The Quincunx: The Palphramonds

By Charles Palliser

A classic Victorian mystery full of intrigue, deadly plots and devastating twists and turns

Falsely imprisoned in an asylum, John escapes from their clutches with the help of the kindly Digweed family. Starting a new life in hiding with them may feel safer, but they survive by scavenging the sewers of London.

Summoning his strength, and on discovering the existence of a second will that could be his salvation, John must go undercover in the guise of a servant, into the very heart of the enemy themselves…

The fourth part of the classic and beloved The Quincunx is perfect for fans of Michel Faber and S.J. Parris.

Praise for The Quincunx

‘Grips like steel… it’s a book to make you miss your stop on the bus or the train, keep you up at night and wake you early… a formidable achievement’ Kaleidoscope, BBC Radio 4

‘His brilliant and entertaining pastiche of the mid-nineteenth-century novel’ The Times

‘A brilliant and deeply eccentric attempt to reproduce an early Victorian novel…it combines massive scope with minute detail – there is a cast of thousands, but every figure is loveingly painted. The plot is so thick the spoon stands up in it, and by the end, the reader has toured the whole of late Regency society… Magnificent – gripping and beautifully written; the sort of book that sends you into a trance of pleasure’ Independent

‘Charles Palliser has realised a world that can almost be smelt and tasted as it pours off the page of this gripping, extraordinary novel’ Daily Telegraph

‘His plot is of an intricacy that Wilkie Collins himself might have envied… an astonishing achievement’ Scotsman

The Quincunx

1 The Huffams

2 The Mompessons

3 The Clothiers

4 The Palphramonds

5 The Maliphants

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Jul 19, 2018
• ISBN: 9781788632157

Book preview

Chapter 1

I invite you to enter in imagination the Great Parlour of the house in Brook-street and conceive how it must have been.

The elderly baronet is reclining upon an ottoman in the Drawing-room and addressing his heir, while his wife looks on from a sopha by the window, ‘Outrageous! Absolutely outrageous! Almost as bad as that other rascal.’

‘Your father means that your conduct is only a little less deplorable than that of your brother,’ Lady Mompesson says calmly. ‘And less excusable, for your father and I hold him barely responsible for his actions.’

‘I give him up entirely,’ the baronet exclaims. ‘Entirely. He is being dismissed his regiment in disgrace. Never has a Mompesson…’

He breaks off and after a moment his wife continues, ‘Something will have to be done with him. And whatever it is will cost money. You appear to have no conception of the gravity of the situation. We are getting more and more deeply into debt.’

‘Going entirely to pieces! Damned Jews!’

‘Nobody will take your father’s acceptances,’ Lady Mompesson translates, ‘for our credit is destroyed now that the codicil has been laid before the court and we are threatened with the loss of the estate.’

‘Damnable bad news from Assinder, too.’

‘Ah, Assinder,’ David begins and his mother glances warningly at him.

But it is too late.

‘I won’t hear any more of that!’ the elderly baronet cries. ‘He’s the nevy of a man who served me and my father for forty years! And he’s done damn’ well by me, too!’

‘He has succeeded admirably in bringing down the poor-rates,’ his wife says conciliatingly, ‘for he has largely excluded the settled poor. And the enclosure of the common land has been successful.’

‘That may be so, father, but Barbellion…’

‘I know what Barbellion thinks,’ Sir Perceval shouts. ‘And your mother.’ He glares at her. ‘But it’s nonsense. I’d trust him with my life.’

He pauses and regains his breath.

After a moment, Lady Mompesson says equably, ‘Leaving that question aside, the fact is that he has estranged the chief tenants and in many cases their rents are gravely in arrears.’ Before her husband can protest, she turns to her son and goes on, ‘That is why your father’s affairs are in so sad a state.’

‘And you’re making ’em worse!’ the baronet cries. ‘Spending your time and my money in the lowest gambling-hells. (Like that one that was robbed the other day. And serve its patrons right! Damn’ fool pastime.) Hate to think how much you’ve squandered there. Now, tell me frankly, how much are your debts?’

Mr Mompesson looks at his mother and she purses her lips.

‘A little over two thousand pounds,’ he answers.

The baronet looks somewhat mollified on hearing this figure, ‘Well, that’s bad but it ain’t impossible. There is only one thing for it: you must marry.’

‘The very course I have been thinking of myself, sir.’

