Christmas at Candleshoe (24 page)
When the assault does come it is sudden and formidable. Grant, who is at the stair-head, is among the first to be aware of it. At one moment there is nothing below him but darkness and silence; at the next a powerful beam of light is sweeping up the staircase, and behind it, with a rush, come three or four men in a bunch. A bow twangs; there is a scream of pain; the powerful light vanishes; and in the same instant a lantern balanced on the barricade explodes in a shower of glass under the impact of a revolver bullet. Silence follows.
It must be said that the first round has been won. But the scream and the revolver-shot have done their work. In the uncertain light of lanterns, torches, and candles the adults look at the children, and then with fresh eyes at one another. In a voice that has held unquestioned authority in the western desert, Arthur Spendlove orders Jay’s force to the far end of the gallery. Nobody moves. Jay’s own brow is suddenly like thunder. It is decidedly a moment of crisis. Lord Scattergood, who appears to possess other than intellectual means of assessing and responding to a situation of this kind, leaps with surprising agility to the top of the barrier and down on the other side. ‘This won’t do,’ he says. ‘I shall go down and tell the blackguards what I think of them.’ But he has not taken three steps before he is unexpectedly held up. A puff of acrid vapour comes up the staircase, and within a second it is a dense and stifling cloud. Lord Scattergood is driven back, blinded and coughing, over the barrier. There can be no question of what has happened. The enemy has let off some species of smoke screen with deadly effect. There is a great sound of breaking glass. Jay is smashing every window he can reach. Then there is a shrill whistle and his force is in tolerably orderly retreat to the east end of the gallery. As the adults, unpractised on this treacherous terrain, follow, the ancient flooring creaks dangerously beneath them.
And now the whole force is back on the little stage. Jay with astonishing rapidity orders individuals here and there. Already he has his best bowmen lurking in the canvas foliage of the wings or crouched behind the dusty burlap simulacra of gnarled logs and mossy banks. It is very much a last stand – and not in Arden but in Sherwood. The far end of the gallery is still obscured in smoke, but the stuff seems to be making no progress towards them. If the enemy is already established there he still has a daunting stretch of space to cover. Once more the defenders appear to have the upper hand. And suddenly Jay gives a shout. ‘Listen!’ He is echoed by a cry from the boy who is still at watch by a window. Faintly in the night can be heard a queer, distant ululation – a rising and falling note that it takes only a second to identify. A police-car, moving very fast on the high road, is taking no chances and freely sounding its siren.
Jay’s army gives a yell of excitement. And at the same instant something fantastic begins to happen near the farther end of the gallery. The junk which lines its sides is moving. Old portmanteaux, mangles, cooking-stoves, chests are edging forward, while at the same time spreading across the floor. Behind this armour the enemy is advancing – cautiously but at a fair pace. It is taking no more chances with the bows of the defenders. Jay gives a sharp order, and a whole flight of arrows spends itself in vain. The advancing barrier is level with the Christmas box when something on the stage stirs, howls, leaps. The uncanny monster approaching has roused Lightning from his indifference at last; he takes one more leap and is on top of whatever it represents. There are shouts, cries, curses; and behind the barrier rise up the figures of several men, flailing with their arms as the wolf-hound attacks them. Two overbalance and collide; a heavy chest in the middle of the floor goes over with a crash; and suddenly the whole picture disappears inexplicably from view. Candleshoe shudders and sways through all its fabric, and its air is filled first with the crash of tumbling masonry and falling timbers and then with a dust so suffocating that it is impossible even to cry out at what has occurred. But there can be no doubt of the event. It is simple and definitive. The rotten and over-strained floor of the Long Gallery has given way throughout the greater part of its length. The criminals with much else have disappeared into the gulf with all the instantaneousness of a good
coup de théâtre
. Nothing much is left standing except the little stage – and upon it – incongruously – those who have been cast in the role of audience to this topsy-turvy drama.
The rumble of subsiding debris ceases and the air begins to clear. Through the shattered windows men can be heard shouting – so many men as to put the sagacity of Robin’s father beyond doubt. Grant has possessed himself of an electric torch, and with this he proceeds to make a survey of the position. At this east end of the gallery the beams and joists appear to have held, so that there seems no reason to fear a further collapse. The entire defending force is unscathed, and it should presently be possible to unblock the east staircase and descend.
