A Change of Heir (4 page)

‘At the top of my profession?’ he repeated. ‘Of course not. If I were, I wouldn’t be taking up with a small-time conman like Nicholas Comberford. Would I, now?’

‘Well, here we are.’ Comberford had stopped before rather an imposing flight of steps. He didn’t seem at all offended. ‘It’s not too bad. Same sort of place as the one we’ve come from, but a good deal classier. The old girl booked me into it, of course. She has classy tastes. Indeed, you might say she has a lavish sort of mind. Thinks big, as it were. Which, of course, is the key to the situation. Now, then – in we go.’

It was an obscurely fateful moment. Sensing this, George Gadberry hesitated. This second hotel, he noticed, was very much like the first. Round here there were scores of these respectable and colourless places. It was hard to associate them with anything that might be called dirty work. Yet he was now sure that the man calling himself Nicholas Comberford was a dangerous companion. He was attracted to him because he felt that they shared certain common assumptions. But they weren’t, perhaps, very salubrious assumptions – so that his own prudent course, even at this late hour, would be to turn round and make a bolt for it. Unfortunately it
was
a late hour, if only in the sense that an impressive hall porter, followed by a subordinate functionary of the same sort, was coming down the steps with the evident intention of relieving Comberford and himself of their suitcases. The new hotel was evidently a plushy sort of place. Comberford, in addition to his less definable attractiveness, was clearly in on the gravy. Gadberry thought of the few remaining pennies and sixpences in his own pocket. The thought of Mrs Lapin, who had let him go and certainly wouldn’t want to see him again. He handed over his suitcase and climbed the steps.

‘The food,’ Comberford said, ‘is surprisingly good. I wonder if the old girl knew that? Anyway, there’s time for a drink or two, and then we’ll have a spot of lunch.’ He turned and gave some direction to the hall porter, with the result that the suitcases were spirited away. ‘I have my own sitting-room, as a matter of fact. Her mind works that way. Everything laid on. Convenient for our little chat, wouldn’t you say? But first we’ll just sit down here and have a spot. Waiter’ – Comberford made a commanding gesture – ‘two dry Martinis!’

Gadberry felt increasingly unnerved. Settling down in the corner of the lounge, and beneath the shade of palms luxuriant beyond the ambition of the Chester Court, he stole a good look at his companion. He was again visited by the disturbing sense that the man was familiar to him – disturbing because his memory, or seeming memory, was of somebody he rather liked but distinctly didn’t trust. But who on earth could it be? The puzzle annoyed him, and annoyance prompted him to hostile speech.

‘Look here,’ he said, ‘are you really being all that bright? You take a lot of trouble with false beards and noses and whatever, and then you haul me in here in the sight of the whole place. It doesn’t make sense.’

‘My dear man, it’s perfectly all right. Nobody here will bother about us. The important thing was to leave a cold trail at that other place. It was the address, you know, that I gave your friend Falsetto. Not that anybody is going to get at Falsetto. Still, one can’t be too careful. Not with the stakes as high as they are. Don’t you agree? But here we’re quite all right. A respectable resident, you might say, entertaining – well, entertaining his younger brother. Waiter – I don’t think much of these as Martinis. Bring two more of the same size.’

This speech had an odd and powerful effect on Gadberry. For a moment he couldn’t place it at all. He stared again at Comberford, and suddenly the truth came to him. The reference to a younger brother had revealed it. The person Comberford reminded him of was himself. They must indeed be almost as alike as identical twins. He’d been searching gropingly for the memory of somebody he rather liked and decidedly didn’t trust. Of course that person was himself. It was a description that fitted him perfectly.

He took yet another look at Comberford, and saw that he was a distinctly handsome man. This was gratifying as far as it went. He saw too that ‘identical twins’ was a little wide of the mark. Comberford was older than he was – perhaps by eight, certainly by five years.

It was fantastic! The sense of being in a bizarre situation produced in Gadberry a renewed sense of alarm.

But it also attracted him, just as Comberford himself did. Sitting around Ma Lapin’s, waiting for something that didn’t happen, and waiting as often as not without even the price of a drink: this had made of late a pretty dull sort of life. It had made a duller life, certainly, than is at all tolerable at twenty-seven. So now he steadied himself by drinking his Martini – all at a go, since another was on the way – and addressed Comberford with at least a moderated hostility.

