‘You’re right, Peter-it is a story-book place.’
They went down the great staircase and across a hall chilly with statuary and thence by way of a long cloister to another hall. A footman came up with them as they paused before a door ornamented with classical pilasters and a carved cornice.
‘Here’s the library,’ said Peter. ‘Yes, Bates, what is it?’
‘Mr Leggatt, my lord. He wanted to see His Grace-urgently. I told him he was away, but that your lordship was here, and he asked, could you spare him a moment?’
‘It’s about that mortgage, I expect-but I can’t do anything about it. He must see my brother.’
‘He seems very anxious to speak to your lordship.’
‘Oh-very well, I’ll see him. Do you mind, Harriet? I won’t be long. Have a look round the library-you may find Cousin Matthew there, but he’s quite harmless, only very shy and slightly deaf.’
The library, with its tall bays and overhanging gallery, looked east and was already rather dark. Harriet found it restful. She wandered along pulling out here and there a calf-bound volume at random, sniffing the sweet, musty odour of ancient books, smiling at a carved panel over one of the fireplaces, on which the Wimsey mice had escaped from the coat of arms and played in and out of a heavily undercut swag of flowers and wheat-ears. A large table, littered deep in books and papers, she judged to belong to Cousin Matthew-a half-written sheet in an elderly man’s rather tremulous writing appeared to be part of a family chronicle; propped open on a stand beside it was a fat manuscript book, containing a list of household expenses for the year 1587. She pored over it for a few moments, making out such items as ‘to i paire quysshons of redd sarsnet for my lady Joans chambere’ and ‘to ii li tenterhooks, and iii li nayles for the same,’ and then continued to explore, till rounding the corner of the bookshelves into the end bay, she was quite startled to come upon an elderly gentleman, in a dressing-gown. He was standing by the window, with a book in his hand, and the family features were so clearly marked on him-especially the nose-that she could have no doubt of his identity.
‘Oh!’ said Harriet. ‘I didn’t know anyone was here. Are you-’ Cousin Matthew must have a surname, of course; the potty cousin at Nice was the next heir, she remembered, after Gerald’s and Peter’s lines, so they must be Wimseys, ‘are you Mr Wimsey?’ (Though, of course, he might quite well be Colonel Wimsey, or Sir Matthew Wimsey, or even Lord Somebody.) ‘I’m Peter’s wife,’ she added, by way of explaining her presence.
The elderly gentleman smiled very pleasantly and bowed, with a slight wave of the hand as though to say, ‘Make yourself at home.’ He was slightly bald, and his grey hair was cropped very closely above his ears and over the temples. She judged him to be sixty-five or so. Having thus made her free of the place, he returned to his book, and Harriet, seeing that he seemed disinclined for conversation, and remembering that he was deaf and shy, decided not to worry him. Five minutes later, she glanced up from examining a number of miniatures displayed in a glass case, and saw that he had made his escape and was, in fact, gazing down at her from a little stair that ran up to the gallery. He bowed again and the flowered skirts of the dressing-gown went whisking up out of sight, just as somebody clicked on the lights at the inner end of the room.
‘All in the dark, lady? I’m sorry to have been so long. Come and have tea. That bloke kept me talking. I can’t stop Gerald if he wants to foreclose-as a matter of fact, I advised him to. The Mater’s come over, by the way; and there’s tea going in the Blue Room. She wants you to look at some china there. She’s rather keen on china.’
With the Duchess in the Blue Room was a slight, oldish man, rather stooping, dressed neatly in an old-fashioned knickerbocker suit, and wearing spectacles and a thin grey beard like a goat’s. As Harriet entered, he rose from his chair and came forward with extended hand, uttering a faint nervous bleat.
‘Oh, hullo. Cousin Matthew!’ cried Peter, heartily, clapping the old gentleman smartly on the shoulder. ‘Come and be introduced to my wife. This is my cousin, Mr Matthew Wimsey, who keeps Gerald’s books from falling to pieces with age and neglect. He’s writing the history of the family from Charlemagne downwards, and has just about got to the Battle of Roncevaux.’
‘How do you do?’ said Cousin Matthew. ‘I-I hope you had a pleasant journey. The wind’s rather chilly today. Peter, my dear boy, how are you?’
‘All the better for seeing you. Have you got a new chapter to show me?’
‘Not a chapter.’ said Cousin Matthew. ‘No. A few more pages. I’m afraid I got rather led away upon a sideline of research. I think I have got upon the track of the elusive Simon-the twin, you know, who disappeared and was supposed to have turned pirate.’
‘Have you, by jove? Sound work. Are these muffins? Harriet, I hope you share my passion for muffins. I meant to find out before I married you, but the opportunity never arose.’
Harriet accepted the muffin, and said, turning to Cousin Matthew: ‘I made a silly mistake just now. I met somebody in the library and thought it must be you, and addressed him as Mr Wimsey.’
‘Eh?’ said Cousin Matthew. ‘What’s that? Somebody in the library?’
‘I thought everybody was away,’ said Peter.
‘Perhaps Mr Liddell came in to look up the County Histories,’ suggested the Duchess. ‘Why didn’t he ask them to give him tea?’
‘I think it was someone living in the house,’ said Harriet, ‘because he was in his dressing-gown. He’s sixty-ish and a little bald on top, with the rest of his hair very short, and he’s rather like you, Peter-side-face, anyhow.’
‘Oh. dear me,’ said the Duchess; ‘it must have been Old Gregory.’
‘Good lord! so it must,’ agreed Peter, with his mouth full of muffin. ‘Well, really now, I take that very kind of Old Gregory. He doesn’t usually venture out so early in the day-not for a visitor, at any rate. It’s a compliment to you, Harriet. Very decent of the old boy.’
‘Who is Old Gregory?’
‘Let me see-he was some sort of cousin of the eighth-ninth-which duke was it. Cousin Matthew?-the William-and-Mary one, anyway. He didn’t speak, I suppose? No, he never does, but we always hope that one day he’ll make up his mind to.’
‘I quite thought he was going to, last Monday evening,’ said Mr Wimsey. ‘He was standing up against the shelves in the fourth bay, and I was positively obliged to disturb him to get at the Bredon Letters. I said, “Pray excuse me, just for one moment,” and he smiled and nodded and seemed about to say something. But he thought better of it, and vanished. I was afraid I might have offended him, but he reappeared in a minute or two in the politest way, just in front of the fireplace, to show there was no ill feeling.’
‘You must waste quite a lot of time bowing and apologising to the family spooks,’ said Peter. ‘You should just walk slap through them as Gerald does. It’s much simpler, and doesn’t seem to do either party any harm.’
‘You needn’t talk, Peter,’ said the Duchess. ‘I distinctly saw you raise your hat to Lady Susan one day on the terrace.’
‘Oh, come. Mother! That’s pure invention. Why on earth should I be wearing a hat on the terrace?’
Had it been possible to imagine either Peter or his mother capable of discourtesy, Harriet would have suspected an elaborate leg-pull. She said tentatively: ‘This sounds almost too storybook.’