Lord Mullion's Secret by Michael Innes Page A

remarkable than a singularly patchy memory. This seemed to hold alike over the near and the remote past. If her memory was to be regarded as a route-map of the large areas of experience she had traversed in her eighty years (or whatever exactly they might be) then there were blank spaces scattered indifferently all over it. This, of course, was a rash conclusion to think to arrive at with any confidence on so short an acquaintance with the old creature as his at present was. Her mind might well reveal more extravagant contours on a better knowledge of her. Indeed, he had been as good as warned that it was so. But at least she was far from boring. Honeybath caught himself as being almost sorry, after all, that he hadn’t been invited to set up his easel in front of her.

 
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10
    The four ladies had withdrawn, and the three gentlemen had addressed themselves to a second glass of port, when the dining-room door opened and Dr Atlay appeared. He was received by Lord Mullion cordially but in so entirely casual a manner that it was clear he was treated virtually as a member of the household, coming and going as he pleased. Lady Mullion had, indeed, mentioned to Honeybath that the vicar, who had various antiquarian interests, from time to time pursued his researches in the castle library. Perhaps he had been doing this now, or perhaps he had merely dropped in to deliver the parish magazine. His having gravitated in the direction he now had, however, suggested that he was not without the thought of material recruitment in his mind, and after accepting port he accepted a cigar as well. No doubt he had devoted a long day to pastoral cares, and was glad to become much a man of leisure at this late evening hour.
    â€˜I have paid my respects in the drawing-room,’ he said, ‘and gather, Mr Honeybath, that you have made an early grand tour of the castle.’
    â€˜Lady Mullion was good enough to do me a kind of private view.’
    â€˜I am delighted to hear it. There is much to remark, is there not?’
    â€˜Armour rusting in his halls On the blood of Mullion calls,’ Cyprian said, reaching for a decanter. Cyprian, who at Cambridge regularly devoted two or three hours a week to his studies in English literature, was fond of coming forward with this sort of thing. ‘Not that the stuff does rust. A chap comes down from London twice a year and burnishes it and lacquers it so that you’d think we kept a staff of armourers in the dungeons. All part of the show.’
    â€˜I imagine,’ Dr Atlay said, ‘that your guest was more interested in some of the less martial exhibits. The Zoffanys come to mind. You have seen them, Mr Honeybath?’
    â€˜Not yet. There is a great deal to see, as you have remarked.’
    â€˜There have been nabob Wyndowes, and Zoffany went to work on them in India. And then there are the Hilliards. I recall your mentioning that you would be interested in them.’
    â€˜Yes, indeed. Lady Mullion pointed them out to me in passing, but we didn’t pause on them.’
    â€˜Take a dekko at them now, eh?’ Lord Mullion said, rising. ‘Jolly little things, I’ve always thought, and uncommonly valuable, they say. Have to keep them in the library now, under lock and key and so forth. So come along, all of you.’
    â€˜Excellent!’ Dr Atlay said. ‘It’s some time since I took a look at them. And it’s longer still, I imagine, since Wyndowe did. Do you good, Wyndowe. It cannot be maintained that you are too well up on your ancestors.’
    Cyprian got to his feet, scowling – perhaps because the idea bored him, or perhaps because he disliked being addressed in the vicar’s semi-formal manner.
    So the gentlemen moved off in a body through the castle – Honeybath willingly enough, although he would perhaps have preferred to make the acquaintance of three unfamiliar Hilliards (and defunct Wyndowes) in more instructed