Old Hall, New Hall

by Michael Innes

  3

  Sir John, however, was mistaken. The newcomer was a man of about his own age, dressed in dark, professional clothes. Shown in with a sort of modified ceremony by a parlourmaid, he walked up to Lady Jory and shook hands. ‘Good afternoon, Lady Jory.’

  ‘How nice to see you, Doctor. More hot water, please, Evans.’

  The stranger turned to Sir John. ‘Afternoon, Jory.’

  ‘Afternoon, Jory.’

  The two men had nodded at each other, apparently well pleased. They were not positively familiars, but they were too familiar to shake hands. General introductions followed – but even before these had taken place, Clout had tumbled to the truth. Something familiar in Dr Jory’s features no doubt helped him to it. This was Olivia’s father, Edward Jory’s great-grandson. He was a visitor, so to speak, from the limbo of younger sons. He looked much more capable than Sir John, and his appearance didn’t suggest that the junior line had taken any marked tumble in the world.

  ‘I rather expected to find my girl here. She’s been improving her acquaintance with you, I gather.’

  ‘Jerry had been improving his acquaintance with her.’ Lady Jory uttered this expertly as a gracious correction. ‘Jerry likes clever people. Old Lord Dangerfield says he can’t understand why the boy has gone into the Diplomatic.’

  Sir John was hospitably bringing forward the toast. ‘Foreign Service,’ he said. ‘New name. And examination wallahs, every one of them. Dangerous – eh?’

  ‘We’ve got along with it in medicine for some time.’ With business-like dispatch, Dr Jory took three pieces of toast. ‘Of course, other qualities are desirable as well.’

  At this Professor Milder, who for some minutes had been surprisingly silent, found his form again. ‘The degree of positive correlation between competitive tests and subsequent distinction in the business and professional world’, he said soothingly, ‘is a topic that certainly opens up a wide field of reference. To take first the figures from Minnesota–’

  ‘But how very interesting!’ Lady Jory slightly moved her chair, and with the effect of immediately drawing off Milder into tête-à-tête. Clout saw that the action was virtually automatic, and he was duly impressed. That was how, with a detected bore, a practised hostess behaved. And yet Lady Jory was certainly a quite stupid woman. Clout discovered that he was enjoying himself. Clout, BA, B Litt, mightn’t, after all, be so terribly clever himself. But learning was second nature to him. And at present he felt he was learning all the time.

  Dr Jory, who had finished his toast, leant forward for a piece of plum-cake. And he made this the occasion for a confidential murmur to his kinsman that Clout just caught. ‘I say, Jory. I don’t want to speak out of turn. But I had a notion you might be expecting me. A friend of Olivia’s – a young fellow called Crumb’ – he took a bite of cake – ‘or perhaps Plumb–’

  ‘That’s right.’ Sir John nodded, bewildered but encouraging. ‘Name is Lumb. Parson’s son here. Doing a job for me. Nice lad.’

  ‘Well, he tipped me to come along. I’ve a notion my girl is up to something.’

  ‘That so?’ Sir John, himself a parent, received this communication with ready sympathy. ‘There’s certainly something in the wind, if you ask me. I’m waiting for this George Lumb now. He wants some sort of family conference. Puzzling – eh? But George Lumb will get it straight. Capable boy.’

  It was clear that Sir John had come to place a large confidence in the Great Brain. Clout’s reaction to this discovery was unfavourable. It came back to him forcibly that Lumb was a pest. He was also inclined to suspect that Jerry Jory was a pest too. Sir John’s heir was in the Foreign Service. One knew what that meant. And if he and Olivia had been meeting each other, it was a foregone conclusion that here was just one further male tagging after the girl. Clout realized that special hazards, as well as a great glory, must attach to the pursuit of a mistress so decidedly magnetic as Olivia. Her nature was, of course, altogether superior to feeling any special attraction in the fact that a young man was a budding diplomat and the heir to the family baronetcy. But Clout didn’t like the sound of Jerry Jory, all the same.

