Charles Palliser (161 page)

“Very well,” said Mr Pamplin irritably. “We have established that there is no just cause or impediment …”

At that moment I stepped forward from behind the screen and cried: “Hold!”

They turned and I saw horror and dismay — though of different kinds — written upon every countenance. Henrietta screamed and backed away, holding up her hands but staring at me through her fingers that were splayed across her face. Bellringer uttered an oath. Mr Pamplin looked dismayed, while Bissett and Mr Phumphred were pale with shock.

“I am not a ghost,” I cried. “I did not die in fleet-ditch.”

I advanced up the shattered aisle and all but Bellringer and the clergyman moved away. I held out my hand towards the old coachman and he cautiously shook it.

Henrietta was hunched against the altar-table watching us with fearful intensity.

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I went up to her and, as if still believing me to be an apparition, she backed away.

“Forgive me,” I said to her in an undertone. “I believed it was for the best that you should think me dead. For your sake as well as mine.”

She shook her head in bewilderment: “You should have let me know!”

“I’m sorry,” I said.

Surely I could see in her face that she had loved me and had suffered! This was why she had listened to Bellringer.

“I did not mean to surprise you this way, but I had to prevent this marriage.” She was still staring at me in horror. Continuing to speak softly so that the others would not hear, I went on: “He is deceiving you. He means simply to enrich himself through you.”

As I was speaking Bellringer came up to us and stood beside her with an expression of solicitousness that I remembered well.

“That is not true,” Henrietta muttered, looking from one of us to the other. “He knows I am penniless.”

“No,” I said. “The will has appeared again. It was not destroyed as we all believed.

That means that if I really had been dead, then you would have inherited the estate.”

“Don’t listen to anything he says, Henrietta,” Bellringer said. “He hates me. He wants to injure me in your eyes.””

“But I know the will was not destroyed,” she protested to me. “That was why they wanted to marry me to Tom: so that I would make the estate safe for them. But I’m not marrying him. Harry has rescued me from that.”

I was baffled by her words. Was she, then, collaborating with Bellringer in outwitting her guardians? But at her next speech all became clear to me:

“And so, you see, when Aunt Isabella hears what I have done, she will destroy it and that will be the end of my prospects.”

“He has lied to you,” I said. “Lady Mompesson does not have the will. Bellringer himself has it.”

“That’s not true!” Henrietta cried, turning to him as she spoke.

“Dearest, he is lying,” Bellringer said and gently took her hand. To my dismay she allowed him to do so.

I was in a turmoil. This wasn’t how it should have turned out. What was happening?

Did Henrietta feel nothing for me? Did she love Bellringer? Did she even know that he had the will and was that why she was so dismayed to see me: my existence disqualified her as heir? Surely that could not be!

“How could it be the truth?” Bellringer went on. “For even though I see that he is alive, yet I still wish to make you mine. But you know that the Huffam heir stands between you and the estate, so if I only cared for your inheritance, would I marry you now?”

“Yes,” I cried, “because you know that my life hangs by a thread. Look at me, Henrietta,” I said to her, indicating my bandaged head. “His friends have tried to kill me once and he knows that they will try again.”

“I don’t believe you,” she said. “You have a crotchet about people trying to kill you.”

She turned to the clergyman and said in a firm voice: “Mr Pamplin, pray continue.”

“No!” I exclaimed, raising my voice so that the others would hear and trying one last desperate means. “He has tricked you, all of you! The marriage of Miss Henrietta that Sir David ordered you to bring about was to his brother, Tom.”

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“That is what he has saved me from!” Henrietta cried, flushing. She turned to me with an expression I had never seen on her face: “What are you trying to do to me?”

“Is that true?” demanded Mr Pamplin. Seeing Henrietta’s discomfiture he believed me and said: “In that case, you’ve made a damned fool of me, Bellringer.”

“But you showed me that letter from Mr Barbellion,” said Bissett, in alarm; “saying that it was Sir David’s wish as how I should accompany Miss Palphramond to her wedding with you.”

I knew that Bellringer was an accomplished forger: he had devised the note that Miss Quilliam had said had been the undoing of her and he had forged the copy of the will that had taken me in. But there was no point in trying to persuade them of this.

