope that Evadne Fortescue’s eyes were bent precisely that way upon him. So it was jolly well his business to stand in his tracks and fight it out. He was shocked to think that, a mere twenty-four hours previously, he had been planning a craven flight from Bruton Abbey.

Moreover – and with that marked clarity of vision which sexual infatuation brings – he was now seeing his way much more confidently through those ethical intricacies of his situation which had from time to time obscurely troubled him in the past. Mrs Minton
ought
to have an heir, since her wish so to be provided was blameless and indeed laudable. On the other hand a sound morality was far from requiring that the real Nicholas Comberford should necessarily take on the job. If he had other ideas, that was his own affair. And if he chose to provide a substitute, thus gratifying his great-aunt’s wish and at the same time securing a suitable provision both for himself and for a well-qualified understudy (so to speak) or stand-in, the result was plainly advantageous to all concerned.

Gadberry was naturally delighted that the mists had once more parted before him in this way, and the simplicities of the matter been restored to him. And now, moreover, there was an additional factor conducing to the absolute rightness of what he was in course of achieving. There was Evadne. Evadne was going to make him the happiest of mortals, and he was going to do his best to carry out the same job by her. It was clear that anything – even if it were a mild deception – calculated so immensely to enhance the stock of the world’s bliss must be absolutely right in itself.

Thus heartened, Gadberry resumed his colloquy with the impassive Boulter.

‘As a matter of fact,’ he said fondly, ‘there is another girl. I dare say you know her. Captain Fortescue’s daughter. Miss Evadne.’

‘Ah, yes indeed, sir. Although she has not been much in these parts of recent years, I have occasionally seen her at divine service. If I may presume, sir, I would wish to congratulate you on your taste.’

‘Thank you very much.’ Boulter, Gadberry thought, although a shade stiff in his manner, was undoubtedly a very good fellow.

‘A great beauty, sir. A toast, as the gentlemen used to say. Decidedly a toast. It must certainly be arranged, sir. The romance, if I may term it, must be facilitated. I am decidedly with you in that.’

‘I’m very glad to hear it.’ Gadberry was naturally delighted at thus so readily securing Boulter as an ally.

‘A high degree of satisfaction in that sphere, sir, conduces remarkably to a young gentleman’s content. At least for several years, sir. It depends, of course, upon the temperaments involved. Later on, congruous tastes and habits – what is sometimes called compatibility of temperament – come increasingly into play.’

‘I suppose so.’ Gadberry wasn’t sure that there was any occasion for Boulter’s launching out on this homiletic vein.

‘But at the start, one must agree, the sensual music is the thing. I draw the expression, sir, from a poem by the late Mr Yeats.’

‘Yes, of course.’ This time, Gadberry gazed at Aunt Prudence’s extraordinary butler in positive alarm.

‘When the rites of marriage go well, a young gentleman is likely to be the more amenable in other fields. He will not stand strictly upon terms.’

‘Boulter, what on earth are you talking about?’

‘It may be, sir, that your continued residence at the Abbey will require that certain compromises – chiefly of a financial nature – will have to be made. Should you be securely in the enjoyment of the riches of the marriage-bed, you will be the less sticky about paying up.’

‘About paying up?’ It was perhaps Boulter’s abrupt descent to normal colloquial expression that chiefly startled Gadberry now. Then he thought he understood. ‘My God!’ he said. ‘Do you mean that ghastly woman?’

Very respectfully, Boulter removed Gadberry’s empty coffee cup from beneath his nose, and began clearing the table. Gadberry watched him in silence. He was now puzzled and disturbed – but it had been rash, all the same, to come out with that last question. In the nature of the case, the dire problem of Miss Bostock must remain private and his own. He had no doubt – such is the fortifying power of love – that he would solve it effectively enough. Perhaps – it suddenly and surprisingly came to him –
she
could just be tipped off the top of the Abbey tower. Such a solution would be, in her own phrase, extremely simple and elegant. Or alternatively – But Boulter had resumed his discourse. Gadberry’s exclamation didn’t seem to have surprised him at all.

