Lord Mullion's Secret Page 9

  The fish proved to inhabit individual glass cases, and to be stuffed. But did one stuff fish? Was such a branch of taxidermy feasible? Honeybath had often wondered, and never found out. Perhaps the fish in their glass cases were faithful replicas, executed in plaster or wax, of actual fish which had fallen to the skill of angling Wyndowes long ago. There was conceivably a special branch of sculpture devoted to such creation, or it might simply be a side-line profitably pursued by the skilled assistants of Madame Tussaud.

  These were absurd speculations, such as ought not to have deflected Honeybath either from further perpending his late anxieties or from exhibiting a civil zeal in the hunt for Great-aunt Camilla’s pictures. His companions, however, now felt that they were hot on the scent. The kitchen corridor was a broad, stone-flagged thoroughfare, and followed a gentle curve which must have been dictated by one of the external walls of the castle. On one side hung the fish. On the other, frame hard against frame in the fashion favoured by collectors long ago, hung hundreds rather than scores of small pictures of the most various sort. Sporting prints predominated, but there was no end of portrait heads, architectural and topographical sketches, stormy seascapes, an aphrodisiac nudes, the offerings of laborious schoolchildren in the way of painfully ‘shaded’ cylinders and cubes, woolly alphabets and nebulous scriptural scenes executed in embroidery by persons in the same defenceless phase of life, illuminated testimonials of respect and esteem from well-affected tenants and their wretched labourers, royal warrants and commissions appointing sundry loyal subjects (styled ‘cousins’ for the nonce) to do this or that round about the empire, rent-rolls and dairy-books and cellar-books, fragments of which had struck some earlier Lord Mullion as being of keen antiquarian or historical interest. A catalogue of all this could have been almost indefinitely prolonged, and the only common denominator that could be extracted from the lot was that of mediocrity or near-mediocrity. Here and there it might have been possible to pick out the equivalent of Cyprian’s piece of Chinese porcelain lurking in a potting shed. Honeybath, for example, believed himself to have briefly glimpsed a representation in oils of an obstinately static horse-race which might have been by John, or by John F, or by John N Sartorius, and which might conceivably be flogged to an artistically minded Emir or Sheik for several hundred (or even thousand) pounds. But the total effect was not inspiring, and it could hardly be supposed that Miss Wyndowe would be too pleased to find the labours of her brush or pencil jostling in such company.

  This thought appeared to occur to Lord Mullion.

  ‘Fascinating part of the place, this,’ he said heartily. ‘They all come along here, you know – the visiting crowd, I mean – on their way to the kitchen. The kitchen is supposed to be a great feature of the castle, being so extremely medieval and so forth with all those spits and ovens and tables made out of entire oak trees and the like. But our clients can scarcely be dragged away from the corridor. Bella Kinder-Scout was remarking on the fact to me only the other day.’

  Great-aunt Camilla seemed unimpressed by this, or indeed by anything else. She had made her way down the corridor assisted by both Cyprian and her multipedous device. She looked, or was contriving to look, extremely tired – which was a state in which her quite dippy component seemed likely to gain the ascendant. In this condition she was liable to say anything under the sun. Honeybath felt that the present expedition had been sadly misconceived. His own attention wandered back to the stuffed or sculptured fish, which were at least not wholly remote from Nature’s family. He remarked the interesting fact that they were nearly all positioned in the same way, facing from left to right as one looked at them. This is the artist’s immemorial resource for setting his creations within the tide of time: face to the right and you are moving into the future; turn your head and you are glancing back into the past. It is a psychologically obscure but nevertheless powerful symbolism, and Honeybath was meditating upon it in a professional manner when he was arrested by a sudden shout from Lord Wyndowe. The moment was one, although he had no notion of the fact, pregnant for the future of the Wyndowe family.

  ‘Here they are!’

