Quincunx

  It was early evening as we passed between the stone pillars that marked the rear-entrance to the old Huffam estate and followed the over-grown carriageway as it wound through the decaying timber down towards the lake, taking the route that my mother and I had walked all those years ago when she made her fruitless appeal to the honour and generosity of Sir Perceval and his lady. So strong was the wind now that the elms were waving like willow-trees, and black towers of cloud were piling up against the face of the pale moon. As I peered forth I thought of what Sukey had told me of the actions of the Mompessons’ steward, Assinder. They had no right to this land: they had obtained and held it by fraud and had failed in their obligations towards it. If Bellringer could be made to give up the will the estate would be mine.

  As we crossed the bridge at the head of the lake, I leaned my head out to search for the old house to the left. We were still a quarter of a mile short of it, but the drive swept past it towards the new house leaving nothing but the water-logged meadow-land that lay between the lake and the hill where Jeoffrey Huffam’s mausoleum was, at the foot of which the Old Hall stood. There was no alternative, and so I ordered the reluctant driver to venture cautiously across the ill-drained ground.

  The old house was visible now about a mile away as a blacker shape against the gloom, and whatever Sukey had seen, it appeared to be in complete darkness. Or was it? Was that a gleam from within or merely the dim light of the sky reflected off one of the window-panes? Now it was lit up by a flash of lightning and, with the gaping roof of the wing that was directly ahead of us suddenly exposed, it looked a complete ruin. I peered around in the hope of spying the chaise Bellringer had hired, but unless it was that dark shape beneath the trees in the distance, I could not see it. As we advanced, our progress grew slower and slower as our vehicle’s wheels sank in the soft grass.

  At last I called out to the driver to stop and, ordering him to wait, jumped down and hastened towards the crouched hump of the old house. Exhausted by long hours of travel and with my head still painful, I soon out-ran my strength and, gasping for breath and my ears ringing, was forced to pause to recover. I went on more cautiously, finding myself crossing what must once have been a terrace of gravelled walks between balustraded walls, where there were still ancient fish-ponds dark and thick with weed. Now I saw the mullioned windows gleaming faintly where the leaded glass panes still remained. I headed for the arched entrance at the side where I discovered that the great wooden door was unbarred, and I passed in.

  There was a warm, earthy smell I could not identify and my feet seemed to be standing on broken tiles. At first I was in pitch darkness and cursed myself for not having brought a light, but as I grew accustomed to the gloom, I found that the roof was high above me and realized that I was in a great hall. I had never forgotten Mrs Belflower’s story of the elopement and duel which had been so surprisingly confirmed by Miss Lydia. So it was here that it had happened sixty years ago!

  As I gazed upwards there was a flash of lightning and my eyes, though dazzled by the brightness, glimpsed the great timbers of the vaulted roof bearing illuminated armorial insignia on the corbeilles, the ogival hoods above the lofty windows, and ancient portraits hanging below them still with shreds of the yellowed muslin clinging to them with which they must once have been wrapped for protection. Beneath my feet I noticed the pattern of tiles making black and white lozenges like endlessly proliferating and ramifying quincunxes, it occurred to me, whose centre changed as I advanced.

  Though there was no sign that the house was anything but deserted as it had been for so many years, above the occasional roll of the thunder and the continuous moaning of the wind and pattering of the rain I thought I heard voices. Yet they might merely have been the sounds of the eddying gusts and for anything I knew to the contrary I was alone in the great building.

  Suddenly a huge shape loomed up before me and I heard a harsh breathing. Then it was followed by a deep trumpeting note and I realized it was a cow. So that was the smell! The ancient hall of my ancestors was now a cow-byre!

  I ventured further, recalling that the chapel figured in the stories of both Miss Lydia and Mrs Belflower and trying to remember if either of them had suggested where it might be. As I groped my way towards the back of the hall, there was another flash of lightning and I started as I saw a shape ahead of me and to the left. At the realization that it was my own shadow I laughed aloud, and the noise sounded so hollowly that I was frightened again. I passed through an ancient screen hung with painted leather which was now cracked and hanging in strips, and found that I was in a smaller chamber where there was a strong smell of damp. At the next flash I saw that the walls were still hung with glazed linen and tapestries that were billowing in the draught, except where they had come down and lay in a rotting pile leaving the bare frames exposed. I passed a lofty old tester-bed — perhaps that in which Jeoffrey Huffam had been born, it occurred to me — still with its damasked wall-hangings in faded scarlet and gold.

  In a corner there was the entrance to a spiral staircase and I began to ascend, finding the old stone treads badly worn but still in place. As I groped my way upwards in the dark, I suddenly thought I heard voices. Remembering Miss Lydia’s account of how her aunt, Anna, had dwelt there in her madness, I felt a profound unease.

  Suddenly someone spoke from the darkness very clearly and very close to me. But what made me start and caused the hairs to rise on the nape of my neck, was that I knew the voice before I understood the words:

  “Master Will-Not must perforce give way to his better, Mr Thou-Shalt.”

  My wits must have turned! I had imagined it. This was Bissett’s voice. Yet how could that be? I must be mad or dreaming. I rounded the last twist of the spiral and found myself at the back of the old chapel behind an ancient wooden screen. The roof was derelict and rain-water was running down the walls and across the floor and splashing through the broken windows where only remnants of coloured glass remained. What light there was came from two coach-lamps and a pair of lanthorns which were hanging from poles at the altar end. Standing side by side with their backs to me were Bellringer and Henrietta, with Mr Pamplin facing them. Mr Phumphred was standing beside Bellringer. On the other side of Henrietta stood — yes, it was indeed Bissett!

  “I ain’t your sarvint to command, Mrs Bissett,” Mr Phumphred was saying. “It’s my dooty as giver-away to make sure that the young lady truly does wish it.”

  “Thank you, Mr Phumphred,” Henrietta said in a low voice that I could hardly catch. “I know you mean well, but I assure you that I am not being forced into this in any way.”

  “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.

  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.”

  “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.

  “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.”

  “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.