Lord Mullion's Secret (2 page)

Of course nothing of all this really bothered the Mullions very much. They were confident people, amused rather than bewildered by the oddity of the times. What Lord Mullion called dismissively ‘the current drift in social legislation' had to be admitted as variously vexatious. It could even be felt occasionally as lapping a little ominously against the walls of the castle, rather as if cannon balls were plopping into the moat. (Not that the moat could really be plopped into, since it was dry and a mass of daffodils.) But it would have taken a rumbling of the tumbrils across the inner ward of the castle itself to persuade these long-established persons that they were under any sort of threat. Having always shied away from anything other than landowning they were without any great fortune themselves. But a surprisingly high proportion of the total wealth of England belonged, if not to their friends, at least to people with whom it would be perfectly tolerable to sustain a nodding acquaintanceship. So it would be foolish to be flustered by the vagaries of one or another ephemeral political set-up. The char-a-bancs, like governments, came and went, while life in Mullion Castle and on its surrounding acres continued undisturbed.

The contents of the ancient dwellings were substantially undisturbed too. During recent generations its owners had been spacing out their demise at intervals long enough to be decidedly advantageous from a financial point of view, so that death duties had been coped with without any disastrous dispersal of goods, chattels, heirlooms and paraphernalia. Some notable possessions had until recently even been less disturbed than the lawyers and insurance people had been quite happy about. Thus for a very long time the three Nicholas Hilliard miniatures had simply hung on a moth-eaten velvet panel in the drawing-room, from which they could be lifted and handed round for admiration and comment after a dinner-party. But about these prudence had at length prevailed. They were now disposed in a showcase cunningly anchored to the floor, and beneath a sheet of some transparent substance guaranteed to resist a sledgehammer. There were, of course, numerous other objects of considerable value on view. But few of them could simply have been slipped into a pocket – and the guides, moreover, were well aware of what it was particularly desirable to keep an eye on. The only notable theft to date had been of a walking-stick much prized by Lord Mullion as having at one time been the property (he believed – but nobody knew why) of the first Duke of Wellington.

Shortly after the present chronicle opens, however, it was to be discovered that there had been a theft of a different character from Mullion Castle. On this occasion an object of considerable value was involved – and a great deal of perplexity as well.

 

 

Henry Wyndowe and Charles Honeybath had been schoolfellows, and now the first was a peer and the second a painter. Although painters (even Royal Academicians) are nothing like so grand as peers (or at least as peers of ancient creation), the two had remained more or less familiarly acquainted. Honeybath was the elder by several years, and as a consequence it had once been the future Lord Mullion's business to tidy his study, toast his crumpets, get the mud off his rugger boots, and accept a ritual admonitory swipe on the behind from time to time. Lord Mullion looked back on this feudal servitude as if it had been a warmly affectionate relationship, and Honeybath, as happens with fagmasters, had been quite fond of young Wyndowe in a casual fashion. So they continued to meet – and not merely as a matter of chance encounter – during several decades. The intimacy had not developed, however, as a family affair. Honeybath had become a widower after only a few years of marriage, and had grown rather fonder of his club than of other men's houses. He had never been a guest at Mullion Castle. Lord Mullion in fact knew more about Honeybath's pictures than Honeybath did about Lord Mullion's family. (The pictures, and particularly the portraits, were on annual display; the Wyndowes didn't much go in for public occasions.) Lord Mullion wasn't exactly a connoisseur. But he respected the arts in a general way, although his attention was inclined a little to wander when specific works of art were obtruded upon his notice – unless, indeed, dairy cattle or pedigree bulls were prominent in the composition. And even in a picture gallery Honeybath always took pleasure in meeting his one-time fag. This even held when Lord Mullion one day turned up unheralded at his Chelsea studio.

The studio was no more than a studio, although a commodious one, and it was situated a couple of blocks away from Honeybath's flat. Honeybath liked this arrangement. He liked the sense of closing a front door behind him five times a week and setting off to work like any other normal citizen. Correspondingly, he liked leaving his work behind him at the end of the day. If your painting-room was across the corridor or up an attic staircase you were under the temptation to dodge into it at all hours and take a lick at this or a dab at that. It was a habit particularly easy to fall into if you were a man without domestic ties, and in Honeybath's experience good seldom came of it.

