Hag's Nook dgf-1

by John Dickson Carr

  "I snatched a quick meal, he said, "and came straightway. Did you arrange everything?"

  "Everything. She'll telephone when he leaves. Here, have a cigar and a glass of beer. How was he when you saw him last?"

  A bottle jittered and clicked against the side of a glass. "Sober enough to be frightened," the rector answered. "He went for the sideboard as soon as we reached the Hall. I was of two minds as to whether to stop his drinking. Herbert's got him in hand, though. When I left the Hall he was sitting up in his room lighting one cigarette from the end of the last; he must have smoked a whole box

  just while I was there. I - er - I pointed out the deleterious effect of so much tobacco - No, thanks; I won't smoke - on his system, and he flew at me."

  They all fell silent. Rampole found himself listening for the clock. Martin Starberth would be watching it, too, in another house.

  Inside the house, the telephone rang stridently.

  "There it is. Will you get the message, my boy?" asked Dr. Fell, breathing a little faster. "You're more spry than I am."

  Rampole almost fell over the front steps in his hurry. The telephone was of the ancient type you crank up, and Mrs. Fell was already holding out the receiver to him.

  "He's on his way," the voice of Dorothy Starberth told him. It was admirably calm now. "Watch the road for him. He's carrying a big bicycle lamp."

  "How is he?"

  "A little thick-spoken, but sober enough." She added, rather wildly, "You're all right, aren't you?"

  "Yes. Now don't worry, please! We'll take care of it. He's in no danger, dear."

  It was not until he was on his way out of the house that he remembered the last word he had quite unconsciously used over the phone. Even in the turmoil it startled him. He had no recollection whatever of using it at the time.

  "Well, Mr. Rampole?" the rector boomed out of the dark.

  "He's started. How far is the Hall from the prison?"

  "A quarter of a mile beyond, in the direction of the railway station. You must have passed it last night." Saunders spoke absently, but he seemed more at his ease now that the thing was begun. He and the doctor had both come round to the front of the house. He turned, big and bold-shining in the moonlight. "I've been imagining-dreadful things-all day. When this business was far off, I laughed at it. Now that it's here . . . well, old Mr. Timothy Starberth . . ."

  Something was worrying the good rector's Eton conscience. He mopped his forehead with a handkerchief. He added:

  "I say, Mr. Rampole, was Herbert there?"

  "Why Herbert?' the doctor asked, sharply

  "It's – ah - it's only that I wish he were here. That young man is dependable. Solid and dependable. No nerves. Admirable; very English, and admirable."

  Again the rumble of thunder, prowling stealthily and low down along the sky. A fresh breeze went swishing through the garden, and white blossoms danced. There was a flicker of lightning, so very brief that it was like an electrician flashing on footlights momentarily to test them before the beginning of a play.

  "We'd better watch to see that he gets in safely," the doctor suggested, gruffly. "If he's drunk, he may get a bad fall. Did she say he was drunk?"

  "Not very."

  They tramped up along the lane. The prison lay in its own shadow on that side, but Dr. Fell pointed out the approximate position of the gateway. "No door on it, of course," he explained. But the rocky hill leading up to it was fairly well lighted by the moon; a cow-path meandered almost into the shadow of the prison. For what seemed nearly ten minutes nobody spoke. Rampole kept trying to time the pulse of a cricket, counting between rasps, and got lost in a maze of numbers. The breeze belled out his shirt with grateful coolness.

  "There it is," Saunders said, abruptly.

  A beam of white light struck up over the hill. Then a figure, moving slowly but steadily, appeared on the crest with such weird effect that it seemed to be rising from the ground. It tried to move with a jaunty swing, but the light kept flickering and darting-as though at every slight noise Martin Starberth were flashing it in that direction. Watching it, Rampole felt the terror which must be running in the slight, contemptuous, tipsy figure. Very tiny at that distance, it hesitated at the gates. The light stood motionless, playing on a gaping archway. Then it was swallowed inside.

  The watchers went back and sank heavily into their chairs.

  Inside the house, the clock began to strike eleven.