Grant turns his torch upon the yawning cavity in the middle of the gallery and finds that the beam has no power to pierce its obscurity. It occurs to him that all the criminals may not have been engulfed; someone may have managed to scramble to the side. The beam reaches no more than halfway down the gallery; he plays it along first one wall and then the other. Some of the accumulated lumber has tumbled into the pit; some remains; there is no sign of a human form.
The beam halts. For a second Grant believes that he has spotted somebody after all – a single figure, standing pressed against the wall. Then he realizes that the figure is in marble; it is one of the youths who stands on either side of Gerard Christmas’ monument. He moves the torch and sees that the corresponding figure is missing. The collapsing floor has carried with it part of the face of the monument. Where previously the marble curtains hung there is now vacancy. The torch probes this and uncertainly picks out a small chamber, once more piled with lumber, and thick with dust. Candleshoe has faced its crisis and the Christmas box has opened.
The ambulances have departed with the battered evildoers, and Lightning is said to have enjoyed a large breakfast. Mrs Feather is glad of a cup of tea. The sunrise has struck her as particularly beautiful, and it is already warm on the terrace that flanks the eastern façade of Candleshoe Manor. The house has been sadly battered, but in this Mrs Feather sees a certain advantageousness. Major repairs being now essential, it should be possible to make a thorough job of restoration – including adequately modern domestic offices and first-class plumbing – without any risk of offending local or antiquarian sentiment.
And the rooms must be rearranged. With sudden inspiration, Mrs Feather sees that her breakfast-room should face this way. On a glorious summer morning such as this it will thus be possible for her guests to stroll out with their coffee to the terrace. For that matter, this is what everybody has done now; it is the presence of nearly all who have been concerned in the late untoward events, here assembled for the purpose of consuming whatever Tab, Jay, and Mr Armigel can provide, that has put this pleasant picture of future house-parties into Mrs Feather’s head. And there is nobody here, she reflects, whom she would not much enjoy entertaining.
Except, conceivably, Dr Rosenwald. Perhaps it is because this eminent expert has only lately come into anybody’s head, and been extracted in a thoroughly chilled condition from Lord Scattergood’s car, that his disposition appears to Mrs Feather to be not of the first charm. The distinguished Roman, indeed, is concerned to make himself agreeable, and has already entered into conversation with Mrs Feather on the large opportunities that attend any American lady of conjoined means and taste who is minded to amass paintings under expert guidance.
Paintings, meanwhile, are occupying other members of the party. For it is paintings – all much browned and some of them sadly battered – that the Christmas box has proved chiefly to contain. This is an odd circumstance upon which Mr Archdeacon and Mr Armigel are even now in learned conference. They presently opine that Squire Candleshoe, at the time of his notable dispute with the first Earl of Scattergood, must have taken the precaution of stowing away in a secret chamber the access to which was still known to him such works of art as he had succeeded in abstracting from Solomon’s Cottage. The librarian and the chaplain, armed with piles of dusters and assisted by Jay, turn over the oddly revealed little collection where it has been stacked at one end of the terrace, and presently they come upon what confirms their conjecture. This is a large canvas behind the accumulated dirt on which it is possible to discern what can only be an encounter of Actaeon and Diana.
‘Ah – the Schiavone!’ Mr Archdeacon is delighted. ‘A most interesting minor painter of the Venetian School. Let us have Dr Rosenwald to confirm our discovery.’
Dr Rosenwald however, who conceives himself to be pressing home his advantage with Mrs Feather, declines for the moment to interest himself in such small game. Mr Archdeacon turns roguishly to his employer. ‘Marquess, let us he quite clear about this, so that there may be no further dispute between the houses of Spendlove and Candleshoe. Miss Candleshoe has ceded you the Leda and the Lollia. Do you acknowledge that the Diana and Actaeon is hers?’
‘Certainly, my dear Archdeacon. I can have no claim upon anything that has been come upon in this extraordinary way. And now bring Armigel here for a cup of this excellent tea.’
