Charles Palliser (155 page)

“You obviously take a very close interest in the suit. You say that this individual’s identity has not been revealed, but may I assume that it is known to you?”

He smiled at me so coldly that I began to wonder how I had ever thought him kind and good-hearted. And now, as I looked at him, the strangest idea crossed my mind.

“Forgive me for not answering that question,” he replied. “But you do see, don’t you, that you cannot remain safe simply by allowing yourself to be declared dead? Too much is at stake.”

“You mean, to this individual my life is an insignificant obstacle?”

He merely flicked at his polished boots with the edge of his pocket handkerchief.

“But you forget,” I said, “that to the world I am already dead.”

He smiled and said softly: “But you see, I know the truth.”

As I looked at his face I felt that I was reading his very soul. How could I have imagined that anything but greed and self-interest motivated him? The blood rushed to my head with shame as I remembered how trusting I had been. I had gone to him with my hideous story of the death of Stephen and he had brushed it aside. The death of Stephen! I recalled that Stephen had told me how it was Henry who had persuaded him to trust his aunt. Surely he had been implicated in his death! What a fool I had been!

How dared I blame my mother for her fatal trustfulness!

“Then I assume,” I said in as steady a voice as I could muster; “that you have come to put to me once again your infamous proposal that I should blackmail Sir David and Lady Mompesson?”

As I spoke I moved towards the door to make it clear that I wanted him gone.

However, he remained reclining in his chair, idly swinging one leg. His self-confidence had grown in proportion as my peace of mind diminished.

“You are quite out,” he answered.

I was so surprised that I sat down.

“Imagine,” he began, looking up at the ceiling reflectively, “how very different the situation would be if that will which you and some of your friends went to so much trouble to retrieve, should still exist?”

“But it doesn’t,” I replied. “I saw it destroyed in my very presence.”

“Yes, but supposing it had not been destroyed?” he persevered.

“Then if it could be laid before the Court I should be in danger no longer.”

He gave a sharp, angry laugh: “Is that all that strikes you? Don’t you care that it would make you the owner of the property?”

“That too,” I agreed.

“That too,” he echoed, leaning forward and gripping the arms of the chair.

I shrugged my shoulders.

“Are you really so unconcerned?” he muttered to himself. He stared at me for a moment and then suddenly said: “What if I should tell you that the will does exist?”

I started: “Then I should tell you again that I saw it burnt to ashes before my eyes.”

He hesitated a moment and then said: “What you saw old Clothier destroy 716 THE

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was a careful copy of the will made on parchment of an identical type and written in an accurate legal hand.”

“Nonsense,” I said. “The document I took from the hiding-place was the original.

You said so yourself.”

He nodded: “I did. And so it was.”

“And it never left my possession until it was taken from me and destroyed.”

“Except once,” Henry said softly with a smile. “When you slept on my sopha for a few hours the morning you came to me.”

I gasped and immediately anticipated what he was going to say.

“And while you slumbered I sat at my desk,” he went on, “and made as accurate a copy of it as lay within my power. And given my experience as a law-copier and the fact that I had all the materials I needed at hand — including an old and blank sheet of parchment — I was able to make a very good copy indeed. Certainly good enough to deceive you and old Clothier.”

I did not doubt that what he was saying was the truth.

“Why did you do this?”

“As a precaution in case anything happened to it.”

“And where is it now?”

“Safe where it belongs.”

I could make nothing of this.

“And you see how far-sighted I was to take such a precaution,” he went on; “and how grateful to me you ought to be?”

I tried to collect my scattered wits. This did not make sense: “But why should you fear that?” I cried. “We were about to take the document to your principal. It would not have deceived him.”

I faltered and broke off for even as I spoke, it all became clear to me.

“There was no such appointment, was there? It was Silas Clothier whom you went to see and not your principal. It was you who arranged to lure me into that trap.”

“Stuff!” he said. “You saw how badly injured I was.”

