Quincunx

  So your father inherited the estate. And Clothier, furious at having been cheated, set about foreclosing on the mortgages and the post obits and resorted to Chancery in the attempt to prove that the codicil was illegally suppressed and that, since the marriage of your parents never took place, his son, Silas, was the rightful heir. He offered to abandon this suit if your father would sell the estate, but your father outwitted him for he did not wish to sell his ancestral lands to a counter-jumping Cit any more than his father did. So, less than a year after his father’s death, he conveyed the estate to his brother-in-law, Sir Hugo Mompesson, who, now that he had a son — the present Sir Augustus — was keen to obtain it. Since Sir Hugo could not put down the whole of the purchase-money, it was settled that an annuity was to be paid as a charge on the estate to your father and his heirs in perpetuity.

  Your father died soon afterwards and so did old Clothier, but the Chancery suit continued, for it was taken over by Mr Silas. Now, Master John, this is the important intelligence that I have for you. Just before Mr Paternoster died a few years ago he confessed to me what he had done and why. He told me he had gone to your father and told him that Mr Jeoffrey had just made a will disinheriting him. And so your father bribed him to suppress it and, for good measure, to conceal the codicil to the earlier will so that he would not have to go to the expense of breaking the entail before he could sell the estate.

  However, what Mr Paternoster told me on his deathbed was that he did not destroy those two documents, as he led your father to believe. He kept them for a number of years and not long before, he had approached the Mompessons and told them about the will and that it was still in existence. They were naturally horrified for it would have the effect of disinheriting your father retrospectively and thereby invalidating their purchase of the estate. And so they purchased it of him for a large sum of money. I fear they will have destroyed it, Master John, and so there is no evidence now that it ever even existed.

  The codicil, however, offers more hope. Mr Paternoster dared not offer it, of course, to the Clothiers but he sought out the heir of Mr George Maliphant — upon whom, you may remember, the entail devolved in default of your father’s issue provided that the death of young Mr Silas had taken place — and he offered it to this gentleman, a certain Mr Richard Maliphant. However, Mr Maliphant declined to purchase it. Mr Paternoster told me he had then sold it to another member of that family, but he refused to tell me who this individual was.

  Now, if you could regain the codicil and lay it before the court you might have a chance of being declared owner of the Hougham estate, for it would retrospectively create a base-fee instead of the fee-simple the Mompessons believed they had purchased and the court might find that the sale was therefore invalid.

  I dare say all of this will require a great deal of money, Master John. So you must begin now to save what you can from your annuity, and start to acquire the knowledge of the law of real property that will permit you to prosecute the suit most effectively. Why don’t you come and live here? (You may pay me something for your board and lodging.) And bring that other young fellow, Martin, the son of poor Elizabeth Fortisquince. I will teach you what I know of the Common Law and of Equity. So you must … you must … What the devil is that row, Master John? I say, what the … Master John? By God! Who are you?

  BOOK IV

  A Friend on the Inside

  CHAPTER 91

  It is late in the evening and Mr Clothier and Mr Sancious are alone in the counting-house or, rather, almost alone for Mr Vulliamy is still at work in the outer office where he can surely hear the sound of raised voices.

  “Those bills of Quintard and Mimpriss that you advised me to buy for my client — they were worthless!” Mr Sancious is shouting.

  “I didn’t know the house was in danger,” the old gentleman exclaims indignantly. “Why, I got burnt myself holding their paper. And so did my informant.”

  “Your informant,” the attorney sneers. He looks as if he is about to say something else, but then he goes on: “I’ll wager it was your informant that got us into this pickle! See where your bill-dealing has got us! Every penny the Pimlico and Westminster Land Company made out of that spec — lost! And the company itself going to smash with the prospect of gaol for someone!”

  “Why should you care?” cries the old gentleman. Then, jerking his head towards the door and hushing his guest with a gesture of his hands, he goes on in a hoarse whisper: “It ain’t you that will suffer for it.”

  “Nor you either!” the attorney retorts. “And I wonder if you’ve bubbled me all along. Why, I’ll wager you’ve been selling your own slang bills to the company and making me pay for your losses!”

  “That’s a lie!” the old gentleman screams. “And if it comes to that, you haven’t been square with me. It was you who arranged the Huffam boy’s escape!”

  “What are you talking about?” Mr Sancious exclaims in amazement — or a fine imitation of it. “Why would I have done that?”

  “Don’t play with me. Do you take me for a fool? I know you were behind it. And I’ll stake my life you know where he is now.”

  “That’s absurd. What motive could I possibly have for doing such a thing?”

  The old gentleman looks very cunning at this: “Don’t think I don’t know exactly what your game is, Sancious,” he says. “I know how you’ve been trying to trump me. But you won’t succeed. I’ve been one too many for you. I know all the cards you hold. You see, I …”

  The old gentleman falters and starts gasping for breath. Then he sinks to the floor moaning: “Loosen my collar. Help me.”

  The attorney stands looking down at him while his host splutters and clutches his chest.

