The Copper Box/Chapter 11

E found ourselves in a wonderful old house, a place of nooks and corners, old oak, old everything; it would not have surprised me if, as I made my way along its queer passages and stairways, I had met men in ruffs and women in farthingales. But it was modern enough in its present administration, and they served us with a capital dinner, late as it was in the evening. That and the charm of our surroundings put Madrasia and myself into a better humour than we had been in during the last tiresome stages of our long journey. I think that by that time we were both inclined to enter into the spirit of the thing; it was, after all, an adventure that had possibilities. And in the middle of dinner Madrasia, with a whimsical laugh and a roguish sparkle in her eyes, bent towards Parslewe, who, as usual, was unconcerned, phlegmatic, and apparently quite at home.

“If it’s not stripping away too many of the wrappings of your precious mystery, Jimmie,” she said, “may one ask a question?”

“Aye, why not?” he answered. “As long as it’s sensible.”

“Sensible enough,” she retorted. “Where are we?”

“Just so!” said I. “The same question has suggested itself to me, limited as my intelligence is. For I don’t know!”

Parslewe regarded us with calm eyes and manner.

“We’re in the ancient and eminently picturesque and very comfortable Crown Hotel at Medminster,” he answered. “Which stands in the Market Place, and commands a remarkable view of one of the last bits of mediæval England, as you can read in the guide books, and, better still, see for yourselves in the morning.”

“Medminster,” exclaimed Madrasia. “But that’s where old Sperrigoe comes from! At least, that was the address given in The Times advertisement that Weech showed us.”

“Precisely!” agreed Parslewe, drily. “It was here in this very room, at that table, that I had the honour of meeting Sperrigoe.”

“When?” demanded Madrasia.

“Oh! Some time ago,” he answered, indifferently.

“Then, if you’d been at home when he called at Kelpieshaw the other morning, he’d have known you?” said Madrasia, giving me a kick under the table. “Of course he would, as you’d met before.”

“He might have known my face,” answered Parslewe. “But he wouldn’t have known my name; at least, I mean, he never knew my name when I met him here. We chanced to meet here, as strangers, happening to dine together at the same table; we smoked a cigar together afterwards, and chatted about the old town. I heard his name, but he never heard mine; to him I was a mere bird-of-passage. I guess,” he went on, with one of his cynical laughs, “old Sperrigoe would have been vastly astonished if he’d found me in at Kelpieshaw and had recognised in me the stranger of the Crown!”

“Have you come here to see old Sperrigoe?” demanded Madrasia.

Parslewe was the best hand I ever came across at the fine art of disregarding a direct question. His face became utterly blank and his lips set, and remained so until a new whim came over him, and he began to tell us something of the history of the old house to which he had brought us. Of that he would talk, but we both saw that it was no use questioning him on any other subject, and we left him alone. But I had already learned something—Parslewe had been there before; he had met White Whiskers there; White Whiskers would know him; without a doubt he had come there to meet White Whiskers. But why on earth did he elude White Whiskers at Kelpieshaw?

Before the evening closed I learned something else. Madrasia retired early; Parslewe began writing a letter in the smoking-room; left to myself, I strolled out to the front door of the hotel to take a look at my surroundings. The old Market Place was flooded in bright moonlight, and I saw at once that Parslewe had been right when he spoke of it as a bit of mediæval England. On all sides of me were ancient half-timbered houses with high gables and quaintly ornamented fronts; above them, at one end of the square, rose the tall square tower of a church; fronting it, at the other end, was what I took to be an old Moot Hall. But for the gas-lamps which twinkled here and there, and for the signs and names above the shops, I should have thought myself thrown back to Tudor times.

The hall-porter came out as I stood there, looked up at the sky, and remarked that we should have a fine day to-morrow, and that good weather was desirable, for people were beginning to go about.

“You get tourists here, I suppose?” said I.

“No end of ’em, sir,” he answered. “Deal of Americans come here—they like that sort of thing”—waving his hand towards the old houses opposite. “Nothing of that sort in their country, I understand, sir. Oh, yes, full of tourists all the summer months, sir.”

“But you don’t remember all their faces, do you?” I suggested.

He laughed at my reference to his remark on our arrival.

“Why, no, sir, not chance comers like that,” he admitted. “Though I wouldn’t be too sure on that point—one gets into a habit of noticing, you know, sir. But in the case of anybody who stops here a day or two—never forget, sir. I knew your friend at once—noticeable gentleman, of course.”

“Easily recognised,” I suggested.

“Just so, sir. Though it’ll be—let me see—yes, three years or so since he was here,” he answered. “Oh, I remember him well enough. Stopped here two or three nights, one autumn. A collector of curiosities, I think, sir. I remember I bought him a couple of packing-cases to carry away odds and ends that he’d bought in the town. Considerable trade done in that way here, sir—half those shops you see on the other side are curio shops.”

