Sorcerer's House

by Gerald Verner

  “Of course,” Dr. Ferrall, in a dark red dressing gown, stood aside. “Oh, it’s you, Boyce. Good lord! You’re both soaked. What the deuce is the trouble?”

  “Meriton’s dead,” said Alan bluntly.

  “Dead…Meriton?” Ferrall’s face was almost stupidly astonished. “Good God! How did it happen?”

  “His…head was smashed in,” said Flake, and her voice WE not quite steady. “His head was smashed…”

  “His head?” echoed Ferrall. He shot a searching glance at each of them in turn. “Where…how?”

  Alan shook his head.

  “We don’t know how,” he answered. “We found him like that—under the window of the Long Room—at Threshold House.”

  *

  They were back in the wet darkness of the drive, only now that darkness was seared by bright wedges of light from the headlights of Ferrall’s car. The leaves of the bushes glistened against the black background with a startling greenness where the light caught them, and the sprawling figure of Meriton threw a long, deep shadow, elongated and distorted, over the muddy gravel.

  Flake, clutching Alan by the arm, stared at that shadow, morbidly fascinated by its queer shape... Dr. Ferrall moved to the sharp, white ray, and his own shadow obliterated that other. He stood looking down for a moment and then he stooped, feeling and pressing with sensitive fingers.

  The soaked leaves around them dripped water, making strange little sounds as though something was moving and creeping stealthily through the shrubbery.

  “The back of his skull is crushed to pulp,” Ferrall spoke without looking up. “Though how—”

  “He fell,” said Flake. “He fell... He must have fallen—”

  “From there?” demanded Ferrall. His head jerked up and he stared above into the darkness.

  “Yes—from the window,” she answered. “He must have fallen from the window...”

  “Supposing he’d tripped and fallen heavily,” suggested Alan. “Couldn’t he have hurt his head that way?”

  “It must have been a very heavy fall,” answered Ferrall, “and he’d have to have fallen backwards...”

  Alan felt Flake’s fingers tighten on his arm. He glanced quickly, down and sideways, at the dim white oval of her face. She looked on the verge of tears.

  “You mean something hit him?” she whispered huskily.

  Ferrall shook his head.

  “Perhaps—perhaps not,” he replied. “That’s what it looks like. I can’t tell without a closer examination.”

  “If he fell from the window, he might have fallen on his head,” said Flake. “He could have done that.”

  “Yes, it’s possible, I suppose.” Ferrall sounded doubtful. “It looks a...well, a different kind of injury to me.” He hesitated, cleared his throat, and added: “We ought to get in touch with the police, you know.”

  “The police?” Flake’s tone sharpened. “The police—?”

  “Of course,” Ferrall’s voice was reassuring and matter-of-fact. “It’s the proper thing to do in a case like this. It’s up to them to make up their minds how Meriton came by his injuries...” He looked at Alan. “Will you wait here?”

  “Sure,” said the American, though he didn’t relish the proposal.

  “Good. I’ll go and tell ’em. I can drop you at home on the way, Flake.”

  “I’ll stay,” she said quickly.

  “You won’t,” declared Alan firmly. “You’re soaked through and you’ve had enough for one night. You go along with Ferrall.”

  She looked rebellious for a moment and then, reluctantly, she walked over and got into the car.

  “Won’t be long,” said Ferrall. He backed the car into the semicircle of the drive, swung the long radiator round, and was gone.

  The darkness was intense now that the headlights no longer served as an illumination.

  Alan fumbled in his pocket for a cigarette, remembered that the rain had put his lighter out of action, and slid the packet back again. His hand came in cold contact with the torch which he had taken from Flake, and he pulled it out and switched on the light. It wasn’t very bright but it was better than being in the pitch blackness. He might as well, he thought, try and get some shelter from the rain. Not that he could get much wetter.

  He made his way round to the front of the house and walked up the broken steps to the porch. The weather-beaten oak door was shut and he leaned against it to rest. It gave under his weight and he nearly fell backwards into the hall, only saving himself by an instinctive clutch at the frame.