‘Very well. But you know whom I am referring to.’

‘But father, as I said the last time we spoke of it: I need a bride with ready cash. And I believe I have found one.’

‘I have told you before, the first priority must be to retain the estate.’

‘But not if we can’t afford to keep it, father. What would it matter if we lost the land as the price of remaining afloat?’

‘Dammit, sir!’ the baronet cries. ‘Have you no pride of family? Mompessons have owned land down there for hundreds of years.’

‘Oh come, father. You speak of pride, but you know the truth. We acquired the estate by very dubious means. Your grandfather got that miserable creature, James Huffam, into his power and helped him to cheat his own son of his inheritance.’

The baronet turns purple with rage and while his wife angrily signals to her son to leave the room, this is perhaps a good moment for us, too, to withdraw from this domestic scene.

Chapter 2

Through the long hours of darkness that followed I watched the wretched creature across the cell from me as I tried to make sense of what was happening. So this was the Refuge mentioned in my mother’s narrative!

I thought of the procession of years – more than my lifetime – that he had passed here. It was a long time before it occurred to me that I was locked up with the murderer of my grandfather – since any hope I had nurtured that he might be innocent had been dispelled by the sight of that wild countenance – for this creature, now whimpering and huddling itself against the opposite wall, appeared to present no danger to anyone except perhaps itself.

For the first hour or so my cell-mate shook his chains as if trying to escape, but he was so firmly secured that he could hardly move. Then he set to moaning and rubbing his head against his upper arms which was all he could reach, constrained as he was by the links, and after some time the terrible idea came to me that he was weeping. It occurred to me to attempt to speak to him, but here a difficulty arose: I did not know how to address him.

Eventually I said simply, ‘Do you understand me?’

At my words he pressed himself back against the wall, staring at me in terror and trying to shield his face. And it was long before he was quiet again.

The long night dragged by. There were noises from elsewhere in the house for I heard a thin wailing sound that was so unrelenting that it might have been the wind – except that I believed it was a calm night.

So little light reached the cell that it was difficult to know when the dawn had arrived, but at what I took to be an early hour, Dr Alabaster came to the grille accompanied by the turn-key who had brought me there the night before.

My poor fellow-inmate cowered back at the sound of the mad-doctor’s voice, ‘Good morning, Master Clothier.’

I crossed to the grille and peered through it at the sallow features of Dr Alabaster.

‘Don’t call me that!’

‘I trust you passed a pleasant night,’ he went on, ‘reunited, after so long a separation, with your esteemed parent.’ He held a lanthorn up to the grille so that it illuminated my face, ‘But I see that you appear tired. My fear is that he may have kept you awake with his eloquence. You must have had a great deal to talk over together. Has he told you of your distinguished grandfather – who I believe died before you could have the pleasure of making his acquaintance – and of his own affection for the gentleman and of its practical expression?’

He motioned to the turn-key to unlock the door and as it swung open he made a mock rush towards the chained creature who started back in terror. Without thinking I hurled myself at our tormentor, butting with my head since my arms were secured. The other man, however, pulled me away and hit me in the face so that I fell stunned onto the stone-flagged floor whose thin covering of straw gave little protection.

‘Be careful not to mark the body, Rookyard!’ exclaimed the doctor, brushing down his coat with a glance of deep resentment towards me. ‘I was warned that he was violent. We may have to use the Tranquillizer or the crib.’

Rookyard smiled reflectively.

‘Put him in one of the low grates,’ said Dr Alabaster. Then he said to me with a thin smile, ‘Now take leave of your father properly, as a dutiful and affectionate son.’

When I did not move Rookyard propelled me violently forward so that the poor wretched creature cowered back against the wall.

‘What an affecting scene,’ said Dr Alabaster.

He began to walk away up the passage but then turned and said, ‘Show yourself to be your father’s son, Master Clothier, and don’t disappoint your family’s hopes in you.’

There was a coarse guffaw of laughter from Rookyard and from the tall man, whom I now saw to be waiting in the passage. Then they pushed me before them in the other direction.

At the end of the passage we ascended some stone stairs – the turn-keys kicking and tripping me as I climbed – and then passed along another passage, then down some more steps into what seemed to be the cellar level of the building. Here we stopped and when the giant had unlocked another iron-grilled door, Rookyard pushed me through it so hard that I fell sprawling on the ground. As I picked myself up I found I was in a cell that seemed to me to be identical to the first, except that it was uninhabited: there was straw on the floor and a tiny barred window high up. There were no articles of furniture or, indeed, any contents except a narrow palliasse of straw, a jug and a wooden platter containing some cold porage.

