The Grenadillo Box: A Novel (4 page)

Thus when I fretted over my friend, I knew unpredictable behavior was not out of character. But, as a small voice in my head reminded me incessantly, his schemes were usually spur-of-the-moment adventures. He’d never left me out of one for so long before. And in none of his schemes had he ever gone missing.

It was now more than a week since I had seen him at the workshop. By last Sunday I’d become so concerned that I’d called at his lodgings. The landlady hadn’t seen him. His belongings had been moved. No, she could not tell me where I might find him. His sweetheart, Dorothy, had unexpectedly returned to Yorkshire. When I questioned Chippendale, he appeared indifferent to the absence of his most talented employee. Indeed, whenever I raised the subject he seemed irked by my curiosity. The day I learned of my journey to Cambridge was the first he deigned to volunteer any information on the subject. Partridge, he told me, had sent a letter explaining that his sudden absence was due to his being stricken by a contagious distemper. Not wishing to infect his workmates, he had exiled himself to a friend’s house in Shoreditch, where he was presently recuperating.

My natural inclination was to believe this story. I held my master in the greatest respect; he had no reason that I knew to lie to me. But while I dared not question him for fear of rousing his anger, I could not help but find this explanation implausible. Last time I set eyes on Partridge he was in good health, talking rashly about Dorothy, hinting at their betrothal. I now began to question the reason for Dorothy’s precipitate departure as well as Partridge’s absence. I asked myself how, if Partridge were ill, had he vanished so rapidly from his lodgings? And as for the friend in Shoreditch, I was convinced it was nonsense. I was close as a brother to him and never heard mention of this person. The illness, I decided, was most probably a yarn spun by Partridge, for some reason of his own. Only I couldn’t fathom what that reason might be.

P
erhaps it was fortunate that over the days that followed I did not have long to dwell on my worries. It was impressed upon me almost every hour that the library must be finished in time for the dinner Lord Montfort was holding on New Year’s Day. Since this involved assembling a vast bookcase and the date was now only four days hence, my time passed in a frenzy of activity. I supervised the transportation of crates to the library. I ensured the packing mats and battens, paper and lay cord were removed without damage to the carvings on which Partridge had labored so painstakingly. Piece by piece I watched each segment emerge, marveling as I did so at the brilliance of the craftsman who conceived and so dexterously executed it.

It is a commonly held misbelief, among those who have never commissioned furniture, that the proprietor of a great workshop must himself draw and cut and carve every object produced under his name. In truth the great London cabinetmakers—John Channon, William Hallet, William Vile, Giles Grendey, and of course, Thomas Chippendale, all of whom do flourishing trade in this golden age of cabinetmaking—have long since put down their tools. Proprietors are transformed by success into administrators and salesmen, their craftsmen’s skills forgotten. Their talent must be diverted into lavishing attentions upon patrons in place of tabletops. Thus, in order to supply the fabric of his trade, Chippendale relied upon a host of journeymen in his employ. Without workers such as Partridge, Molly Bullock, and I, scarcely a stick of furniture would have been made in his name.

In this instance it was Partridge who’d created the finished sketches, Partridge who’d carved the most intricate parts and overseen the completion of the whole. Partridge, my friend and ally. I didn’t doubt that, if he could see me fretting over his whereabouts while I assembled his great masterpiece, he would have laughed and called me an idiot. But therein lay my concern: I hadn’t seen him.

Yet have I learned how distance and time can shift our perception of almost anything. Over the days of frenetic work that followed, when I was removed from London and all that was familiar to me, I began to feel my fears were unfounded. Working in this great room, piecing together Partridge’s creation from the fragments laid before me, my worry diminished. There was nothing I could do about Partridge here. I would carry out my instructions to the best of my ability. By the time I returned to London, Partridge would surely have reappeared, doubtless rolling with laughter at some clever scheme he’d carried off.