“False! False! You were not badly hurt. Or if you were, that was the price you were ready to pay. It was all a charade!”

“This is absurd. You don’t surely imagine that a man in Pamplin’s position would involve himself …”

“I don’t know. I think I could suspect him of anything, for all he is a clergyman. (I know more about him than you think.) And yet I believe you duped him as much as me.

Yes, I see it now, you wanted him there precisely because he would be an unimpeachable witness to my abduction and your resistance to it in case it ever came to light.”

As if he had for once no answer to this, he turned his head away.

“I think I understand it now. You sold me and the will to Silas Clothier, though I don’t know how you knew how to find him. But you also intended to cheat him as much as you betrayed me and so you made that forgery. And once I was dead and he expected to claim the estate under the codicil, then I imagine that you intended to go to the Mompessons and tell them you had the will. Or rather, that you represented someone who had it. And in that situation they would have given you almost anything to have it back.”

“You’re very clever,” he said and I took his remark as sarcastic.

“No, what you mean is that I’ve been a complete fool. But I believe I understand now.

There is more. You betray anyone who trusts you if there’s OLD FRIENDS IN A NEW LIGHT

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an advantage to be got from it. Poor Stephen trusted you and I’d stake my life that you betrayed him, though I don’t understand how or why. But when you urged him to deliver himself into the power of his aunt who sent him to that wicked place to be done away with, I’ll wager you did so for a reward. And by doing that you helped to murder him. Why, that’s why you were so poor the first time I came to you and so much more prosperous the next time!”

He stared at me without smiling but did not make any effort to answer my charge.

“But when it was Silas Clothier who died that night instead of I, you were taken by surprise,” I continued. “How dumbfoundered you were to see me again! Your scheme was in ruins, for since I was still alive the Mompessons were not in the grave danger you had hoped for. That is why you wanted me to remain hidden so that I could join you in blackmailing them.”

“Hardly that,” he protested gently. “Let us say, ‘arriving at a composition advantageous to both parties’. But it was clumsy of me to have suggested it. I hadn’t realized what high principles you have. And yet since they apparently permit you to burgle a house and steal the property of another, perhaps it was pardonable in me not to appreciate this.”

I flushed: “I believe there is a difference. I thought I had a moral right to the inheritance even if I had to steal the will back. But I don’t see any need to justify my actions to you.”

“Just don’t be so ready to accuse me. Now, on that basis, let us be perfectly frank with one another. Will you hear what I have to say?”

“I will at least hear it. Be quick.”

“I am no longer interested in the Mompessons. I have a much better proposal. I was delighted to hear you say just now that you have a moral right to the will, for I am offering it to you.”

“To me? I have nothing to pay you with, and I don’t imagine you are offering it as a gift.”

“You would not make a good man of business. Only consider for a moment. Who else derives any advantage from the will? Not the Mompessons for while you are alive, they can make no use of it. If they laid it before the Court you could come forward and claim the estate. In order for it to be of any value to them, they would have to know that you were dead and then marry that mad girl to the half-wit.”

I shuddered for I had not considered the implications of the re-discovery of the will as they affected Henrietta. Perhaps she was no longer safe from a forced marriage, as I had believed. But how did Henry know so much about the Mompessons?

“You are the one who stands to gain the most,” he went on. “For you would go from beggary to opulence.”

“Then what do you want from me?” I asked.

“I want you to agree to convey to me a third share in the property.”

“A third share!” I exclaimed. Then I added: “Have you not forgotten one thing? I am not yet of age and therefore have no power either to alienate any real property I may possess or to bind myself to do so in the future.”

“My dear fellow, you seem to forget that I am a Chancery lawyer. Of course I have considered that. All I want from you at this stage is your consent. I will retain possession of the will but I will file a bill on your behalf — acting through a third-party, of course, in order to conceal my role — serving notice

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to the Court that the succession of the Maliphant claimant under the codicil is objected to. There will be no difficulty in drawing out this process until you are of age and can then execute a bond by which you will bind yourself to the conveyance of the property in my favour.”