  Cyprian’s voice rang down the corridor. Just so might his uncle, Sylvanus Wyndowe, have bellowed ‘Gone away!’ or something of the sort in the hunting field, and it would almost have been appropriate if the whole little company had broken briskly into a canter. And indeed, as Honeybath was subsequently to reflect, the shout was to prove much like one initiating a rapid course of things leading from a view to a death in the morning.

  But the actual quarry was far from exciting. Hanging between a dish of flabby fruit rendered in inexpertly handled oils and the charcoal head of somebody’s favourite hound were two small watercolours each of which coped valiantly if unsuccessfully with outdoor scenes of a rather elaborate sort. And Miss Wyndowe had hobbled up and was pointing dramatically at the first of them.

  ‘Ah,’ she cried, ‘dear, dear Azay-le-Rideau! Howl remember struggling with that fountain. But I was rewarded. Monet himself approved.’

  Honeybath glanced at the picture. He more than glanced at the fountain. And then – cautiously – he glanced swiftly at Lord and Lady Mullion, at the girls, at Cyprian, at Dr Atlay. Perhaps they were gratified by the old lady’s sudden animation, or perhaps they were bored. But certainly detectable in them was that curious quality of inattention so often to be remarked in people ‘doing’ overwhelming public galleries. The kitchen corridor wasn’t exactly that. Its mere petty multitudinousness was wearisome, all the same.

  ‘But surely–’ Honeybath began, and broke off on detecting the note of irritation in his own voice. ‘But surely,’ he managed to say, ‘the other picture was even more taxing, Miss Wyndowe? To get the glint of the water beneath–’

  ‘Ah, but indeed! That bridge over the Seine at Argenteuil: it was daunting to attempt such a subject in the very steps of the Master himself. You remember his painting, Mr Honeybath?’

  Honeybath certainly remembered Monet’s painting: remembered the boldness of the bridge’s span emphasized by the sickle of sky beneath, softened by the flutter of bunting above. But for the first time Great-aunt Camilla had embarrassed and even alarmed him. She was quite, quite mad. No woman in her senses could site Bernini’s Fontana del Bicchierone somewhere on the Loire, or confound an affair of cast-iron girders with Ammanati’s Ponte a S.Trinità.

  Various civil remarks were made – and some of them by Honeybath to the best of his ability. He continued to find himself curiously put out. Something quite unaccountable and absurd had just happened; and it had happened hard upon something else which, if not absurd, was very unaccountable indeed. He had a dim sense that these two unaccountabilities were related, although he couldn’t conceive how this might be so. The problem so preoccupied him that he had very little sense of the brief remaining events of the evening, which indeed chiefly consisted in getting Miss Wyndowe back into her lift. Eventually he found himself alone for a few minutes with Lord Mullion and (blessedly) a decanter of whisky. And it seemed to him there was nothing for it but to speak out.

  ‘Do you know, Henry,’ he began cautiously, ‘that I think Miss Wyndowe must be mistaken in her impression that she never travelled in Italy?’

  ‘My dear Charles, whatever do you mean?’ Quite abruptly, Lord Mullion had put down his glass and was staring at his old schoolfellow in astonishment.

  ‘Those two watercolours have nothing whatever to do with the places she mentioned – and which are, of course, both in France. The one is of a famous fountain at Tivoli, and the other is of an equally famous bridge in Florence.’

  ‘God bless my soul! How very odd. But of course Great-aunt Camilla imagines things. Not a doubt about that.’

  ‘But, as I understand the matter, it is quite firm family history, or persuasion, and has been for a long time, that on her Grand Tour as a young woman – for I suppose it may be called that – she firmly refused to enter Italy. Perhaps because she disliked the Pope, or perhaps because
she distrusted the drains. If those two watercolour sketches are hers, then that record is nonsense.’

  ‘Well, yes.’ Lord Mullion had recourse to his glass, and appeared to find wisdom in it. ‘They must be by somebody else, and she has it muddled up.’

  ‘It’s certainly a possibility.’

  ‘A probability, I’d say. Remember the state of her mind.’

