“How would he learn of it? And why should it concern him?”
“He had at least one spy in the Mompessons’ trust. And your grandfather also believed that Mr Fortisquince’s new bride was paid by him to supply intelligence.”
Mr Nolloth and I speculated about her motives and why my grandfather mistrusted her, but could come to no clear conclusion. Since reading my mother’s pocket-book, I had often puzzled over Mrs Fortisquince’s extreme malevolence against her.
“For obvious reasons, Peter’s father took a keen interest in your grandfather’s affairs,” Mr Nolloth continued. “And of course this lost will would make the codicil worthless to him and destroy any chance of his inheriting the estate. He would, like the Mompessons, realize that your grandfather was the party who stood to benefit from it, and would suspect that he had obtained it. He had already become angry and suspicious that your grandfather was delaying placing the codicil before the court. And he would have known, since your grandfather was so obsessed by the suit, that only a higher claim to the estate could prevent him from making use of the codicil.”
“Then why did my grandfather not proceed with laying the codicil before the court in order to allay his suspicions?”
“Because once that was done your mother’s life and his own were in grave danger. As yours is now.”
“But would they not also be in danger once the Mompessons and the Clothiers knew that my grandfather had the will? For surely the Clothiers, and even the Mompessons, would stop at nothing to destroy or to regain it respectively?”
“Precisely. And if the Clothiers killed your grandfather and your mother in the process and took custody of your father as well, then so much the better from their point of view. And so your grandfather’s chief preoccupation was how to ensure the safety of your mother and father and protect the will once it was delivered to him. And this was what was discussed between the three of them, your father, your grandfather, and Mr Escreet, that night that your parents agreed to marry. And it was then that they hatched the conspiracy that was to have such fatal and unforeseen consequences.”
“A conspiracy!” I exclaimed. “Against whom?”
“Against your mother, for one. For your father and grandfather were determined to keep as much of all of this as possible from her in order not to worry her.”
“But did they not think of what anguish that would cause her!”
“But they could not have known then that their scheme would go terribly wrong. And, moreover, to take part in the plan required the ability to act a part which they did not believe that your mother possessed. In order to understand what happened you must consider the situation as it presented itself to them that night. They needed to encompass the following ends: your mother had to be kept from the knowledge of any of this, at least until all was safe; your father had to be spirited away to a place where he would be secure from his father and Dr Alabaster who, remember, were at this time armed with a writ from the Commission of Lunacy which permitted them to take him into custody as soon as he left the protection of your grandfather’s house; the Mompessons and Clothiers were to be deceived into believing that your parents had not received the will and the codicil from your grandfather; and, finally, in case the attempt to convince them of this failed, both documents — the codicil and the will — were to be conveyed out of the reach of either the Mompessons or the Clothiers and their numerous agents and intelligencers.”
“How could they hope to achieve all these ends?”
“Well, Mr Escreet devised a very ingenious way of going about it. He suggested that your father and grandfather should stage a mock quarrel in the presence of Mr and Mrs Fortisquince and your mother, at the climax of which your father should storm from the house with your mother.”
“The charade of which he spoke at the inn in Hertford!” I exclaimed.
“A charade, yes. Exactly that. And so you see why your mother could not have been forewarned? She would not have been able to deceive the keen eye of Mrs Fortisquince. Your grandfather entered into the spirit of the thing wonderfully, and Mr Escreet was also very convincing, but your father often told me how poorly he himself acted the part.”
“Yes, my mother recorded that she thought his manner was strange, but she was completely taken in by my grandfather and Mr Escreet.”
