would not wish to anticipate any plan you may have, beyond saying that I usually find myself in Stamford of a Tuesday morning, & that I also find the tap-room of the George Hotel a convenient place to take some refreshment at around midday.I cannot impress upon you enough the need for absolute discretion.Please direct reply via Post-office, Peterborough.I have the honour to be,Yours very sincerely,P. CARTERET
The next morning, Mr Tredgold and I laid our plans. Feeling that he could not risk undertaking such a clandestine meeting himself, my employer suggested that I might go to meet Mr Carteret in his stead. To this I readily agreed, and so he replied immediately, requesting Mr Carteret’s permission to send a trusted agent. Two days later a letter came back. The secretary was unwilling to sanction such an arrangement, saying that he would speak only to Mr Tredgold in person. But a further exchange of letters produced a softening in his attitude, and it was agreed that I, as Mr Tredgold’s surrogate, should travel to Stamford to meet Mr Carteret the following Tuesday, the 25th of October, though I decided I would go a day earlier and settle myself in the George Hotel in readiness.
The day prior to my departure happening to be a Sunday, Mr Tredgold invited me to spend the afternoon with him in his private residence.
‘I think perhaps we should forgo our usual bibliological entertainment,’ he said after we had taken our lunch and were sitting before the fire in his sitting-room, ‘and speak a little about the matter of Mr Carteret – if you do not mind?’
‘Of course. I am entirely at your disposal.’
‘As you always are, Edward,’ he beamed. ‘Well, then, no doubt you find Mr Carteret’s letter puzzling enough – as I do also – with respect to the matter he wishes to disclose. It may be that Mr Carteret exaggerates the importance of what he has discovered; but I suspect, knowing him to be a gentleman of careful judgment, that he would not have written to me in this way unless it was of the greatest possible moment. Whether Mr Carteret will choose to reveal the matter to you in person, I cannot say. Whatever happens, I hope you will be kind enough to keep me closely informed. I’m sure I do not need to impress on you the necessity for absolute discretion.’
‘I understand completely.’
‘That is one of your most valuable qualities, Edward,’ said Mr Tredgold. ‘You instinctively understand what is required in any given situation. Is there anything else I can tell you?’
‘Mr Carteret, you have said, is Lord Tansor’s cousin.’
‘That is correct. He is the younger son of his Lordship’s late aunt. His father, Mr Paul Carteret Senior, fell into pecuniary difficulties, leaving his two sons with no alternative but to earn a living. Mr Lawrence Carteret, now deceased, entered the diplomatic service; Mr Paul Carteret Junior was offered employment by his noble relative.’
‘A generous gesture,’ I observed.
‘Generous? Yes, you may say that, although the offer was perhaps made more out of duty towards Mrs Sophia Carteret, his Lordship’s aunt.’
‘You also mentioned, I think, during our talk in the Gardens, that Mr Carteret will inherit the Tansor title.’
‘He will – assuming of course that his Lordship’s position regarding an heir of his own remains as it is at present.’
Mr Tredgold took out his red handkerchief and began to polish his eye-glass.
‘You should be aware,’ he continued, ‘that Lord Tansor’s resolve to bequeath the major portion of his property to Mr Phoebus Daunt has been strengthened by a history of ill-feeling between the two branches of the family. A financial disagreement between Lord Tansor’s father and Mr Paul Carteret Senior has, alas, coloured his Lordship’s relationship with his cousin. The Carteret line, in his opinion, is also tainted by mental impairment.’
He lowered his voice, and leaned towards me.
‘Mr Carteret Senior’s mother died insane, though there is not the slightest indication that his son has inherited the malady. Indeed, Mr Carteret Junior is one of the sanest men I know; and his daughter, too, is decidedly free of any imputation of mental feebleness, being a fiercely intelligent and capable young woman – and a beautiful one, too. Lord Tansor, however, is prey to an acute sensitivity on this subject, deriving, I believe, from the fact that his Lordship’s elder brother, Vortigern Duport, died of an epileptic seizure. More tea?’
We sipped silently, Mr Tredgold appearing to take keen interest in an area of the ceiling just above my head.
‘Do you wish me to say something about Mr Phoebus Daunt?’ he suddenly asked.
‘Mr Daunt?’
‘Yes. To better understand the circumstances that have led to the present situation.’
‘By all means.’
Whereupon Mr Tredgold began to give me a full and detailed account of how Dr Daunt and his family had come to Evenwood, as a result of his second wife’s connexion with Lord Tansor, and of how the Rector’s son had been taken into his Lordship’s favour through his step-mother’s influence. Much of what he told me has been incorporated into an earlier section of this narrative.
‘It cannot be denied,’ Mr Tredgold was saying, ‘that the young man is highly gifted. His literary genius is well known, and Lord Tansor takes pleasure in it as far as it goes. But he has also displayed a rather extraordinary talent for business, which is much more to his Lordship’s taste. I think it is certain that this has played no little part in Lord Tansor’s wish to see him succeed to his property, in preference to Mr Carteret and his successors.’
Now, this was a completely new, and unexpected, view of my enemy, of which I was eager to hear more. According to Mr Tredgold, Daunt had been given two hundred pounds by Lord Tansor on his twenty-first birthday. Not six months later, the young man had requested an interview with his patron, at which he confessed, with a solemn face, that he had committed the whole sum to a railway speculation recommended to him by an old College acquaintance.
Lord Tansor was not pleased. He had expected better. A foolhardy railway speculation! Why, better that the boy had lost it all on the tables at Crockford’s* – after all, a few salutary sacrifices to the goddess of chance were to be expected of gilded youth (not that