‘I don’t know what this is about,’ he said. ‘But aren’t you taking a bloody lot for granted? You go to this chap Falsetto, and you rake through hundreds of photographs until you see something like your own face staring at you. It happens to be mine, and you know nothing about me. But you take it for granted that I can be hired for whatever funny business is in your head.’

‘So you can, old boy.’

‘I’ll thank you not to call me “old boy”.’ Gadberry marked with satisfaction the arrival of the second round of Martinis. They prompted him, indeed, to a return to truculence. ‘I have to bandy that stuff with Falsetto and his sort. But I’ll be damned if I’ll be old-boyed by you.’

‘All right, George. I suppose I may call you George? For the time being, that is. It isn’t much of a name, if you ask me. You could find a better one.’

‘And I don’t like this stupid talk about names. First about Gadberry, and then about George.’ Gadberry took a gulp of his second Martini. ‘Weren’t you taught one doesn’t make jokes about people’s names?’

‘That’s fine, George!’ There was genuine satisfaction in Comberford’s voice. ‘You had a nursery, hadn’t you? And then a schoolroom, and then a prep school, and then Harrow or Rugby or whatever, after that? All the works, just as I had. And that’s a great relief. You see, Falsetto’s dossier – would it be called that? – didn’t run to information of that kind. And it would be no good if you were some sort of jumped-up prole. The old girl simply wouldn’t take it.’

‘Who the devil is this old girl you keep on talking about?’

‘Drink up, old boy. George, I mean. No heel-taps. And now we’ll go up and have lunch.’

The lunch was a good one. To Gadberry, whose palate had of late been confined within the gastronomic range of Mrs Lapin, it seemed very good indeed. Comberford, however, pronounced it no more than modestly meritorious. It would be at about the level, he supposed, of what the ‘old girl’ put up with at home, and no doubt she came here for the same thing when she had to visit London. It was a bit pathetic, surely, just not knowing what you could command if you wanted to. Still, although she was as old as the hills, she was not perhaps beyond the reach of education in these and other matters.

Gadberry listened to these remarks for the most part in silence. He naturally found Comberford’s oblique manner of approaching whatever it was he had to propose more than a little irritating. Who the ‘old girl’ was simply hadn’t so far appeared, although it seemed a reasonable guess that she was some rich and eccentric relative. Certainly riches were well in the centre of the picture; they were the first element, so to speak, to take solid form through the haze of Comberford’s random and elusive talk. Gadberry saw that there was a certain cleverness in this sort of softening-up process; he was being edged into a mood of suspense and irritated curiosity. Of course something disreputable was going to be proposed to him. Of this there could be no doubt. It would almost certainly be a thoroughly predatory plan, with those carefully emphasised riches for quarry.

Gadberry found that he had coffee and brandy before him, and that he was smoking a highly agreeable cigar. He withdrew his attention from Comberford for a time – the man seemed not ready to come to the point – in order to consider these pleasures soberly. Casting Comberford in the role of a Mephistopheles and himself in that of Dr Faustus, he tried to decide for just how many cigars and just how many brandies he would be prepared to do just what. But the equation, he found, had no real meaning. Cigars were all right in themselves, but he certainly wouldn’t risk much in the way of trouble in return for a lifetime’s supply. But change a box of cigars magically into a hareem of houris – and what then? He suspected he didn’t know. On the large speculative issue of Everything-that-money-can-buy he didn’t really have a clue. He had been brought up to believe that the quest of riches is ignoble and delusory. For all he knew, this pious conclusion might be precisely true.

But Gadberry was much clearer about penury. Pious praise of poverty, at least, was poppycock. The ability to command this and that might ultimately prove pretty futile. But the
inability
to do the same thing was something he was fairly confident there was little to be said for. And particularly in the simple world of modest satisfactions: beer, if not brandy; fags if not cigars.

Happy the man whose wish and care

A few paternal acres bound…

Alexander Pope had been right, and that happy man – Gadberry felt – could be him. Only, the little plot of ground had never come his way, whether paternally or otherwise.

