At these words a thought occurred to me: the record might be in that ancient chest that Mr Advowson showed me which he said had come from the old chapel! Would I ever have the chance to look for it?
Miss Lydia dabbed at her eyes and then went on in an unsteady voice: “As the ceremony was ending we heard a horseman riding up. John … John went out to see who it was. It must have been the man sent by Jeoffrey.”
“Was there a sword-fight?” I asked, remembering Mrs Belflower’s story which was being so strangely confirmed.
“I will tell you. I looked out of one of the old windows in the chapel and saw John come into sight below me and then stand amidst a group of trees that stood between the Old Hall and the high ground.”
“I know!” I cried. “There are four elm-trees just there planted in a square.”
“No, there are five,” Miss Lydia said. “They were planted by Jeoffrey to form a quincunx many years before. There is a statue before each of them. And they are oaks.”
“It must be the same place,” I insisted. “Just beneath the Pantheon!”
“The Pantheon? Do you mean that Greek building just above the Old Hall?” she asked, and I nodded.
“Where you and I met that day, John,” Henrietta said.
“I know where you mean,” the old lady said, but her next words plunged me back into confusion about whether we meant the same place. “But that is the Mausoleum. It was built by Jeoffrey in order to improve the view from the Old Hall before he decided to abandon it altogether and build the new house. He is buried there.”
“Then that is why his name does not appear in the graveyard at Melthorpe!” I exclaimed.
“Go on with your tale, Great-aunt,” Henrietta urged.
“As I looked out I could not at first perceive what John was doing. He appeared to be looking at the statue that stood before the tree in the middle. (I should say that the statues were very famous, for though they had been sculpted by a local workman — a man called Feverfew — he was a very gifted mason, and they were considered as good as all but the best Italian work.) Then I noticed that there seemed to be a new figure behind it. It was as if there were not five statues, but six which was quite contrary to the pattern. Then to my amazement it moved and I realized that it was a man. I saw his face full in the moonlight. I did not recognise him. I am sure I would have known him if I had ever seen him. It was such a strange countenance: a big bulbous nose and deep eyes. But most of all I was struck by the expression. I have never forgotten it: such a terrible picture of suffering on such a young face.”
She paused and I said: “I believe that very statue now lies in the garden of my mother’s cottage in Melthorpe, for she told me how Martin Fortisquince’s mother brought it with her when she came to live in that house when she was widowed.”
“She was not widowed,” Miss Lydia said. “She and her husband were estranged a few months after the events I am speaking of and that is when she went to Melthorpe. It was suspected that she knew something of the stranger. In short, that … And she believed the statue saved his life. But never mind. She died in childbirth a few months later and her infant, Martin, returned to his father — such a kind, generous man — to be brought up by him at the Old Hall.”
There was a silence. How complicated things were! New possibilities occurred to me as a result of these words, and I wondered if I would ever know the truth. Each time I seemed about to grasp it, it receded further.
Then I said: “But I interrupted your story. What happened when the stranger came forward?”
“He drew his sword,” the old lady continued in quavering tones. “John did the same and they began to fight. Suddenly a woman came running out from another door of the Hall. She was in a long white dress. I still recall how pale it seemed in the moonlight. Then I realized that it was my aunt, poor mad Anna. I had not seen her for many years and they had not told me that she was living here under the charge of Mr and Mrs Fortisquince. She came up behind the other man and they both turned to look at her for she called something out. Something extraordinary. Then she cried: ‘Watch out behind you!’ Because of this John must have thought she was warning him that there was another assailant, for he turned his back on his opponent. I saw the man … he stepped forward and.… He stabbed him.”
She broke off and fought against her tears. What had the madwoman cried out? I felt there was something crucial here. Something I needed to know that was being kept from me.
“What was she calling?” I asked, but Henrietta put her hand on my arm and shook her head at me.
The old lady looked up, however, and said with terrible sadness: “She was calling out, ‘My son, my son!’ She must have taken John for her lost child.”
“Of course,” I prompted, “it was because she was mad that she forgot that the child had died?”
At this, Miss Lydia suddenly looked very old and terribly frightened.
“What happened then?” Henrietta asked quickly, with a reproachful glance at me.
The old lady wiped her eyes on her handkerchief and said softly: “My parents tried to force me into marriage with a man I loathed. I managed at last to resist.”
Henrietta and I stared at each other. What a hideous tale! What struck me most forcefully was the brutality of Jeoffrey Huffam. He had seduced and discarded a young woman, possibly ordered the murder of his granddaughter’s lover, and then tried to force her into marriage with a man she hated. This was the man whose last will I had believed I had a duty to uphold! He had written his first will, his codicil, and that final testament in order to frighten, reward, and bribe his heirs. If I no longer had the duty to do it, did I still feel I had any moral right to steal a will that had been made by such a man and with such motives?
