The Devil in Clevely (Afternoon of an Autocrat) (19 page)

'Certainly very fortunate for you. But a curious arrangement. Who is this somebody?'

Shipton looked at Richard with harassed eyes and a nerve began to twitch in his cheek.

''Twas part-er of the bargain, sir. Heving took-er advantage of it like-er, 'twouldn't be right-er for me to teller.'

His disability increased with his nervousness and was in itself enough to annoy his listener past bearing.

'Such a sale could be easily traced, you foolish fellow,' Richard said. 'You can save me time and considerable displeasure by telling me.'

Shipton looked down at his feet and cracked his knuckles.

'Oh well, possibly Mrs Shipton could hazard a guess.'

'You wouldn't-er tell her, sir?'

'Would I not?' Richard's smile sent something cold through Shipton's blood.

'If I teller...?'

'Then I need make no inquiries.'

''Twas Miss Parsons, up-er at Dower House-er.'

'Oh.' Richard sat for a moment, mentally adding the acreage of Bridge Farm to the amount of land which Miss Parsons owned openly and speculating upon the form of madness which would lead a woman to buy land on such a strange condition. Then he rode away. And soon he found that another man, ostensibly the owner of several strips in Old Tom and in Layer, had in fact sold his land to 'somebody' who wished the deal to remain secret.

'Not so much of a secret,' Richard ventured. 'Miss Parsons' kindness is better known than she realises.'

'She saved me from beggary,' the man said simply. 'I'd had a run of bad luck, and to top all broke my leg. Old Scrat alone knew where I'd have been but for being able to sell out and yet stay on for such a small rent.'

'Most fortunate for you,' said Richard absently. And perhaps, he thought, fortunate for me too. He remembered Monty's remark about the old woman being perhaps sane enough to make her mark and not quite sane enough to watch her rights. Certainly she now ranked second to himself as a land-owner, and her claims to the Waste when it was divided would be considerable. He set out to visit Dower House.

Miss Parsons was feeling very well. It was a long time since she had felt so well in body and so clear of mind. Damask, dear child, had now been with her for a fortnight, and in that brief time had worked wonders. Saunders and his dreadful wife had gone. How that miracle had been brought about Miss Parsons did not fully understand; Damask had told her to stay out of the way while she dismissed them, but she had been worried and had gone down and stood outside the kitchen door, ready to go in and support the child if necessary. No sounds of strife reached her, however, only the sound of voices; Damask speaking quietly, the man and the woman muttering at first, and then becoming quiet. Later in the day they had left the house and Miss Parsons had been hysterical with relief. When she was calm again she said, 'And you promise to stay with me--promise.' 'Of course I shall stay,' Damask said. 'Then would it not me wise of me to write to the Poor Farm?'

'I am not from the Poor Farm. It might be as well to write Mrs Cobbold, at Muchanger. That was where I was working and my quarter isn't up until Michaelmas. She might make a fuss if she knew I was here.'

'Oh no, not if I write and say how much I depend on you. I'll do it at once.'

She showed Damask the letter when it was written. It began well--the courteous, formally-phrased letter of one lady to another, asking as a favour that she should allow a maid-servant to break her time and enter new employment. Then it deteriorated suddenly because Miss Parsons' mind had slipped a cog and it was fifty years earlier and she was writing to thank another Mrs Cobbold for a very pleasant dinner-party on the previous evening and asking whether anyone had picked up a silver button which had dropped from the Captain's waistcoat--of no value, no value at all, and if it had not been found no one was to bother to search for it----

'That will do very well,' Damask said, rightly concluding that this unmistakable evidence of the state of Miss Parsons' mind would strengthen the force of the appeal in the opening sentences. Mrs Cobbold, when the letter reached her, said to her husband, 'Oh well, this explains. Now which do I answer--the first half or the second? Poor old thing, she must be quite demented! Still, she chose well! that solemn little creature will not take advantage. And Cook always resented her going out on a Sunday----'

So that was settled. Miss Parsons' next concern was the finding of substitutes for the Saunders. 'I'm not going to have you ruining your pretty hands and working yourself to death, dear child. If you did you might just have well stayed at the Poor Farm. Could you go and find some servants in the village?'

