A Change of Heir (6 page)

Gadberry stared at Comberford with a kind of fascinated horror. For the first time, the fantastic proposal he was up against seemed to him to have veered into the region of the possible.

‘Look here!’ he said wildly, ‘let’s get back to essentials. People just
can’t
successfully impersonate each other. The mere physical thing’s unworkable. Are we really all that like each other? I don’t believe it. And our mannerisms and intonations and so forth are totally different. The deception would blow up in the first ten minutes.’

‘It would blow up then –
or never
.
Le premier pas
, as I said before. And we are extravagantly like each other – far more than I could reasonably have hoped. Or rather, you’re extravagantly like me five or six years ago.’

‘There you are, then. This isn’t five or six years ago. It’s–’

‘Don’t be an ass, George. It’s precisely the point that will make your acceptance instantaneous – not only by Aunt Prudence, but by any remaining servants who were around at the time of the funeral. That’s psychology, old chap.’

‘But think of things like passports, bank accounts, signatures, proofs of–’

‘Poppycock. Aunt Prudence will simply march you in on her bank manager, and you’ll find the fellow has put down the red carpet. And so with the family solicitor and everybody else. You just don’t realise the enormous respectability of the position you are going to enjoy. For instance, when you go into the village church on Sunday to read the Lessons–’

‘When I
what
?’

‘Lord, yes. You’ll have to accept your responsibilities, you know. I don’t disguise the fact from you for a moment. But, as I was saying, when you do that, do you expect the dear old vicar to step forward and demand documentary evidence that you are indeed the long-absent Nicholas Comberford? Of course not! Now, get on with Aunt Prudence’s letter. You haven’t yet got to her proposal. And it’s worth getting to.’

However, my own Recollection is very clear as to the high Regard in which my dear Husband held you in those early and formative Years. It was his Habit to remark that had you been born directly into the Line of our Properties, you would have come to justify the Privilege by an exact Attention to the Duties of such a Station.

At this point, Gadberry produced sharp laughter.

‘Think of that!’ he said. ‘Your great-uncle, if you ask me, can’t have had all that much stuffed between his ears.’

‘I rather agree, George. But now, you’ll find, the thing’s coming. You’re on the brink.’

These are, as you must be aware, difficult Times for the Landed interest. The Administration is unsympathetic, and make little Doubt but that the present Prime Minister – whose Name escapes me for the Moment – would be hard put to it to distinguish Wheat from Oats, or a Dog Fox from a Vixen. In such iron Times a strong Hand is needed for the management of large Estates, and although much may reasonably be left to one’s Agents, Bailiffs and Men of Business it is nevertheless increasingly incumbent upon one to exercise a strict Surveillance…

Once more, Gadberry broke off abruptly.

‘I ask you!’ he said. ‘How the hell am I going to manage an estate? The notion’s absurd.’

‘That’s all rot. It’s simply that the old girl is failing–’

‘Her letter doesn’t read as if she’s failing.’

‘Well, she is. Only a year or two to go, as I’ve said. And she’s beginning to fuss. Of course those agents and bailiffs and people are perfectly competent to do their job. They wouldn’t thank you for really trying to poke your nose in. You’ll just ride around now and then to have an affable word with the tenants. Nothing more than that. And now, George, go on to what the old girl’s prepared to run to.’

It is this, my dear Nicholas, that I have determined to call upon you to do. Although hale of Body and – I believe – of Mind, I am yet conscious that my Years require me to give serious Thought no less to Matters temporal than to Matters eternal. If I am to discharge the Duties of the Station to which it has pleased Providence to call me, I must give anxious Consideration to the Future of Bruton – and that alike in the Choice of its Proprietor and the Well-being and proper Control of its labouring Poor. Are you likely to be a just Repository of my Confidence in these Regards? It is in an Endeavour to determine this all-important Issue that I now make the following probationary Proposal.

First, you shall present yourself to me at Bruton with all convenient Speed. Secondly, being domesticated here, you shall with all due Diligence endeavour to prove yourself worthy of my Trust. Thirdly, and in return, I shall make you an annual Allowance of Money – an Allowance which must be neither improperly lavish nor, on the other hand, improperly exiguous in the Light of our Consequence in the County. Five thousand Pounds suggests itself to me as a reasonable Figure. And fourthly, when your Competence and Probity shall have declared themselves to my Satisfaction, I will execute the requisite Instruments for establishing you as my sole Heir.

