Philip Gooden - The Salisbury Manuscript

If, a few minutes after this, you had been standing on the terrace of

Northwood House, you would have heard the sounds of voices raised in threat or anger. It was a still night and the sound travelled easily from Hogg’s Corner. The next sound you would have heard from inside or outside the house, since it was the boom of a shotgun going off. Would have heard, unless you were Nan, whose hearing was poor and who slumbered on undisturbed in her room.

‘It’s a very extraordinary story,’ said Eric Selby. He’d already given a brief account of how he’d been summoned by Miss Nugent to see Walter, intimating that he had a great deal more to say. ‘What I have to say is quite shocking in its way, especially for you, Helen.’

‘I am not a little girl any longer, Uncle.’

‘Well, I would normally have some doubts about telling either of you, but Walter Slater said that he does not care now who knows his secret. His confession. He told me I might as well shout it from the rooftops. Once I had persuaded him to talk, it poured out of him like — well, like water from a breached dam, like blood from a wound. The poor fellow.’

‘Where is he now?’ said Helen. ‘He is not still in the bell-tower at St Luke’s surely?’

‘I accompanied him on his way back to Venn House though I didn’t see him right to the front gate. Nevertheless he promised me that he would return home and sleep in his own bed, not in the damp and discomfort of the ringing chamber.’

Canon Selby was sitting with his god-daughter and Tom in the seclusion of his drawing room. The rest of the household had long since gone to bed. Selby no longer looked so distracted as when he’d first appeared at the door. A good measure of brandy and Helen’s solicitous words had restored him to his usual humour.

‘Walter Slater has made a confession, you say?’ said Tom.

‘Yes, but it was not what you might think. Nothing to do with Felix’s death. At least I do not think so. It wasn’t even Walter’s confession in a sense but another’s. All I can say is that his father behaved very badly, his uncle too.’

‘Percy and Felix Slater?’

‘The pair of them,’ said Selby, shaking his head. ‘Mind you, I had had my suspicions once upon a time. There’d been rumours around the close many years ago. I’d put them to one side though.’

If all this had been designed to sharpen the curiosity of his listeners, it was succeeding. Both sat on the edge of their chairs, while the Canon leaned back in his and took another sip from his glass.

‘It appears that Walter Slater is not the nephew of Felix,’ he continued. ‘He is not the nephew but the son .’

‘What?’ said Tom.

‘There is more. Nor is Amelia the aunt of Walter. Rather, she is his mother .’ He paused to let this sink in. ‘Walter was in complete ignorance of his real parentage until the other day, the day of Felix’s death in fact. Percy travelled to Salisbury to tell him. It seems that something had prompted Percy to do this, to put the record straight once and for all.’

Helen said nothing. Tom felt himself go cold.

‘I called on Percy Slater that day,’ he said. ‘He invited me to go to Northwood House. I don’t really know why. He talked about his brother in quite bitter and sarcastic terms, venting his feelings. He told me not to be taken in by his holy act.’

‘Implying that Felix was a hypocrite,’ said Canon Selby. ‘Well, there’a a grain of truth in that. But we should not judge the dead too harshly.’

‘My God,’ said Tom, ‘do you suppose it was something I said which caused Percy to go off and reveal the truth to Walter?’

He struggled to remember in detail what had passed between him and Percy Slater. There’d been talk about gambling and an argument about the material which had been transferred to Felix, together with some general aspersions on the character of the Canon. Had Tom said something which caused the Canon’s brother to go straight to Walter and tell all? If so, Tom realized with dismay, then he must bear a share of the consequences. Whatever those consequences had been, exactly. He put that disturbing thought to one side.

Selby noticed his agitation and said, ‘Don’t worry, Tom. If you did make some remark — if , I say — then it was surely unintended. Like a man walking along a mountain path who idly kicks a stone over the edge and starts a landslide.’

‘Thank you, sir, but that’s not a very comforting reflection,’ said Tom.

‘I mean that someone would have kicked the stone over sooner or later. It was bound to happen. From what Walter told me, his father — his uncle, I should say — had been on the verge of informing him of his true parentage on several occasions. He was merely waiting for the right provocation.’

‘Which I provided.’

‘We don’t know that, Tom,’ said Helen.

‘It is enough to say that Percy acted rashly, even dangerously, by telling this story when he did,’ said Eric Selby. ‘Yet he cannot be altogether bad, for he brought up Walter as if he were truly his son.’

‘What is the story?’ asked Helen. ‘Tom was only just now describing to me the Slaters’ marriage. How they met in Florence and so on. A ‘strange union’, you said.’

‘That was no secret,’ said Tom. ‘Both Walter and Percy said as much.’

‘It seems that Felix not only met Amelia when he was visiting Florence many years ago. Her parents had a house by the Arno. It seems that they became — well. . that they became. .’

‘Lovers,’ said Helen.

‘Thank you, my dear. Yes, they became lovers. Shortly after Felix returned to England, Amelia suffered a double shock. Her parents died in an outbreak of cholera. No sooner had she lost them than she discovered that she was with child. Having no one else to turn to, she eventually travelled to England to find Felix Slater.’

‘To throw herself on his mercy,’ said Helen.

‘Why, yes, that is how it must have been. We can have no idea of what words passed between Felix and Amelia, but we do know the result. Felix was a rising churchman in the town, fixed on a respectable course of life after all his — his gadding about on the Continent. Of course, he’d been a clergyman when he went abroad but possibly the warmer air — or the looser customs of foreigners — or something else, I don’t know what — caused him to forget his vows and his vocation. But he paid the price after he returned for here was a woman, half English, half Italian, on his doorstep, pleading for his protection.’

‘Couldn’t they simply have married and have done with it?’ said Tom. ‘If Amelia was expecting a child then, when it came, they could have claimed. . they might have pretended. .’

‘That the baby was premature,’ said Helen.

Both men looked at her, Tom with new respect, Eric Selby with a kind of relief at his god-daughter’s plain speaking.

‘Amelia was not precisely with child when she arrived in Salisbury,’ said the Canon. ‘You might say that the child was with her. By this time, Walter had already come into the world. She turned up with a three-month-old baby. Or six months old. Walter can’t be quite sure. You understand that he was in a distressed and confused state when he was telling me all this. What he knows, from Percy, is that his mother travelled through Italy and France by herself, a baby son in her arms.

‘Though he might agree to marry Amelia, Felix could not — or would not — acknowledge the child as his. At least he did not do so publicly, no doubt thinking of his position. Instead he turned to his brother for help. Percy and his wife had recently lost their own son in infancy. Whether the idea came from Felix or from Percy doesn’t matter, but it was the older man who offered or was persuaded to take Walter as if he were his own child. As you’ve discovered, Tom, Percy isn’t a man who has much time for convention. Perhaps he was pleased by this evidence that his clerical brother was — how should I put it? — capable of being a sinner. Perhaps he was moved to pity by the sight of the baby. Perhaps his wife, his first wife, was eager to adopt little Walter as her own. But, whatever the reason, it was an act of kindness that they took the boy. Took him quietly and without fuss and brought him up as if he were truly their own child. At the time they lived in London, far enough away from Salisbury for gossip and rumour not to travel. Though, as I’ve said, there had been a little whispering in Salisbury itself. He could not keep everything concealed. Felix and Amelia were married in due course. Percy soon afterwards lost his first wife, the woman whom Walter had always been led to believe was his mother. Later Percy married again. I do not know whether Percy’s second wife is aware of the truth — that she is a step-aunt rather than a stepmother.’