'I could,' Damask said. 'But some from away would be better, if you want me to keep them in order.'

'Of course, of course. Oh, how clever you are! And how stupid of me. I know what I shall do. I shall write to Mr Turnbull.'

She did so. That letter too was most oddly compounded of reason and dementia; but it roused the old lawyer's sense of responsibility towards his client and resulted in the arrival, ten days later, of an elderly married couple; the woman stone deaf, the man, an old sailor, lacking some fingers on his right hand. Conscious of their handicaps, they were delighted to find employment, touchingly anxious to give satisfaction, and when Richard Shelmadine came to pay his visit to Miss Parsons the house was cleaner than it had been for years and a considerable, stretch of the lawn in front of the house had been roughly scythed.

Nevertheless, as he approached the house he wondered again why anyone living in such obviously straitened circumstances should have bought land and then accepted such nonsensical rents.

Miss Parsons, on this bright September morning, was alone in the library at the back of the house, busily and happily mixing the ingredients of pot-pourri in a large Chinese bowl. It was years since she had made pot-pourri. Damask had suggested it, had dried the rose leaves for her and emptied and washed the smaller bowls which now stood ready to receive the mixture when it was blended. The room was clean and in perfect order, the sun shone in at the wide window and gleamed on the polished floor and the surfaces of the furniture. Miss Parsons was calm and lucid of mind; it was all like old times.

Into the calm came Bennett, the old sailor, saying: 'Sir Richard Shelmadine to see you, ma'am.'

Miss Parsons took her fingers out of the pot-pourri and held them to her nose. Scents, more than anything else, are evocative of memory; everything slipped backwards in time.

'Show him in. And bring Madeira and biscuits,' she said. Charles always enjoyed a mid-morning glass of Madeira. Charles? Oh, how foolish! Charles was...oh dear! Richard, of course, the man had said. Richard. And now here he was, smiling and bowing over her hand and saying that he hoped that she remembered him.

'Oh, very well; very well indeed,' she assured him. It was not true; entering the room unannounced he would have seemed a stranger. He bore no resemblance either to his father or to the young man of nineteen or twenty whom she did remember.

As soon as he was seated Richard began to apologise for not having called upon her earlier, pleading press of business; there had, he said, been so many things to see to.

'Oh, I do not expect to be visited nowadays,' she said abruptly. 'I expect you want something now. What is it?'

He exerted his charm. 'Of course I wanted something --to renew our acquaintance. In the old days I always greatly enjoyed coming here; you have so many curious and interesting things--and the fact that you used to offer me a sip of wine and a biscuit as though I were grown-up much endeared you to me.'

'In those days the fact that you were your father's son endeared you to me,' she retorted crisply. 'Later on I deplored the way you behaved to him; the fact that the poor man is dead makes no difference to that. I'm still alive and able to speak my mind.'

He had guessed that it would not be an easy interview; he had expected to find her senile and vague, probably cantankerous, but not inimical to him personally. Nobody else had held his behaviour to his father against him; why should she?

The entry of the servant, rather flustered, explaining that he could find no Madeira, was a welcome interruption, giving him time to consider his next words. It would be unwise to make any further reference to the past, he decided.

'No, I know. That horrid man drank it. But it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter at all,' Miss Parsons said, justifying the old sailor's opinion of her as an employer--'easygoing but very changeable in her mind'.

Richard took out the paper which bore the notice, and said in a more businesslike manner, 'The second reason for my visit is this. It speaks for itself, I think; but if there is anything you wish to ask about it I will explain to the best of my ability.'

She took the paper and, holding it at arm's length because age had made her very long-sighted, studied it for a moment and then laid it down beside the Chinese bowl.

