‘But this Ibell isn’t going to shoot you.’ Finn was impatient. ‘If he’s around, he’ll simply sidle up respectfully, pulling his forelock to the squire’s favourite nephew. That’s right, isn’t it, Bobby? You know the rural set-up in these things.’
‘Absolutely right.’ Bobby said this in a tone confessing boredom. He had come to doubt whether there was much amusement in making fun of the rather feeble Giles Ashmore.
‘But I’m not a favourite nephew. That’s the whole point, isn’t it? I have the job still to do. And as for Ibell, you just don’t know him. Next to my other uncle – Ambrose Ashmore of Abbot’s Yatter – Ibell is said to be the most ferocious character in the district.’
‘Oh, rot!’ Finn said ‘Even if he’s a bleeding maniac, he can hardly shoot you down while you toy with your uncle’s front-door bell. And now, listen. We’ll drive right up. Bobby and I will help you to hump the Father Christmas stuff right into the porch or whatever. Then we’ll turn round, and stop just out of sight round the first bend of the drive. Tell the old gentleman you were dropped by friends, and that they’ve ventured to take a moonlight stroll, and that you have a rendezvous with them in half an hour near the main road. That will give you a getaway.’
‘I don’t want you to go as far off as that.’
‘We shan’t, and you’re not listening. We’ll be no more than out of sight. But it will mean the old chap won’t feel he has to ask Bobby and me in. Bobby, drive on.’
As these seemed to be rational arrangements, Bobby drove on. They appeared to have approached the Chase more or less by the back. But they rounded a corner, ran up some sort of ramp, and found themselves on a broad terrace.
‘There’s the main door,’ Giles said. ‘But – I say! – isn’t the whole place in total darkness?’
‘Not a bit of it,’ Finn said cheerfully. ‘We passed a ruddy great blazing window only five seconds ago. You must be as blind as a bat. Out you get.’ Finn jumped from the car. ‘And heave out the good cheer. Bobby and I will watch you ring the bell, old chap, and then we’ll cut and run.’ Finn gave one of his sudden and disconcerting laughs. It sounded very loud in the dark. ‘I’ve just remembered a funny thing.’ He turned to Bobby. ‘It was when we were talking about just this: Giles’ ringing the front-door bell at the Chase. Your father said that Giles should first take out a life assurance policy. Seems to make the place a kind of Castle Dangerous, wouldn’t you say? Childe Roland to the dark tower came.’
‘It is dark,’ Giles said. He seemed to be in a panic again. ‘I think we’ve made a mistake.’
‘Too late, old chap.’ With another burst of unholy laughter, Finn stepped forward and tugged the bell. ‘Run, Bobby you bastard!’ he shouted, and made a dash for the car.
Bobby followed briskly. He had a notion Finn cherished designs on the wheel of the Mercedes, which was something which, during the remainder of this nocturnal escapade, he wasn’t going to have. After Finn had drunk a certain amount, he appeared to have the faculty of going on getting drunker for some hours, absolutely gratis. It must be economically advantageous. But it didn’t go with making free with a friend’s car.
‘This is boring,’ Finn said, twenty minutes later. He was sitting beside Bobby, and had smoked several cigarettes. ‘But at least there’s more joy to come.’
‘What do you mean – more joy to come?’ Bobby heard a note of suspicion in his own voice. He was beginning to think it time to be getting off to bed.
‘You’ll see. This is going to turn out even funnier than it was meant to be. Only I’m surprised the aged relative is detaining our Giles so long.’
‘We said half an hour. Do you mean something should have happened to send Giles out on his ear before that?’ It seemed to Bobby that a kind of malice was building up in Finn. He had almost forgotten that Finn had been Giles’ rival for the hand of the agreeable but impecunious Robina Bunker. For the first time that night, he wondered whether there were, so to speak, wheels within wheels in this business. ‘Finn, are you playing this straight?’ Bobby asked.
‘Just what do you mean by that?’
‘You and this Giles both having been after the girl. Are you really backing Giles now?’
‘You’re crazy! What else could I be doing – boiling over with a passion for revenge? I ask you Bobby, am I that sort of chap?’
Bobby – consulting his professional knowledge of human nature – decided that Finn was not that sort of chap. Finn was just a silly ass, and entirely bearable as such from time to time.
