Charles Palliser (139 page)

I broke off, for the old lady was staring at me hard and now said:

“Go no further or you and I may have to quarrel. But for the matter of the will, whoever returned it, I will help you to regain it. But listen, John. Henrietta will be here in a moment, and I want to say something to you. Do not mention any of this to her for she might be upset if she knew what we were planning. She is a strange girl and I fear she would oppose our design against her guardians.”

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“Surely she feels no affection for them.”

“That is true. She is very unhappy and has had a miserable life. She was left an orphan at an early age and abused by her first guardians. Though my nevy and his wife have treated her generously, they have never shewn her any kindness.” The old lady paused and seemed perplexed. Then she went on hesitantly: “I don’t know if you’ll comprehend me if I say that I think she almost takes pleasure in her own misery. I know how she feels. I was like that once myself.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Well, for instance, when she was a child she used to inflict injuries upon herself.

Quite severe ones.”

At these words I remembered the welts I had seen on her arms that time we had met in the great house at Hougham and which she had told me had been inflicted by her cousin, Tom.

“The only person who has ever gained her affection — apart from myself — was a young governess, a Miss Quilliam.”

“I knew her,” I said.

“She did not stay long. I’m afraid she let Henrietta down by trying to take advantage of her position here.”

I raised my eyebrows and Miss Lydia began: “It’s an unattractive story. She tried to ensnare first David and then that near-ideot, Tom, and had to be dismissed the house. I believe she became David’s mistress before they quarrelled.”

I was going to answer, but at that moment there was a tap at the door and Henrietta came in.

When we had re-arranged ourselves on the chairs she asked me bluntly: “I beg you to tell me, John, what are you doing in this house?”

I glanced at Miss Lydia. “I’m hiding.”

“Hiding? From whom?”

“From my enemies, for my life is in danger.”

“In danger!” she cried. “Why, this
is
just like a novel! Why?”

“Because of that document I mentioned to you in the park.”

“Please explain to me,” asked Henrietta, “what it was.”

“ ‘Is’, I am afraid,” Miss Lydia corrected her.

I glanced at her. Perhaps she knew something of its history after leaving my mother’s possession?

“It’s a codicil,” I explained. “It all centres around the Hougham estate which my great-grandfather, James Huffam, inherited under the will of his father, Jeoffrey, almost exactly sixty years ago. Now there were rumours that there had existed a codicil to that will affecting the inheritance, but it was not found at Jeoffrey’s death.”

“And so not long afterwards,” Miss Lydia continued, “my father, Sir Hugo Mompesson, bought the estate from James in the honest belief that he had a clear title to it.”

“But in fact,” I said, “Jeoffrey’s attorney, a man called Paternoster, had misappropriated the codicil.”

“Is that who it was!” Miss Lydia exclaimed.

“He confessed on his deathbed to Mr Escreet,” I explained. “He had been bribed by James to do this in order to prevent the entailing of the estate on himself, for that would have interfered with his intention to sell it to your MARRIAGE DESIGNS

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father, Miss Lydia. The Clothiers suspected this and tried to prevent probate. But Paternoster, with a suborned witness, testified that Jeoffrey had revoked the codicil.”

“But what is the significance of the codicil now?” Henrietta demanded.

“If it were laid before the court and put in force,” I said, “it would retrospectively entail the property on James even these many years later, substituting a base fee in the estate for the fee simple which Miss Lydia’s father believed he had purchased. The base fee would terminate when the succession from James failed: that is to say, if I died without an heir for I am the sole surviving heir of James. In that event Sir Perceval and his heirs would lose all interest in the estate. In plain terms, they would be ousted without compensation.”

“Then who would inherit it?” Henrietta asked.

“That’s the point: it would go to the next remainderman under the entail who is Silas Clothier,” I answered. “He has to be living at that time for if he were dead it could not go to his heir.”

“And what became of the codicil after Mr Paternoster stole it?” Henrietta asked me.