  "-if she only told him," the rector had been running on for some time, but Rampole only heard him now, "to sit near that window!" He threw out his hands. "But, after all, we must be sensi - we must - What can happen to him? You know as well as I do, gentlemen...."

  •

  Bong, hammered the clock slowly. Bong, three, four, five

  "Have some more beer," said Dr. Fell. The rector's smooth, unctuous voice, now raised shrilly, seemed to irritate him.

  Again they waited. An echo of footfalls in the prison, a scurry of rats and lizards as the light probed; in Rampole's taut fancy he could almost hear them. Some lines in Dickens came back to him, a sketch of prowling past Newgate on a drizzly night and seeing through. a barred window the turnkeys sitting over their fire, and their shadows on the whitewashed wall.

  A gleam sprang up now in the Governor's Room. It did not waver. The bicycle lamp was very powerful, cutting a straight horizontal band against which the bars of the window leapt out. Evidently it had been put down on a table, where it remained, sending its beam into one comer of the room without further movement. That was all - the tiny shaft of brightness behind ivy-fouled bars, lonely against the great ivy-fouled hulk of the prison. The shadow of a man hovered there, and then vanished.

  It seemed to have an incredibly long neck, that shadow.

  To his surprise, Rampole discovered that his heart was bumping. You had to do something; you had to concentrate....

  "If you don't mind, sir," he said to his host, "I'd like to go up to my room and look at these journals of the two governors. I can keep my eye on the window from there. And I want to know."

  It suddenly seemed vitally important to know how these men had come to death. He fingered the sheets, which were damp from his hand. They had been there, he remembered, even when he held the receiver of the telephone in the same hand. Dr. Fell grunted, without seeming to hear him.

  The thunder went rattling, with a suggestion of heavy carts shaking the window panes, when he ascended the stairs. His room was now swept by a thick breeze, but still exhaling heat. Lighting the lamp,. he drew the table before the window and put down the manuscript sheets. He glanced round once before he sat down. There were the copies of those comic songs, lying scattered on the bed, which he had bought this afternoon; and there was the church-warden pipe.

  He had a queer, vague idea that if he were to smoke that pipe, the relic of lightheartedness, it might bring him closer to Dorothy Starberth. But he felt foolish, and cursed himself, the moment he picked it up. When he was about to replace it there was some noise; the brittle clay slipped through his fingers and smashed on the floor.

  It shocked him, like breaking a living thing. He stared at it for a moment, and then hurried over to sit down facing the windows. Bugs were beginning to tick and swarm against the screen. Far across the meadow was that tiny, steady lamp in the window of the prison, and he could hear the voices of the rector and Dr. Fell mumbling in conversation just below.

  A. Starberth, Esquire, His Journal. PRIVATE.

  (Eighth September, 1797. This being the First Year in the Good Works of Chatterham Gaol, in the Shire of Lincoln; like-wise the Thirty-Seventh in the Reign of His Sovereign Majesty, George III) .

  Quae Infra Nos Nihil Ad Nos.

  These typwriter sheets carried a more vivid suggestion, Rampole felt, than would have the yellowed originals. You imagined the handwriting to have been small, sharp, and precise, like the tight-lipped writer. There followed some fancy composition, in the best literary style of the day, on the majesty o
f justice and the nobility of punishing evil-doers. Suddenly it became business-like:

  TO BE HANGED, Thursday, the tenth inst., the following, viz.:

  John Hepditch. For Highway Robbery.

  Lewis Martens. For Uttering Forged Notes, the amt. £ 2.

  Cost of timber for erecting gallows, 2s 4d. Parson's fee 10d, which I would readily do away with but that it is subscribed by law, these being men of low birth and with small need of ghostly consolation.

  This day I have overseen the digging of the well to a commodious depth, viz., 25 feet, and 18 feet across at the wide lip-it being rather a moat than a well proper, and being designed to hold the bones of evildoers, thus saving any unnecessary cost of burial, as well as a most praiseworthy safeguard for that side. Its edge has been buttressed by a row of sharpened iron spikes, by order of me.