'Your father,' she said, with apparent irrelevance, 'was a very foolish young man and he grew into a very foolish old man. Always talking about what he would do one day, as happily careless as a schoolboy talking about what he will do in his holiday. I knew it would come to this, and I took my precautions. That is why there is no Madeira. It really was comical; he looked so disgusted the day I offered him an inferior wine. And it was all his fault.' A smile of wry amusement began to reassemble the wrinkles around her mouth and eyes; then it faded, and her whole expression clouded as she realised that she had lost track of what she was saying. And there was no help, no guidance to be had from this stranger who was watching her so closely, yet so coldly. She said, with some defiance, 'It's all right, I know, I know. I must just ...' She turned away and plunged both hands into the potpourri, willing herself to remember. She must remember. Here was the pot-pourri; she had been making it when this stranger arrived--that was obvious; and they must have spoken to one another. But about what, and who he was, she could not recall. The very effort to do so led to greater confusion, and after what seemed to her a long, an impolitely long time she lifted her hands and said piteously: 'I'm sorry. I have forgotten what we were talking about. I do forget. That is my trouble.'

He said gently, 'Please don't worry. We all have these little lapses. Why, once in London I hired a hackney carriage and gave the man the address of a house where I hadn't lived for four years! Actually we were talking about this'--he reached out and touched the paper--'and you were just going to sign your name, here.' He indicated the space where he wished her to place her signature.

Still confused, and wishing to conceal her confusion, she said in a more animated voice, 'Was I really? Well, that seems very simple, doesn't it?' The quill stand and the inkpot, used for the letters to Mrs Cobbold and Mr Turnbull, stood on the far end of the table. Miss Parsons looked at them, and then at Richard again. Something-- not what she was reaching for, but something--fell into place in her mind. Signing things had some connection with Mr Turnbull----

'Why didn't Mr Turnbull come himself?' she inquired. 'It was hardly of sufficient importance,' Richard said, after only the briefest hesitation. 'A mere formality.' She selected and dipped a quill, took up the paper and held it at arm's length again. The word 'enclosing' leapt out at her. Her mind cleared and she knew what it was she had been saying before she digressed to mention the Madeira and lost her way.

'But that was what I was about to tell you. I knew he would procrastinate too long. So I took action.' Her expression became cunning. 'You can't enclose unless I sign, can you? And I shall never sign. I own more land than you realise. I shall have quite a voice. That is why I have had to live in this meagre fashion, to make my plan and keep my secret. But you can't enclose unless I consent, can you? So we might as well tear this up.'

Taking the top edge of the paper between her two hands she began to tear it, and had torn three inches before Richard lunged forward and seized her by the wrists. At his touch she reacted exactly as she had done to Mrs Saunders' attempts at violence, resisting fiercely and screaming like a maniac. As she fought against him the tear in the paper continued to lengthen and Richard realised that he was helping her to destroy it; so he let go her wrists and put his hands on her shoulders and shook her, partly in the hope of making her drop the paper, partly in genuine rage. He thought later, when he had time to think, how easy and how delightful it would have been to shake her to death. The shrill screams were actually giving way to jerky, breathless little cries when the door opened and Damask rushed into the room. Shouting 'Stop it', she launched herself at him and would have seized him by the elbows but for the fact that he immediately released his hold and stepped back, feeling immensely foolish. Miss Parsons fell limply back into her chair and the paper fluttered to the ground.

'He tried to murder me,' she said shakily.

'Ma'am, I assure you...I was merely trying to prevent her from tearing an important document,' Richard said, feeling more foolish. He stooped to retrieve the paper and held it out to show the torn edge. 'She had taken up the pen in order to sign, then suddenly she began to tear it instead.'

The girl was not looking at him or at the paper; she was stooping over the old woman and had placed her arm about her.

'There, there,' she said, as though to a child. 'It's all right now. I'm here. It's all right.' She tucked back a wisp of the white hair and fastened one or two buttons which had opened in front of the old woman's bodice, and then she lifted her head and looked into Richard's face with a stare which was neither accusing nor tinged with complicity, nor amused. It seemed indeed to have no connection with the unusual scene just ended; it was a long, cool, measuring stare under which his lack of ease increased to the fidgeting stage. Touching his hair and then his cravat, he said again, 'I assure you ...'

'He tried to murder me,' Miss Parsons repeated.

'No, no. Nobody would do that. It was just a misunderstanding. Look, you go on with the pot-pourri and I'll take him away.'