Yet there was one disadvantage about this disposition of things. When you work, for the most part alone, in an isolated studio you are more vulnerable than in a dwelling with a household around you. There is nobody to say you are out, and you either have to receive casual callers with what civility you can muster or be suspected of ungraciously skulking in a cupboard until your importunate visitor has taken himself (or more probably herself) off again. And such people can he not only importunate but occasionally impertinent as well – behaving as if in a picture shop and poking around all over the place. It was even possible to suspect some of them as seeking evidences of what used to he called Bohemian life. But Lord Mullion was not in any category of this sort, so that Honeybath's welcome was unforced and immediate.

‘My dear Henry,' he said, ‘how delightful to see you!'

‘Can I come in, Charles? Is it perfectly convenient? I mean, are you painting somebody – one of the nobs, as it regularly seems to be nowadays?'

‘Nothing of the kind. I'm simply messing around. So hang up your hat. And you're a nob yourself, aren't you'? Only nobs have hats any longer. Do you remember, Henry, the absurd things we had to wear even to walk down that High Street'? All gone, I'm told.'

Honeybath and Lord Mullion had been ‘Charles' and ‘Henry' to one another ever since Honeybath's last year at school, when they had found themselves by chance sentenced to improve their acquaintance with the French language and French manners throughout the Easter holidays in the same horrible French family. Only on returning to school they had become for a time ‘Honeybath' and ‘Wyndowe' again in deference to the moral code operative in the period. But Christian names had returned quite naturally after that.

‘As a matter of fact,' Lord Mullion said, glancing round him, ‘this is a familiar set-up to me at the moment. I've been sitting to a chap not a mile away. Is “sitting” right? He did me standing, as it happens. It made me feel so much like my own butler that I expect to have a thoroughly butler-like appearance in the finished portrait. Fair enough. The Wyndowes started off as butlers, as everybody knows.'

‘Probably quite some time ago.'

‘Well, not really. Round about 1580, say. But the trouble has been that they've regularly had themselves painted or limned or whatever they called it ever since, and, my children got together and said my turn had come. And standing up seemed to be the traditional thing. Holding a sword or a hunting-crop or a six-foot walking stick, or pointing out an order of battle on a map. Actually, remaining on my two feet was something of an advantage, since I was able just to take a turn around the place when I had a prompting that way. The painter didn't seem to mind. He's a nice chap – although no genius, if you ask me.'

‘Not many of us are that, Henry. But you never know how posterity may judge. Can't you hear somebody saying, “They've sent a decent little Dutchman to take my likeness. Name of Rubens, or some such. No reason to suppose he can paint for toffee. But a useful man, I'm told, to send on a confidential mission”?' Honeybath was hospitably producing drinks as he offered this whimsical travesty of art-history. ‘Will you take a glass of madeira?'

‘Yes, indeed. The truth is, Charles, that I've come on a confidential mission myself. Or not exactly a mission, since nobody has sent me and it's all my own idea.' Lord Mullion paused – seemingly to take a sniff at the madeira, but actually (Honeybath discerned) because of some uncharacteristic embarrassment. This, indeed, wasn't difficult to elucidate. It troubled Lord Mullion that the commission he had just described hadn't been offered to his old schoolfellow. And now – this was clear too – he had some delicate point to make. ‘I'm wondering, you see' – he resumed, taking a plunge – ‘whether you'd consider painting Mary. For the other side of the fireplace, so to speak. She's a damned sight better worth painting than I am, and a tiptop painter ought to be rounded up to do the job. Would you consider it, Charles, my dear fellow?'