Rookyard released me from the strait-waistcoat and then the door clanged shut behind me. Looking at the food and the water in the jug, it came to me that they were poisoned and so, despite my hunger and thirst, I determined neither to eat nor to drink, let the consequences be what they would.

My only hope lay in escaping, and with this in mind I examined my cell. The window was not only too high up to reach but also, with its iron bars, impossible to squeeze through. From the feeble quality of the light that came through it, I seemed to be below ground level and on a quiet side of the building. Peering through the small grille that surmounted the iron-bound door, I could see a little way along the passage in either direction by the faint lume of a distant gas-mantle. Holding the bars of the grille, I pulled myself up the door until I was just able to peer out of the bottom of the window on the opposite wall. I could make out a patch of waste ground with a scrubby grass-plat beyond it on which a broken wheel-barrow was lying on its side, and further off some untended shrubs and a large pond surrounded by a muddy swamp. There was no prospect of escaping that I could imagine.

The long hours dragged by and the cell was as cold as the other had been, and I was still in only my night-shirt. (I discovered that at least I still had the sovereign that I had hidden in its hem.) I was so hungry and thirsty that, towards noon, I nearly succumbed very suddenly to the temptation offered by the bason of congealed porage and the jug of cloudy water. But this would be to abandon the quest both to bring the Clothiers to justice for what they had done to me and my family, and to unravel the mysteries that surrounded me.

I was dozing on the palliasse when I suddenly heard something and looked up just in time to see an object being pushed through the grille and falling onto the straw on the floor. I rushed to the door but because of my limited angle of view was only in time to glimpse a figure passing swiftly and almost noiselessly along the passage away from me.

I picked up the object and found that it was half of a loaf of bread wrapped in a piece of muslin cloth that I found to be soaking wet. Here were the food and drink that I desperately needed! Then a suspicion came to me. This might be a ruse to lure me into consuming poisoned food when I would not eat what had been given to me. But then I wondered what I had to lose by taking this risk since otherwise I would die anyway?

So I made a lingering feast of the soggy bread and then tilted my head and wrung out the cloth into my mouth. No drink before or since ever tasted as sweet as that water, savouring though it did of the grubby cloth.

This must have been the early afternoon for it was only an hour or two later that it began to grow dark, or, rather, even darker, and so I found a dry corner of the cell and settled down to try to sleep.

Chapter 3

Dozing restlessly, I fancied I was dreaming that someone was calling me. But since I did not recognise the voice and since it was calling, ‘John Clothier, John Clothier!’ and I did not want to acknowledge that this name was mine, I refused to answer the summons. Yet it came again and again and more and more insistently so that at last I woke up and lay with beating heart in the near-darkness and the bitter cold, having no recollection of where I was. Then I realized that someone was in reality calling to me by this hated name for I heard a loud insistent whisper repeating the syllables, and at that instant the memory of my situation came flooding back.

The unknown being who was addressing me was at the door of the cell. I rose and, advancing cautiously towards it, saw the outline of a face through the grille against the faint light that came from the passage. This individual was holding something through the bars and when I took it I found that it was another piece of bread wrapped as before.

‘You are John Clothier, are you not?’ said a gentle voice.

For a moment I was too stunned to answer and my visiter, who sounded like an elderly gentleman, asked again, ‘You are the son of Peter Clothier?’

‘I am John Clothier,’ I answered hesitantly and reluctantly. ‘But who are you?’

‘My name will mean nothing to you. I am Francis Nolloth.’

He stepped back into the passage so that the little light there was from the gas-mantle some yards away fell on him. I saw that he was a small man of upwards of sixty with a mild, Quakerish face and a bald head, that he was looking at me with a kindly expression, and that he was the pitying figure I had seen in the night-ward – the owner of the single countenance on which I had so far seen signs of intelligence and compassion in that place.

‘Thank you,’ I said as I began to devour the bread.

He stepped forward again to whisper through the grille, ‘They mean to poison you. Take nothing from them.’

‘How do you know these things?’

‘I am a wardsman here and trusted by them.’ I must have revealed my dismay, for he went on, ‘Yes, I am an inmate of this place. But I am as sane as you.’