“You’re quite right, Mrs Bissett,” Bellringer said. “Don’t believe him.”

She shot me a malevolent look and nodded her head as if remembering all the times I had shewn myself to her to be unreliable.

“Do your work, Pamplin,” Bellringer said. “The bride is willing and the licence is in form.”

The clergyman nodded and those present took up again the positions in which I had interrupted them. I had played all my cards and had none left. So the ceremony was resumed and I discovered I had never desired her so much as now when I was forced to stand by and see her wed to another. I hated him as I had hated no-one before. In my powerlessness to oppose my fate, I was reminded of how I had crouched in the darkness beneath the Thames wharves and waited for the tide to rise and kill me.

“Listen!” Mr Phumphred exclaimed a few moments later.

Against the roaring of the wind I heard the hooves of a galloping horse.

I looked out of one of the western windows and saw the moon peep from behind some scurrying clouds whose paleness threw into silhouette the mausoleum on the hill that rose beside us. In the foreground were the four great elm-trees of Miss Lydia’s story bowing in the gusts of wind. And in a flash of lightning I saw a horse and rider approaching the house at a gallop.

I called out to describe what I had seen and Bellringer hurried to the window beside me. At that moment the rider threw himself to the ground and ran towards the building.

He was carrying something heavy that I could not make out. I did not recognise him, but I saw Bellringer blench as he looked out.

Then he ran to seize Henrietta and cried: “Quickly! He is coming in the back way.”

Though none of us — except Bellringer — were sure who the rider was, we were immediately united in a kind of guilty fear and followed the newly-wed couple towards the stair at the back of the chapel.

“Leave the lanthorns, you ideot!” Bellringer cried as Mr Phumphred made to pick one of them up.

When we reached the bottom of the stair, we listened but could hear nothing.

Bellringer led us towards the great hall and we had picked our way in the darkness halfway down its length when suddenly a voice that was so harsh with anger that I did not know it, shouted from behind us: “Stand where you are!”

We all froze. The man strode forward until he was within a few paces of us, peering to make out who was who in the gloom. I saw that he was carrying a duelling-pistol in each hand and I heard the locks click.

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“Is that you, Bellringer, you snivelling cheat?”

I recognised the voice now: it was David Mompesson.

“It is I, John Huffam,” I said.

“Then stand clear, meddler,” he said. “Justice must be done.” He stepped forward until he was level with me.

“Don’t be a fool, Mompesson,” I warned him.

He was staring intently at something over my shoulder and I turned in that direction.

There was a flash of lightning and I saw a figure caught in silhouette slipping silently towards the great door behind us. Seeing this Mompesson raised his right arm. I moved so that I was between him and his quarry.

“You can’t shoot him now,” I cried.

I saw Mompesson’s face like a white mask and knew that he was going to fire, but I found I was powerless to move. Suddenly I was violently pushed from behind. There was a vivid flash in front of my eyes and what seemed like a blow to the head. My lungs were filled with acrid smoke. I could not breathe. Then I found myself on the floor, gasping and blinded, my eyes seeing fireworks. Someone was lying beside me. Instantly there was another explosion, this time from a safe distance.

There was a high, terrible scream.

Then Joey’s voice beside me said hoarsely: “Are you all right, John?”

He had saved me. He had entered the Hall just as we came in and had pushed me out of the way of the first shot. (Later he explained how he came to arrive just then: he had seen my chaise as he was returning from Thorpe Woolston and had followed it to the Old Hall.)

He helped me to my feet and with his aid I staggered towards the rest of the party. Mr Phumphred had brought two of the lanthorns from the chapel and by its light I could see that the others were standing around Bellringer who lay on his back, except for Bissett who was kneeling beside him and had loosened his coat and shirt which were covered in something that looked black in the pale moonlight. Henrietta was cowering nearby, staring at Mompesson.

As we drew near Bellringer gasped: “I’ve done for you now, Mompesson. “You’ll hang for this, and nothing can save you.”

His face wore an expression of triumphant malice.

“He was trying to escape,” Mompesson protested to the rest of us. “I had no choice.”