Further examined in the context of the Mephistopheles idea, all this perhaps led to the conclusion that he was prepared for mild turpitude for the sake of small gains. Put that way, it sounded more than a shade inglorious. Nor did it seem to fit the present situation – not with Comberford talking mysteriously of high stakes or whatever.

‘For a start, I’d say, one ought to be clear about the theory of the thing. Wouldn’t you agree?’

Gadberry turned his attention back to Comberford with a jerk. It sounded as if the man had at last said something definite – and while he himself had been doing this wool-gathering.

‘Theory of what?’ Gadberry asked. He tried to speak in his best tough and grudging manner. But the Martinis and the hock – for there had been hock – and the brandy had undoubtedly been doing a bit of a job. It might have been premature to say that he was feeling co-operative, but he could fairly have been described as approachable.

‘The theory of what I’ve been talking about, George. Imposture, and so forth.’

Gadberry was almost certain that Comberford hadn’t been talking about anything of the sort. It was just that he had this technique of assuming that you were more in the picture than you were.

‘Imposture and impersonation,’ Comberford amplified. ‘My idea is that
il n’y a que le
premier pas qui
coûte
. You follow me? Only get off to a flying start and–’

‘They did teach me a certain amount of French,’ Gadberry said with some indignation. ‘And no doubt you’re right.’

‘Once let suspicion stir, and nine-tenths of the battle is lost. So it’s a tremendous challenge. Fortunately, George, you do have – I can see that you have – a fairly rapid sort of cunning. Would you agree?’

Gadberry didn’t feel constrained to agree. The tribute struck him as of a disobliging sort. If it was true – and he believed it was – that his mind did move with a tolerable speed, he had better get it so moving now. Comberford had conducted this affair at his own pace for long enough.

‘I think you said something about imposture and impersonation,’ he began. ‘Do you want me to impersonate you, or a younger brother of yours, or what?’

‘Me. Of course I can see that you’re a little younger than I am. But there will be nothing awkward about that. In fact, it may be psychologically advantageous. You’ll see.’

‘Is this just on one specific occasion?’

‘Good Lord, no! I’m not proposing, my dear George, to waste your time in perpetrating some mere practical joke. It’s nothing like that. Nothing like that, at all.’

‘For how long, then?’

‘Well, for quite a time.’ Comberford hesitated – which was something he hadn’t done before. ‘That’s where the challenge comes. And, of course, the reward.’

‘Is this imposture and impersonation criminal?’

‘Decidedly not. Morally, that’s to say.’

‘Morally?’

‘Everybody concerned will be happier and better off than they would otherwise have been. So it just
can’t
be wrong, can it?’

‘But a judge might think it wrong? I might be put in quod?’

‘Oh, most decidedly. You must be absolutely
clear
about that, my dear George, from the start. If you were found out, they’d put you away for years.’

‘And you as well.’

‘Certainly – if they could get hold of me.’ Nicholas Comberford smiled cheerfully. ‘The fact that we were in it together would make it conspiracy, or something like that. And they always make out that conspiracy is particularly bad. It just shows how unfair the law can be. Two chaps, and the penalty ought to be halved. Four chaps, and it ought to be quartered. You’d think the justice of that would be absolutely obvious, wouldn’t you? But the minds of magistrates don’t work that way. They’re unreasonable people. One should have nothing to do with them.’

‘What’s the risk of having something to do with them in this affair?’

‘Enormous, in a way.’ Comberford’s cheerfulness seemed to be increasing. ‘That’s to say, an outsider would see it as that. But just have faith in your own star – and, well, the risk’s merely minimal. You have
faith
in your star, haven’t you?’

‘Don’t be silly. I haven’t got a star.’

‘But of course you have!’ Comberford leant across the table. ‘Let me pour you another drop of brandy, and you’ll acknowledge the truth of what I say.
In vino veritas
, you know.’

Seeing no cogency in this particular application of the tag, Gadberry declined the brandy. His cigar, he found, had gone out, and this gave him a moment to think.

‘You keep on talking about an old girl,’ he said. ‘Who is she, and just how does she come in?’