  I am much vexed, in that my new suit of scarlet, together with the laced hat, which I ordered these six weeks ago, did not arrive by the mail-coach. I had resolved to present a good appearance - scarlet, like a judge, would (I am convinced) make an imposing figure-at the hangings, and have prepared words to speak from my balcony. This John Hepditch (I have heard) has a pretty talent for the making of speeches, though of low birth, and I must take care he doth not outshine me.

  I am informed by the chief turnkey that there is some discontent, and a striking upon cell-doors, in the underground corridors, due to a species of large grey field-rat which eats the bread of those confined, and is not easily frightened away; these men further complain that, due to natural darkness, they are unable to see such rats until the rats are upon their arms and snatch at food. Master Nick. Threnlow asked me, What he should do? To which I replied, That it was through the instigation of their own, wicked habits that they had come to such a pass, and must endure it; and I further counselled that any unwarranted noises should be met by such Floggings as would induce the malefactors to preserve their proper chastened demeanour.

  This evening I began writing a new ballade, in the French manner. I think it very good.

  Rampole moved in his chair, and looked up uneasily, to be met by the staring light across the meadow. Below him on the lawn he heard Dr. Fell expounding some point in connection with the drinking customs of England, and the protesting rumble of the rector. Then he continued reading, skimming the pages. They were far from complete. A number of entire years were omitted altogether, and in others there were merely some jottings. But the parade of horror, cruelty, high-sounding preachments, and miserly chucklings over twopence saved, while old Anthony scribbled away at his verses . these were only a prelude.

  A change was coming over the writer. He began to scream to his journal.

  They call me a "limping Herrick," do they? [he writes in 1812]. A "Dryden in falsetto." But I begin to think of a plan. I do heartily abhor and curse each of those to which I have the misfortune to be bound by ties of blood. There are things one can buy and things one can do to defeat them. By which I am reminded that the rats are growing thicker lately. They come into my room, and I can see them beyond the circle of my lamp as I write.

  He has grown a new literary style with the passing years, but his rage grows like a mania. Under the year 1814 there is only one entry:

  I must go slowly with the buying. Each year, each year. The rats seem to know me now.

  Out of all the rest, of them, one passage brought Rampole up with a shock.

  June 23. 1 am wasting, and I find it difficult to sleep. Several times I have believed to hear a knocking on the outside of the iron door which leads to my balcony. But there is no person there when I open it. My lamp smokes worse, and I believe to feel things in my bed. But I have the beauties safe. It is good that I am strong in the arms.

  Now the wind rushed fully in at the window, almost blowing the sheets from Rampole's hands. He had a sudden horrible feeling as though they had been jerked away from him; and the ticking and scrambling of the bugs outside did not add to his easiness. The lamp flame jumped slightly, but resumed its steady yellow glow. Lightning illuminated the prison, followed in an instant by a full crash of thunder....

  Not yet through with Anthony's journal, and the diary of another Starberth still to come. But he was too fascinated to read faster; he had watched the one-eyed old governor shrivel up with the years, wearing now his tall hat and tight-waisted coat, and carrying the gold-headed cane he mentioned frequently. All of a sudden, the dogged quiet of the diary was broken!

  July 9. Oh Lord Jesus, sweet dispenser of mercy to the helpless, look upon me and aid me! I do not know why, but my sleep is gone, and I can thrust a finger between the bones of these ribs. Will they eat my pets?

  Yesterday we hanged a man for murder, as already noticed. He wore a blue-and-white striped waistcoat to the gallows. The crowd booed me.

  I sleep now with two rush-lights burning. There is a soldier on guard at my door. But last night, the while I was making out my report upon this execution, I heard patterings in my room, to the which I tried to pay no heed. I had trimmed my bedside candle, - put on my nightcap, and prepared to read in bed, when I noted a movement among the bedclothes. Whereupon I took my loaded pistol from the table and called to the soldier to throw back the clothes. And when he had done it, doubtless thinking me mad, I saw in the bed a large grey rat looking up at me with his eyes. He was wet, and there was a large pool of black water there; and the rat was gorged fat, and seemed to be trying to shake loose from his sharp teeth a flimsy of blue-and-white striped cloth.