“It was an unfortunate necessity that your mother had to be deceived, seeing that things turned out so unexpectedly and terribly. But all was done with the best of intentions. I assume that you understand that the purpose of the charade was to lead Mr and Mrs Fortisquince to believe that there had been a complete rupture between Peter and his new father-in-law? And it was crucial that Mr Fortisquince, in reporting this — with no malign intentions — to the Mompesson family, would mention that he had only passed the gift to your grandfather after Peter had left the house. For by then Sir Perceval would have learned that the will had been removed from his house and put into your grandfather’s hands by Mr Fortisquince’s unwitting agency. Mr Fortisquince would be believed as one whose reputation was that of a gentleman incapable of the smallest act of deceit. His assertion that the newly-married couple had left the house after such a scene and gone no-one knew whither, would forestall any attempt to find them, and the Mompessons would have no reason to anyway if they assumed that your grandfather still had the will.”
“And Mrs Fortisquince would report the same to the Clothiers!”
“Exactly so. And they too would therefore reject the idea that your grandfather had entrusted the will — and also the codicil — to his son-in-law, would abandon the attempt to take custody of him under the writ of lunacy, and would instead concentrate their efforts to obtain the codicil and the will — the one to lay before the court and the other to destroy — on your grandfather himself.”
“Then do you suspect that what happened to him …”
“I must leave you now,” he broke in. “Yallop has not done his rounds yet and is certain to come very soon.”
“A little longer, I beg you!” I urged.
“A few minutes. No more. To return to my story, then. It was a considerable attraction of the ruse proposed by Mr Escreet that even if it failed to convince your family’s enemies that a breach had taken place between your father and your grandfather, at worst your parents would be safely out of London, and in possession of the two documents, in a place whose whereabouts only your grandfather and Mr Escreet knew. And so in the week preceding the one appointed for the wedding of your parents, all the necessary preparations were secretly made. Your grandfather entrusted to your father both the codicil and the letter he had written to explain the significance of the purloined will. (He wrote this because he knew that, as you have just implied, he was putting himself in grave danger.) Now it was crucial that when Mr and Mrs Fortisquince arrived it should be demonstrated to her that her husband did not give the package he had with him to your grandfather until your parents had left the house. She would not bestow much attention on this at the time but would realize its significance later when the loss of the will by the Mompessons became known. And so it was agreed that your grandfather would decline to accept the package until your parents had departed after the argument. They chose the subject of money as the one that the Mompessons and the Clothiers would find most plausible as the cause of a rift between son-in-law and father on the former’s wedding-day. Only after your parents had driven away would your grandfather ask Mr Fortisquince for the package. He would then slip it surreptitiously to Mr Escreet and then your father …”
“Would secretly return to the house to take it from him!” I cried in delight.
“Precisely,” said Mr Nolloth. “Mr Escreet would leave the back-door unlocked and since the servants would be out of the way celebrating the marriage below stairs, he would be seen by no-one.”
“But Mr Fortisquince saw him,” I said. “Though he did not recognise him at the time.”
“Yes, many things went wrong.”
“Then pl
ease tell me what happened!” I almost cried out.
“No, I must not stay any longer. It is getting light. I will be found and then I will lose all power to assist you.”
“I don’t care. I must know what happened.”
“Tomorrow, if I can,” Mr Nolloth whispered and slipped quietly away.
I lay down on the hard straw-bedding but I knew that sleep would not come for many hours, for what the old gentleman had said had started a train of thought that I needed time to pursue. So my grandfather had had an irrefutable claim to the estate. Then surely I had inherited it? My great wish might yet be fulfilled! But I must not allow myself to think of this for it all depended on the will, if it had ever even existed. Could I be sure that it had? If it had, then what had become of it? Presumably it had been destroyed. How strange that I understood now more than my poor mother had ever done of the events of that fateful night, and in particular, the benign purpose of the charade. In the light of what I now knew, could I say that her fear that her husband had killed her father was unfounded? For one thing, it seemed to me certain that acquiring the purloined will was the motive for the murder, and I could not see what Peter Clothier had to gain from this.
A little later the night-porter came along the passage and held his lanthorn to the grille for a moment before he passed on.
