The Nonsuch Lure Read online

  There was an unfamiliar young woman at the desk when he entered Cuddington House. He went directly to his room, glad he didn't yet have to inform his Artless Charmer he was leaving ahead of schedule.

  Opening his door, he stood stock still. The little sunlight that could escape the Shell-Mex's shadow usually reached into his room in late afternoon, and it was now almost unnaturally bright. It reflected off the white walls, providing a luminous aura for the object on the opposite wall. There, between the two large mullioned windows, looking perfectly at home, hung the portrait of Chloe Cuddington. Andrew forgot his disappointment and weariness. An incredibly strong magnetism seemed to reach out to enfold him as it had the previous day. Quietly, he closed the door and stopped to look at the portrait as if seeing it for the first time.

  In some ways he was. His room was twice as large as Rosa's, and he was at a sufficient distance to admire the striking perspective, as well as the artist's superb craftsmanship. The reflected sunlight bounced off the light walls and acted almost as a spotlight, bringing the sitter vitally alive. The beautiful girl with that extraordinary silvery hair seemed about to grasp the armchair, rise and come to-

  ward him. The expressive gray eyes were alight with welcome. He could almost imagine her opening her arms to receive him.

  Steady, old boy, you've had enough fantasy for one day, he told himself. There was an envelope placed strategically in the middle of the bed. It was from Rosa Caudle:

  "Mr. Moffatt—we hope you won't mind our hanging the portrait in your room. You seemed to enjoy it so, it seemed a shame to return it to the attic right away. Harry and I thought it looked quite nice in here. The packages inside the desk are from the safe, and I've told the porter to let you look for anything you need in the attic. Harry and I will be at Sparrow Field for the weekend. The girl's name—the one at the desk—is Jennifer; she stays in our rooms when we're away. Ask her for anything you need.

  R. C."

  Again, Andrew studied the portrait. It was in remarkably good condition. As he walked around the room, the dark-lashed eyes of the lovely Chloe seemed to follow him. He could well understand Julian Cushing's obsession. A boy, probably a lonely one, striving to make a living and a name for himself in the raw newness of a little Virginia town. And on some social occasion or perhaps while acting as a tutor in James Cuddington's home, he'd come upon this picture hanging over a colonial fireplace. Obviously, it had haunted young Julian, and together with his interest in Nonsuch, Chloe's beauty had been sufficiently overwhelming to bring him—as well as the young medieval beauty herself—back to the very house where she had been painted.

  With an effort, Andrew withdrew his gaze from the picture and opened the desk. Inside were three old Harrods' shoeboxes filled with papers tied with fine twine, hemp and rubber bands. There were several keys, with labels attached. An envelope of calling cards with the name "James Cuddington" heavily engraved reminded Andrew of the kind his father had carried. Several packages of what appeared to be legal documents were all bound with ribbon. Andrew methodically began to sort them out, then settled himself in the room's one comfortable chair and started to read. He reached for a pencil and pad and made several notes, read extracts from the folded sheets and referred several times to the pictures of

  Nonsuch in his briefcase. The sunlight faded, and the room became shadowy. He switched on a light, stretched, looked for some time at the portrait of Chloe Cuddington as he smoked a cigarette and then went back to his reading.

  It was past midnight when, exhausted and hungry, he put the papers aside. It was too late for room service, and he was in no mood for the several-block walk to the nearest restaurant that would be just on the verge of closing. Supperless, but totally immersed in his thoughts, he undressed for bed. He lay, smoking a last cigarette and looking once more at the portrait. "My dear, you must have been some woman," he said aloud, "some woman indeed." He knew as he turned out the light that he was not going into the Connaught or to Vermont. He was going to stay right here in London, probably at Cuddington House, till he'd unraveled the mystery. And at the end—if what he read was correct—he had little doubt that he, too, would meet a Miss Chloe Cuddington, just as Julian Cushing had two hundred and fifty years before.