‘Don’t say that,’ I protested. ‘I believe I am going mad.’

‘That’s what they want,’ he said. ‘I know, for they don’t notice me and so I hear many things, for my duties take me everywhere in the house and at all hours.’

‘Can you not escape?’

‘Escape? To what? I have nothing in the world outside. I would be forced to beg my living on the streets.’

‘How can that be? Have you been here so long?’

‘Longer than anyone. Longer even than Dr Alabaster himself, for he inherited me from his predecessor.’ Almost proudly he said, ‘I have been here more than five-and-twenty years.’

‘How is such a thing possible?’

‘Oh it is a common enough story. I have not time to tell it now though we are safe for a little while because the night-porter is still in the kitchen. We will hear him when he comes this way and then I will go. As for how I came here, suffice it to say that I was so unfortunate as to be heir-at-law to a large estate.’

‘Can that be a misfortune?’

‘Aye, for my brother and sister stood to inherit in default of myself and they had the means and the lack of scruple to have me put away. And so a medical gentleman was bribed to perjure himself. So you see, my case is similar to yours and your father’s and to many others. But our time is too short to waste. Listen to me carefully. As I have said, I have overheard them talking about you and I know that you are in danger of your life. For as long as I may, I will pass food to you. But we must try to get you free of this place.’

‘Why are you endangering yourself for me?’ I asked.

I wondered if this man had been ordered by Dr Alabaster to win his way into my trust like this, and although from his countenance I doubted it, I dared trust nobody.

‘Should I need a reason? But if you must have one, ascribe it to my love for your father.’ He added gravely, ‘I have heard that you have seen him.’

I tried to say ‘I have’, but the words stuck in my throat.

‘I am sorry for it,’ the old gentleman said. ‘But I promise you that he was not always as he is now.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘When he first came here he was in complete possession of his faculties.’

‘He was sane?’ I almost cried.

‘Completely,’ Mr Nolloth replied.

At his words I felt a surge of relief. But an instant later I realized what this meant: if he was sane when he killed my grandfather then he committed murder. And yet if Mr Escreet had been telling the truth when he had told my mother that her husband was sane, was he also speaking the truth when he had said that the quarrel was only a charade? In that case, could Peter Clothier indeed be innocent?

‘As I say, he was sane,’ Mr Nolloth said slowly, ‘but labouring under a great mental affliction.’

He paused and I said, ‘Have no fear. I know – I have known for several months – that my grandfather was murdered by…’ I could not finish the sentence.

‘By your father?’ exclaimed Mr Nolloth. ‘Is that what you believe? Then allow me to lift that burden at least from your shoulders. Your father was completely innocent of that terrible crime.’

I said nothing for another possibility had presented itself to me: that if the old gentleman were not an agent provocateur of Dr Alabaster’s, then he might be a well-intentioned lunatic.

His next words, however, served somewhat to allay these suspicions, ‘I guess from your silence that you do not believe me. Why should you? I wish I had the time to explain it all to you. I have said that your father should never have been committed to this place. And he would not have been but for the plea of insanity that his father and brother entered in order to evade his indictment before the grand jury, for of course that was a ruse, a legal trick.’

‘Yes,’ I said, ‘but one intended to save him from… from the consequences of being found guilty.’

‘No,’ Mr Nolloth said and laughed mirthlessly. ‘It was not intended to save him from the gallows but to give him into the custody of his father and then Dr Alabaster – perhaps a worse fate than execution. I promise you, he could never have been found guilty if the case had gone to trial. The evidence against him was wholly inadequate and the judge would have so directed the jury. Believe me, for I speak as a lawyer.’

‘You are a lawyer!’

‘Yes, an attorney-at-law. I imagine you are surprised that my knowledge of the law has not enabled me to save myself from this place. The truth is that the laws and procedures relating to lunacy – particularly those of the court of Chancery – are wholly irrational and unjust and may easily be manipulated for unscrupulous ends. Like your father, I have the misfortune to be a Chancery lunatic – quite the most wretched, I assure you.’

‘But how do you know so much of his history?’

‘He told me everything when he first came here – and he told it in such a manner that I did not doubt him for an instant.’

‘But if he was sane then…’ I began and could not go on.

‘How does that square with the poor creature you saw last night?’ the old gentleman gently supplied. ‘The answer is only too simple. Alabaster and his people set out to madden him – Hinxman (he is the enormously tall one) and Rookyard and the others, though I except Stillingfleet for I believe he has some vestiges of humanity left.’

