‘All right,’ said the other, somewhat mollified and impressed by his quiet tone. ‘What is it?’
‘I cannot agree to accept all responsibility for anything that may happen on this job,’ said Clegg, his hand on the blue-print before him. ‘All I ask is that you should be present in the foundry when we run the first cast.’
George Frimley grunted. ‘All right,’ he agreed grudgingly. ‘All right, my time’s precious, but if it will put a stop to all this infernal drivel it will be worth it.’
Upon this understanding, preparatory work on the big castings was put in hand. Photostat copies of the drawing were taken; the job was priced; a wooden pattern was made and delivered to the foundry by the pattern makers in smooth, snugly fitting sections painted glossy black and red. Soon the first mould was taking shape in the sandy floor. Things seemed to be settling down. Whatever it was that tunnelled the moulding-floor seemed to have suspended its activities. The lurking figure by the cupola had not been seen for some time, and the men began to use the side door again. Even Arthur Clegg’s fears were lulled into a sense of security. None the less, he was still obstinately determined that George Frimley should be present when the time came to run the first of the big casts.
Sure enough, at four o’clock in the afternoon of a sultry August day, George duly appeared in the foundry. Everything was ready. The blower hummed steadily, and its fierce blast roared in the molten heart of the big cupola. Its steel sides radiated an intense heat that smote the face with an almost physical force. Before its mouth stood the three-ton ladle ready coupled to the overhead crane.
‘O.K.?’ queried the foundry foreman.
‘O.K.’ nodded Clegg, standing beside Frimley, and the orderly routine began.
The furnace-man drove his long rod through the fireclay stopping in the furnace mouth, there was a scintillating flicker of sparks, and the molten metal gushed into the ladle. As he stood waiting with his plummet rod to stop the flow, a black silhouette against the glare, his shadow, vastly magnified, wavered on the opposite wall. There were some who said afterwards that they saw there also a second and shorter shadow. Whether they did or no can never be determined. Certainly there was no one beside him at the time, and the illusion quickly vanished as the man plugged his furnace. There was a whirr of motors overhead as the crane lifted and swung the ladle across the shop towards the mould. The furnace-man knocked over the switch of the blower motor, and the steady hum deepened and gradually died away, leaving the shop strangely silent. The foreman signalled with the palm of his hand to the crane-driver, and the ladle was gently lowered into position beside the mouth of the mould. Two men manned the hand-wheels which would tip the ladle, a third held a skimmer to keep the dross from entering the mould, while a fourth prepared to take out the stops and to light the gas as it issued from the mould vents. Their faces, running with sweat, gleamed in the glow of the molten metal which dimmed the daylight of the roof-lights overhead. The silence of this rather tense moment was broken by an unexpected sound. Somebody laughed. It seemed to come from the direction of the big cupola. Everyone, George Frimley included, glanced in that direction, but the furnace-man was sluicing his face in a bucket of water in the far corner of the shop, and there was no one there. Clegg knew very well that it was not the furnace-man, for the voice was too thin and cracked. It was, he said, more a kind of snigger than a laugh.
The interruption was only momentary, for molten metal cannot be kept waiting or it becomes too glutinous to pour. The stops were taken out, the pourers swung their hand-wheels, and the mould began to fill. The vents ignited with a ‘plop’ like a gas-ring and showed flickering blue tongues of flame. Judging by the contents which remained in the ladle, the mould should have been three parts full when the ghastly and inexplicable thing happened.
The black sandy floor just behind the mould suddenly bellied upwards as though moved by an earthquake and, with a sound like a gigantic roman candle discharging its ball of coloured fire, a fountain of molten metal shot high into the air. There was an urgent shout of ‘Hey up!’ and everyone scattered. The wretched skimmer was caught in the deadly hail and stumbled towards the doorway, screaming like a woman, his clothes reduced to smoking rags. One of the pourers tripped over a mould-box, fell, and did not rise again. There was a sickly smell of burnt flesh. But for the moment the survivors had no eyes for the victims. In the hole which had opened in the sand a pool of molten ore seethed and bubbled angrily. Upon it, or within it (for in some strange way the metal appeared to have become translucent), they saw what they all agreed to be a corpse. What or who it had been no one can say, for not only was it burned beyond hope of recognition, but it was also in the last stages of decomposition. Around it, seemingly impervious to the fiery element in which they moved, crawled creatures of most sickening shape. They resembled maggots seething and writhing in putrid flesh except for the fact that they were the size of a man’s forearm.