  ‘I do remember it. But she is uncommonly positive – isn’t she? – that she painted the things herself. And I believe the point could be proved or disproved through a little close comparative study of those two efforts with others that are undoubtedly her own work.’

  ‘You don’t say so?’ Lord Mullion was impressed. ‘But – do you know? She probably did the things from picture postcards or something like that. I did it myself as a kid.’

  ‘It’s another possibility.’ Honeybath paused on this, and finished his whisky. It was on the tip of his tongue to say, ‘And there’s another thing’, and to go on to tell Henry that he was at present the owner not of three but only of two miniatures by Nicholas Hilliard. But he refrained. He refrained because of a certain very odd idea which was beginning to harbour in his head. It was an idea of the kind that needs sleeping upon – and in all probability then needs burying.

  ‘Not a doubt of it,’ Lord Mullion was saying easily. ‘The truth is you never know where you are with the old girl. We’ve got used to it, you know, and don’t much bother ourselves about small mysteries. Clever of you to spot the thing, Charles. Never have spotted it myself. Martin Atlay might, being interested in that kind of thing. By the way, we’d better not challenge Camilla herself on the point. It might upset her. And then she can be very awkward indeed.’

  ‘My dear Henry, I’d be speaking quite out of turn to her if I raised the question.’ Honeybath hesitated. ‘But I believe it may be worth thinking about, all the same.’

  ‘Yes, of course. I quite agree with you.’ Lord Mullion nodded sagely and vaguely, and one might readily have concluded that he would never give the matter another thought. ‘Better get off to bed,’ he said as he stood up. ‘I do hope you’ll sleep well, Charles. It’s quiet enough here – if you don’t mind the owls.’

  11

  It may have been an owl that awakened Honeybath in the small hours, but what he awoke to was a ghost. The ghost – which like many ghosts might have been no more than a perambulating scarecrow in a white sheet – was standing silently in a corner of the bedroom, in which the only illumination was from a faint moonlight. There was no reason to suppose that the ghost had uttered, moaned, or clanked a chain: its effect was of one waiting considerately to be taken notice of. Honeybath was not alarmed or even surprised, and he might thus be said to be conforming to the customary behaviour of persons encountering veridical apparitions as distinct from the story-book variety. Honeybath, in fact, got briskly out of bed.

  ‘Can I do anything for you?’ he asked politely.

  At this the ghost did move, and did produce a sound. It turned and walked slowly towards the door to the accompaniment of a faint tap-tapping on the polished floor. It opened the door (which is a much more difficult feat for a ghost than merely vanishing through a solid wall), passed out of the bedroom, and closed the door behind it. Then the tap-tapping receded down the corridor.

  A brief irresolution now possessed Honeybath. Although his privacy had been invaded, and his just repose disturbed, it was really no business of his. There was no doubt in his mind that he had simply witnessed something already described to him: untoward nocturnal behaviour on the part of Miss Camilla Wyndowe. Whether somnambulistically or otherwise, the old lady was prone to these wanderings around Mullion Castle – and apparently with a degree of mobility scarcely commanded by her on other occasions. He couldn’t recall that Lady Mullion had recorded herself as taking any action during the similar incident she had described to him, so he had no clue as to what, if anything, he should himself do. It was hard to believe that this aged and crazed person was allowed thus to wander at will, or that she was doing so now other than because, thus in the middle of the night, she had eluded the care of whatever nurse or similar attendant had the duty of looking after her. She had been without torch or candle, and although she presumably knew the castle well it could not be anything except a singularly dangerous place to wander about in after such a fashion. It would be irresponsible not to follow her at once, and keep an eye on her till he could somehow summon help.

  Honeybath, unfortunately, had neither torch nor candle either – and not even a box of matches. Unlike Miss Wyndowe, he was totally unfamiliar with the lay-out of the castle, vague about which way to turn as soon as he left his room, totally unaware of where anybody else was sleeping. So he must catch up with the old lady before she disappeared from view, and keep her in sight until he could decide how, with least fuss, to alert one or another member of the household.