‘How?’ I said. ‘How can a sane man be turned into a lunatic?’

‘How?’ Mr Nolloth repeated. ‘Do not ask. But take my word for it that driving the sane mad is as profitable a part of the madhouse-keeper’s trade as curing the afflicted. And they are so much more often successful in making than in unmaking lunatics that I have often wondered if we are not all insane, and what we name sanity is no more than a collective agreement to behave in the same mad ways. For the two are mingled strangely in that poor young man, your father.’

Young? I thought in amazement. He must be five- or six-and-thirty!

‘For even he,’ Mr Nolloth went on, ‘has periods of relative lucidity.’ His voice trembled slightly as he added, ‘I wish he did not.’

‘Why do you say that?’

He paused and then said, ‘At such times he thinks of his wife, your mother. Would it grieve you to tell me whether she lives and what has become of her?’

The request was gently expressed and I told him in a very few words.

He sighed and said, ‘I am sorry. Very sorry. I hope Peter never learns of this. Nor indeed of your existence – if you will forgive me for saying so – for I know that he rejoiced that no child was born of his brief marriage to grow up in danger and shame. But I fear that Dr Alabaster and Hinxman will tell him about both of you if he recovers enough to understand.’ Then he said sadly, ‘Your arrival here will accomplish several of their purposes together.’

‘What purposes?’ I asked. ‘What do they intend for me?’

He hesitated before saying, ‘Do you understand how it is that your father’s family would gain by your death?’

‘Indeed I do!’ I exclaimed. ‘It is on account of the codicil to my great-great-grandfather’s will which Mr Escreet…’

To my surprise he interrupted me, ‘I know all about how your grandfather purchased it through the agency of Mr Escreet. But tell me what has become of it since your father confided it to your mother’s keeping at the inn in Hertford.’

‘I believe that it has very recently come into the possession of the Clothier family,’ I said and explained how my mother had been tricked into parting with it to Mr Sancious (disguised as Steplight), and my belief that he and Mrs Fortisquince were agents of the Clothiers.

‘Then that explains what I have overheard. They must have laid it before the Court of Chancery, for the Master of the Rolls is about to sign an order making you a ward of court in less than a week.’

‘So I was right!’ I exclaimed, remembering my assumptions about the significance of my appearance before the Court.

The old gentleman asked me what I meant by this and so I briefly outlined my mother’s story and my own up to her death, then explained how I had been led into a trap at the house of Daniel Porteous and his wife; how I had been deceived into believing that I had encountered them by chance; how I had been taken before the court and perplexed by some of the things said and done there, then lied to (by Emma) in being told that I had been legally assigned to the guardianship of these people; how I had discovered the real identity of the family; and how I had tried to escape but had been detected and brought here.

‘Then you understand,’ Mr Nolloth asked, ‘that at your death your grandfather, Silas Clothier, inherits the Hougham estate outright?’

I nodded and he said, ‘This is why Peter has always been so worried for the safety of your mother. The Clothiers’ scheme is close to fruition, for from what I have overheard I believe they have instructed Dr Alabaster either to bring about your death or to ensure that you be truly mad before the Master’s order can be signed, for otherwise the Mompessons will ask him to assign you to the custody of another doctor. So they must achieve their purpose within a week.’

‘But surely the Master would be suspicious if I…’ I protested.

I left the sentence unfinished.

‘No,’ the old gentleman replied thoughtfully. ‘For only consider the matter from his point of view. He saw you before him in court ill and confused. Since then two justices of the peace have examined you (as required) and signed an order for your committal, and they can testify to your insanity. For what were you doing? Making absurd charges against your family and refusing to eat because you believed they were trying to poison you!’

‘Then what do you think will happen to me?’

‘A Commission of Lunacy convened by the Court of Chancery will most likely examine you and, assuming that it finds you to be insane, as I trust Dr Alabaster to ensure that it will, and the Mompessons’ request fails, then you will stay here indefinitely. Though I don’t think your life would be suffered to last very long in that event.’

We were both silent for a few moments and then he said, ‘At all costs, you must escape from here, and as soon as possible. But how?’

I was about to speak when he whispered, ‘Listen!’

At first I could hear nothing, but then I detected a faint noise that might have been the clanging of a metal door.