‘You’re a silly ass,’ Bobby said. ‘And, of course, I’m very fond of you.’
‘Exactly! So we’ve got that clear. Hullo! I think he’s coming now.’
A flicker of light from the invisible house had suggested the opening and closing of the front door. A moment later, they heard Giles Ashmore’s footsteps. Then he swung round the first bend of the drive, walking briskly. He raised an arm and gave a wave; the gesture brought his hand up out of shadow and into moonlight; it was like the sudden pale flame of a candle, Bobby told himself.
‘Absolutely OK!’ Giles almost shouted as he came up. He was a man transformed. ‘I knew I’d bring it off, whatever you said. And I have.’
‘Your uncle will stump up!’ Bobby asked.
‘I’m sure he will. He was touched. And he’ll be touched.’ Giles laughed appreciatively at his own joke. ‘It’s just a matter of the amount, I’d say. But at the moment, by the way, he wants–’
‘You told him what your application was in aid of?’ Finn interrupted. He sounded incredulous. ‘The bedding of Miss Bunker – all that?’
‘Yes, of course.’
Finn gave his yell of laughter. ‘I’d like to meet Uncle Martyn Ashmore. He’s a deep one, he is.’
‘Well, you’re not going to – not now. But Bobby is.’ Giles talked rapidly and in plain excitement. ‘Bobby, he wants you just to come back and be introduced. Something about having met your father, and worked it out that you must be a great-nephew of his old friend Somebody Raven.’
‘Everard Raven. You mean your uncle wants this handshake now?’ Bobby was surprised. ‘The idea was–’
‘You don’t mind, do you? And Finn won’t mind waiting. We’ll only be a jiffy.’
‘But I want to come too!’ Finn was extremely indignant. ‘You mean I’m to stay in the car as unpresentable? What a damned uncivil thing!’
‘Not unpresentable – only tight.’ Giles – he was really a transformed Giles – brought this out briskly. ‘Come on, Bobby. Five minutes will do the trick.’
Finn made a resigned gesture, and lit another cigarette. Bobby followed Giles back to the house. He was trying to remember all he could about his great-uncle Everard. He had a notion that he had edited an encyclopaedia, and was not to be confused with Ranulph Raven, the author of Tales: Chiefly Imaginative or Grotesque. Ranulph Raven, too, had presumably been acquainted with sundry Ashmores. Perhaps he had picked up a grotesque tip or two from them.
‘Giles,’ Bobby said, ‘you did honestly come clean to your uncle about Robina?’
‘Yes, of course. It’s the whole point, isn’t it? But, by the way, I don’t think you should mention her to him yourself. He’d probably like to think our engagement wasn’t public property until after he’d approved it.’
‘I don’t see that it’s your uncle’s business to approve of your engagement – except, I suppose, that he’s going to finance the marriage. But I’ll say nothing about it unless he does. This really must be just five minutes, wouldn’t you say?’
‘Oh, certainly. I’ll ring the bell again.’
But this proved unnecessary. The door opened as Giles stepped forward, and revealed to Bobby’s curiosity – although for the moment only in silhouette against some bleak and unshaded light in the background – the craggy figure of Martyn Ashmore. Bobby decided that the proprietor of the Chase was older than he had expected – and then found himself deciding that he was younger. What led to this instant c
onflict of impressions – if indeed it wasn’t entirely random – he couldn’t quite make out.
‘Ah, Giles, come in again.’ Martyn Ashmore stepped back; the two young men advanced; Giles politely closed his kinsman’s front door behind him. ‘And this must be Robert? How do you do. I have told Giles that your great uncle Everard was a close friend of mine. A remarkable man. A very hard-working man. His Revised and Enlarged Resurrection was a masterpiece.’
‘I’m afraid I haven’t heard of it, sir.’ Bobby was rather startled by this sudden vision of a deceased kinsman in so apocalyptic a role.
‘The dictionary he undertook after his New Millennium. That, you know, was his encyclopaedia. Your father fell over the wall of my park.’ Martyn Ashmore appeared unaware that here was a transition of some abruptness. ‘I was very glad to meet him. Turned out an authority on portraiture. Jarvis, Haydon – fellows of that sort.’