  When he recovered his balance, he saw that the big door was wide open.

  He thought that the lock was rotten and had given way under his weight, but when he examined it he found that it had been unlocked.

  Curiously he looked round the great, yawning cavern of the dilapidated hall. The old panelling was rotten and broken away in a dozen places and there were heaps of dirty white plaster where parts of the ceiling had fallen. Everything was covered in dust, and huge cobwebs swayed in the draught from the open door. The place smelt of damp and decay.

  An enormous staircase, black with age and grime, led upward into darkness, and there was a big open fireplace with a pile of soot in the hearth.

  Alan stared up the staircase. On the floor above was the Long Room from the window of which he had seen that dim light; from the window of which Paul Meriton might have fallen…

  He suddenly caught his breath.

  The light of the torch had shown him something on the broad, dusty treads of the stairs.

  Footprints—damp footprints in the thick dust!

  There were quite a lot of them. They led back from the staircase to the door.

  And there was more than one kind. Two people had been in the house that night. If one set had belonged to Paul Meriton, whose were the others?

  Alan moved forward slowly, taking care not to obliterate any of those marks in the dust. He reached the foot of the staircase and, after a momentary pause, began to ascend, keeping to the side of the treads. He heard a scurry of rats, and something flew over his head.

  There were bats here, then, as well as rats...

  Well, one expected such things in an old derelict mansion like this...

  He came to a landing on either side of which was a broad corridor. The damp footmarks led to the left, and to a partly open door—the only door in that wall of the corridor. He pushed it fully open and stepped across the threshold. He was in the Long Room.

  It was very long and, in consequence, looked narrow. The whole of one end—the end farthest away from the door—was taken up by a great window that reached from the floor to the high ceiling. Dust and dirt and cobwebs were here also, but the air smelt fresher and cleaner. He saw the reason for this when he went nearer to the window. Most of the glass was out.

  It occurred to him, as he stood there staring at the window, that if anyone should chance to be looking in that direction now, there would be a light visible—the light from the torch he carried. Was that what he had seen from his room in Bryony Cottage? The light from a torch that somebody had carried?

  He looked down at the floor. The footprints, here, were in wild confusion. Close to the great window was something that glistened in his light, and when he stooped to look closer he saw, with a sudden constriction of his throat, that it was blood—wet blood. There were several spots of it...

  Something ugly and horrible had happened in this room that night. Paul Meriton, lying down there on the sodden ground, had not met with any accident. His death had been deliberate…

  Alan’s face was white as he straightened up. He felt a sudden panic take possession of him—a violent desire to rush away from this horrible room with its hideous evidence. The shadows and the dust and the cobwebs all concealed something that was malignant and evil.

  The whole room was evil...

  Although he was not, normally, an imaginative man he seemed to feel a gathering of forces—potent forces—that had been locked up for centur
ies in these ancient walls. The shadows hanging blackly round the great carved cornice, seemed to have thickened oddly, and he fancied that a queer smell which was neither damp nor mildew had seeped into the dank atmosphere...a pungent spicy smell that reminded him of a church…

  The story he had listened to on the lawn, in the dark garden at Bryony Cottage, filled his mind with disquieting images and he understood the superstitious dread of the villagers for this house...

  Sorcerer’s House...

  And then the silence of the night outside was broken by the hum of a car engine. Dr. Ferrall was returning with the police.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Sunlight streamed into the living room at Bryony Cottage; strong, hot sunlight, although it was barely nine o’clock in the morning.

  There were, gathered in that pleasant room, six people: Alan Boyce, Flake, Dr. Ferrall, Henry Onslow-White, Major Chipingham, the Chief Constable for the County, and Inspector Hatchard of the local C.I.D. With the exception of Major Chipingham, fresh and rosy from his morning bath, and Henry Onslow-White, sat and smooth-shaven, they looked pale and tired.

  The Chief Constable cleared his throat. He said, speaking in a clipped, staccato manner:

  “Got the gist of it, I think. Queer business altogether. Like to hear more details.”