‘I take it, sir, that you refer to Miss Bostock. I did not, in point of fact, have her in mind. But she certainly brings up a relevant consideration. Decidedly so. The other evening, as I think you will recall, you and I were in agreement that she is a dangerous woman. It is a fact that is the more apparent to me now.’

‘The more apparent? What do you mean?’

‘She is an observant woman. It is a faculty, sir, which I think I may claim to share with her. I am myself, as another of our poets has it, a man who notices things. And Miss Bostock is a woman who notices things. We are, perhaps, evenly matched. That is why, sir, I hope to be of assistance to you. On mutually advantageous terms.’

‘Boulter, I haven’t the least idea what you are–’

‘Come, come, sir – if I may use the expression without impertinence. It is very apparent to me that Miss Bostock has most unfortunately arrived at the truth.’

‘The truth?’

‘She knows – does she not? – that you are an impostor. You will pardon the expression, sir.’

‘Look here–’

‘Let us not bandy words, sir.’ Boulter remained wholly impassive. ‘Let us rather reconstitute our relationship, sensibly and profitably, in terms of the facts of the case. You are not Mr Nicholas Comberford.’

Boulter must be pushed off the top of the tower too. Prowling the gardens between snow showers after he had got away from the man, Gadberry arrived at this rational conclusion readily enough. And it wouldn’t do to arrange, so to speak, successive precipitations. Boulter must go, Miss Bostock must go, and Mrs Minton had better go as well. But it must all happen at once. A bird-watching party was conceivable. Mrs Minton and her companion should be lured up the tower in this ornithological interest, and then Boulter should be instructed to take them up, say, plum cake and Madeira. And then –? Well, one could have buried in the mouldering structure a small charge of dynamite. It would be perfectly decent to get married a month or thereabouts after the triple funeral.

Gadberry circumambulated the fishpond. He even advanced cautiously over the ice – it was now very thick – and peered into one of the large, jagged holes that had been smashed in it for the benefit of the pike. He had on several occasions just glimpsed these celebrated creatures. They were enormous. Nowhere in England were there pike like the Bruton pike. They devoured perch by the ton. If you were to fall in and drown – an ancient gardener had assured Gadberry – they would have picked you to whispers before your corpse developed any of those distressing qualities which would bring it to the surface again. In the old days the pike had accounted for several lay brethren who, as a consequence of monastic inebriety, had mistaken the smooth surface of the fishpond in the moonlight for the smooth surface of the bowling green under the same treacherous illuminant. As for Abbot Jocelin, he had simply been pitched to the ravening brutes during the celebrated revolt of the children of the singing school in the year – Gadberry seemed to remember – 1423.

How tedious is a guilty conscience!

When I look into the fish-ponds in my garden,

Methinks I see a thing armed with a rake,

That seems to strike at me…

The Cardinal in
The Duchess of Malfi
was, of course, mad. Gadberry, with the Cardinal’s celebrated meditation thus floating into his head, realised that he was quite capable of going mad himself. Merely to harbour a fantastic vision of liquidating his embarrassments with high explosive was to be pretty mad. Still, he wasn’t beyond recalling himself to sanity here and now. What he had to do was to work out a rational programme in the light of the latest change in his situation.

It was, of course, very disconcerting that Boulter, as well as Miss Bostock,
knew
. And didn’t – he had almost forgotten him – the Reverend Mr Grimble show signs of at least some glimmering of the same awareness? This really left only Mrs Minton herself. What if
she
knew, and was for some fiendish reason dissimulating her knowledge? Gadberry’s head swam. He stepped back in nervous haste from that sinister aperture in the ice.

That both Miss Bostock and Boulter
knew
affected, in the first place, simply what might be called the pay-out. They wanted Gadberry securely established as the heir of Bruton because they wanted their whack. But the female of the species was more deadly than the male. Compared with Miss Bostock, whose fell purpose no compunctious visitings of nature were going to touch, Boulter positively dripped the milk of human kindness. He seemed perfectly prepared to continue to put up with Mrs Minton in the land of the living if only her supposed great-nephew and, as a consequence, her butler, were to enter substantially into the enjoyment of the Bruton revenues at an early date.