  In a low strangled voice the old gentleman gasps: “Call Vulliamy, for heaven’s sake!”

  Mr Sancious remains motionless.

  After a few minutes the old gentleman falls silent and lies quite still. Instantly the attorney crosses to the strong-box and tries to raise the lid. It is locked. He goes to the desk and begins opening drawers and looking through piles of papers.

  At that moment, however, the old gentleman suddenly jumps to his feet: “Not so quickly, my dear friend.”

  As Mr Sancious looks at him in horror, he smirks at him and sneers: “You thought you were in luck, didn’t you?”

  He advances towards him and Mr Sancious backs out of the door into the outer office where he cries out: “Your governor has gone mad!”

  Then he turns and hurries out of the street-door.

  In amazement Mr Vulliamy looks up from his desk at his employer who is standing in the door-way to his inner closet and hugging himself in glee.

  CHAPTER 92

  The reason why the old man broke off his narrative so suddenly was that there had come a violent hammering at the street-door. It was a strange and distinctive knock: the blows fell in a quick succession of three, followed by a pause, and then a single knock followed by another pause before the pattern was repeated. Mr Escreet had started at the noise as if he had been suddenly awakened, and he was looking at me now as if he was seeing me for the first time: “By God! Who are you? You’re not Master John! Who the devil are you?”

  “As I told you, Mr Escreet, I am John Huffam.”

  As I spoke, my mind was in a tumult as I tried to think about the implications of what he had told me.

  “No you’re not. John Huffam is dead.” He stood up: “Whoever you are, you must go. He must not find you here.”

  “Whom do you mean?” I asked. “And how do you know who is there?”

  He looked frightened: “Nobody else knocks like that. Hurry, he has his own key.”

  He seized me and almost pushed me out of the room. As we were passing through the hall, he raised his finger to his lips and while we crept on tip-toe across the broken tiles, the sound of the street-door opening came to us. We were by now hidden from the vestibule by the staircase and paused here while we heard the door close and realized that t
he newcomer had entered the house. Then the vestibule-door opened and shut and we heard footsteps almost passing us as the stranger went into the side-lobby. We set off again down the long passage and reached the back-door safely. Mr Escreet almost pushed me through it and then locked the door behind me.

  I made my way along the dark little alley-way into bustling Charing-cross, and then going up the street, returned along the public way into the first yard of the court. There I found Mr Digweed waiting for me where he could see anyone coming or going but could not be seen from the house. To my surprise, Joey was with him and was panting as if he had been running. I was pleased to see him, though only because I knew how worried his parents were.

  “Who was it who arrived just now?” I asked them.

  They both shook their heads.

  “What did he look like?”

  “He was quite young,” Joey answered; “dressed like a genel’man, but out of blunt, I should say. I can’t say no more than that.”

  “I’ll wait and see him when he comes out.”

  “You can’t,” Joey said. “He’s jist come to the house.”

  “Who?”

  “Barney. Sally must have told him where we was.”

  “You ain’t safe there now, Master John,” his father put in. “You must be got away.”

  I saw the force of this, though I was reluctant to give up my chance of observing Mr Escreet’s visiter.

  “But where to?” I wondered.

  Mr Digweed and Joey looked at each other.

  “Meg’s,” Joey said.

  “That’s what I was thinking.”

  I looked at Joey. Was he telling the truth or was this another trap that he was going to lead me into? How had he learned of Barney’s return to the house? Was it not probable that he had gone back to him with Sally and that they had concocted another design against me?

  “I’ll take him there, dad,” Joey said, “for if one of Barney’s men dodged me here I can lose him better than you can.”

  Mr Digweed nodded.

  “So you came back, Joey?” I asked.

  He reddened but his father, who I could see was torn between his pleasure that his son had returned and his alarm on my behalf, said: “Aye, thank Gawd. He says he didn’t never go back to Barney but jist walked about and slept out.”

  Joey’s manner was less sullen than I had ever seen. It seemed to me as if he was truly pleased to be able to do something for me and with this reflection, I decided to trust him.

  So we left his father, and Joey led me on a headlong chase across the metropolis, weaving our way between the foot-passengers on the crowded pavements, dodging up alley-ways, and diving across busy roads so suddenly that horses reared their heads and drivers shouted and cracked their whips at us. With many digressions and doublings back, we were heading steadily East along the riverside.

  We passed the Tower and cut through a district all of whose streets were either cleared away or in process of being demolished. This was St. Katharine’s parish where a medieval college and hospital together with more than a thousand houses were being taken down (and their inhabitants evicted) to make way for the new dock. The rubble and soil extracted from here were being shipped up-river to fill the Grosvenor-bason in Pimlico — an undertaking which I had seen while crossing the Neat-houses in search of Barney.

  Beyond that we suddenly entered a district where men with wind-burnt faces in stiff clothes walked the streets, brazen-faced women flaunted their finery, and all about us were ships’-chandlers, biscuit-makers, rope-makers, and, in short, the manufacturers and suppliers of everything to do with ships. Sea-gulls cried above us and London was suddenly a sea-port.