  Inspector Hatchard raised eyes that looked out from under bushy, overhanging brows. His greying head had a little round bald spot on the top of the skull. When he was thoughtful or worried, he had a habit of gently rubbing it with the middle finger of his right hand.

  “There doesn’t seem to be much doubt that it was murder, sir,” he said. “He was struck on the back of the head with some heavy, blunt instrument, and pitched out of the window. I’ve got the report of the police surgeon. That’s right, isn’t it, sir? You agree?”

  He appealed for confirmation to Dr. Ferrall.

  “That’s right,” agreed Ferrall. “Quite a considerable amount of force must have been put behind the blow. His skull was badly fractured. In my opinion the fall could not have been responsible for the injuries.”

  “Weapon?” queried the Chief Constable.

  Hatchard shook his head.

  “We haven’t found it yet, sir,” he said. “We’re still looking.”

  Major Chipingham smoothed a hand over a hairless head. He frowned, pursed his lips, and turned his pale blue eyes towards Alan. He said:

  “You were the first to find the body, eh?”

  The American nodded. Had he got to go over it again? he thought wearily. Waves of tiredness kept breaking over him and his eyes felt hot and prickly.

  “How did you come to find it?” asked the Chief Constable. Alan told him. He had already told Inspector Hatchard and Ferrall and the police doctor. When he mentioned Flake, Major Chipingham gave her a sharp look which, although he may not have intended it, was entirely disapproving.

  “Huh!” he grunted, when Alan had finished. “Wondered what you were doing at this place, so late, in that storm. Heard something about this legend, or whatever you call it. Lot of poppycock, of course. People talked a lot of nonsense when that poor devil of a tramp was found.”

  “His skull was badly fractured too,” put in Ferrall quietly. Major Chipingham glared at him.

  “Coincidence—nothing more,” he said irritably. “That was an accident. Snooping round the place and fell out of the window. Probably drunk… What was this light you saw like?”

  “Just a dimmish kind of light,” answered Alan.

  “What impression did it give you? Candle, torch…?”

  “It didn’t seem like either.” Alan tried to fight back a yawn and failed. “That may have been the distance…and the rain...I couldn’t really tell.”

  “I think I ought to mention,” said Ferrall, “that my sister saw a light in that window the night before last.”

  Major Chipingham’s mouth, which had partly opened to put a further question to Alan, remained open as he turned his eyes towards Ferrall.

  “Your sister saw a light—the night before last?” he repeated. “What time?”

  “Between twelve and half past,” replied Ferrall. “She had been out to dinner with some friends and was on her way home...”

  “Knowing the house was empty, didn’t she attempt to investigate the cause of the light?”

  “She was on the Mersham Road. That’s a fairish way from Theshold House,” said Ferrall. “Besides,” he shrugged his shoulders, “some things are best left alone.”

  The Chief Constable stared at him frostily, He said: “Mean to say you believe in this…this rubbish?”

  “I neither believe nor disbelieve,” said Ferrall. “I prefer to leave it alone, that’s all.”

  Major Chipingham gave a snort. “Let’s get back to something practical,” he said curtly. “I understand that Meriton spent part of the evening here?”

  “That’s right,” Henry Onslow-White spoke for the first time. “We’d invited some people to meet Mr. Boyce, who is staying with us for a few weeks... Meriton called in for a drink. He was only here for a short while...” He looked over at Alan.

  “Who were the others?”

  “Ourselves; my wife and my daughter, and Dr. Ferrall and his sister.”

  “What time did Meriton leave?”

  It was Ferrall who answered:

  “About eleven. He asked if I would give him a lift home and left with us.”

  “Did he say anything about going to this place—Threshold House?”

  “Nothing.”

  “No mention was made about the house at all?”

  “Not then.” Ferrall moved in his chair, uncrossed his legs and recrossed them. “The fact that my sister had seen a light in the window on the previous night was mentioned earlier in the evening.”