Jay is left, rather a lonely figure, turning over and dusting the remaining paintings. Grant Feather, watching him from a distance, sees that the contents of the Christmas box have been far from answering the boy’s romantic expectations. Partly, perhaps, because the pirate hoard has revealed itself as no more than these dismal squares of darkened canvas, and partly as a reaction from his heroic defence of Candleshoe, Jay, for the first time in Grant’s brief acquaintance with him, is visibly depressed. He examines the paintings one by one, conscientiously but listlessly. Then suddenly he pauses at his task. ‘Grant,’ he calls out, ‘come here.’
Grant walks across the terrace. Jay is looking in some perplexity at the painting now beneath his hand. He has just wiped the dust from its surface, and what is revealed is the portrait of a youth, richly attired in what appears to be carnival costume, and holding in his hand a small black mask. Jay gives another wipe. ‘I can’t understand it,’ he says. ‘It looks familiar.’
Grant takes one glance and agrees. The portrait is clearly by an Italian painter of the early eighteenth century, and is of no high distinction. But it is extremely interesting, nevertheless. Jay may well find it perplexingly familiar. For the youth who looks squarely out of the canvas might be the mirror image of Jay Ray.
And suddenly, without a word from Grant, this comes to Jay. He turns even paler than usual, and then very quietly asks, ‘Who is it?’
Everybody has gathered round. Jay turns from the portrait and looks at the circle of familiar faces with something like terror. Mr Armigel kneels down, adjusts his spectacles, and reads out an inscription. ‘
Johannes Candleshoe. Aet. Suite 19. Venetia 1720
… This is undoubtedly a portrait of himself brought home by Jack Candleshoe from his Grand Tour.’
Miss Candleshoe has stepped forward. She takes one look and speaks decisively. ‘Then, pray, may I be told why this Jack Candleshoe is indistinguishable from Jay?’
‘By all means.’ Mr Archdeacon speaks from behind the first glorious cloud of tobacco smoke which he has allowed himself this morning. ‘Jay is a Candleshoe. In fact, my dear madam, there can be little doubt that he is your heir.’
Rarely can it have fallen to a professional oracle – one with leisurely habits, metaphysical interests, and a highly involved and periphrastically form of address – to enjoy such an opportunity as is now Mr Archdeacon’s. His explanations occupy just under an hour. And yet, in essence, they are extremely simple. He had, at the time of the depositing of the Benison pictures at Candleshoe, fallen into a relationship of some confidence and familiarity with the lately established housekeeper, an American lady passing under the name of Mrs Ray. Perhaps because by that time Mr Archdeacon had already been in notable possession of the qualities of a sage, or perhaps simply because some confidant had become emotionally necessary to her, Mrs Ray had revealed that hers was a surprising and anomalous, yet wholly respectable situation. A Californian by birth, she had married, obscurely but with an undoubted legality, a shiftless Englishman named Rupert Candleshoe, who had very shortly thereafter died. The character of her husband having been far from such as to make her repose any ready confidence in his relations, and she herself being a woman of strong – even original – turn of mind, she had determined upon a little anonymous prospecting before entering into any overt connexion with them. This odd resolution it was that had brought her under her maiden name to Candleshoe; and at Candleshoe she had still been turning over her problem when she suddenly met with an accidental death. To Mr Archdeacon her conduct had appeared a shade fantastic. Yet this was perhaps essentially because he had remained without one vital piece of information. He had no notion that the lady passing as Mrs Ray had an infant child, or that the decision confronting her was whether her child’s future should be that of an American lad with his own way to make, or that of a bankrupt English squire. Had Mr Archdeacon known of the orphaned Jay’s existence, it would have been incumbent upon him to come forward with such facts as he knew. As it was, the strange situation apparently terminated by the lady’s sudden death had seemed no affair of his, and the uncertain relationship always existing between Benison and Candleshoe had militated against any casual revelation. But the facts of the case were undoubted now; and Jay’s mother in the course of her confidence had been sufficiently explicit in the matter of times and places to enable the situation to be investigated and corroborated by whatever legal personages would be concerned.