  Qhapter ^jfive

  On Monday, Rosa Caudle returned to her place behind the desk, and Andrew told her how much he enjoyed having the portrait in his room. He'd spent a good deal of time prowling in her attic on Sunday, he said, and he'd taken several boxes to his room. He hoped that met with her approval—he was being very careful of everything and more than appreciated her indulgence. And soon he might be able to tell her more about Julian Cushing, for he'd learned a good deal about the young man.

  "Have you, sir?" Rosa beamed. "Well, I'm glad those old papers and things in the attic are proving useful. And to think of the number of times we've almost thrown them out! Take your time, sir. Harry and I will be glad to be of any help, and we'll just leave the portrait in there until you go—if it's all right with you."

  Once outside, Andrew took a taxi to Timothy's Hans Place apartment. His friend had promised to meet him there as soon as he could leave his office. Housekeepers being a thing of the past, Andrew was to get the superintendent to let him in. He tipped the man for the inconvenience, and then, after admiring Hodge's quarters, helped himself to a glass of his host's scotch, settled himself on a comfortable sofa and took from his briefcase some papers and books he'd found in the attic the day before.

  He began with one small leather-bound book. It was, he could see from the contents, about two hundred and fifty years old. That would put it back just about in Julian Cushing's time. Its pages were brittle and dry, and the handwriting in the first few was a faded brown. It seemed to be a casual record of the Cuddington

  family genealogy. Births and deaths were noted, and a few comments included at appropriate points. The handwriting was the same for four or five pages, and then—the writer presumably having died—another person and a different handwriting took over.

  The fluid hand at the beginning was typical of the mid-fifteenth century, and the writer had apparently copied his information from older, probably deteriorating records, some of which went back to the thirteenth century. He'd taken great pains to explain that Cotin-tone, Cudyton, Codington all meant Cuddington—that the name had been spelled differently during the centuries since the first Cuddington landowner was mentioned. That, Andrew was impressed to see, was in the Domesday Survey in 1086. In the following pages the writer noted with quiet satisfaction that one Cuddington had married a sister of the Walter de Merton who became Chancellor of England in 1260 and had later founded Merton College at Oxford. When he died, the chronicler stated with evident pride, he was Bishop of Rochester and had left twenty marks for the poor of Cuddington village.

  In the fourteenth century, the writing continued, one Simon de Codynton had become sheriff, building a manor house that had, with its chamber, great hall, pantry, buttery and kitchen, been the wonder of the parish. A very imposing residence for 1350, Andrew knew, when most people of substance were more concerned with security than comfort. That building would have been part of what he'd seen in his "time slip" at Sparrow Field. The next hundred years were detailed descriptions of family squabbles with the common people of Cuddington over the land that, from the villages named, must have encompassed thousands of acres. Within this area was the "common land," where the poor pastured their cattle and planted their crops in individual strips. The name of the land, the chronicler noted, was Sparwefeld. And, thought Andrew, as he sipped at his drink, today Sparwefeld is an ancient farmhouse with an attractive front yard, a tidy garden and scruffy-looking backyard. Sic transit gloria mundi. . . .

  Following the unknown Cuddington who'd recounted the family's early history, a different handwriting recorded that in 1495 Sir Richard Cuddington's wife, Chloe, had given birth to the son and heir, Richard. Two years later, another boy, James, was born. In 1520, the same writer noted,
with lordly satisfaction, that Cudding-

  ton House in the Strand had been completed. "And King Henry passed this way in the Straund for France this day."

  Those years and the few that followed seemed to have been the peak of Cuddington prosperity. Both boys married young. Richard was barely nineteen when he wed a Miss Elizabeth Darrell of Ewell. "One of the Squire's seven" was written after her name. James had married the following year. Several lines were drawn through two births, indicating, Andrew assumed, that the children were stillborn. However, in 1522, a boy, Richard, had survived. He would have been the one mentioned in the lounge history who became the famous Tudor painter. As for the elder Richard and his bride, Elizabeth, they'd had only one child, born in 1516, a girl named Chloe after her grandmother. That was the Chloe Cuddington who had sat for the portrait. Chloe's marriage to Bartholomew Perm in 1536 was duly noted, and after the date, someone in a different script had scribbled, "a great favorite of the Quene."