So here, suddenly, was a tricky situation – but of a kind with which Honeybath was by no means unacquainted. Painting the portrait of an old chum is usually plain sailing. You simply go straight ahead, and within half-a-dozen sittings you are revealing what you have never noticed in forty years: the ape or poodle or clown or saloon-bar type that lies at scratching distance beneath that familiar mug. But the old chum knows what he has booked in for, and is delighted (even to the pitch of roaring with laughter rather than rage) when what you have made of him is revealed to his astonished gaze. For the entire candour of schoolboys, of undergraduates, is between you still, and carries the day. But an old chum's wife is a different matter, and you may find yourself in the end faced with a polite but angry couple. What you have put on your canvas isn't what the woman sees in her looking-glass and has taught her husband to see. The woman may know her ‘weak points' even to excess, and be coldly candid about them when having her clothes cut and her hair dressed. But all this is mere aesthetics. And portrait-painting is about something more and other than how near, or remote from, winning a beauty contest your subject happens to be. In fact portrait-painting, like major surgery, ought not to be undertaken by a family friend.

Of course Honeybath, as has been explained, was scarcely that so far as the Mullions were concerned. He had done no more than meet Lady Mullion three or four times on essentially public occasions. And what he could recall of her now was reassuring. She was a handsome woman, and one who hadn't flinched from letting what of good and ill had come to her stamp itself on her face. Honeybath knew he would enjoy painting Lady Mullion. This didn't necessarily mean that he would make a success of the job. But it was a favourable omen, all the same.

‘But of course I'll consider it!' he said. ‘I'm very, very pleased, Henry, that you should propose the idea.'

‘I know that you must be tremendously busy, Charles.' Lord Mullion was clearly delighted, and spoke as if a burden of guilt had been lifted from his shoulders. ‘You'll understand, I'm sure, that the other affair was arranged by the young people entirely above my head. But if I can have Mary by you–'

‘As you certainly shall. It's true it will take a little fitting in, but it will be at the cost of no more than a few harmless fibs. How long are you both staying in town?' Honeybath was well accustomed to having the exigencies of ‘the Season' (followed by the necessity of shooting grouse) obtruded upon the craft of portraiture.

‘In town?' There was simple surprise in Lord Mullion's repetition of the phrase. ‘My dear man, I'm up only for the night myself. And Mary no longer comes near the place. She can't stick London, and I'm bound to say I sympathize with her. We're very quiet folk, you know – very quiet folk, indeed. Except on Wednesdays and Saturdays, that is – but I'll tell you about that later. You must come down and stay with us at Mullion, of course, and get a bit of country air, and tackle the assignment in your spare time and the occasional wet day.' Lord Mullion chuckled happily, well aware that this derogatory manner of speaking of the ‘assignment' couldn't be taken as other than a joke. ‘Dash it all, you've owed us a long visit for a long time.'

This last remark might perhaps have been described as a little lordly, since Honeybath (as has been recorded) had never been to Mullion Castle in his life. But here again was old-chum fun, and Honeybath didn't see how it was to be resisted. Accepting commissions on, as it were, a residential basis was something he had learnt to be chary of. It had got him into trouble before, and was basically unsound. It meant your becoming, in a restricted sense, a kind of court painter. You sketched the children, and even the dogs. You had to take a fancy to this and that nook and corner of house and gardens and park, and delight yourself in consequence with little topographical tasks. It could be entirely enjoyable, and probably at Mullion it would be. Still, Honeybath's studio was where Honeybath liked to work.

Lord Mullion sensed this hesitation, and had the guile (an immemorial inherited guile) to begin making anxious alternative suggestions at once. The Mullions themselves no longer had a town house, or even a town chicken-coop. But their son already kept a pad (odd term, eh?) in Kensington, and something could certainly be fixed up. Honeybath, aware that he had been on the verge of graceless behaviour, hastened to express his pleasure at the prospect of being a guest at the castle. He even remembered the Hilliards, which were famous, and said how much he looked forward to being shown those minute masterpieces. Presumably – although he couldn't remember – they were portraits of early Wyndowes. He did remember that Hilliard had engraved Queen Elizabeth's second great seal in 1586– a fact suggesting that Henry's family must have prospered in the buttling line with notable rapidity.