* * * * *
Clegg retired prematurely from the foundry trade and now lives in a small cottage near Henley-in-Arden where he grows tomatoes and keeps bees.
Apart from the fact that he never paid a nocturnal visit to Hawley Bank Foundry, George Frimley was made of sterner stuff. But, as you already know, he spent the next three months recuperating at Bournemouth. But he is still a changed man. For one thing he is not so readily given to shouting at his employees, and his golf handicap is not what it used to be.
As for Hawley Bank Ironworks, even in these days of Scrap Metal Drives, much of the plant still lies there. The big beam engine still lurks in the ruinous engine-house like a great grasshopper eternally poised to spring. But George Frimley’s business is back in a rebuilt Brookend, and there is no new tenant. Winter gales have stripped tiles from the roofs; water drips again from choked and broken guttering. The old silence has fallen once more in the clearing of the woods. Even the grass is creeping back over the newly made road and the tendrils of the briars will soon meet across the way.
Music Hath Charms
WHEN JAMES HENEAGE rang up one morning in a state of great excitement with the news that he had just inherited the property of Trevarthen in Cornwall, and to suggest a joint visit of inspection, Thornton accepted the proposal with alacrity. He had known James well since their schooldays, and they shared many tastes in common. Moreover, the fine spring weather made the prospect of exchanging the streets of London for the Cornish cliffs particularly attractive. The house was said to be furnished and, assuming it fulfilled his expectations and that he could obtain suitable domestic help, James expressed his intention of occupying it, at any rate for the summer months. As he was at that time engaged upon a study of the early Celtic civilisation of Cornwall, which involved considerable local research, such an arrangement would suit him admirably. They arranged to meet the following morning beneath the clock on No. 1 platform at Paddington. Meanwhile, in a mood of pleasurable anticipation, Thornton looked up Trevarthen in Morrow’s Guide to Cornwall, and found the following brief entry:—
TREVARTHEN HOUSE AND COVE (Map 2, Sq. 6c). Small but picturesque private fishing cove in Mounts Bay. Penzance 10 m.; Helston 6 m. Traditionally associated with activities of Count Hennezè, notorious eighteenth-century smuggler and wrecker. Rugged cliff scenery.
As it would be difficult to find a Cornish cove which did not boast ‘rugged cliff scenery’, and which was not popularly associated with smuggling in fact or fiction, this information left Thornton little the wiser.
James Heneage had never visited Trevarthen, and at the time that he received the news of this unexpected legacy from an uncle whom he had not seen since early childhood, he knew no more about the place than Thornton. His sources of information, however, were not confined to Morrow’s Guide, for his library included a comprehensive collection of historical and topographical works on the Duchy, including the great Borlaise, and these, as may readily be imagined, he had lost no time in consulting.
The next day, while the Cornish Riviera Express bore them swiftly i
nto the West Country, he imparted the fruits of this research to Thornton, with the result that by the time they had rumbled across Brunel’s great bridge over the Tamar, the latter felt that he was already well acquainted with Trevarthen.