  This rat the soldier killed with the butt of his musket, the rat being not well able to run across the floor. Nor would I sleep in the bed that night. I had them kindle a great fire, and dozed before it in a chair with warm rum. I thought that I was just falling asleep when I heard a murmur as of many voices on the balcony outside my iron door - though this is impossible, so many feet from the ground - and a low voice whispered at the keyhole, "Sir, will you come out and speak with us?" And, as I looked, methought there was water running under the door.

  Rampole sat back with a constriction at his throat and. the palms of his hands damp. He was not even startled when the storm broke, the rain sheeting down into the dark lawn and hissing among the trees. He heard Dr. Fell cry: "Get those chairs in! We can watch from the dining-room!' - and the rector replying with something unintelligible. His eyes were fixed on the pencilled note at the end of the journal; Dr. Fell's handwriting, for it bore the initials G.F.

  He was found dead on the morning of Sept. 10, 1820. The night before had been stormy, with a high wind, and it is improbable that the turnkeys or soldiers would have heard any cry had he made one. He was found lying with his neck broken across the stone coping around the well. Two of the spikes on this coping had been driven entirely through his body and impaled him with his head pointing down into the well.

  There was some suggestion of foul play. No signs of any struggle were visible, however; and it was pointed out that, had he been attacked, even several assailants would have had their hands full. Despite his age, he was widely celebrated for the almost incredible strength of his arms and shoulders. This is a curious fact, since he seemed to develop it after he had taken over the governorship of the prison, and it steadily increased with the years. Latterly he remained always at the prison, rarely visiting his family at the Hall. The eccentric behavior of his later life influenced the findings of the coroner's jury, which were: "Death by misadventure while of unsound mind."

  -G.F., Yew Cottage, 1923.

  Putting his tobacco-pouch on the loose sheets to keep them from blowing, Rampole sat back again. He was staring out at the drive of the rain, visualizing that scene. Automatically he lifted his eyes to the window of the Governor's Room. Then he sat for an instant motionless....

  The light in the Governor's Room was out.

  Only a sheet of rain flickering in darkness before him. He got up spasmodically, feeling so weak that he could not push the chair away, and glanced over his shoulder at the travelling-clock.


  It was not yet ten minutes to twelve. A horrible sensation of unreality, and a feeling as though the chair were entangled in his legs. Then he heard Dr. Fell's shout from downstairs somewhere. They had seen it, too. It couldn't have been out more than a second. The face of the clock swam; he couldn't take his eyes from those placid small hands, or hear anything but the casual ticking in a great silence....

  Then he was wrenching at the knob of the door, throwing it open, and stumbling downstairs, in a physical nausea which made him dizzy. Dimly he could see Dr. Fell and the rector standing bareheaded in the rain, staring towards the prison, and the doctor still was carrying a chair under his arm. The doctor caught his arm.

  "Wait a minute! What's the matter, boy?" he demanded. "You're as white as a ghost. What-

  "We've got to get over there! The light's out! The-"

  They were all panting a little, heedless of the rain splashing into their faces. It got into Rampole's eyes, and for a moment he could not see.

  "I shouldn't go so fast," Saunders said. -"It's that beastly business you've been reading; don't believe in it. He may have miscalculated the time. . . . Wait! You don't know the way!"

  Rampole had torn from the doctor's grasp and was running through the soggy grass towards the meadow. They heard Rampole say, "I promised her!"-and then the rector was pounding after him. Despite his bulk, Saunders was a runner. Together they slithered down a muddy bank; Rampole felt water gushing into his tennis shoes as he bumped against a rail fence. He vaulted it, plunged down a slope and up again through the long grass of the meadow. He could see little through the blinding cataract of rain, but he realized that unconsciously he was bearing to the left, toward the Hag's Nook. That wasn't right; that wasn't the way in; but the memory of Anthony's journal burned too vividly in his brain. Saunders cried out something behind him, which was lost under the crackle and boom of thunder. In the ensuing flash of lightning he saw a gesticulating Saunders running away from him to the right, towards the gate of the prison, but he still kept on his way.