CHAPTER 79
The day that arrived — insofar as it was distinguishable to me from the night in my dark, underground cell — was exactly the same as the previous one. In the morning Hinxman brought food which I left untouched. About an hour afterwards, Mr Nolloth managed to push a large piece of bread through the bars and this time he accompanied it with a small stone jug of water which I was quick enough to take from him, and which I concealed beneath the straw. This was enough to keep me alive a little longer, but I knew that my strength was ebbing.
Mr Nolloth failed to keep his promise to come again that night. I was more disappointed by this than by the fact that the next day he did not bring me meat and drink either, so that all I had was the food brought by Hinxman which, hungry as I was, I left untouched.
I could not help blaming Mr Nolloth for having let me down, irrational though I knew this was. Or was it so irrational? For during the long blank hours of day and night alike, I could not keep from my thoughts the question whether I could trust him. To distrust him was to imagine that there was a complicated conspiracy directed against me in which he was a participant, and to suspect this seemed to me to be an indication of insanity. And yet there did seem to be a design against me for Barney and Joey Digweed had risen from my past and shewn themselves to be implicated in some kind of secret combination against me, unless I could ascribe their reappearance in my life to the effect of mere coincidence. But I could not do so, for had not Joey led me to the Clothier (or “Porteous”) family who had most certainly conspired to deceive me?
So a plot against my life and sanity certainly existed, and if the very family whose name I bore could organise it, then how could I trust a stranger? And yet there had to be some fulcrum of certainty on which to rest or I would doubt everything and surely that was the quickest road to madness? Mr Nolloth’s look of pity when he saw me dragged by Hinxman and Rookyard through the night-ward, and his expressions of affection for Peter Clothier, seemed to me to be the signs of genuine sympathy which it would be madness not to trust. Finally, I concluded that, circumstanced as I was, I had nothing to lose by believing in him.
Late in the afternoon — as I assume it was — of the second day following Mr Nolloth’s last visit, the door was suddenly unlocked and Hinxman came in with Rookyard following him.
He smiled strangely and said: “Your dad has been askin’ arter you most tenderly. So, since the doctor is always anxious to accommodate those under his care, he has arst me to take you to visit him.”
When they had led me back along those dark passages to the cell in which I had been placed on my first night in that house, I found that the wretched creature was no longer there and that the place had been transformed: fresh straw had been laid and there were now two chairs facing each other across a small table. Seated in one of them was a stranger who looked at me intently as I entered. He was a little under forty, clean-shaven, and neatly dressed in a blue coat with a white stock, a white waistcoat and dark trowsers. Hinxman pushed me into the chair opposite him and pressed me into it by leaning heavily on my shoulder. The stranger still stared at me fixedly and at last I recognised him.
Instead of the wavering light of madness in his eyes there was a deep melancholy. He looked much younger now that he had lost his tangled beard and his ragged mop of hair; and since he was free of the strait-waistcoat, I could see how thin and frail he was. Beneath the edge of the stock I noticed a raw wound on his neck. Altogether I found the appearance of this man towards whom I stood in such a strange relation, even more disturbing in this new manifestation than what I had been braced to encounter.
We faced each other for a few moments while Rookyard and Hinxman looked on. I had some idea of giving him my hand but the gesture seemed too formal.
“They have just told me that my wife had a child,” he said gravely. “They say you are he. And yet I cannot believe it. Is it so?”
He spoke hesitatingly as if unused to speech, but his voice was soft and gentle. I was unable to speak or even to nod my head.
He went on: “But I see that you are Mary’s child. You feature your dear mother’s fa …” His voice broke and he stopped.
“In course the boy’s your son and heir, Peter,” said Hinxman. “Why, it’s plain to see he’s inherited his father’s wits.”
“For he wouldn’t be a scholard in Dr Alabaster’s ’cademy if that wasn’t so,” added Rookyard.