Bobby contrived to produce some suitable reply to this. He was accustomed to thinking of his father as a notable polymath. And what his father didn’t know about, his mother did. Perhaps this was why Bobby had taken to fiction, which is a field of knowledge only in a somewhat special sense. Meantime, he had an opportunity to glance round this strange old man’s habitat. Its first suggestion was extremely comfortless. The hall, although not large, had a flagged floor, a raftered ceiling, a random display of rusty weapons on its walls, and a certain amount of useless-looking Tudor furniture standing around. There was a disproportionately large fireplace, and in this there dully shone, like a glow-worm in the mouth of some forbidding cavern, the single bar of a small and extremely primitive electric fire. The whole set-up, moreover, had a mouldy smell.
It wasn’t altogether apparent, however, that the Ashmores had to suffer, as head of the family, a savage old person lost to all the decencies or even creature comforts of life. Mr Ashmore’s black trousers had here and there a greenish hue, but there was a suggestion that they had been donned, together with an appropriate change of linen, at some prescribed evening hour. His faded velvet smoking-jacket seemed really to belong to an age in which gentlemen veritably put on a special garment of the sort before lighting a cigar. Perhaps what Bobby could glimpse through a half-open door was in fact a smoking room, and at least it had a bright log fire burning in a sizeable grate. Through another door, it was true, there was visible a once dignified apartment which seemed to have been roughly adapted to the uses of a kitchen, and there was everywhere a little more dust than seemed compatible with the existence of any indoor servants whatever. It was towards the first of these doors that Mr Ashmore now made a move. He seemed to be proposing, if not some form of material refreshment, at least the enjoyment of the young men’s conversation for a few minutes longer.
‘I think we’d better not stay, Uncle Martyn,’ Giles said. Giles’ manner had become nervous again. It was as if, knowing he had pulled off a wonderful coup with this all-important relative, he was feeling that it would be wise to go while the going was good. Perhaps he was afraid that Bobby would somehow put his foot in it. ‘Bobby has a friend we have to pick up,’ he went on, ‘and then I have to be dropped at home and they go on to Dream.’
‘Then I must not detain you.’ Martyn Ashmore, it struck Bobby, was speaking to them rather as a grown-up speaks to well-bred children – as if to contemporaries, but with a faint playfulness at the same time. And his nephew Giles he definitely found amusing. This emerged in the next words he spoke. ‘I must simply retire to the enjoyment, my dear lad, of your very original present. You have really surprised me, I am bound to say. Shall I ever surprise you? It seems too much for an old man to hope for. To impose the unexpected upon one’s intimates – even upon one’s mere relations – holds a peculiar pleasure. Don’t you agree?’
‘Well, yes – I do.’ Giles produced this rather uncertainly. But suddenly he reiterated it. ‘Yes. I do.’
‘There was a fellow who wrote plays’ – Martyn Ashmore had turned to Bobby – ‘and, as it happens, I was mentioning him to your father the other day. He said something to the effect that the tables of consanguinity are founded upon a basis of natural revulsion. It may be I don’t get the words right, but the idea is clear. I have always subscribed to it, so far as my own consanguinity is concerned. I detest all other Ashmores – and it has worried me that, as a matter of mere decorum, I may have to part my possessions among them. Upon the occasion of my death, that is. And my death might now take place, you know, in little more than thirty years time. Or so statistics and the habits of heredity suggest to me. But what was I saying? Ah, yes. I detest all Ashmores, and it is therefore reasonable to infer that all Ashmores detest me. Suddenly an Ashmore appears, bearing gifts. Have I any reason to distrust him? We sport no Grecian ancestry, so far as I know. Giles, you follow me?’
‘I don’t quite follow you, Uncle.’ Giles’ uneasiness was increasing. ‘I’m sure I never heard anything about Greek marriages in our family. Only some French ones, and I don’t–’
‘Timeo Danaos et dona ferentes. I see that Bobby understands me. He is clearly a ripe scholar. But now I see that you must really go. Mr Appleby, please give my best wishes to your father. But for the fact that I rarely venture abroad, I would call on him, and hope to be presented to your mother.’ Martyn Ashmore, as he moved through these ritual remarks, moved also towards his front door. It swung open under his hand. ‘And so, goodnight,’ he said. ‘And, Giles, I shall be thinking about you, and about what we have talked over earlier. Who knows what will come of it? You may – yes, after all – you may be surprised.’