  Three pages later the handwriting changed again. The baronetcy had ping-ponged between the descendants of Richard and James, and childhood mortality being what it was, there were as many stillborn children or those who survived but a short time as there were those who lived. Andrew was amused to see the truth of Rosa Caudle's statement that the family had faithfully stuck with the tradition of naming the eldest son Richard, the second son James—the older daughter was inevitably a Chloe. After that there were a few Rachels, Elizabeths, Charleses, Georges and Henrys. The Richard Cuddington who became the painter had had a passel of children, and it was his great-grandson, James, who'd gone to Williamsburg. His birthdate was recorded in 1630, and he left for America (noted as "the colonies") at the age of twenty, probably when his father died and his older brother had inherited Cuddington House. He would have been nearly seventy when he'd shown Julian the portrait and asked the young man to return it to the family. It had probably formed part of his inheritance.

  Through the Georgian and Victorian periods, the Richards, Jameses, Elizabeths and Chloes had lived on in Cuddington House, much as the lounge history had described. There were rarely many children, which was undoubtedly a blessing, for it was apparent that over the years the family fortunes had dwindled even further. Several ladies had remained spinsters, possibly for want of a decent dowry. In 1912 he noted the birth of his Artless Charmer. She had

  been an only child and named for the Rosa who had been the friend of Julian Cushing.

  He had just finished at the date of Rosa's marriage to Harry Caudle in 1930 and the date of a few major restorations to the house when Timothy arrived. He looked at the papers spread on his sofa and said, cheerfully, "Well, Andrew, what have we here?" Peering at some of the books and papers more closely, he laughed. "Looks like you've robbed the British Museum."

  "Sit down, Tim, I've got some story to tell you. . . . Believe me, you're going to need all your wits about you to understand this, so you'd better have a drink first—here, I'll fix it."

  "You seem a lot better than last Friday. Have you stayed away from that blasted place as I asked you to?"

  "I haven't been back, but I'm going there soon." Andrew looked at the papers thoughtfully. "Listen, Tim, I think I know what's there."

  "Well, what in hell is it—don't keep me waiting!" Hodge sipped his drink. "And how did you find out?"

  "It's all here—almost the whole damned story. I've spent the weekend reading everything I could find. There are some missing pieces, but I think—no, I'm pretty sure I've got the basics right. Are you ready?"

  "As ready as I'll ever be." Hodge regarded the mess on his sofa. He was happy to see his friend looking more like himself. "Where did you find all that ancient memorabilia?"

  Andrew told him how Rosa had hung Chloe's portrait in his room, how she'd left boxes of family records from the safe for him and given him permission to look in the attic. After going through all the records, he'd taken the keys, discovered they fitted several locked trunks, found boxes containing books, papers and old letters and had closeted himself with them till he felt he knew most of what had happened to Julian Cushing.

  "There are still some blank spots—and they're important, Tim— I'm not denying that. But what's here really tells us quite a bit." He lit a cigarette and continued. "Julian, as you know, lived in Williamsburg. We have all that information from his Journal. He saw the portrait of Chloe Cuddington, became infatuated with it—he was a very impressionable boy, I think. When James Cuddington offered to pay his passage to England if he'd return the portrait to 'its owners'—the family at Cuddington House—Julian leaped at the

  chance. That, by the way, was not in Julian's Journal, but in other papers I found in the attic."

  "What kind of papers?" Hodge drew his chair nearer to see what Andrew had in his hand.

  "The best kind—diaries. Those days people didn't have our demands on their time, and when they had their leisure moments, there was no car, no theater to speak of and certainly no television. So for entertainment they turned to their diary or journal. It was a calendar of whatever happened to them on a certain day, and many of them used the pages as a sort of psychiatric clearinghouse— they'd confide things to it, for instance, that they'd tell no one else."

