Free A Change of Heir by Michael Innes

unperturbed reply. ‘I’m Nicholas,’ he ought to explain. Or (remembering the Memoirs ) perhaps he ought to expand to ‘I’m Nicholas, who brought the white mice into Sunday school’. Or would that be the wrong note? Would it be more courteous to concur (so to speak) in the assumption that something like a formal introduction was needed, and say with a bow ‘I am Mrs Minton’s great-nephew, sir. My name is Nicholas Comberford’?
    ‘Fellow hasn’t a tongue in his head.’
    Gadberry realised that when he ought to have been saying something he had been thinking what to say. It didn’t, of course, really matter in this instance, but it did represent his breaking a rule. It was always better to trust to the spur of the moment than to give any appearance of a pause for calculation.
    ‘He has a look of young Nicholas, you know, of young Nicholas.’ Grimble had turned to his hostess and, between gulps of soup, offered this informatively. ‘Only young Nicholas would always speak up. Well do I remember the occasion upon which I caught him stealing my strawberries. He was under the net, you know, under the net. So he couldn’t get away. And I was carrying a switch, I was carrying a switch, I say.’ Grimble produced a high-pitched cackle of laughter, and then slid more soup with surprising dexterity through a slit in the bird’s nest. ‘So he spoke up, you know, he spoke up loudly.’
    ‘Mr Grimble’s memory isn’t quite right.’ Gadberry addressed the table at large, and to the accompaniment of his sunniest smile. ‘It was the coachman’s boy who was under the net. I was astride the wall, with my strawberries already picked. And I was treacherously cheering on the vicar at his good work.’
    ‘That is certainly correct.’ Mrs Minton nodded her head emphatically. ‘My dear husband made a note of it at the time. A Comberford, he justly remarked, would not readily let himself be caught in the net.’ Mrs Minton looked down the table. Although the story didn’t really appear to represent her great-nephew in a wholly amiable light, she took evident satisfaction in it. Indeed, she expatiated on this now. ‘I am glad, my dear Nicholas, that you hold so much of that early period in your memory. It is a very proper sort of piety. Boulter, we will take wine.’
    The company took wine – and with reasonable elegance at this stage of the meal, since Boulter was instantly able to produce a suitable Madeira. Had Mrs Minton (as she was quite capable of doing) not uttered these words until her guests had munched their way to the other end of the feast, Boulter would have been equally dextrous in the production of Sauterne. Gadberry had a high regard for Boulter’s professional accomplishment. When he became master of Bruton – he found himself thinking – he would probably keep Boulter on.
    ‘One branch of the Comberfords, indeed,’ Mrs Minton was proceeding, ‘have a motto that is apposite here. It is Cave Retiola . Just what is meant by the little nets is obscure. But, in general, wariness is being enjoined. The injunction is at least a politic one.’
    Gadberry agreed. To be wary of the little nets, he reflected, was precisely his business.
    ‘I speak only of a cadet branch of my family. The motto of our own line, Nicholas, you know very well.’
    This was awkward, and there was a slight pause. It was a piece of homework that Gadberry ought to have done long ago. Only he hadn’t. That armigerous families have mottoes, coats of arms and the like just hadn’t occurred to him.
    ‘Hold everything!’
    It was Dr Pollock who had enunciated this loudly and emphatically, so that for a moment Gadberry had a confused impression that the company was being summoned to confront some sudden crisis. But Mrs Minton was again nodding approvingly.
    ‘Precisely,’ she said. ‘It is an excellent motto, and particularly to be regarded in the present age of legalised expropriation and robbery. One ought to give nothing away.