11
Finn was standing on the terrace. He had got tired of waiting in the car, and had been taking a prowl round the house, the sickle moon was now high in the sky. But light cloud was drifting across it, and the broken façade of the ancient building gleamed and darkened alternately like a stage-set defectively lit.
‘I took a peep,’ Finn called out as they came up. His voice sounded much too loud in the still night. ‘But I didn’t see any sign of you. Didn’t the old fellow crack one of those bottles of champagne?’
‘What do you mean – you took a peep?’ Giles demanded. ‘Have you been peering through a keyhole?’
‘That lighted window, you idiot.’ Finn pointed along the terrace. ‘There’s a curtain not quite drawn, and it seems to be the old gentleman’s sitting-room. But he must have been palavering with you somewhere else.’
‘We didn’t go beyond the hall,’ Bobby said. ‘And now I think it’s time we cleared out. Let’s get back to the car.’
‘I wonder whether he has opened a bottle of that wine?’ Giles asked. Uncertainty again seemed to have overtaken him. ‘He has an odd way of talking sometimes. Courtly and old-world, I suppose. And he said something about enjoying what I’d brought along. Let’s have a look.’
‘For pity’s sake!’ Bobby said. He was suddenly feeling impatient over this whole affair. But Giles had already moved the short distance down the terrace, and Finn was skipping gleefully after him. Bobby hesitated, and then followed.
‘He isn’t!’ Giles whispered, and drew back from a quick glance he had taken through the half-drawn curtains. Bobby said nothing, but made a similar brief inspection. It was the room with the fire which had been visible from the hall, and Martyn Ashmore was sitting in an easy-chair at one side of the fireplace. Bobby saw him put out a hand to a small table and pick up a book. There was certainly no bottle or glass in evidence.
‘He was merely saying something polite,’ Finn said. ‘Probably he doesn’t drink at all, and will send your blessed cadeau to a church sale.’ Finn’s voice was again recklessly loud. ‘It’s not quite the Christmas season yet,’ he added. ‘But what about striking up with a carol?’
‘Be quiet, you fool,’ Bobby said. ‘And if you both want to come away in my car, come now. This prowling and spying–’
But Bobby’s sentence – plainly to be framed in a key of moral reprobation – never got itself finished. It was interrupted b
y an angry voice from the near-darkness below the terrace.
‘Stay where you are!’ the voice shouted roughly. ‘If you run, I’ll fire!’
‘Run!’ Bobby hissed. He was clear he wasn’t going to take an order like that. ‘Into the park. Draw him away from the car.’
‘It’s Ibell!’ Already fleeing down the terrace, Giles produced this in a panicky gasp. ‘He’s quite–’
But Giles’ sentence didn’t get itself finished either. There was a loud report, accompanied by the unbelievable sound of a patter of lead on the wall of the house close behind them. The ferocious Ibell – if it was indeed he – not being in a position to fire a shot across their bow, had fired one manically close to their stern.
‘Scatter!’ Bobby shouted. And he ran to the edge of the terrace and jumped. At once a dramatic darkness engulfed him, so that for an alarming moment he wondered whether his blind leap had taken him to the bottom of a well. Then he realized that it had merely been synchronous with the moon’s making a dive into deeper cloud than hitherto. With a madman around, this was all to the good.
He had fallen soft – into a drift of beech-leaves, with leaf-mould underneath. He put up a hand and removed a dry twig from his hair. He could still faintly hear running footsteps. Suddenly he heard, too, the baying of a hound. But no – he didn’t. It wasn’t a hound. It was Finn. And his heart warmed to Finn, whose involvement in this night’s proceedings was not, like Giles Ashmore’s, mercenary, but entirely joyous and freakish. And now the hound abruptly – so to speak – took to the air. It too-whitted and too-whooed. Finn, like the boy so movingly recalled by Wordsworth, was blowing mimic hootings to the owls. But the keeper – if it was the keeper – appeared not assuaged by this gamesome metamorphosis. There was a further angry shout, and the shot-gun went off again. If the chap was really firing into darkness – if he was letting off his bleeding weapon other than straight into air – he deserved to be locked up. Even if he believed himself to have stumbled upon a trio of burglars on his employer’s terrace, he was far from entitled to try and maim somebody.
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