The library was a long narrow room that spanned the western limits of the house and had recently been redecorated in readiness for the new furnishings. The walls were freshly hung in crimson silk damask; a sumptuous flower-filled Axminster carpet, its pattern reflecting the stuccoed ceiling, lay ready to be unrolled. The ceiling alone had taken a dozen local craftsmen six months to complete. The long outer wall was centered upon a Carrara marble chimneypiece. To either side four sash windows gave onto a formal Italian garden. The view was generally considered delightful, one of the marvels of Horseheath, and in the summer season—according to Constance—numerous visitors came specially to walk in the gardens. To me, however, the marriage of Art and Nature seemed profoundly discordant. Walls of oppressive privet terminated in stifling niches; urns were filled with skeletal plants; and in the center a huge fountain formed the hub of an immense circular ornamental pond. And betwixt every path, white marble statues of nymphs, now frosted by winter, stood frozen in various stages of undress.

Partridge’s gargantuan bookcase faced this garden and, appropriately enough, resembled a Roman temple. Ancient architecture had recently become his obsession—how often he lauded its symmetry, its precision, its order. For in the ancient past, he claimed, were proportions and details that had never been improved upon, and therein the fashionable future lay. This notion had been the cause of some dissension within the workshop. Chippendale, though fond enough of meticulous design and classical architecture, preferred a multiplicity of decoration whenever possible. If patrons could be persuaded to festoon their commissions with chinoiserie knickknacks in the shape of hoho birds, dragons, and pagodas, or with ribbons and roses and watery cascades, extra might be charged and the piece would appear suitably sumptuous. Urns and pilasters didn’t compare visually or commercially.

Partridge’s fondness for antiquity was shared by Lord Montfort, who had spent some months in Italy as a young man. In Rome, like every other youth of his generation and rank, he had studied ancient architecture, acquiring much of the statuary visible from the window as well as the collections within the house. He agreed with Partridge’s classical theme—a room devoted to learning demanded some reference to ancient civilization. Yet he was equally obsessed by the need to impress his acquaintances, and fretted that scholarly restraint would be too subtle to be remarked. Thus to Partridge’s austere pilasters, urns, and pediment he added Chippendale’s suggestions for sundry swags of trailing foliage and flowers. The resulting structure resembled nothing so much as some classical temple relic overgrown with Arcadian vegetation.

It was New Year’s Eve, my fifth day at Horseheath, before I made Lord Montfort’s acquaintance. He exploded into the room, swirling his hunting cape, a mangy lurcher skulking by his side.

“Hopson, where are you, man, you rascal, you idler?” he thundered. “I come to remind you I expect company tomorrow. Unless they can admire this room and its fittings to my satisfaction I shall be pleased to inform Mr. Chippendale of your tardiness and detain my payments accordingly.”

The fact he could not see me, for I was presently perched on top of a ladder ensuring that the plinth of an urn was precisely square to the column beneath, further infuriated him. Like a freak tide with no sandbags to halt it, the onslaught surged forth unabated. “And you may tell Mr. Chippendale when you see him that, under the circumstances, he need not trouble himself to demand the return of his folio. I shall keep hold of it for as long as it pleases me.”

I had no comprehension of this reference to a folio, but in any case his fury had thrown me into such red-faced confusion I would scarcely have recognized my own mother.

“Lord Montfort,” I exclaimed, hastily folding my two-foot rule into my pocket, descending to his level and bowing. “I am Nathaniel Hopson.”

Montfort peered at me through small bloodshot eyes. The lurcher thrust forward, growling, the hair on its back standing up like a thistle. I tried to ignore the dog and fix on the man. He was stout-figured, aged perhaps fifty and five years, wigless, with lank hair and a belly that strained at his breeches. He was sweating profusely, and from his incessant twitching and blinking I judged him to be in a state of high agitation.

“I trust when your lordship examines the progress thus far you will not be displeased. The bulk of the work is already completed. It remains only for me to make minor adjustments that will be accomplished in the next hours.” The lurcher sniffed my breeches, its ears pressed back close to its head, its snout pushing insistently at my groin. It was still growling. Ignoring his dog, Montfort took in for the first time the work I had virtually completed.

The scale and magnificence of the room could hardly fail to inspire his awe. He drew short grunting breaths, while registering the extraordinary metamorphoses of mere wood into towering bookcase, library table, steps, globes, and chairs.

“Looks the part, don’t it, Hopson? Finest library in the county, I’ll wager.”

“Yes, my lord.”