  He liked it neither figuratively nor in plain fact – as he discovered when, in the middle of these ruminations, hurrying feet and laughing voices made themselves heard through the windows of Lady Jory’s drawing-room. It sounded almost as if some mild sky-larking was in progress. A minute later, Olivia came in – very decorously, and accompanied by a young man, whose gravity was unflawed. Jerry Jory was like his father, but he was even more like Sir Joscelyn over the fireplace. He had the same long and melancholy face, which would lend itself admirably to being sketched against a background of funerary urns and sarcophagi. Alternatively – Clout morosely thought – he would photograph well as a minor member of his profession, standing solemnly behind a Foreign Secretary during the formal signing of some obscurely discreditable treaty.

  Olivia did at least abandon this tiresome person as soon as she had been given a cup of tea – crossing the room to sit down close by Clout on a small sofa. ‘Colin,’ she murmured, ‘who’s the Yank?’

  ‘Chap called Milder. He wants to put Joscelyn into a corner of a book on genteel theft.’

  ‘And the one made of putty?’

  ‘That’s Gingrass, my boss. He brought Milder and me along.’

  ‘What does Sir John think of all this academic interest?’

  ‘I don’t know that he thinks much at all. His feeling seems to be that Joscelyn was learned, and that this sort of thing was to be expected sooner or later. He seems to think that your George Lumb is going to make some kind of announcement.’

  ‘He’s not my George Lumb. I suppose he’s your Miss Sackett’s George Lumb – if he’s anybody’s. And I think I know what he’s up to.’ Olivia’s tone was grim. ‘He’s definitely going over to those Jorys.’

  ‘What do you mean by those Jorys?’

  ‘Our host and hostess, of course – and the dim one I came in with.’

  Clout’s heart gave a bound. ‘Jerry Jory? Is he nice?’

  ‘Oh, he’s quite all right.’ Olivia spoke indifferently. ‘But I’d like to do him down, all the same.’

  Clout could only vastly admire this pertinacity, ‘In the name of family justice?’

  ‘Of course. Joscelyn Jory was a thief, all right, and your American colleague is welcome to him. But his chief theft was from his brother.’

  ‘What does your father think, Olivia, about this Caucasian treasure business?’

  For a moment Olivia hesitated. ‘As a matter of fact, I haven’t discussed it with him. I wanted to find out more first, so that there wouldn’t be any doubt about the facts.’

  ‘Do you think Lumb’s found out more – and that that’s what this is about?’

  Olivia nodded gloomily. ‘Yes. He’s got hold of something. And his announcement, as you call it, is to be made to everybody, so that we all start square. George Lumb has no idea of fair play. Don’t you agree, Colin?’

  As she asked this question, Olivia Jory had with a beautiful impulsiveness and adequate unobtrusiveness laid one of her hands on Clout’s. ‘Yes, of course,’ he said. He was only dimly aware that, if the interest of the finest precision was to be observed, these words stood in need of a little qualification.

  ‘These Jorys know absolutely nothing at all. So giving them the slightest hint is nothing but horrid favouritism on George Lumb’s part. He’s probably infatuated with one of the daughters – and you should see them. Yes – he’s goggled adoringly at both of them, ever since his nose could show above the vicarage pew.’

  Clout, although he knew that there was a wild fallaciousness in this conjecture, had no difficulty in admiring the élan with which it had been expressed. ‘Are you sure’, he asked, ‘that the New Hall Jorys don’t know the family tradition you do – the wager, and the swap, and your great-great-grandfather never getting his due?’

  ‘If they do, they never think of it. I’m the first per
son who saw the plain implication: that the whole discreditable business almost certainly resulted in that enormously valuable stuff being hastily hidden away – and never brought to light again.’

  ‘How do you know it wasn’t?’

  ‘I don’t – not positively. But, if it had been, the fact would almost certainly be remembered. I don’t say we’re on a certainty, Colin darling. But I do say we’re on a good thing.’

  To this, not unnaturally, Clout contrived absolutely no reply. He was wondering whether his ears could possibly have deceived him, and no astounding term of endearment in fact been added to his name. If uttered, it had certainly been casually, and with nothing demonstrative accompanying it. It had been only for a moment that Olivia’s hand had touched his. And she had now contrived to make the little sofa seem much bigger. She was sitting, one might say, at the other end of it, and had suddenly contrived an air of listening with respectful attention to Gingrass.