Gadberry stopped reading, and for some moments kept silence. When at length he did speak, it appeared to be out of a sort of desperation.

‘But I
couldn’t!
’ he cried. ‘It’s inconceivable.’

‘What’s inconceivable?’

‘Living, in this awful abbey-place, with an old woman who talks like that.’

‘Perhaps she doesn’t talk quite as she writes. It’s a very formal letter, after all.’

‘Her proposal’s utter bosh. There’s no sense in it.’

‘On the contrary, it’s thoroughly businesslike. You turn up at Bruton on probation, as she says, and make do for a year on the £5,000. In fact it looks as if you – which means you and I, old chap – go on making do on that modest allowance even when she’s proceeded with what she calls her requisite instruments and has appointed you as her heir. Her doing
that
is the crucial point. She must be persuaded to sign on the dotted line pretty soon. It must be done before there’s any suspicion of her going gaga and incompetent. On the other hand, it would be hazardous to force the pace. You’ll have to use your discretion.’

‘She’ll have to make a new will?’

‘Oh, decidedly.’

‘Isn’t it an odd way to dispose of a great estate – leaving the bequeathing of it to so late a date? It just asks for enormous death duties, and so on.’

‘Perfectly true, George. I see that you already possess a very useful sense of these things. And it’s a pity, I agree. Still, there will be plenty to divide up, all the same. Now, just skim through the rest of the thing to yourself. And I’ll go and look up a train.’

‘You’ll do
what
?’ It was with difficulty that George Gadberry articulated this question. He was feeling suddenly breathless and a little sick.

‘Lord, yes. The plunge is the thing. Put it off for a week, and you’d simply funk it. Candidly, I’d do just that myself. But don’t give yourself time to think, and all will be well.’

‘What about those memoirs, or whatever they are, by your Great-uncle Magnus?’ Gadberry found himself clutching at this as at a straw. ‘Oughtn’t I to give myself a week or two to get them up?’

‘Good Lord, no! Incidentally, I’ve got them with me in one of my suitcases, and they’re yours from this moment. Just read through the first hundred pages or so on your way down, and start talking on the strength of them at once. You can imagine the sort of thing. “Do you remember, Aunt Prudence, how angry you were when I helped the red-haired stable boy to drown the kittens?” There will be lots of that sort. Maintain a pious and dutiful attitude towards the memory of old Magnus, and you’ll have her eating out of your hand.’

Comberford drained the last drop of brandy in his glass, prudently pushed away the bottle, and got to his feet.

‘Nicholas,
old boy,’ he said, ‘good luck!’

SOME PROBLEMS OF A COUNTRY GENTLEMAN

George Gadberry (as he had formerly been) climbed out of his bath. He remembered to do so with due care, so that this time he succeeded in not overturning it. It was that sort of bath – like a child’s portable paddling-pool, but with a sloping back at one end against which it was just possible to recline in a gingerly way for purposes of maximum luxury. It was, in fact, a hip-bath. Not many minutes ago, it had been filled, hot-water jug by hot-water jug, by two housemaids. Presently, when George had signified his vacating his dressing-room by ringing a bell, these handmaidens would return and empty it – just how, he had not yet discovered – before shoving it away in a cupboard. If the bath itself was not particularly enjoyable, these ancillary circumstances somehow were. There was something almost Homeric in being thus tended. George had made, indeed, no improper advances to these young persons, since he was still so eminently in the position of feeling that he just couldn’t be too careful. But he did beguile this dressing hour with a little harmless fantasy, vaguely feudal in suggestion. The younger of his two attendants was not ill-favoured. And he was a kind of lord of the manor, after all.

George whistled as he dried himself – and did so with a cheerfulness not much diminished by the knowledge that he would never in actual fact get very far as a routine seducer of innocence. The excitements of love tended to assail him romantically, intermittently, and upon occasion catastrophically, rather than in a steady and businesslike fashion. Going after these maidens, he suspected, would turn out to be rather a shabby role, carrying an uncomfortable suggestion of a lack of fair play. Reflecting thus, he tossed away his enormous towel, stopped whistling, and frowned instead. These streaks of fastidiousness puzzled him. They certainly didn’t seem to go with his present enterprise, which could only be described as vastly unscrupulous. For he was now well launched on a criminal imposture. And the really odd thing was that he appeared – intermittently at least – to be enjoying it.