“It disappeared for many years and I assume that he sold it to someone in the Maliphant family, for it was they who stood to gain the estate if Silas Clothier were dead when the Huffam succession failed. Perhaps their line failed. Do you know, Miss Lydia?”

“No, I haven’t the slightest conception.”

“Strangely enough,” I said, “there was a boy at the school I was sent to whose name was Stephen Maliphant. Though that must have been merely a coincidence. But whatever had happened to the codicil for all those years, someone offered it for sale to my grandfather (in fact, to Mr Escreet) a few months before his death. He purchased it, and it was in order to do so that he formed an alliance with Silas Clothier as part of which my mother was to be forced into marriage with his elder son. However, then things changed,” I said, glancing at Miss Lydia who had sighed at my reference to my mother. I went on, trying to suppress all reference to the part she had played at this juncture: “For one thing, my grandfather realized that once it was before the court it put him and my mother in danger from the Clothiers.”

“And was your mother forced into that marriage?” Henrietta asked.

“No. In fact, she married the younger brother.”

She looked at me with her eyes widening: “So this horrible old man, Silas Clothier, who is endangering your life, is your grandfather?”

“Let me go on with my story,” I answered, after a moment’s hesitation. “Well, my grandfather — I mean, John Huffam — died shortly after that and the codicil passed into the possession of my mother. She wrote to Sir Perceval a few years later to say that she had it and sent him a copy. And he, realizing that it threatened his possession of the estate, tried to purchase it. However, my mother refused to part with it because she had promised her father to pass it on to her heir. But eventually it fell into the hands of the Clothiers, as I explained in the park. What I don’t know is what has happened to it since then.”

“I can tell you,” said Miss Lydia. “Silas Clothier laid it before the Court of Chancery.”

Just what I had guessed!

“I leave it to you,” the old lady went on, “to imagine how horrified my 640 THE

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nevy and his wife were by that. Since then they have been closeted with Mr Barbellion for hours every week.”

“What was the judgement of the Court?” I asked.

“It upheld the validity of the codicil and retrospectively entailed the estate on James Huffam, ruling that the heir in succession to James is the nominal holder of title to the estate.”

I needed to take a deep breath for it was a shock. Title to those vast and rich lands which had been owned for centuries by my ancestors was now vested in me. Even though I knew it meant nothing in actuality, it was profoundly exciting and gave me a foretaste of what real ownership would be like.

“That confirms what I had assumed,” I said, and explained how Daniel Porteous and Emma had lured me into their trap and then led me before the Court.

“I believe,” I explained, “that their intention was to establish my identity so that my death would be accepted beyond question.”

The other two shuddered and Miss Lydia said :

“You are quite correct. By bringing you before the Court the Clothiers prepared the way for your death to be accepted. It was clear from your appearance that you were very weak, and their counsel stressed this and implied that you had inherited your father’s mental alienation. That is why Mr Barbellion tried to prevent the Clothiers gaining custody of you, but since they are your nearest kin, he was only able to obtain a stay of execution. During that period they had you committed to Dr Alabaster’s madhouse which you were never intended to leave. However, you foiled their intentions by escaping and they therefore had to come before the Court and confess that you had disappeared. They moved a motion to have you declared dead, and brought on witnesses — a justice of the peace and Dr Alabaster himself — to testify to your poor state of health and to your insanity. The burden of their testimony was that, having absconded from the skilled care of the asylum, you could not hope to live very long.”

I smiled at this.

“But the situation is grave, John,” she said. “Perceval’s counsel naturally opposed this since it would dispossess him immediately, and the Master of the Rolls compromised by ruling that if you could not be found within a certain period you would be declared dead. Upon the expiry of this period, the property will pass immediately to Silas. The court has appointed a Receiver of Rents and is making an inventory of the estate.”

As I reflected on this many implications occurred to me.

“What is the period?” Henrietta asked.

“It was four years from that date.”

“A little over two years from now,” I said. “Well, if the Clothiers and their agents could find me, I wonder what my life would be worth, for Silas Clothier is already a very old man.”