‘Yallop has begun his rounds,’ Mr Nolloth said. ‘I dare not stay longer. I will try to come again tomorrow night.’

‘Please wait for a moment,’ I said urgently.

‘Yes, yes, I will think about how you might escape,’ he said hastily.

‘It’s not that,’ I replied. ‘Tell me why you believe Peter Clothier was innocent.’

‘Is that more important to you than escaping?’ he asked.

‘Yes,’ I said, ‘for I don’t believe there is any way I can be got free of this place, and I must know the truth before…’

I broke off but he said, ‘I understand. I will try to come again.’

Without another word he left the grille and though I squeezed myself against it to see him go, he was so quick that he was already out of sight along the passage. He left me in a state of exhaustion, but too excited and moved to contemplate sleep.

---

The next day passed like the previous one: Rookyard brought food and water which I neglected in favour of bread that Mr Nolloth managed to deliver through the grille.

Late that night he appeared again at the door, to my delight, and brought with him more bread and water.

‘I have been trying to think of how you might escape,’ he began, ‘but I have made no advance.’

‘Mr Nolloth, I beg you: please tell me what you know of my grandfather’s death.’

‘If you wish it,’ he answered. ‘But first tell me, how much do you know of what happened the night he was killed?’

I explained what I had learned from reading my mother’s account and said that although I had perused it only once, it was engraved on my memory.

‘Then I will tell you without delay what will make all clear. Do you recall the gift which your grandfather received that night from Mr Fortisquince?’

I nodded.

‘Have you any idea what it was, or, rather, what your grandfather expected it to be?’

‘No,’ I said hesitatingly, but then in growing excitement I told him of my guess that the reason why my grandfather had lost interest in the codicil was because he hoped to obtain a document that was even more effective.

‘You are perfectly correct,’ the old gentleman said. ‘What your grandfather expected to receive that night was a document of the utmost importance. This was nothing less than a will of Jeoffrey Huffam, your great-great-grandfather, dated later than the one which was probated.’

My guess had been on target!

‘And if, as I believe we may assume, it was not a forgery,’ the old gentleman continued, ‘then since a will remains effective no matter how long it has been lost sight of, once it had been probated it would have displaced both the original will and also the codicil about which there has been so much to-do.’

‘Then what would have been the consequences?’ I demanded quickly.

‘Very far-reaching for a great number of people. The will disinherited your great-grandfather, James, in favour of Jeoffrey Huffam’s infant grandson.’

‘My grandfather!’ I exclaimed.

‘Precisely. John, then a child of a few months, became vested in the title to his grandfather’s property. And therefore the sale of the Hougham estate by James would be retrospectively invalidated by the will beyond question, for James had no interest in the estate to convey. In short, if the will could have been probated it would have made your grandfather the outright owner of the estate immediately.’

‘His great ambition so close to being achieved!’ I murmured. ‘The Mompessons ousted and the Clothiers thwarted.’ Many questions flooded into my mind but one of them thrust itself forward ahead of the others, ‘But where had the will been all those many years?’

‘Apparently in the Mompesson family, for someone in that household wrote to your grandfather and undertook to obtain it for him.’

‘The letter with the Mompessons’ crest,’ I cried, ‘that my mother mentioned!’

So that indeed explained why, immediately after receiving it, my grandfather had lost interest either in laying the codicil before the courts or in bringing about my mother’s marriage with Daniel Clothier.

Then I asked, ‘But why should someone in the Mompessons’ trust have wished to betray them? Who was this friend on the inside? And, indeed, why should the will have been kept by them for so long since it represented so grave a danger to their interests?’

‘These are questions, young gentleman, on which your father and I have had a great deal of leisure to speculate, but without profit.’

‘I beg your pardon,’ I said. ‘Please continue. What happened, then, on that fateful night?’

‘Not so fast. I must go back to the day about a week before that night when your mother and father informed your grandfather of their desire to marry. Did your mother tell you that he set the date of the wedding for a week hence and proposed to invite his old friend, Martin Fortisquince with whom he had quarrelled, and his new wife?’

‘Yes, she was very puzzled by this.’

‘Here, then, is the explanation. Your grandfather had secret conference of your father and Mr Escreet and told them of the promise that had been made – though he did not identify the individual in the Mompessons’ confidence. He explained that his unknown helper had proposed using Mr Fortisquince as the unwitting agent to convey the document from the Mompessons’ house to himself. The intention was that the will would