A clean white shirt had been laid out on a chair, with a cuff link already inserted in one side of each cuff. He donned this and buttoned it up. He tied his black tie. Silk socks, dress trousers, pumps: on they all went. Such a ritual, followed seven nights a week, ought to have been extremely boring, but he had to confess to himself that so far he had found it quite fun. It wasn’t, indeed, entirely unvaried. On Sundays – and this was a Sunday – Aunt Prudence liked him to don the red velvet smoking jacket. He put it on now, and admired its silk facings in his looking-glass. Conceivably such things were no longer made. This one had belonged to Uncle Magnus, but it fitted him very well. He was pleasantly aware of something symbolical in his being enjoined to wear it. It was a sort of token that his acceptance at Bruton was already assured.

Gadberry glanced at his watch, and saw that he had fifteen minutes to spare before going downstairs. So he had better put in a little time with the
Memoirs
. He still kept these locked in a suitcase, and when he consulted them it was always with an ear cocked for anybody approaching his room. The housemaids would make nothing of them, but it would be different with the butler, Boulter, or with Aunt Prudence’s companion, Miss Bostock. Miss Bostock, indeed, he had come to regard as the danger-point in his whole enterprise, for she was a well-established inmate of the Abbey whom Nicholas Comberford had failed to mention.

Fortunately it was difficult to be surprised unawares in a building that went in so massively for stone-flagged and uncarpeted corridors. Only a ghost could bring off anything of the sort. There were several ghosts, it seemed, at Bruton Abbey. But none of them had put in an appearance yet. Perhaps their activities took place on a seasonal basis, as with so much else in this part of the world. If the affair really went on indefinitely – Gadberry thought – nothing was going to take more getting used to than the importance the calendar assumes in a rural environment. If you had grown up to regard winter simply as so many months in which you have to put shillings rather more frequently into the gas meter, or summer as indicating nothing more than a changed weight of underwear, then you found it quite a business to get on terms with the fact that the earth’s annual wobble on its axis (or whatever it was) really has significance for the life of man. It was having that now. Winter had arrived. The Abbey was very cold.

Gadberry got out a volume of the
Memoirs
and went into his office. This was the name he had decided to give to his comfortably appointed, if not very adequately heated, sitting-room. For country gentlemen, it had appeared, always have offices. They keep accounts and things in a safe there. They interview tenants and give them whisky. If the place is very grand (and Bruton
was
very grand) they hold conferences with a perfect gentleman known as the Agent. Gadberry held such conferences with Mrs Minton’s Agent, a person of vaguely military provenance called Captain Fortescue. Fortescue and he had arrived, Gadberry felt, at a very good understanding. Major matters were settled Fortescue’s way, but with a great air of having been thought up by Gadberry. Minor matters were also settled Fortescue’s way, but this time with Fortescue being given high marks for vigilance and efficiency. It was a discreet and civilised arrangement, reflecting, Gadberry thought, credit on both of them. Certainly it kept Great-aunt Prudence happy, and this was clearly something laudable in itself. The old girl was a benefactor. It was their business to do her proud.

Not – Gadberry reminded himself, as he settled down for a few minutes relaxation – that he and Fortescue were remotely in a conspiracy. Fortescue was entirely honest, and therefore potentially an enemy.
All
honest men were that. The thought was a little daunting. It made Gadberry feel lonely.

He reached for a decanter, and poured himself a glass of sherry. The decanter was a beautiful affair of Waterford glass, and it had been given him by Aunt Prudence. There was a puzzle in this – a puzzle that had several times made him feel distinctly uneasy. Aunt Prudence was certainly not given to swimming in alk, and she appeared never to have heard of cocktails. But wine was served, if sparingly, at meals, and the old girl appeared to have no feelings whatever about one’s private habits in this regard. How could Comberford – the real Nicholas Comberford – have been so ill-informed in the matter? It was actually her fanatical objection to liquor that he had advanced as a principal reason for his inability to face the prospect of domestication at Bruton Abbey himself. Perhaps Aunt Prudence had entirely changed her views over the past few years. But Gadberry had gathered no hint to support this hypothesis, and the little fishing for information which he had ventured upon with Boulter had yielded at least a presumption the other way.