“Yes. These gentlemen are right. I am mad, you know.” Then he said eagerly: “But tell me, how is your dear mother?”
Unable to speak, I shook my head.
“I broke her heart. Do you know what I did?”
I shook my head to try to stop him.
“I murdered her father,” he said almost in a whisper. “Your grandfather.”
“No, no, that’s not true.”
“Oh but it is. Though I don’t recall how or why but, you see, that’s because of my madness.”
“Why, you took a haxe,” said Hinxman, “and you chopped the old genel’man in three eq’al pieces. And an uncommon scaly way to show respect for your miss’is’ dad it was. Pertickerly on your wedding-night.”
“Not an axe, Mr Hinxman. It was a sword.”
“Which only makes it worse, Peter,” put in Rookyard, “as you’ll see yourself if you think about it. Or you would do if your wits wasn’t addled.”
“Some things I remember clearly. Others not at all. After your mother and I left the house, I went back secretly. I remember that very well.”
“Yes,” I said. “But it was by arrangement with Mr Escreet.”
He frowned: “No. You’ve been misinformed. Nobody knew. At least, I don’t believe so. I remember passing the door of the dining-room which was open and averting my head so that anyone in there should not see me. So you see, I must have meant to do harm, mustn’t I? I went to the library and there I found Mr Escreet. I remember that very clearly. Then it seems that I attacked him and Mr Huffam. I used a sword. We were in the plate-room. Sometimes I can almost remember doing so, but this part of it seems like a dream. Apparently I stole some money. But I certainly remember that I could not leave the house for the back-door was locked. And I recall cutting my hand as I broke the glass of the vestibule-door. So you see, I must be a murderer. But Mr Escreet survived, thank God.”
My belief in what Mr Nolloth had said dissolved and I believed I was staring into the mild brown eyes of the murderer of my grandfather.
“You feature your grandfather very nearly,” he said. “The same eyes. The very mouth that your sweet mother has. What is your name?”
“John,” I managed to say. Seeing no sign that he recognised the name I
added: “John Clothier.”
“I remember that name,” he said with a shudder. “It is mine. Or it was. Once I was proud to bear it. I loved my father, and I admired him as sons do their fathers. Though I saw how unhappy he made my mother — a gentle creature who could do nothing right in his eyes. For long I knew nothing of the business that my father and brother drove, for I was a shy, dreaming schoolboy who wanted nothing more than to be left alone with my books. I wished to become a book-seller. But when the time came for me to leave school, I found that I was expected to enter and to bear my full part in the family’s trade. And now I discovered what it was.” He paused and sighed. “In brief, they had a hand in every low, snivelling trick that is perpetrated in London against the poor or the unworldly or the defenceless: They ran illegal pawn-shops that charged too high a rate of interest and were used as a cover to receive stolen goods. They lent money to young gentlemen with expectations and then blackmailed them or their friends for extortionate repayments. And they owned some of the worst properties in the metropolis: the stinking dens of the most poverty-stricken from which they wrung blood-rents, as well as the haunts of every imaginable and unimaginable vice from which they reaped a dividend.”
“Now, now,” said Rookyard. “You mustn’t slander one of the finest old genel’men in London.”
“Imagine what such a discovery meant to me,” he continued, apparently not having heard this remark. “The father and brother whom I so revered, revealed to be no more than crimping cheats and blackmailers! When I refused to have anything to do with all of this they tried every means to make me give way from bribes to threats and eventually to violence. Is it any wonder that I became as I did? After my mother died I had no allies. I believed that everybody was against me, and that all the people in the world were either weak and therefore victims, or strong and so behaved as my father and brother. Your mother and her father were the first decent people I had ever known. Because I came to love your mother I found the strength to resist.” He broke off and gazed at me as if he had newly awakened from a dream: “That wasn’t what I meant to say. I wanted to ask you how your mother is.” His voice trembled. “I don’t know what to believe. The people here tell me such stories.”