Both these people, Gadberry had to admit, had the spurious Nicholas Comberford under their thumb. So had the authentic Nicholas Comberford – who clearly couldn’t be ignored just because he was rather mysteriously quiescent at the moment. Of whatever came in, Comberford was to have a half. And there would be Boulter and Miss Bostock to satisfy after that. It was a prospect that didn’t seem too good. Yet it had its brighter side. Any of the three could give him away. But all three would pretty certainly take themselves off the payroll if they did so. Comberford, as the originator of the deception, could expect no favour from his outraged great-aunt, and he would probably go to jail into the bargain. Boulter and Miss Bostock, if they were clever at putting nothing on the record, might possibly elude the law. But a showdown would automatically kill the goose that laid their golden eggs. Gadberry himself had only to keep his nerve in order to ensure that – the true Comberford apart – he had no more than two minor pensioners on his hands.

And, once more, there was no absolute urgency about the affair. Boulter’s was a waiting game, and two could play at that. Miss Bostock, it was true, intended nothing less than murder as soon as it should be convenient. He was quite clear about this. But convenience, as he had already reassured himself, required the passing of some decent interval of time. It required, too, the rigging of something that was to have the appearance of natural death. Mrs Minton was going to be murdered. But her death was never to be
seen
as that. And to contrive the appearance either of accident or fatal illness was to require at least a little thinking out. Tonight, tomorrow, the next day: to organise his own plans and defences he had at least as much breathing space as that.

Gadberry’s brow cleared a little as he worked this out. That there could be any fallacy in so simple a chain of reasoning never entered his head.

Boulter was waiting for him in the cloisters. The man’s bearing was monumentally respectful. Perhaps he was just being cautious, since any curious fellow servant could successfully eavesdrop in this murky place. More probably he was proposing to get a perverse enjoyment from continuing to behave in this way.

‘Mrs Minton’s compliments, sir. She proposes to pay a call on Lady Arthur Shilbottle this afternoon, and will be glad to know that you are able to drive her over.’

‘Oh, bother!’ Although merely amused that Aunt Prudence was thus proposing to force the pace, Gadberry didn’t at all welcome the idea of having to spend his afternoon in such an expedition. He had, needless to say, planned an expedition of his own. He was going to walk over and see Evadne. She would probably be in bed, but perhaps she would only be immobilised on a sofa. In either case, he intended to see her. If there was any difficulty about going in and kneeling at her bedside, he would obviate it by making a firm declaration of his suit to her father first. After that, and despite all the lover’s diffidence that he could summon, he was confident that he could gain her troth pretty well by storm. For it was his instinct that it had been love at first sight with her, just as it had been with him. Through all her maidenly modesty, through all her sweet confusion upon their utterly unexpected encounter, her eyes, somehow, had declared it. And now there was going to be delay because of this stupid plan.

‘Is that the message you would wish me to convey, sir?’

‘The message?’

‘ “Oh, bother”, sir. You would wish me to tell Mrs Minton that?’

‘Don’t be a fool, Boulter. You know we must go easy with her. Say I’ll be delighted. And find something I can take to those tiresome young women. As a present, I mean. No harm in playing up a bit.’

‘Quite so, sir. What sort of object would you have in mind?’

‘I haven’t the slightest idea. A puppy, perhaps.’

‘I judge it improbable, sir, that anything of the sort is available just at the moment. Or not of a suitably thoroughbred variety. There might possibly be a kitten.’

‘Very well – a kitten. Or a canary or some furry caterpillars.’

‘Thank you, sir. I will see what can be done.’

Gadberry walked away impatiently. It just wasn’t possible to perturb Boulter. And now, he supposed, his best plan would be to try to speak to Evadne on the telephone. In one way or another he must ceaselessly show his devotion to the dear girl. To let a whole day pass without some manifestation of it was inconceivable.