“A grand setting for a spectacle?”

“Indeed.”

The dog retreated beside his master. I breathed more easily. It was weeks before I recalled those words and comprehended their true significance.

T
hus to Lord Montfort’s dinner and the dreadful discovery with which this strange tale began. Eight people, in addition to the host himself, took their seats that afternoon at the fine mahogany dining table. Three were family members and residents of the household—Elizabeth, Montfort’s fragile young wife, I have already remarked; Robert, his nineteen-year-old son by a previous marriage, was heir to the estate, a handsome, strongly boned man, grandly dressed that evening as befitted the occasion; Margaret Alleyn, Lord Montfort’s spinster sister, had run the household for the past two decades. The five remaining guests comprised a pair of neighboring landowners, Lord Foley and Lord Bradfield and their respective wives, and a last-minute addition to the party—Montfort’s attorney, a man by the name of Wallace, who had been called in to attend on his lordship earlier in the day and had yet to be dismissed.

My previous description of this assembly, its strange atmosphere and awkward guests, might perhaps have conveyed the impression that the event was from the start ill-fated, that the signs of the impending tragedy were all too evident to anyone with an ounce of sensibility. In truth I must confess that such a view, though easy enough in hindsight, does not give a true appraisal of the situation. I am no different from any man in that conclusions I draw are fashioned from the raw materials of experience and event. If I possess any special talent, it is that my profession has taught me to employ those materials more carefully than most men, for my skill depends upon my capacity for meticulous precision. In this case, however, my materials were sparse. I was unfamiliar with the household. The strained atmosphere did not unnerve me because I presumed it to be the usual state of affairs. In any case how could I judge the household accurately, being so unaccustomed to such grandeur? Devoid of any similar experience, I knew only what I saw.

My encounter with Lord Montfort the previous day had shown me he was a man prone to outbursts of choleric ill-humor, who frequently evoked uneasiness in those surrounding him. Thus it did not seem unusual that his temper, far from improving, showed signs of further deterioration. Yet, as the evening drew on, the extremes of Montfort’s moroseness threw a shadow over the proceedings that appeared to surprise his guests and family. Dinner was under way when the first of them remarked it. His neighbor Lord Bradfield, a man of large girth and matching appetite, had interrupted his imbibing of turtle soup to recount a prized fragment of gossip. “The bishop was actually pleased when he found himself to have the itch. Said it was of no concern where he caught it, for it would help him keep his mistress to himself.”

Ignoring his wife’s glare, Bradfield paused and slurped a spoonful of soup, spilling a large droplet upon his purple damask jacket, which was already much spattered with the residue of good dinners. If Bradfield expected to gather encouragement from his host, he was sadly disappointed. Montfort stared at him bulbous-eyed, scowling, silent. The ladies on either side were equally aloof. His sister, Margaret, seemed preoccupied. Elizabeth, his wife, lowered her eyes and shifted uncomfortably in her seat.

All this while I was standing ramrod-still by the sideboard, waiting for the footman’s signal to clear away. I should say here that I’d never waited at table before and had only stepped in when pressed by Mrs. Cummings. She was in a fluster on account of Miss Alleyn, in her capacity as housekeeper, thoughtlessly giving three of the staff the night off. On top of this, the second footman had fallen unaccountably ill (Mrs. Cummings blamed the potency of the ale at the tavern). That left only Connie and a scullery maid to help in the kitchen and the footman to serve. Thus she’d begged for my assistance “just till the dessert is on the table,” and foolishly I’d succumbed. Now, standing here in a scratchy wig, squeezed half to death by scarlet livery and gold tassels, like some ridiculous confectionery box in a shop window, I regretted my acquiescence.

How different was this chilly assembly from the raucous jollities at the Blue Boar or the Fountain. Were it not for Partridge’s inconvenient absence I should have been there—or, even better, I should have been at the playhouse with Alice. I yearned for the throng, the gaudiness, the cacophony of song, the air thick with the smell of roasting meat, boiling puddings, tobacco smoke, and sweat. I yearned, above all, to distance myself from this dismal gathering.

