‘And what are her intentions towards Mr Wilkins?’
‘Strictly honourable. She’s decided to wait a fortnight, and then propose to him if he hasn’t done anything about it by then. I’m sure he won’t have, he’s obviously a man of no imagination or initiative.’
‘Of course she’s an exceedingly horizontal girl,’ said Jasper in a contemplative voice. ‘All the same, I should say that Mr Wilkins is a lucky chap.’
‘Oh! he is indeed.’
‘What’s she worth?’
‘She’s fabulously rich. Her father left something like three million, I believe.’
‘Makes me sick,’ said Jasper, ‘you see that definitely shows I must be a Nihilist, otherwise why should I be engaged to the only poor girl in the parish.’
‘You’re not engaged. And there’s still Eugenia,’ said Poppy.
‘Eugenia’s a fine girl, but it’s you I’m in love with, darling Miss Smith.’
‘Good,’ said Poppy, bouncing over to his side of the car and putting her arm round his waist. ‘Hullo! there’s something hard and bulging in your pocket – what is it?’
‘I had an idea that, as we are unlikely to get anything out of my old man, it might be a good plan to translate this visit into terms of hard cash at the earliest opportunity. There’s a chap on the Evening Banner who will give me £50 for a photograph of grandfather – you see they’ve only got one of him taken seventy years ago in his Fauntleroys and as he’s bound to die soon they’ll be needing a more recent one for the obituary. So I brought this “Kodak” along (they are very strictly forbidden in Peersmont). I found it in Mrs Lace’s house the first time I went there and thought it might come in handy.’
When they arrived at Peersmont village they stopped at a public-house and had what Poppy described afterwards as a fairly delicious but really rather disgusting lunch, over which they sat for such an immoderate length of time that it was already past four o’clock when they set forth, again in the Rolls-Royce, for the asylum. They drove through a grim Victorian medieval gateway flanked on either side by huge black walls, on the top of which were a double row of revolving spikes. Inside, the grounds were dank with conifers, in the midst of which there suddenly appeared the towers and spires of the Houses of Parliament, looking strangely uncomfortable in their rustic setting. The chauffeur drew up without any hesitation at the Peers’ entrance, when the door of the car was immediately flung open by a policeman, who asked their business.
‘The Duke of Driburgh?’ said Jasper casually.
‘I believe His Grace is in the House at present,’ replied the policeman, ‘would you kindly step this way and I will tell the curator that you are here. What name, please?’
He led them across the courtyard towards what should have been the House of Commons but which was, it appeared, the residential part of the asylum. The curator sat in a little Gothic room tremendously decorated with wood carvings, and received them warmly. He was a charming young man.
‘The Duke of Driburgh?’ he said, when Jasper had explained who he was. ‘Splendid! The duke will be most awfully pleased to see you, I know. But look here, the House is sitting at the moment, can you wait until it rises? It won’t be more than another half-hour at the outside, there is very little business today. In fact I would send for him at once except that he happens to be deputizing for our Lord Chancellor, Lord Rousham, who is on the sick-list again – no, nothing at all serious I am glad to say. He has just nipped up to the top of a big elm tree and is building himself a nest there. We don’t stop him nowadays, one is never supposed to stop them doing harmless things of that sort. He won’t catch a chill in this warm weather and the others like to watch how the nest is getting along. Rather fun for them really.’
‘How interesting,’ said Jasper. ‘And has my grandfather any little hobbies of that sort?’
‘Nothing in the least spectacular. He is fond of building and reads a great deal of Rider Haggard. A few bricks and a bucket of white paint keep him happy for hours, he thinks the paint is mortar you see. But he has never had an outburst since he came here, he is very easy from my point of view.’
‘What was he shut up for?’ said Jasper, ‘I have often wondered, but it happened years before I was born, and has been kept very dark in the family ever since.’
‘I’m not absolutely certain myself – I could look it up in the records for you though. Let me see’ – he opened a drawer and took out of it a card-index – ‘A.B.C.D. Driburgh. Here we are. Oh, yes, of course, I remember now. He was shooting over his estate and something annoyed him – the birds were going in the wrong direction or something like that. Anyway the result was that he deliberately shot a gamekeeper and three beaters straight off, two left-and-rights. Curious little nerve storm, he always seems quite sane here. A very leading figure in the political line, you know.’
‘And what are his political opinions?’ asked Poppy with a slight giggle, which was hastily checked as the curator gave her a severe look. She gathered that jokes about the inmates and their eccentricities were not much encouraged.
‘The duke is an out-and-out Tory and anti-White Paper man.’
‘But I imagine they are all that?’ said Jasper.
‘My dear sir, you are very much mistaken. We have comparatively few reactionary peers, the majority here are moderate Baldwinites; among the Liberals there are some extremely advanced thinkers, and besides that we can boast no fewer than four Communists and two Scottish Nationalists.’
An electric bell now rang