At that moment Henrietta said: “Take comfort, dear Great-aunt. I will not try to dissuade John from regaining the will any longer.”
Miss Lydia clapped her hands and cried through her tears: “Thank goodness! Oh, Henrietta, I have been so afraid for you!”
So now I had to do it for Henrietta’s sake! I felt a profound relief that the responsibility for making the decision was being lifted from me.
“But before I can try,” I pointed out, “we have to work out how to open the hiding-place.”
“Will you help us, Henrietta?” Miss Lydia asked. “For three heads are better than two, and your young one will be of more use than my poor old one?”
“Don’t ask me, Great-aunt. I have withdrawn my prohibition but I have not said that I approve.”
“Very well, then you and I, John, will do our best alone. First of all, please explain exactly what happened when you and your poor friend tried to open the hiding-place.”
Henrietta looked at me sharply and I blushed. Miss Lydia realized what she had revealed and glanced timidly at her great-niece. There was nothing for it and Henrietta had to hear the whole story. When we had done, she said nothing but looked thoughtful.
So now I began to describe the design of the “quincunx of quincunxes” on the entablature of the chimney-piece which Mr Digweed and I had discovered was a lock, while all the time Henrietta sat with a book in her lap, glancing towards us occasionally. As I went over our actions that night, Miss Lydia found a large sheet of paper and a pen and, sitting at the little round-table, I drew the design of twenty-five quatre-foils.
“There appear to be twenty-five bolts,” I explained, “each representing the bud of one of the quatre-foils of the design. We found that each bolt may be drawn out several inches, for we did this to all of them. But nothing happened, and it seems that only certain of the bolts must be withdrawn. I suspect that if any superfluous ones are moved, they serve actually to lock the slab of marble more firmly in place.”
“Or do worse than that!” Miss Lydia said and I nodded, not understanding what she meant but anxious to continue.
“So I believe,” I went on, “that the solution lies in establishing precisely which combination of bolts should be drawn out.”
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“The quincunx of roses,” said Miss Lydia, “is the device of both the Huffams and the Mompessons, but I am not sure that I have ever seen such an arrangement as this quincunx of quincunxes, as you aptly called it. Though it seems familiar.”
“I know the quincunx, too,” Henrietta said, looking up from her book; “for it appears on some worthless pieces of china that I inherited from my parents. (Everything of any value was sold before I knew anything of it.) So I suppose it must have been on the Palphramond coat-of-arms, too.”
“I believe,” Miss Lydia said, “that all the families descended from Sir Henry Huffam — the Palphramond and even the Maliphant families — adopted variants of the quincunx. I have even heard, John, that the Clothiers took it for their blazon when Nicholas changed his name from Abraham and applied for a grant of arms.”
“Then this design,” I said, indicating my drawing, “appears to me to be a kind of monstrous assertion of the triumph of the Mompesson branch of the family over the rest of it.”
Miss Lydia seemed about to speak but Henrietta said, laying down her book: “There is a difference, however. For although it seems that the design of the different quincunxes in each of the family’s devices is identical, the colours are not the same, are they?”
“Colours?” Miss Lydia exclaimed. “The correct term is ‘tinctures’.”
Seeing that Henrietta’s point was important, I said: “In the Huffam version of the device — which is surely the original and which I have seen on the family vault in Melthorpe church-yard — the four quatre-foils at the corners have white petals and a black bud, while the arrangement of tinctures of the central quatre-foil is precisely reversed: black petals and a white bud.”
As I spoke I took the quill and inked in the appropriate parts of the first figure of the design.
“And,” Miss Lydia said, “the Mompesson design is precisely the same except that the central quatre-foil has red petals — ‘gules’ in the language of heraldry. (Black is ‘sable’, you know, and white is ‘argent’.)”
She likewise inked in the next figure, blacking the buds of the four quatre-foils at the corners as I had done, and then covering with dots the petals of the central one to represent red.
“I remember my father telling me,” she went on, “that the original device of the Mompessons was the crab gules. He made up a new device by combining the Huffam blazon with it. So our shield has a crab and the quincunx of quatre-foils like the Huffam design, except that the central one is in gules to distinguish — or ‘difference’ — it. But you know, John, the quincunx of quincunxes represents not the triumph of the Mompessons over the other branches, but the union of the two founding families.”
Before I could answer this, Henrietta said: “The tinctures of the Palphramond design are the same as those of the Mompesson one.”
“And I believe the Maliphant design is identical to the Huffam,” Miss Lydia said.
Henrietta came across to the table and looked over my shoulder: “Then I believe that we are beginning to solve the puzzle.”
“Why do you say that?” I asked.
“Because I suspect that the answer to the question of which of the bolts should be withdrawn lies in the different tinctures.”
“Yes,” I exclaimed. “I believe you may be right.”
“I’m only a very foolish old woman,” said Miss Lydia smiling, “so I do not understand unless you explain it to me very slowly.”