  At last we reached a shabby, run-down district near the river and here, in a dirty, narrow way called Brewhouse-lane, Joey stopped and knocked on a low door set deep in the wall. (We were, in fact, in Wapping and almost beside Execution-dock where pirates and mutineers were formerly executed by the incoming tide.) We were both gasping for breath and I had had neither time nor wind to ask any questions.

  Meg’s turned out to be a clean and respectable lodging-house — a most unlikely occurrence in that part of London where the crimping-houses lay in wait to prey upon discharged sailors. Meg herself was a friendly, honest woman of about Mrs Digweed’s age. Although she was an old companion of hers, their friendship was, Joey assured me, quite unknown to his uncle. She showed Joey and me to a small but spotless room, and when she had withdrawn, I expected Joey to say he would leave me and was about to ask him to convey my thanks to his parents, when he made it clear that he wanted to say something. I was impatient for him to go for I had much to think about.

  He seemed to be having difficulty in beginning, but at last he blurted out: “It was all down to me. Ma didn’t know nothing about it.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Jist a-fore we went down to the North that time, Barney got Sal to bring me to him and he gived me four shillin’ and promised me more if I’d do what he wanted. I was to get inside this crib in Melthorpe, and he told me exackerly where it was and what it looked like. I was proud that he trusted me. And that was why I led Ma back through Melthorpe and straight to you and your mam.”

  “I see. And what did he want you to do?”

  “I was to prig a door-key if I got the chance. But most of all I was to look out for any screeves — papers — that might be lying around, and to see where anything vallyable might be kept hid.” Then he cried: “But I didn’t do none of them things.”

  “Because I caught you!”

  “No!” he exclaimed indignantly. “I didn’t want to do nothing arter your mam was so good to us. I reckoned I’d jist take a good look round so I could tell Barney what I seen, but not tell him nothing that’d help him to prig nothing of you.”

  Was this the truth at last? Presumably his parents had known this but wanted Joey himself to tell me. And now he had done so at a time when, having rescued me from his uncle, he felt in a morally stronger position. I was almost certain that I now knew the reason for his sullenness towards me: there is nobody we resent as much as someone to whom we feel we have done wrong.

  “I believe you,” I assured him.

  “That ain’t all,” he said. “That time I dodged you from the carcase, there was more to it. When you found your shake-down at the Common-garding that night, I spoke to the boy what you’d gived a ring to.”

  “Luke!” I cried.

  “That’s the ticket. I got him to watch you and dodge you if you went anywheres, and then come back and tell me where you were. I gived him my last four-pence and promised him another six-pence. Then I went back to Barney and found they was getting ready to clear out of there. Barney told me he’d got his orders about you from whoever it was that was paying him.”

  “Who was that?”

  “I dunno. But he told me how I was to make a pall of you and lead you as if by chance to this crib out towards Islington. He even drawed me a map so as I should find it. Which as you know I done.”

  I said nothing but suddenly he broke out: “Well, I nivver knowed what they meant to do, did I?”

  I nodded distractedly. What he had said confirmed my assumption that Sancious was the connexion between Barney and the Clothiers.

  “So I left Barney and went back to the Common-garding,” Joey went on; “and Luke took me to your grand-dad’s house.”

  Almost everything that had still puzzled me about the role of Mr and Mrs Digweed was now explained and my fears about them were all but laid to rest. And though Joey had done my mother and me wrong, he had been too young to be held responsible and the very fact that he had for so long resented me was proof of how guilty he felt. Even so, I could not be entirely sure that he would not return to his former allegiance to his uncle, and therefore I felt I could not trust him too far.

  As Joey was leaving, Meg asked me to come and eat in the kitchen, so it was only after I had returned to my chamber later that evening that I had leisure to
reflect on the things Mr Escreet had told me — and told me, as it were, by mistake. His confusion about time and my identity had given me a window straight into the past so that I believed I now possessed knowledge that no-one else alive had apart from us two. I now knew that the purloined will of Jeoffrey Huffam had indeed existed and that it was the attorney Paternoster who had misappropriated it and sold it to the Mompessons. I also knew that instead of destroying it (as Mr Escreet had assumed they would), the Mompessons had kept it, for shortly before my grandfather’s murder he had received that mysterious promise from someone in their household that he would return it to him through the agency of Martin Fortisquince. I was puzzled by why the Mompessons had held onto the will since its effect was to disinherit them. (Presumably it had been by an oversight and surely they must have destroyed it by now?) And I was intrigued by the identity and motives of the person who had undertaken to steal it back from them.

  I settled down to try to sleep. In the middle of the night there was a noise at the front of the house and when I looked out of window I saw the three Digweeds standing in the street with all their possessions loaded onto a hand-cart. As I came down, Meg rose and let them in. We went into the kitchen and they explained that they had decided to flee from their house under cover of night and in the utmost secrecy, in case Barney or any of his gang were keeping watch. They intended to find somewhere to live in this part of the metropolis so that I could dwell with them again. I was very surprised by this and it confirmed my assumption about their real motives.