Looking down at the injured man I could see that the ball had entered his chest from behind and left the body just below his heart.

“I’m finished,” he said suddenly. Then with something between a laugh and a gasp he added: “So Umphraville is avenged.”

Astonished by this allusion, I was about to ask him what he meant and how he knew of that ancient crime, but at that moment two figures appeared at the door — a lady and a gentleman carrying a lanthorn. As they drew near I recognised them as Lady Mompesson and Mr Barbellion. (Sir David, I learned later, had parted from the coach some miles away and had taken one of the carriage-horses and ridden into the park from the rear, which explained why he had reached us ahead of them.)

“What has occurred?” asked the solicitor, looking at the pistols that his client was holding.

Mompesson seemed about to speak but Mr Barbellion raised a hand to stop him: “If you please, Sir David. I advise you to say nothing.”

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“He shot him in the back,” said Mr Pamplin laconically.

“Did anyone of you witness this alleged incident?” Mr Barbellion asked, glancing keenly from one face to another.

Bissett looked at him expressionlessly and Mr Phumphred fearfully, glancing also at Lady Mompesson who was gazing fixedly at him. Mr Pamplin looked away.

“Are you going to try to cheat me of my revenge?” gasped Bellringer. “Charles, damn you, you saw it.”

“It was too deuced dark to see anything,” the clergyman muttered.

“Henrietta?”

She said nothing. Was she too shocked to speak?

“I saw it,” said Mr Phumphred looking straight into Lady Mompesson’s face.

“You ideot!” Lady Mompesson screamed at her son and swiftly struck his face.

“Then I can do nothing for you, Sir David,” said Mr Barbellion. “You have very little time. I advise you to make the best use of it.”

To my amazement Lady Mompesson knelt over the dying man and began searching his pockets. Seeing this her son knelt down and did the same, laying his weapons on the ground.

“You’ll find nothing,” Bellringer gasped.

They pulled everything out onto the broken tiles of the floor. Lady Mompesson found his pocket-book and looked through it.

I stepped forward: “I protest at this. The man is seriously injured. Someone must be sent for a surgeon.”

The two ignored me. They reminded me of a pair of thieves I had once seen rifling the pockets of a corpse on a piece of waste ground near Bethnal-green.

Then a more sinister consideration struck me. The will would only be of value to them if two eventualities occurred: my death and the marriage of Henrietta to either Mompesson himself or Tom. It must be that their keenness to find the will was because they knew very well that someone was determined to procure my death.

Mr Barbellion was watching me and now smiled thinly in greeting. I must have presented a strange and unimpressive appearance for, in addition to the injuries received in the attack by Barney, my eyebrows were now singed and my face blackened and scorched by the blast of Mompesson’s pistol.

“Ah, the Huffam heir welcoming us to the mansion of his fathers,” the lawyer said.

I heard a chinking sound and saw Mompesson drop several keys from Bellringer’s pockets onto the worn squares of the floor. One of them was enormous.

“I do not have it,” said Bellringer. “I am not such a fool.” He paused and fought for breath, raising his head a little so that he could watch Lady Mompesson and her son who had given up the search and were now looking at him eagerly. “It’s safe,” he said.

The words were coming faintly and at longer and longer intervals. “It’s back. Back where … where it came from.”

His head fell onto the broken tiles.

“Back where it came from!” I repeated to myself, staring at the huge key. And he had said to me at my lodgings that it was “safe where it belongs”. Those words had reminded me of something that someone else had said, but I could not recall who.

“You fool,” Lady Mompesson hissed at her son. “You’ve destroyed us all.”

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“What shall I do?” he muttered.

“I cannot advise you,” said Mr Barbellion. “To do so would be to become an accessary after the fact.”

I saw Mompesson clench his fist and move forward, but his mother took his arm and held him back.

“I can only describe to you,” the solicitor went on, “a desperate course of action that a man who has committed a serious felony might take. He might go abroad as swiftly as possible. Therefore he would need to get to the nearest port — which I believe must be Boston — and take the packet-boat to one of the Dutch ports. I fear he would have to reside overseas for the remainder of his life.”