  "The sort of thing my patients tell me," Hodge volunteered.

  "Exactly"—Andrew waved the book—"and this is one of those books. It's the diary of Miss Chloe Cuddington. Not the one in the portrait, of course. She'd been dead for over a hundred years. But there was another Chloe who later lived in Cuddington House, and she, I'm thankful to say, was a very bright well-educated young lady for her time. She kept journals and diaries, and it's from her that I got most of my information." Andrew went to his host's well-stocked bar, refilled his glass and went on.

  "Apparently, old James Cuddington in Williamsburg knew from communications with his relatives in London that his brother's son had a daughter named Chloe and that she was the image of the portrait of her ancestress. Not only were the names passed on, but this particular family characteristic—the almost white-blond hair, the square chin with the deep cleft, that incredibly strong beauty-was a physiological signature that surfaced every generation or so. Actually, it seemed to have been such a distinguishing trait that it was looked for quite early in the Cuddington children. Often a generation or two would pass; then, suddenly, there'd be a child who grew to the image of the girl in the portrait. All this, of course, was known by the James Cuddington in Williamsburg. Whether he mentioned it to Julian or not, I don't know. However, it would account for Rosa's—Rosa Cuddington, that is—for her remark to him that he would find things little changed at Sparwefeld. That's where Chloe lived a good deal of the time—the girl seems to have loved the outdoors and preferred Sparwefeld to Cuddington House. She, too, had some knowledge of Nonsuch that doesn't come through clearly. But after all, I haven't had time to go through all of her diaries thoroughly—not yet."

  "What do you mean—had some knowledge about Nonsuch?" "Well, you must remember that although the palace had ostensibly been pulled down, there were still many ruins aboveground. What the neighboring villagers hadn't pillaged or pilfered would still be standing, I'd think. Rosa Cuddington told Julian the ruins were more extensive than he'd been led to believe. So he went to Sparwefeld—to Sparrow Field of today—to see Nonsuch. It must have been a fantastic moment for him. Yet in his diary, as you remember, all he says of that day is 'Nothing.' Well, here, in Miss Chloe Cuddington's diary, it tells what actually happened:

  "April 10, 1700: I went to the ruins for my morning Walk as is my Wont, hoping to paint the part of the Wall which remains with the great tree in the Wilderness hanging over it. The sun often makes this very Beautiful. While setting up my easel, I was reminded of the Lure. Why can't I put this fairy Tale from my Mind? 'Tis only a legend, I am sure. My father once told me Dr. Dee was a great Fakir for his time; he had even hoodwinked the Quene. . . .

  But while I was walking about the ruined buildings, waiting for the s
un to strike the right spot, he came. . . ."

  "And here"—Andrew laughed—"you can see that he—and it was Julian she saw—must have made a great impression, for she has underlined it four times!" He continued reading:

  "He introduced himself to me most gracefully as Mr. Julian Cushing of Williamsburg, which is in America. I was very Excited to meet someone from the Colonies—he was sent by my great-uncle James, who must be quite Old. Mr. Cushing told me of his deep Interest in Nonsuch, and so I took him on what I called My Grand Tour. I have talked with many Old men in the village who can remember Nonsuch when it was still all standing Together, and they have described what the ruins are, although some of them are so Tall, they need no description. . . ."

  "Then there must have been more of it left than one might think," said Hodge, draining his glass and going to the bar to refill it. "Read on, old man."

  "As this was Mr. Cushing's first visit, we started near the old Banqueting House and walked through the Wilderness to where I had planned to paint my Tree and Wall. We went on through the kitchen buildings—he being Most Pleasant and Charming. His speech is different—and he says so is Mine—but he speaks truly and well, and we both were at Ease. He told me I greatly resembled a portrait of a relative he has brought back to Cuddington House.