  Gingrass had for some time been rather in eclipse. It wasn’t any good his preserving an air of exhibiting Professor Milder as a refined comedy turn for the sophisticated. The Jorys weren’t sophisticated – or certainly not in that way – and they wouldn’t have accepted a guest as a comic turn anyway. Nor was it any good Gingrass bringing out Hilary and Lytton and Virginia and Willie and Bertie and Tom. The Jorys, although they might have heard of some of these persons, would not have been specially impressed by even the largest claims to their acquaintance. But it wasn’t for nothing that Gingrass prided himself on being a man of many facets other than the merely academic. He was now producing, for Sir John’s benefit, what was in fact a companion piece to the Lake Garda episode. Only this time, it was not a career as a novelist that Gingrass had renounced; it was the life of a landed proprietor. His father’s small estate had been heavily burdened; and he himself, after a solitary week spent tramping the adjoining moors, had decided that in the interests of the tenantry he must sell to a new man, able to plough in his rents for a period of years. Gingrass had kept nothing but a patch of land, where there was not a bad stretch of trout stream and a little rough shooting.

  Both Sir John and his son received these confidences with proper civility. Only the recumbent spaniel behaved with some lack of propriety – raising his head for a moment, gently swaying his great ears in a gesture that couldn’t be construed as at all acceptive or affirmative, and then relapsing into slumber or abstraction. Professor Milder had now got hold of Dr Jory, and appeared to be offering him a brief factual history of the National Health Service in these islands. Clout wondered whether anything was going to happen after all. The New Hall Jorys were a very nice study in themselves, and they would work up at least into a satiric sketch of the gentler sort. Moreover to be in the same room with Olivia was a happiness that set all other considerations aside. All the same, he couldn’t help feeling that there had been in the air a promise of drama that hadn’t fulfilled itself. Nor was much headway being made in the purely learned way. If the widow of the late Alderman Shufflebotham had – what wasn’t likely – the entrée here, and should wander in now, she wouldn’t be likely to feel that he, Clout, had done much as yet to justify his having entered upon the enjoyment of her husband’s benefaction.

  Clout had got so far in his reflections when the drawing-room door opened and George Lumb came in. He was carrying a portfolio. And he was accompanied by Sadie Sackett.

  Sadie, rather to Clout’s surprise, appeared to have been here before. Lumb must have brought her in to help him on the strength of her professional qualifications as a librarian. And she was clearly in favour with Sir John. He was giving her tea with great politeness. But he had also taken up with her what appeared to be some familiar vein of banter, for Sadie was blushing and laughing aloud. He hadn’t shown any tendency to a similar relationship with Olivia. Perhaps it was really true that two opposed parties were building themselves up in this room.

  But now Sir John was serious again. Sadie had said something that made him turn to Lumb inquiringly. ‘George,’ he asked, ‘what’s this about letters?’

  ‘I’ve f-f-found some, Sir John.’

  ‘Are they any good? I mean, could one get anything out of them?’ Sir John went with admirable simplicity to what he plainly conceived to be the relevant point. ‘Penfold – fellow who told me you can get the deuce of a lot out of books – said nothing about letters.’

  ‘It may be autographs, John.’ Lady Jory supplied this. ‘They are sometimes quite valuable, I believe. When I was a girl I once had a letter from Mr Arthur Balfour. He had been lunching with Papa and Mama, and had spoken a few words to me in the garden, and afterwards been told that it was, in fact, my birthday. So, of course, he wrote this little letter to explain why he had not congratulated me. And one of my brothers gave me five shillings for it, simply because of the signature.’

  ‘Is that so, m’dear?’ Sir John was much struck by this anecdote, which it appeared his wife had not previously communicated to him. ‘George – is that what you’ve got on to? Letters from big-wigs – eh? Five shillings is always something, if you ask me. I can remember Jerry here saving nearly a tenner out of his weekly five bob. Pleased me very much. I put something to it, and there he was with his own gun.’

  ‘It was a new saddle. The gun was a present from my grandfather.’ Jerry Jory offered this correction in a well-bred way, with no suggestion that it was of the slightest importance to anybody. But Clout at once decided that he was a thoroughly dull man.

