The Bishop approved the suggestion; and with a chorus of farewells they left the Cathedral house together. “Well,” said Bredon to his companion, “you’ve got a wonderful Bishop here.”
“Yes,” said Eames, “the mind dwells with pleasure on the thought of him. There are few of us for whom more can be said than that.”
“I can’t fit Mottram, from what I’ve heard of him, into that household.”
“Because you’re not a provincial. Our common roots are in Oxford and in London. But in a place like this people know one another because they are neighbours.”
“Even the clergy?”
“The Catholic clergy, anyhow. You see, our priests don’t swap about from one diocese to another; they are tied to the soil. Consequently they are local men, most of them, and a local man feels at home with them.”
“Still, for a man who had no religion particularly, isn’t it rather a challenge to be up against your faith like that? I should have thought a man was bound to react one way or the other.”
“Not necessarily. It’s astonishing what a lot of theoretical interest a man can take in the faith and yet be miles away from it practically. Why, Mottram himself, about three weeks ago, was pestering us all about the old question of ‘the end justifying the means.’ Being a Protestant, of course he meant by that doing evil in order that good may come. He worried the life out of the Bishop, urging the most plausible reasons for maintaining that it was perfectly right. He simply couldn’t see why the Bishop insisted you weren’t ever allowed to do what’s wrong, whatever comes of it. And the odd thing was, he really seemed to think he was being more Catholic over it than we were. However, all that bores you.”
“No, indeed. I want to know everything about Mottram; and it’s silly to pretend that a man’s religion doesn’t matter. Was he thinking at all, do you suppose, of becoming a Catholic?”
Eames shrugged his shoulders. “How can I tell? I don’t think he really showed any dispositions. But of course he was a religious man in a way, he wasn’t one of your nogoddites, like Brinkman. You’ve met Brinkman?”
“Yes, I’m staying in the same hotel, you see. And I confess I’m interested in him too. What do you make of him? Who is he, or where did Mottram pick him up?”
“I don’t know. I don’t like the little man. I don’t even know what his nationality is; he’s spent a long time in Paris, and I’m pretty sure he’s not British. And mind you, he hated us. I think he had corresponded for some paper out in Paris; anyhow, he knew all the seedy anti-clericals; and I rather think he was asked to leave. Mottram seems to have taken him on on the recommendation of a friend; he had some idea, I think, of doing a history of the town; and of course Brinkman can write. But Brinkman very seldom came in here, and when he did he was like a dog among snakes. I daresay he thought the house was full of oubliettes. He’d got all that Continental anti-clericalism, you see. Here’s the house.”
They turned up a short drive which led them through a heavily walled park to the front door of a painfully mid-Victorian mansion. A mansion it must be called; it did not look like a house. Strange reminiscences of various styles, Gothic, Byzantine, Oriental, seemed to have been laid on by some external process to a redbrick abomination of the early seventies. Cream-coloured and slate-coloured tiles wove irrelevant patterns across the bare spaces of wall, Conservatories masked a good half of the lowest storey. It was exactly suited to be what it afterward became, a kind of municipal museum, in which the historic antiquities of Pullford, such as they were, could be visited by the public on dreary Sunday afternoons.
“Now,” said Eames, “does that give you Mottram’s atmosphere?”
“God forbid!” replied Bredon.
“See then the penalty of too great riches. Only one man in a thousand can express his personality in his surroundings if he has a million of money to do it with. It wasn’t Mottram, of course, who did this; but he would have built the same sort of horror if he hadn’t taken it over from a predecessor like himself. And the rooms are as bad as the house.”
Eames was fully justified in this last criticism. The house was full of expensive bad taste; the crude work of local artists hung on the walls; bulging goddesses supported unnecessary capitals; velvet and tarnished gilding and multicoloured slabs of marble completed the resemblance to a large station restaurant. Mottram had possessed no private household gods, had preserved no cherished knickknacks. The house was the fruit of his money, not of his personality. He had given the architect a free hand, and in the midst of all that barbaric splendour he had lived a homeless exile.
The housekeeper had little to add to what Bredon already knew. Her master usually went away for a holiday about that time in the year, and Mr. Brinkman always went with him. He had expected to be away for a fortnight, or perhaps three weeks. He had not shown, to the servants at any rate, any signs of depression or anxiety; he had not left any parting messages to suggest a long absence. His letters were to be redirected, as usual, to the Load of Mischief. There had been none, as a matter of fact, except a few bills and circulars. She didn’t think that Mr. Mottram went to any of the Pullford doctors, regularly at least; and she had had no knowledge of his seeing the specialist in London. She did not remember Mr. Mottram being