“How do they keep up their stock?” I asked.

“Ah! that’s a question that a lot of people have put to me, sir,” he replied. “You’d almost think they manufacture things! But the fact is, sir, this is an old part of England, with a lot of old houses about, old country seats, and the like. And families die out, and the stuff they’ve been accumulating for generations comes to auction, and a lot of it gets into these curio shops—that’s how it’s done, sir. Plenty of antiques in those shops, sir, but nothing to what there is in the old houses in the neighbourhood.”

“Do you know a house near here called Palkeney Manor?” I asked, thinking that as this was an intelligent and communicative man I might as well improve my own knowledge. “There is such a place, I think?”

“Palkeney Manor, sir!” he answered readily. “To be sure, sir! Three miles out—fine old house that is—sort of showplace; you can look round it by paying a shilling—all our American customers go there, and the shillings go to the local charities. Oh, yes! that was old Mr. Matthew Palkeney’s. Dead now, he is, and they do say that the lawyers don’t know who the property belongs to—haven’t found out yet, anyway. Fine property it is, too. Queer old gentleman, old Mr. Palkeney!—and that reminds me that I think your friend knew him, sir. Leastways, the last day your friend was here I remember that old Mr. Palkeney drove up in his carriage and gave me a parcel for him—I helped him to pack that parcel in one of the cases I’d bought for him.”

“You’ve an excellent memory,” I remarked.

“Oh, well, one thinks of things, sir,” he answered. “Faces, now, sir, they stir your memory up, don’t you think? And I’ve seen some remarkable faces in my time—faces that you’d remember twenty years after. Some faces, of course, is that ordinary that you never notice ’em. But others”

At that moment Parslewe put his face through the swing door behind us, and seeing the hall-porter on the steps came out. He had a letter in his hand. Coming to the hall-porter he waved the letter towards the west end of the Market Place.

“Isn’t Sir Charles Sperrigoe’s office just round that corner?” he asked. “Aye? Well, just go and put this note into his letter box, will you? Then he’ll get it first thing in the morning. Go now, there’s a good fellow!” He turned to me when the man had gone on his errand. “Well, master!” he asked, in his half-cynical, half-humorous fashion. “How does this appeal to your artistic sense?”

“A fine setting for a mystery, Mr. Parslewe,” I answered.

“I dare say you’re right,” he said with a laugh. “But I think we shall have done with mysteries to-morrow, my lad. And what mystery there is has been none of my making! Well, I’m off to my bed. Good night.”

With that, and a pleasant nod, he went unconcernedly off, and presently I followed his example, more mystified than ever by his last remark. For if he had not made all this mystery, who had?

Whether the mystery was going to be done with next day or not, its atmosphere was still thick upon us next morning. At ten o’clock, Parslewe, who invariably made all his arrangements without consulting anybody who was affected by them, marshalled us into a carriage and pair at the door of the Crown and gave some instructions, aside, to the coachman. We drove off into a singularly picturesque and well-wooded country. Madrasia, fresh from the almost treeless slopes of the Cheviots, was immediately in raptures with it. Already the trees were in leaf, the wide-spreading meadows were covered with fresh green, and in the vistas of woodland through which we passed daffodils and wood anemones made splashes of colour against the bursting verdure. New to her, too, were the quaint thatched cottages, many of them half-timbered, and all ancient, by the roadside.

“It’s like the old England that one sees in pictures!” she exclaimed. “It’s as if we’d gone back!”

“We have gone back,” said Parslewe, with one of his queer, grim looks. “Back to Elizabeth! There’s not much that’s altered hereabouts since Shakespeare’s time—neither houses nor men. And if you’re going to develop a taste for mediævalism, my dear, you’ll soon be satisfied—we’re presently going to set foot in a house that’s as old as they make ’em.”

But before this came about the carriage stopped at a wayside cottage, and Parslewe, without a word to us, got out, knocked at the door, and went in. He remained inside for several minutes; when he emerged again it was in the company of a tall, weather-beaten old man whom, because of his velveteen coat and general appearance, I took to be a game-keeper. Motioning to the coachman to follow him up the road, Parslewe walked on ahead with his companion, and presently turned into a wayside wood. Coming abreast of the bridle-gate by which they had entered, we saw them in conversation with a third man, also elderly, who was felling trees; for some minutes the three stood talking together.

“What is he after now?” asked Madrasia.

I shook my head—nothing was going to draw me into speculations about Parslewe’s proceedings.

“The best thing at the present juncture,” said I, as oracularly as possible, “is just to let things occur. I don’t know what he’s after! Let him pursue it! We shall find things out as we go on.”