Bradfield’s gawking expression showed me he was taken aback by Montfort’s mood, but he didn’t inquire the reason for it. Perhaps he didn’t dare. Perhaps he already knew what lay behind it. At any rate, not wishing to squander his storytelling talents on an unappreciative recipient, he shifted his attention towards the other end of the table, where he caught Lord Foley’s eye. Foley was clad in a black velvet suit that gleamed with the luster of moleskin, untouched by any imperfection. A froth of milky lace accentuated his skull-like face with its great beak of a nose and dark-socketed eyes. He gave Bradfield a vague half smile, all the encouragement needed for that gentleman to hasten on with his narrative.

“I have it on excellent authority his mistress is always vastly good for two or three days after his Sunday sermon, but by the time Thursday comes all the effect is worn off.”

Catching the joke, Lord Foley bared his wolfish teeth. Given an instant longer he might have responded with some clever witticism, but Montfort unexpectedly interrupted.

“You do not want to leave your mistress with Foley even till Thursday, for I wager he’ll have her himself, itch or no itch. Ain’t that right, Foley?” Montfort had turned an ominous shade of puce, and his breathing was labored, his expression thunderous. Sensing his master’s mood, the lurcher, until then asleep under Montfort’s chair, began to stir.

Foley pointedly avoided Montfort’s gaze. Taking a corner of his damask napkin, he dabbed a droplet of soup from his lower lip. He turned to Montfort’s son, Robert. “You intend to leave for Italy soon, I understand.”

Robert was dissecting a woodcock. Detaching its head and long pointed beak with extraordinary delicacy, he laid it on the edge of his plate like a wreath on a gravestone before responding to the inquiry.

“I hope to depart by the end of the month. I’m filled with as much impatience to be gone as my family are keen to be rid of me. Don’t you agree, Elizabeth?”

This last question he addressed to his young stepmother, who was seated between the bulky forms of his father and himself. Her voice was soft and rather high-pitched. She spoke rapidly, as if afraid she would be told to be quiet. “I am sure you will find much to entertain yourself, Robert. As for your family’s eagerness to be rid of you, I cannot be the judge of that—but I shall be sorry to see you go.”

Montfort glared at his son and his wife. A moment later, wheezing furiously, he heaved himself to his feet, shuffled past me to the windows, and pulled back the curtains. Nothing gave him as much pleasure as the prospect from this room, he declared, and he refused absolutely to have them drawn for the rest of the evening. Catching the nasty set of his mouth, none of the assembled company dared remonstrate that there was nothing to be seen of the prospect since it was dark outside, or that the fierce cold he’d let in caused them unnecessary discomfort. The ladies pursed their lips, shivering in silence as goose pimples rose on their décolletage. The men too fell silent. Montfort, still shadowed by his sleepy dog, lumbered back to the head of the table and lowered himself slowly into his chair.

At the far end of the table, Foley alone was undaunted by his host’s foul temper. He rekindled his conversation with Bradfield. The subject matter was inaudible, but to judge from Foley’s black brows jerking up and down like startled spiders, it was a question of some drama. A short interval later and the rest of the assembly had mustered the courage to resume a subdued chatter. The attorney Wallace attempted to attract the attention of Miss Alleyn, who was rapt in her nephew Robert’s account of his imminent voyage to Italy.

Miss Alleyn, her thin nose reddened by the sudden burst of cold, was trying to question Robert on the details of his journey, but, apparently oblivious to her, he was deep in conversation with Elizabeth on the subject of Rome. In the midst of this exchange he leaned over to her, whispered a confidence, then continued with his description. Soon after that I heard a loud snort and a strange growling sound issued from Montfort’s lips. Robert paused and turned to his father, his brow wrinkled in puzzlement.

“Are you well, sir? You appear out of sorts. Does your gout trouble you?” he inquired solicitously.

“If I find myself indisposed, I would thank you not to add to my unease by your interrogation. You may fancy yourself a physician, but that is no more than a flight of your imagination.”

Robert was startled by the harshness of this retort. “I did not intend to add to your discomfort. I am merely concerned for your well-being.”

“I will choose when and with whom I wish to discuss my well-being, Robert,” responded his father bitterly. “And as for you, Elizabeth, I will thank you to remember your guests.”