Miss Lydia smiled and said: “More than ten years younger than I.”

I blushed and faltered.

“You were going to say,” she said, “that he cannot hope to live very long. And since under the codicil he must be alive at the moment of your death, the Clothiers will try to kill you even before the time-limit expires.”

I nodded.

“They may not need you to be dead,” Miss Lydia said, “if they can prove you illegitimate.”

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I stared at her in horror, wondering what she meant and how much she knew.

“You see, John, the Clothiers have always tried to have your grandfather’s service as heir set aside on the grounds that he could not prove filiation for there is no proof that his parents, James and Eliza, were legally married.”

I understood what she was driving at now: “Yes,” I said, “I remember that Mr Escreet mentioned this.”

“No record was ever produced, nor any witness. The Clothiers have been able to produce evidence that James and Eliza lived together for some time before the alleged marriage took place, and that supports their case.”

“This explains what Barbellion was looking for the first time I ever saw him!” I exclaimed.

I repeated what Mr Advowson had told me about Barbellion’s interest in the records of the Huffam family.

“But the marriage did take place,” the old lady said. “I know that for certain, though I cannot prove it.”

I stared at her in amazement. Before I could speak I was interrupted.

“Can it really be true that your own family are trying to kill you?” Henrietta asked.

“Why, yes!” I cried, and told them about the way Emma had tried to poison me and about my treatment in the madhouse. Miss Lydia was very upset by this but I thought Henrietta looked a little sceptical.

“If your own family are trying to kill you, I don’t understand why you are safe in this house,” she said.

I looked at Miss Lydia and she nodded and said: “There is something we have kept from you. John, tell her.”

So I explained how Jeoffrey Huffam had made a new will on his deathbed when he heard of the birth of my grandfather and realized that he now had the means to disinherit his profligate son by entailing his property on the infant.

“However,” I continued, “after his death Paternoster substituted the earlier will for the later one, first removing the codicil from it as I’ve explained. And he acted for the same reasons, for if the entail had stood, James would have been a mere pensioner of his own son.”

“And presumably this Paternoster was the villain,” put in Miss Lydia, “who sold the will to my father?”

“That is so,” I confirmed.

“Your father bought it?” Henrietta exclaimed.

“Indeed he did, and for a very large sum. For he realized that since James had had no title to sell, this meant that his own title would be void if it ever came to light. I only learned of it long after my father’s death, and it seemed to me to be a shameful act.”

“Yes,” Henrietta cried. “A mean, unjust deed! But what has this to do with us? It all happened many years ago. What has this to do with your being in this house, John?”

I wondered if I dared to tell her that only by regaining the will could I make myself safe from the Clothiers.

Before I could speak, however, Miss Lydia, holding her with her glittering eyes, said:

“Do you conceive how I thought it right to try to restore justice?”

“Yes I see that, but what could you do?” Henrietta asked. “Your father must have destroyed the will?”

“Indeed he did not and it passed into the possession of your guardian.”

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Henrietta started.

“Oh yes,” the old lady went on. “Perceval has continued to profit from this act of injustice. And though I suppose it seems ancient to you, yet it all happened when I was already nearly ten years older than you are now. And as John knows, it blighted and even shortened the lives of his grandfather and his parents. But as you will hear, it has continued to exercise its baleful effect and has profound consequences for both of you.”

She spoke so gravely that I asked: “What can you mean?”

“You wonder that my father and after him my brother and now my nevy did not destroy the will?”

“Yes,” I said. “That has long puzzled me. It could only destroy their right to the estate, surely?”

“Let me try to explain,” the old lady said. “I have told you that the probate of the original will was unsuccessfully disputed, and this was done by the Clothiers — Mr Nicholas Clothier and his son, Silas. Well, after the failure of that case, they instituted a Chancery suit which has continued down to this very day. They were now disputing the validity of my father’s purchase of the Hougham estate from James, and he feared — and after him Augustus and then Perceval continued to fear — that one day they would be successful. And in that event the only way to save the Mompessons’ title to the property would be to produce the will.”