  ‘Quite so.’ Sir John nodded cheerfully. ‘Well, George – is that it?’

  ‘N-n-no. The writer of these letters’ – and Lumb held up the portfolio – ‘was quite obscure. She was a m-m-member of your own f-f-family, sir.’

  ‘The deuce she was!’ Sir John, although disappointed by this news, saw no offence in the manner in which it had been intimated. ‘Then, why, my dear boy–’

  ‘There are references to something that should be known to you – and to D-D-Dr Jory as well.’ Lumb was for some reason very serious. ‘M-m-my idea is, sir, that Sadie should read them to us.’

  ‘Certainly, George. A capital plan!’ Sir John was so enthusiastic about this that Clout had to conclude him quite gone on Sadie Sackett. That, of course, was all right in its way. Sadie was a good sort of kid, and not without the looks that might prompt an old buffer to begin feeling fatherly. But considering that Olivia too was in the room, one really had to conclude that Sir John was as stupid as his agreeable but vacuous wife.

  Lumb had handed the portfolio to Sadie. He now came over and stood beside Clout. He glanced quickly at Olivia – so unhappily that it was impossible not to feel sorry for him – and then spoke in a low voice. ‘I s-s-say, Clout – of c-c-course you’re in on this. And I suppose Gingrass c-c-can’t be turned out. But who’s that other chap?’

  ‘Name of Milder. You needn’t worry about him. Harmless bore. Wants to write a bit about Sir Joscelyn’s collecting methods in a general history of the subject. But even if he does, nobody will ever read it. It seems agreed he should just be let tag around.’

  Lumb nodded. ‘M-m-may Sadie begin?’ he asked Sir John.

  ‘Certainly, certainly. But you haven’t told us who the letter- writer is.’

  ‘Sophia Jory.’ It was Sadie who answered. ‘A younger sister of Joscelyn and Edward. The letters are to her old governess, it seems. They’re not the actual letters, or of course they wouldn’t have turned up here. They’re Sophia’s own copies. She’d been taught to keep a letter book.’

  ‘And p-p-perhaps she thought she could m-m-make use of them. I think Sophia Jory enjoyed writing.’ Lumb added this with a note of respect.

  ‘Sophia Jory.’ Sir John repeated the name thoughtfully. ‘I don’t think I ever heard of her. Jerry, did you?’

  Jerry shook his head. ‘I know Joscelyn and Edward had sisters. But I’m sure I never heard of Sophia by name. I can’t think she did anything much.’

  ‘She d-d-didn’t. She c-c-c–’ For a moment L
umb was in more difficulty than usual. But he overcame it. ‘Sophia didn’t do,’ he said firmly. ‘She chronicled. Sadie, begin.’

  4

  ‘Dear Miss Bird, – Your last letter (which has remained unanswered longer, I fear, than you would at all have sanctioned while you yet had some control of a sadly negligent pupil) is full of interest. But then am I not perpetually astonished, as often as I hear from you, by the inexhaustible variety of incident and observation that Harrogate seems to yield? But diversion is all in the eye; and to most I am persuaded that your remarkable town would seem a dull place enough!

  From your account of your present state of health, although you give it so lightly, I cannot derive other than anxious thoughts. I am particularly disturbed that your physician should have prescribed porter. No doubt it is, as you say, less repulsive than the waters; yet I cannot believe that anything of the sort is (to speak plainly) a drink for gentlefolk. Mr Charles Dickens, the new novelist, is, you have remarked, extremely entertaining; but let us not choose our beverages on the recommendation of his coarser female creation! It was often observed by my dear papa that there is no constitution which a sound burgundy will not fortify. The axiom is one which I have never seen reason to question, and I am therefore happy to say that my brother has eagerly concurred in my suggestion that he should dispatch a dozen of this excellent specific to you forthwith. Only don’t let her mix it, he said to me as he gave the instruction to his butler, with the damned stuff from the pump. You will forgive Joscelyn this profanity, will you not, and religiously take a glass when you dine? It is to be Clos de Tart, assuredly a strange name for a wine, but highly to be commended (it seems) nevertheless.

  But, I hear you exclaim, what is this of Sir Joscelyn, and how comes he to be at home? And thus, dear Miss Bird, I enter upon my own news!