As if she’d been slapped, Elizabeth flinched and lowered her eyes. She was coiffed with an elaborate white-powdered wig interwoven with silk rosebuds and leaves, and her gown was of crimson silk trimmed with black lace. The richness of this garb seemed only to heighten the pallor of her powdered face. A black beauty spot had detached itself from her upper lip and trembled precariously before falling to her breast. She stroked the ringlet of white hair that lay on her shoulder, as if touching something soft in the face of his harshness offered some small consolation. Then, though plainly shivering from the cold, she took out her fan and began fanning herself as if feverish with heat. This evident distress failed to move her husband. Turning to the roast partridge on his plate, he pierced its golden skin with his fork, hacked off a large section of succulent meat, and began to chew.

I
t was not the first time I’d witnessed Lord Montfort speak roughly to Elizabeth, and I confess his treatment of her rankled with me. Perhaps I was being foolishly unworldly in my distaste; after all, what husband is not masterful on occasion? Is it not a man’s God-given right to be ruler in his own household, to demand obedience of his spouse whenever he deems it necessary? Yet in this instance something in the disparity of their ages (she was only three years older than his son), something in his physical grossness and her fragility (I could not help picturing his vast belly crushing her birdlike frame) struck me as profoundly distasteful. How had such an unlikely match come about? I’d quizzed Constance, a fountain of knowledge on such subjects, and learned a little of the sorry tale.

Some five years earlier, aged seventeen, Elizabeth, the youngest daughter of a respectable merchant, had attended a summer ball. Henry Montfort, widower, owner of this fine estate, and father of one motherless teenage son, had clapped eyes on her sweet, innocent form and determined to be the first to enjoy her. According to Constance’s enthusiastic account, this was an easy enough challenge. Elizabeth was little match for Montfort’s guile. She was swiftly persuaded to drink too many glasses of champagne and to accompany him on a moonlight promenade, which led to her brusque deflowering beneath a marble nymph. Some time later Elizabeth’s father had discovered his daughter wandering the gardens in distress. Having established what had taken place, he threatened uproar unless a marriage was hastily effected. Thus within a matter of weeks had the hapless Elizabeth left her comfortable, sheltered childhood and the parents who doted on her, to become the wife of Lord Montfort. Thus ever since, I deduced, had she been bullied and ill-used by her husband.

Connie was less sympathetic than I to her plight. Elizabeth had her consolations, did she not? What were these consolations? I demanded. Connie spelled them out for me: Elizabeth was rich; she was mistress of this grand house; she had friendship tendered to her by Miss Alleyn, who viewed her as the daughter she’d always longed for. And then (here Connie paused theatrically) there were other consolations. “What do you mean,” I cried precisely as intended, “ ‘Then there are other consolations’?” Connie winked knowingly, but more than that she wouldn’t say.

I
was rinsing cutlery and glasses in the urn specially fitted for the purpose (Mr. Chippendale does thriving business in such accoutrements for the well-appointed dining room—the most popular being a matching pair, one lead-lined for rinsing, the other fitted for storing cutlery), when the sound of Foley and Bradfield guffawing at the other end of the table distracted me. Foley’s lips glistened with grease, and his cobweb cuffs swirled as he gestured with a drumstick caught between bony thumb and forefinger. He had finished eating, and his plate was piled with white-picked bones. Bradfield listened avidly; suddenly grasping Foley’s witticism he was racked with convulsive laughter. Morsels of half-chewed flesh spurted from his lips, adding to the ancient encrustations on his belly. To Lord Montfort the sight of this messy hilarity was insupportable. His face flooded deeper crimson than his wife’s garb.

“Foley,” he snarled, “you may well jest. You are leaving my house the richer.”

There was a long pause, during which I froze, not wishing to draw Montfort’s fury by an injudicious clattering of spoons. Montfort’s vitriol must have been as unmistakable to Foley as to me, but he ignored it, turning instead to engage his wife in conversation. “My dear Jane, do you catch sight of this picture of the Veduta, is it not quite as ravishing as that of San Daniele I purchased last spring?”

The snub served only to incense Montfort further. “Sir,” he spat, “I would ask you to respect my presence. You may make a fool of me at the gaming table but not at my dining table.”