signatories. Of such an agreement I had found no trace amongst my mother’s papers; but, seeing its likely importance to my case, I began there and then to devise a way of getting my hands on a copy of it. My great enterprise had begun.
The next day I wrote to the firm of Tredgolds, in a disguised hand, and using the name Edward Glapthorn. I described myself as secretary and amanuensis to Mr Edward Charles Glyver, son of the late Mrs Simona Glyver, of Sandchurch, Dorset, and requested the pleasure of an interview with Mr Anson Tredgold, on a confidential matter concerning the aforementioned lady. I waited anxiously for a reply, but none came. The tedious weeks dragged by, during which I continued to make a number of enquiries concerning employment, without success. August came and went, and I began to despair of ever receiving a reply to my enquiry to Mr Anson Tredgold. It was not until the first week of September that a short note arrived, informing me that a Mr Christopher Tredgold would be pleased to receive me privately (the word was underlined) on the following Sunday.
The distinguished firm of Tredgold, Tredgold & Orr has already been mentioned in this narrative, in connexion with my neighbour Fordyce Jukes, and as the legal advisers of Lord Tansor. Their offices were in Paternoster-row,* in the shadow of St Paul’s: a little island of the legal world set in a sea of publishers and booksellers, whose activities have made the street proverbial amongst those of a literary inclination. The firm occupied a handsome detached house, on the other side of the street from the Chapter coffee-house; as I was soon to discover, part of the building, unlike many in the City, was still used by the present Senior Partner, Mr Christopher Tredgold, as his private residence. The ground floor formed the clerks’ offices, above which, on the first floor, were the chambers of the Senior Partner and his junior colleagues; above these, occupying the second and third floors, were Mr Tredgold’s private rooms. One peculiarity of the building’s arrangement was that the residential floors could also be reached from the street via two side staircases, each with its own entrance that gave onto two narrow alleys running down either side of the house.
It was a fine morning, bright and dry, though with a distinct feeling of impending autumn in the air, when I first saw the premises of Tredgold, Tredgold & Orr, which were soon to become so familiar to me. The street was unusually quiet, but for the dying chimes of a nearby church clock and the rustle of a few newly fallen leaves drifting along the pavement and gathering beside me in a little twirling heap.
A manservant showed me up to the second floor, where Mr Christopher Tredgold received me in his drawing- room, a well-proportioned apartment whose two tall windows, looking down on the street, were swathed and swagged in plush curtains of the most exquisite pale yellow, to which the sunlight streaming in from outside added its own soft lustre.
All, indeed, was shine and softness. The carpet, in a delicate pattern of pink and pale blue, had a deep springy pile, reminding me of the turf against which I had lain in my little nook above the Philosophenweg. The furniture – sparse but of the finest quality, and much against the present ponderous taste – gleamed; light danced off brilliantly polished silver, brass fittings, and shimmering glass. The long sofa and tete-a-tete chair,* in matching blue-and-gold upholstery, that were set around the elegant Adam fireplace – each item also enclosing an abundance of perfectly plumped cushions of Berlin-work – were deep and inviting. In the space between the two windows, beneath a fine Classical medallion, stood a violincello on an ornate wrought-brass stand, whilst on a little Chippendale table beside it was laid open the score of one of the divine Bach’s works for that peerless instrument.
Mr Christopher Tredgold I judged to be a gentleman of some fifty years or so. He was of middling height, clean shaven, with a full head of feathery grey hair, a fine square jaw, and eyes of the most piercing blue, set widely in his broad, tanned face. He was dressed immaculately in dove-grey trousers and shining pumps, and held in his left hand an eye-glass on a dark-blue silk ribbon attached to his waistcoat, the lens of which, during the course of our interview, he would polish incessantly with a red silk handkerchief kept constantly by him for this purpose. In all the time of our subsequent acquaintance, however, I never once saw him raise the glass to his eye.
Mr Tredgold rose from the seat he was occupying by the window, shook my hand, and invited me to make myself comfortable on the tete-a-tete chair, whilst he (somewhat to my relief) took a seat on the sofa. He smiled seraphically, and continued to beam as he spoke.
‘When your letter was passed to me – Mr … Glapthorn …’ – he hesitated for a moment as he glanced down at a little sheaf of notes he was holding —‘I thought it would be more convenient for us both if we conducted this interview in a private capacity.’
‘I am grateful to you, Mr Tredgold,’ I replied, ‘for giving up your time in this way.’
‘Not at all. Not at all. You see, Mr Glapthorn, your letter intrigued me. Yes, I may say that I was intrigued.’
He beamed again.
‘And when I am intrigued,’ he continued, ‘I can be sure that the matter in hand is out of the ordinary. It is a remarkable instinct I have. It has happened time and again. I am intrigued; I investigate the matter in a private capacity, carefully, quietly, and at my leisure; and then – it always happens – I find something extraordinary at the bottom of it all. The ordinary I can leave to others. The
This statement was delivered in the smoothest of tenor tones, and with slow precision of enunciation, which gave it a chant-like quality. Before I could reply, he had consulted his notes again, polished his eye-glass, and had proceeded with what was evidently some sort of prepared introduction to our meeting.
‘In your letter, Mr Glapthorn, I find mention of Mr Edward Glyver and his late mother, Mrs Simona Glyver. May I ask what your relationship is to either of these two persons?’
‘As I stated in my letter, I have been engaged by Mr Edward Glyver as a confidential secretary, to assist him in the ordering and final disposal of his late mother’s papers.’
‘Ah,’ beamed Mr Tredgold, ‘the authoress.’
‘You know her work?’
‘By reputation.’
It did not strike me as odd then, though it did later, that Mr Tredgold was aware of the identity that lay behind the anonymous and pseudonymous works of my mother. He nodded at me to continue.
‘Mr Glyver is presently residing on the Continent and wishes to conclude his mother’s affairs as quickly as possible. As it is impossible for him to take on the whole task himself, he has delegated the business side of things to me.’