  There rose in Alan Boyce’s mind a vivid memory. The dark garden and Avril Ferrall’s deep contralto coming, suddenly, in the pause that had followed a murmur of light conversation, ‘There was a light in the window last night. I wonder who is going to die this time?’ and that later whisper which he had caught when he brought over the drinks ‘...it’s dangerous’...

  “What did Meriton say about it?” The Chief Constable’s voice brought his mind back to the present with a jerk.

  “He appeared to think that she had imagined it,” replied

  Ferrall.

  “What I’m trying to get at,” said Major Chipingham, “is whether he was sufficiently interested in this talk about lights to go and investigate for himself.”

  “I couldn’t say. Possibly,” Ferrall’s tone was non-committal.

  “Surely,” said Henry Onslow-White, “he wouldn’t have chosen such an hour on such a night?”

  “Don’t know about that,” said the Chief Constable. “It didn’t deter Mr. Boyce when he saw the light—or Miss Onslow-White,” he added.

  “But Meriton couldn’t have seen the light,” said Henry Onslow-White. “Not from his house...”

  “Perhaps he became anxious about his property,” suggested Major Chipingham. “After all, the house belonged to him.”

  “I’m afraid that won’t wash,” interrupted Onslow-White, shaking his big head. “Meriton didn’t care a tinker’s curse for Threshold House. It’s a white elephant and always has been.”

  “Well, something must have taken him there,” said the Chief Constable, making the obvious statement with an impatient gesture. “That’s what we want to get at. What took him to this empty house, in the pouring rain, at one o’clock in the morning?”

  “It’s my opinion, sir,” remarked Inspector Hatchard, who had been listening quietly, and occasionally making a note in the open book before him, “that he went there to keep an appointment.”

  “You think so, eh?” The Chief Constable seized on the suggestion with the eagerness of a drowning man clutching at a lifebelt. “Inclined to agree with you. Had the same idea myself. Queer place to choose, though!”

  “That depends, sir,” said the inspector quietly,
“on the way you look at it. If Mr. Meriton had wanted absolute privacy and secrecy, he couldn’t have chosen a better place. Nobody was likely to disturb him there.”

  Shrewd guy, the inspector, thought Alan. More brains in his head than in the bald dome of his pink-faced superior.

  “What was the object of all this secrecy?” demanded the Chief Constable. “Eh?”

  “You have me there,” sir,” said Hatchard. “I don’t know. But the footprints show that there were two persons there last night and one of them was Meriton.”

  “It’s the other we’re interested in,” said the Chief Constable. “Who could Meriton have gone there to meet—?”

  He was interrupted by a commotion outside in the hall. Through the closed door, Mrs. Onslow-White’s voice reached them raised in protest.

  “Don’t be silly, Maggie,” cried a deep booming voice. “Of course I’m going in...”

  Alan Boyce saw the Chief Constable stiffen and the pink of his face grow deeper. He made a clicking noise with the tip of his tongue against his teeth; a noise of irritable disapproval.

  The door was flung open violently—so violently that it crashed against a chair—and into the room marched an extraordinary figure. It was a huge man, dressed in very stained and very baggy corduroy trousers and an open-necked shirt of a vivid and startling shade of green. His shock of unruly hair was the colour of a freshly ripened horse-chestnut, and he had an aggressive beard of the same vivid hue which projected belligerently from an out-thrust chin.

  “ ’Mornin’,” boomed this apparition, in a voice that set all the ornaments in the room rattling. “Now, Chippy, what’s this blasted nonsense about murder?”

  Henry Onslow-White’s fat face creased into innumerable wrinkles and he uttered a soft, throaty chuckle. Major Chipingham was a study in outraged dignity.

  “Really, Gale,” he said severely. “You can’t come bursting in here like that.”

  “Nonsense!” retorted the newcomer, throwing himself down in an armchair so heavily that it shook the house. “I’m in, aren’t I? Don’t you try an’ get all official with me, Chippy, my lad! I want to know what all this is about, d’you see? Shoot!”