“Well,” Henrietta began, “it seems that the petals of every quatre-foil may be black or white or red. But notice that in both designs the bud is always black or white, never red. What I’m suggesting is that this choice may correspond to the possible positions of each bolt: if black it should be withdrawn, if white left in position.”
“Or, of course, vice versa,” I said.
“Yes, that is true, I’m afraid,” Henrietta said. “It must be quite arbitrary.”
“I begin to see,” Miss Lydia said. “And this is exactly the kind of puzzle that my father used to love, for he had a passion for designs and conundrums and heraldry, and I believe it must have been he who devised this pattern in order to celebrate the alliance of the two families. (Indeed, I’m certain I once saw a memento of the wedding that looked like this.) So if I have understood you, the choice of which part of the design should be which tincture depends on how the three tinctures of the Huffam and Mompesson quincunxes have been incorporated to form this larger design?”
“That is so,” I said. “But is there any way we can work that out or is it entirely arbitrary and at hazard?”
“From what I recall of what my father told me, it is a principle of heraldry,” Miss Lydia said, “that nothing should be arbitrary. For one thing, the design should be … What’s the word? Like the reflection in a looking-glass?”
“Symmetrical!” Henrietta exclaimed.
“Yes!” I cried. “That is a great help. For the other two designs are merely replicas of the first two. So let me draw them in and let us see what results.”
I began to do so but Miss Lydia cried: “Don’t make those directly opposite mirror each other. Make the diagonals do so. That is much more like true heraldry.”
Seeing that she was right, I added to the design before us so that the first and fifth quincunxes and the second and third reflected each other.
“The difficulty with that,” Henrietta pointed out, “is that we have quite arbitrarily assumed that the first quincunx is the Huffam crest and the second is the Mompesson version of it. It might easily be the other way around.”
“Surely not,” I protested, “for the Huffam crest is the original motif and that family is the more ancient, so that it might fairly be assumed to be the point of departure.”
“On the other hand, since it was a Mompesson who devised it,” Miss Lydia suggested rather tartly, “one might expect that my family’s version of the quincunx would be not the first but the central one.”
“Or the Huffams’!” I objected.
“I had no intention of provoking another round in the feud,” Henrietta said, smiling, and Miss Lydia and I laughed uneasily. “But if we are right that the other four designs reflect each other, then the central one must surely be different from them in order to maintain the logic of the pattern. And in that case, whether the Huffam or the Mompesson is the first makes no odds, for the tinctures of the buds are white in each case and it is only the petals that differ.”
“Yes,” I said in excitement. “And that suggests that it is those four central bolts that should be withdrawn.”
“Or,” Henrietta said teazingly, “that it is they which should not be withdrawn.”
I had to admit that she was right.
“In that case,” I said, “I could pull out all the ‘white’ bolts except the central one and then pull that one out. And if that didn’t work, try it the other way around.”
“No!” the old lady cried, looking at me in alarm. “For there is a rumour that the lock incorporates a device of the kind which the French call a machine-infernale. A booby-trap. It was added after your attempt.”
“Do you mean it would be triggered if someone tried to force it?” I asked.
“Or,” she answered, “if the wrong bolts were withdrawn.”
“I see,” I said. “And what would be the consequence?”
“I have heard that there is a spring-gun inside which has been adapted from a game-keeper’s man-trap.”
I recalled what Harry had told me of the fate of his and Sukey’s father, and shuddered.
“But I have also been told,” Miss Lydia went on, “that it is only an alarm-bell that is released.”
“Then we must decide if the central bolt is white like the others or black, so that I know at least whether the bolt should be in the same position as them or not.”
“I think it must be black,” Henrietta said. “For if it were white then the design of the central figure would be the same as the Mompesson and Palphramond designs which wo
uld surely not be right. It will only be different if it is black.”
“Yes,” I agreed. “But in order to be sure, we need to know how the two original designs are merged in that one.”
“I should be able to work that out,” Miss Lydia said, laughing, “for I am myself the sole living result of the alliance between the Huffams and the Mompessons. My father had many books and papers concerned with genealogy and heraldry which must still be in the Library. I will hunt through them and try to find a clew.”
“But even if we could work it out,” Henrietta asked, apparently having quite forgotten her original disclaimer of interest; “how will you manage to get into the Great Parlour?”
“If necessary, I could pick the lock of the door (provided that my friend, Joey, brings me the tool I need), but that might take a long time so it would be better to get the keys. But there is a difficulty in stealing them from the nightwatchman …”
“Because he hides them!” Miss Lydia exclaimed.
“Precisely,” I said. “However, I believe I may be able to secure them, for I have a suspicion about them. But the real difficulty lies in getting out of the house afterwards. I cannot pick the locks of either the back-door or the street-door, and the first-floor windows are now barred.”