“I merely asked from curiosity,” I said. “For the bargain itself, I can give you your answer now. You inferred from what I said a moment ago that I believe I have a right to the will and therefore to the estate, but if you had attended to my words more carefully you would have heard that what I said was that I once believed that. I believe so no longer, and I assure you that I will never consent to what you propose.”

He was clearly surprised and, from the way his face darkened, very angry.

“You’re mad,” he exclaimed. “If you agree to this you will inherit vast wealth. But if you refuse …”

“As I will, I assure you,” I broke in.

“Then you leave me with only two choices. Either I can sell the will back to Sir David.”

Then Henrietta would once again be forced into marriage with Tom!

“Or, on the other hand,” he continued, “I can offer it to the Maliphant heir who will, of course, destroy it and with it your chance of ever inheriting the estate.”

“I tell you, I do not care.”

“No? But you forget that in both cases the other party needs your death, the Mompessons so that that girl inherits and the Maliphant claimant in order to inherit under the codicil.”

From the way he looked at me I knew precisely what he was threatening.

“So there is your choice: on the one hand, wealth and safety; on the other, poverty and … at the least, danger.”

His words strangely recalled the choice offered me by my mother many years before, but now the terms were much more starkly opposed for it was not wealth and danger against poverty and safety, but a choice that presented itself quite unequivocally to self-interest. And, though Henry did not know it, the choice was all the starker because of Henrietta. In rejecting wealth and safety I was also condemning her to marriage with Tom. And yet I did not hesitate.

“I have given you my answer,” I said. “And I assure you that I will never change my mind. Once I was prepared to go to almost any lengths to gain that estate for I believed that I had Justice on my side. But I did wrong and brought harm and unhappiness to myself and, what is more important, to others.”

I believe that until I spoke these words he had thought that my refusal was merely a bargaining ploy, but now he realized that I meant what I said.

“You believe that merely because harm to other people came of your actions, that proves that you did not have Justice on your side?” he said mockingly. “What a naive view of the world. You think there are rewards for Justice and punishments for doing wrong?”

“You have misunderstood me again. I still believe I had Justice on my side, but what I have learned is that I have no right to Justice. Society itself is unjust.”

“You talk so easily of Justice and Injustice,” he suddenly cried with extraordinary venom. “What do you know of those things? What right have you, a Huffam and a Clothier, to talk of Justice when your two families — and the damned Mompessons —

have done so much wrong to mine?”

“What are you talking about?” I asked in amazement.

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“I have as much right to a share of the estate as you. If my great-grandfather had received his due …”

He broke off as if suddenly realizing that he had said too much and sat for some moments making an effort to compose himself again.

A right to a share of the estate? Did he then have some kind of connexion with my family?

He stood up and said: “If you change your mind, you know where to find me. We have a short while, since the time-limit does not expire for a little longer.”

“I have given you my reply,” I said.

“In that case, you must abide by the consequences,” he said and left the room.

I sat down to consider the implications of what I had learned. First I tried to work out who the Maliphant claimant could be and how it was that Henry knew his identity. My own connexion with him came through Stephen Maliphant. Had Stephen been sent to the school to die because he was the heir? In that case was the claimant Stephen’s aunt or someone closely connected with her? If that assumption were correct, then was Henry himself related to the claimant? Was he himself, even, the Maliphant claimant?

His proposal was hardly consistent with that, for in that case he would surely have destroyed the will. (Unless he was playing his hand even more deviously than I understood.) Yet his reference to his own family’s rights suggested that he had some blood-connexion with me. Was he related to one of the five families descended from Henry Huffam: the Huffams, the Mompessons, the Clothiers, the Palphramonds, and the Maliphants? Where then did he fit in the pattern?