The house stood on the shoulder of Carn Zawn Head, its windows looking across the gulf of Trevarthen Cove towards the arc of Mounts Bay. It was a massive building of Cornish freestone of indeterminate date which was believed to occupy the site, or to incorporate portions, of two previous dwellings. In fact, one authority advanced the theory that the first building at Trevarthen was a Celtic ‘dun’ or cliff fortress similar to King Arthur’s Castle at Tintagel. This, however, was purely speculative, for the recorded history of the place began with the Trevarthen family. Minor Cornish gentry who held the estate for many generations and played only a small part in the great events of their day, their history seems to have been in no way remarkable. The last of the line, Sir Peter Trevarthen, supported the Royalist cause in the west, and when that cause foundered with the fall of St Michael’s Mount his estates were confiscated and broken up. Before the Restoration which might have recouped the family fortunes, he had died impoverished, embittered and without an heir. Thereafter a curtain of obscurity falls upon Trevarthen House which does not lift for a hundred years. Either it stood empty or, as seems more probable, it was partly occupied as a farm-house. But in 1750, the curtain rises upon a melodramatic scene, for in that year Count Hennezè acquired the property and there began a brief regime which made the name of Trevarthen notorious throughout Cornwall.
Count Pierre Hennezè du Hou, to give him his full title, is said to have been of Huguenot family and to have come to Cornwall by way of the Channel Islands, but no more is known of his past history or of the reason why he chose to establish himself in this remote and, by this time, semi-derelict house. That he was a man of substance we may gather from the fact that he brought with him his own retinue of ten servants. He was also accompanied by a lady reputed to be his mistress, but who was euphemistically entitled ‘La Pucelle’.
Among the nobility of the eighteenth century, the practice of vice was a fashionable pastime, while the average Cornishman of those days feared neither God nor man. But the count seems to have triumphantly overcome this initial handicap to found a reputation second to none. Tales of unlimited licence and debauchery spread abroad, and needless to say he was reputed to have sold his soul to the devil and to dice regularly with this obliging fiend. No doubt such tales were deliberately fostered by the Count and his bunch of thugs (for they must have been little better) in order to deter inquisitive strangers. In this they seem to have been successful, for although coastguards and preventive men must have been aware of what was going on, they apparently made no serious attempt to interfere with the landing of cargoes of contraband in Trevarthen Cove. An even more lucrative source of revenue were the wrecks on the Goat Reef. The Count was reputed to lure vessels to their doom on the Goat by showing a false light on Carn Zawn Head, but these stories of wrecking by means of false lights usually have little foundation. When the great gales lashed the seas to fury round that savage coast those pitiless shark’s teeth of rock must have done their work often enough without such aids. Even in these days of steam and diesel power they still claim their victims. False lights or no, there were an unprecedented number of wrecks on the Goat during the Count’s regime, and we may imagine that the few survivors met with little mercy at Trevarthen.
As is so often the case, a reign of violence ended in violence. A local fisherman laying lobster pots off-shore noticed that both the house and the cove seemed deserted and that the Count’s lugger was missing from her usual berth. Emboldened by this unusual stillness he brought his boat into the little harbour and landed at the quay. Under the cliffs where the zigzag path descends from the house he found the body of Count Pierre Hennezè du Hou with contorted face and broken neck. But of the rest of his gang, including ‘La Pucelle’, there was no trace. The superstitious declared that the devil had claimed his own, but the more reasonable explanation which found favour with the majority was that ‘La Pucelle’ had become jealous and persuaded the others to murder the Count before making off with as much of his ill-gotten gains as they could lay their hands on.
‘Quite a colourful story,’ concluded James with a laugh. ‘Good enough for a schoolboy thriller, don’t you think?’
Thornton nodded. ‘What happened to the house after that?’ he asked.
‘Oh, nothing of any interest,’ answered the other. ‘It stood empty again for many years until my great-grandfather took it, and apparently spent a lot of money in doing it up. Funnily enough,’ he added, ‘he’s supposed to have been of Huguenot descent, too, though he didn’t take after the wicked Count. By all accounts he was highly respectable.’