  These thoughts had taken him out of his bedroom and into the corridor. There was fortunately a gleam of moonlight here as well, but it afforded no glimpse of Miss Wyndowe. It looked as if there was nothing for it but move about knocking on doors at random until he found a tenanted one and could report on the situation. But now, half-way down the corridor, another door opened and Miss Wyndowe emerged through it. She shut it softly behind her, crossed the corridor to another door, appeared to listen intently for a moment, and then disappeared into this further room. It occurred to Honeybath that she was simply engaged in the bizarre ritual of making a round of the castle and satisfying herself that all its inmates were safely in bed and asleep. Perhaps she was re-enacting, in some strange fashion, what had once been her actual duty in some different situation.

  She was in the corridor again, and again closing a door softly behind her. She moved on – painfully and with the aid of her stick, yet purposefully and as if she had a good deal still in front of her. This went on, confusingly and down several corridors, for some time. Honeybath felt that his duty was now clear. He must tackle Miss Wyndowe himself and quietly suggest that she might be better back in bed. With this intention he walked straight towards her. But even as he did so she turned and looked at him. Or, rather, she performed the first of these actions, but not the second. Her eyes were closed as if in the most tranquil sleep.

  In the same moment that Honeybath witnessed this startling phenomenon something happened to the moonlight. It must have been a full moon that had been observing these events, but one veiled behind cloud. Now the cloud had dispersed, with the result that a good deal more swam into view. At its further end this corridor was revealed as merging into a thoroughly medieval piece of décor: a vaulted roof, lancet windows, and the beginning of what appeared to be a spiral staircase ascending to some chamber or turret above. Before this stood Miss Wyndowe, who had become a sort of Woman in White – or rather some enigmatical figure corresponding to that in an earlier species of Gothic romance. There was something peculiarly unnerving about this small transformation, but it was not this alone that gave Honeybath pause. He supposed that Miss Wyndowe must be in the strictest sense sleep-walking, and he recalled having somewhere heard or read that considerable danger attends the abrupt arousing of a person in such a condition. Grave nervous shock may result. And as Miss Wyndowe was already far from in the best of nervous conditions, on her the effect might be all the more disastrous. So Honeybath hesitated again. And as he did so Miss Wyndowe disappeared.

  As Miss Wyndowe disappeared the moonlight disappeared also – much as if the old lady had herself switched it off. A much denser cloud must have turned up. All that Honeybath could do was listen, and this he did. For some moments the tap-tap of the walking-stick was audible, and then it faded away. But in its place there was another sound: a low hum which, although he had heard it only twice before, he at once recognized. Miss Wyndowe’s lift was in motion. It was to be presumed that, her unconscious mind having satisfied itself that all was in order at Mullion Castle, she was returning to her own elevated situation, where she would
no doubt simply get into bed again. And this meant that Honeybath could do the same – always presuming that he had not already so lost his bearings that he had little hope of finding his own bedroom door. This was an alarming thought, and one apt to conjure up in the imagination all sorts of embarrassing possibilities.

  But, after all, was the inference he had just made a secure one? Lifts can go down as well as up, and he was fairly clear that he was now located on the second floor of the castle. Might not Miss Wyndowe be proposing to extend her vigilance to the rather splendid apartments – the ‘state apartments’, as the guiding ladies no doubt called them – that lay below? What if, having done that, she soared aloft again, went one higher than her own aerie, and began to perambulate those crenulations with which the ennobled descendants of Sir Rufus Windy had been permitted to embellish their residence rather late on in the Tudor age? This was a horrible thought, and eminently Gothic. Honeybath felt that further action was required of him, and he moved hastily and quite blindly down the corridor. As with so many unconsidered actions, this had an unfortunate result. He tripped over some invisible but hard and painful object (it was, in fact, a fire bucket), fell sprawling on the floor with what seemed to him an overpowering effect of racket, and picked himself up amid a blaze of light. Another bedroom door had opened, a switch had been flicked, and in nothing more modest than his pyjamas he was confronting Lady Patience Wyndowe.