“Where are we going?” she asked.

“I imagine—but I may be wrong—that we’re on our way to that Palkeney Manor of which Murthwaite told us,” said I. “I think we’ve been on our way to it ever since we left Newcastle yesterday morning. That’s probably the house that’s as old as they make ’em. You’d better be prepared—for anything. I am!”

“What do you mean?” she demanded. “You’re getting cryptic too!”

“I think my brains are addled!” I answered. “Never mind! I know something!”

“What?” she asked.

I bent forward to her, endeavouring to look as mysterious as I possibly could, and spoke in a hushed voice.

“This!” I said, thrillingly. “Parslewe has the copper box in his pocket!”

She drew back, staring at me as if she wondered whether my mind had given way. I nodded solemnly.

“Fact!” said I. “I saw him put it there! It’s in the right-hand outer pocket of his coat. And in the copper box lies the explanation of—everything! Hush!—not a word! He’s coming back.”

Parslewe came back, leaving the two old men talking together, and I noticed that they stared after his retreating figure with vast interest. But instead of getting into the carriage again, he motioned to us, in his usual imperious fashion, to get out. Then he turned to the coachman.

“Isn’t there an inn along the road there, near the village?” he asked. “Just so; then you go and put up your horses at it, and wait there till I send for you. We’ll do the rest on foot,” he went on, turning to us. “There’s a path through the woods a little farther on.”

He led us up the road for another hundred yards, then turned into a bridle-track that wound through a mass of venerable old trees for a good half-mile. We made slow progress, for Madrasia insisted on gathering a bunch of primroses. She was putting the last finishing touches to this when Parslewe, who had got a little ahead, called to us.

“Now then, here you are!” he said. “Here’s the place!”

We went on, and found him at the edge of the wood, leaning over a gate. He pointed before him with his stick.

“Palkeney Manor,” he remarked, drily.

Madrasia let out a sudden, whole-souled exclamation of delighted wonder. I was not surprised; the scene before us was one of that peculiar charm and quiet beauty which no other country than our own can show. We were looking on an undulating park, vividly green, studded with old trees beneath which antlered deer were browsing; there was a tree-shaded stretch of water in one of the miniature valleys, and cattle standing knee-deep in it, and above this, on a rising ground, backed by tall elms and giant chestnuts, stood a beautiful old house, mellowed by centuries of age.

We were all intent for a time, staring. Then Madrasia spoke, softly.

“What a picture of a place!” she said. “Jimmie! even you must think it is!”

But Parslewe gave us one of his queer looks.

“Um!” he answered. “To tell you the truth, my girl, I was wondering if the drains are all right! Picturesqueness is all very well—but, however, we’ll go a bit nearer.”

We went slowly across the park, admiring its sylvan beauties, past the shining water, past the shy deer, and up to the front of the house, Madrasia’s ecstasies of admiration increasing with every step we took. And as for myself, I was beginning to have a great wonder and an itching curiosity—especially the itching curiosity. What were we doing here?

But Parslewe seemed to know. He led us straight to the front door, which stood open.

“This is a show-place on certain days in the week,” he said. “This is one of those days, so we can go in.”

We went in. An elderly woman appeared. She wore a black silk apron, and a thin gold chain round her neck; I took these to be symbolic of her rank and estate as housekeeper. And I noticed that after a first glance at him, she gave Parslewe a steady, knowing inspection.

“Good morning to you, ma’am,” said Parslewe, with his best old-fashioned politeness. “I understand we may look round?”

The housekeeper explained. The state rooms, including those once used by Queen Elizabeth, and the bed in which her Majesty had slept, were open to inspection. Visitors paid a shilling each; the shillings were given to the local charities. So Parslewe paid three shillings, and we all inscribed our names in a book—Parslewe last. And as he laid down the pen under the housekeeper’s eye, he turned and looked at her.

“Now, ma’am!” he said. “Have you ever seen me before?”

The woman gave him a quiet, watchful look.

“Yes, sir,” she answered readily. “I remember you. You’re the gentleman who dined here with my late master some three years ago, and spent the evening with him. But I never heard your name, sir.”

Parslewe nodded, and remarking that there was no need to show us round, he’d prefer to be left to himself, led us into the hall and up a great staircase to the state apartments. It was evident at once that he knew the whole place, and for the next hour he was in his element as guide while we were lost in wonder and admiration at the things he showed us. And we were examining the very bed on which Queen Elizabeth had stretched her limbs when the housekeeper came in, more interested in Parslewe than ever.

“Sir,” she said, with something of deference. “Sir Charles Sperrigoe’s compliments, and he awaits your pleasure in the morning-room.”