Thereafter the conversation drifted to more general topics until the train slid down the long incline from St Erth and they saw the majestic shape of St Michael’s Mount framed in the carriage window. From Penzance station they took a bus, alighting from it at the point where the narrow lane which descended to Trevarthen Cove made junction with the main road. It was a perfect spring evening, still and cloudless, the air soft as only Cornish air can be. The main road had taken them out of sight and sound of the sea into bleak uplands punctuated by the gaunt, stone chimney-shafts of derelict tin-mines, but as they followed the lane downward the uplands unfolded to reveal blue water, at first only a pool prisoned by the great arm of Carn Zawn, but presently stretching away to the horizon. And soon they scented the salt tang of the sea, and heard again the eternal voice of the Cornish coast; the endlessly recurring thud and surge of the waves against the cliffs of Trevarthen, and the lost crying of the gulls. At the foot of the hill, the track veered to the left, skirting the lip of the cove, and it was here that Heneage and Thornton first caught sight of Trevarthen House, a long, low building of weathered stone sheltering beneath the arc of the headland. Its windows, facing westwards over the sea, glowed with reflected fire from the setting sun. For a few moments they stood entranced by this romantic spectacle before pressing on up the farther slope towards the house. James almost ran in his eagerness to set foot in his new home.
‘I quite forgot to tell you,’ he panted over his shoulder to Thornton, who was doing his best to keep up with him. ‘There’s an old couple—name of Penrice—who are supposed to be looking after the place. I sent them a wire, so they should be expecting us.’
They reached the low, arched doorway, pulled an iron ring which jangled a bell somewhere in the back regions of the house, and Mrs Penrice duly appeared. She proved to be a voluble old lady, so it would be tedious to recount the conversation which ensued. But if she was garrulous she was also efficient. She had prepared beds for them; an appetising and highly seasoned aroma which suggested Cornish pasty wafted out from the kitchen, while the way in which she directed her docile husband to relieve them of their suitcases left little doubt as to who was in control of the establishment. First impressions of the house seemed to justify their highest expectations, but as darkness was falling, and as they were tired and hungry after their journey they decided to postpone any detailed tour of inspection until the morning. After they had consumed Mrs Penrice’s pasty, which convinced James that he need look no farther for domestic help, they sat for a while in the flickering firelight of the low-ceilinged dining-room before retiring contentedly to bed. The sound of the sea soon lulled them to sleep.
Thornton never slept with drawn curtains, and when he awoke after a dreamless night the sun had already cleared the rim of the headland behind the house and its light was streaming into his room. He lay for a while in drowsy content before he got up, dressed, and walked out on to the narrow front terrace where James presently joined him. The morning promised a continuance of the fine weather, for the shape of the Mount across the bay was blue and indistinct and the sea was calm. Both men were in high good humour, and after they had consumed an excellent breakfast they commenced a thorough
exploration of the house.
It was not, as James had feared, too large; four good bedrooms, excluding the servants’ quarters, and on the ground floor three large and well-proportioned rooms in addition to the usual domestic offices. With the exception of a few good examples of an earlier epoch, fittings, furniture and decoration reflected a deplorable mid-Victorian taste. But James was undismayed, declaring that the house possessed infinite possibilities, and as he paced to and fro excitedly formulating his plans, Thornton began to visualise how readily Trevarthen would respond to his friend’s good taste.
They agreed at once that the drawing-room to the south of the west front was potentially the most attractive room in the house. Though it boasted three large windows, two set in deep embrasures with window-seats facing west over the sea and a third facing south, it was at present darkened by massive mahogany furniture quite unsuited to its proportions, and by a hideous wallpaper of repetitive floral pattern.
‘I shall make this my library and work-room,’ James declared, dismissing the furniture with a wave of the hand. ‘Just imagine,’ he went on, ‘all this junk cleared away and the walls cream colour washed.’
‘Yes,’ the other agreed, ‘but you’ll have to strip this paper off before you can colour wash, if I know anything about old houses it’s probably about fifteen layers thick.’
As he said this, Thornton was idly smoothing the surface of the wall to the left of the fireplace with the palm of his hand. In doing so he made a discovery that he was afterwards destined most bitterly to regret. His fingers detected and followed a slight symmetrical irregularity in the surface of the wall beneath the paper. He felt, and then felt again.
‘I say,’ he asked eagerly, ‘got a knife on you?’
‘Yes,’ said James, coming across the room and taking out a pocket-knife. ‘Why?’
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