Hag's Nook dgf-1

by John Dickson Carr

  They had gathered round his chair and were bending over the paper. Again they all read the words:

  How called the dwellers of Lyn-dun;

  Great Homer's tale of Troy? Or country of the midnight sun

  What doth all men destroy?

  Against it man hath dashed his foot;

  This angel bears a spear!

  In garden glade where Lord Christ prayed

  What spawns dark stars and fear?

  In this the white Diana rose;

  Here was Dido bereft

  Where on four leaves good fortune grows;

  East, south, west, what is left?

  The Corsican was vanquished here,

  Great mother of all sin;

  Find green the same as shiretown's name,

  Find Newgate Gaol, and win!

  Dr. Fell's pencil worked rapidly, making unintelligible symbols. He grunted, shook his head, and returned to the verses again. Reaching to a revolving bookshelf beside him, he took down a black-bound volume labelled, "L. Fleissner, Handbuck der Kryptographik," and glanced at the index, scowling again.

  "Drafghk!" he snapped, like one who says "damn." "That works out to 'drafghk,' which is nonsense. I'll swear the thing isn't a substitution cipher at all. I'll try Latin as well as English on the tests. I'll get it. The classical background always triumphs. Never, young man," he said, fiercely, "forget that.... What's the matter, Miss Starberth?"

  The girl was leaning both hands on the table, her dark hair gleaming under the light. She let out a small laugh as she glanced up.

  "I was only thinking," she returned, in a puzzled way, "that, if you disregarded punctuation... ,"

  "What?"

  "Well . . . look at the first verse. `Homer's tale of Troy.' That's the Iliad, isn't it? `Country of the midnight sun.' That's Norway. If you took each of the lines separately, and put down the definition for each - I hope I'm not being silly," she hesitated, "and put down the definition for each as a separate word...."

  "My God!" said Rampole, "it's a cross-word puzzle!"

  "Nonsense!" shouted Dr. Fell, growing more red in the face.

  "But look at it, sir," insisted Rampole, and bent over the paper suddenly. "Old Anthony didn't know he was doing a cross-word puzzle; but, in effect, that's what it is. You said it was, a form of the rebus-"

  "Come to think of it," rumbled Dr. Fell, clearing his throat, "the process was not unknown-"

  "Well, work it!" said Sir Benjamin. "Try it that way. `What called the dwellers of Lyn-dun?' I supposed that means, `What were the dwellers of Lyn-dun called?' Does anybody know?"

  Dr. Fell, who had been puffing out his moustache and acting like a sulky child, took up the pencil again. He answered, shortly:

  " `Fenmen,' of course. Very well, we'll try it. As Miss Starberth has suggested, our next two words are `Iliad' and `Norway.' `What doth all men destroy?' I can't think of anything except Death. So there we are - FENMEN ILIAD NORWAY DEATH."

  There was a silence.

  "That doesn't seem to make much sense," muttered Sir Benjamin, dubiously.

  "It makes the most sense of anything yet, at least," Rampole said. "Let's go oh. `Against it man hath dashed his foot . . .' That sounds familiar. `Lest he dash his foot against a- Got it! Try `stone.' Now, what angel bears a spear?"

  "That's Ithuriel," Dr. Fell pointed out, recovering his good humour. "The next line is obviously 'Gethsemane.' Let's see what we have now - FENMEN ILIAD NORWAY DEATH STONE ITHURIEL GETHSEMANE."

  Then a broad grin creased up the folds of his many chins. He twisted his 'moustache like a pirate.

  "It's all up now," he announced. "I've got it. Take the first letter of each word separately...."

  "F I N D-" Dorothy read, and then looked round, her eyes very bright. "That's it. S I G-What comes next?"

  "We need an N. Yes. `What spawns dark stars and fear?"' the doctor read. "The next word is `Night.' Next, the place where the white Diana rose - Ephesus. The next line is bad, but Dido's city was Tyre. So we have FIND SIGNET. I told you it would be simple."

  Sir Benjamin was repeating, "By Jove!" and slapping his fist into his palm. He had a burst of inspiration, and added:

  "Good fortune growing on four leaves: that must mean a shamrock, or clover, or whatever they call the dashed things. Anyway, the answer is Ireland."

  "And," Rampole put in, "after you've taken away east, west, and south, the only thing left is north. North. That adds an N. FIND SIGNET IN -"

  Dr. Fell's pencil added four words and then four letters.

  "Complete," he said. "In the last verse, the first word has to be `Waterloo.' The second is `Eve.' That line about a green the same as the shiretown's name-why, Lincoln, of course. Lincoln green. Finally, we find Newgate Gaol in London. -The whole word is WELL." He threw down his pencil. "Crafty old devil! He kept his secret for over a hundred years."

  Sir Benjamin, still muttering imprecations, sat down blankly. "And we solved it in half an hour...."

  "Let me remind you, sir," rumbled Dr. Fell, thoroughly roused, "that there is absolutely nothing in this cipher I couldn't have told you already. The explanation was all made. This is only proof of the explanation. If this cryptogram had been solved without that previous knowledge, it would have meant nothing. Now we know what it means, thanks to - ah-that previous knowledge." He finished his beer with a swashbuckling gesture, and glared.

  "Of course, of course. But what does he mean by signet?"

  "It could be nothing but that motto of his, `All that I have I carry with me.' It's been helpful so far. And it'll help us again. Somewhere down in that well it's carved on the wall. . .."

  Again the chief constable was rubbing his cheek and scowling.

  "Yes. But we don't know where. And it's an unhealthy place to go foraging, you know."

  "Nonsense!" the doctor said, sharply. "Of course we know where it is."

  As the chief constable only looked sour, Dr. Fell settled back again to a comfortable lighting of his pipe. He went on in a thoughtful voice:

  "If, for example, a heavy rope were to be run round the balcony railing in the groove of old Anthony's rope, and its end dropped into the well as Anthony's rope was . . . well, we shouldn't be very far from the place, should we? The well may be large, but a line dropped from that groove would narrow our search down to a matter of feet. And if a stout young fellow-such as our young friend here - were to take hold of it at the mouth of the well and swarm down ..."

  "That's sound enough," the chief constable acknowledged. "But what good would it do? According to you, the murderer has long ago cleaned out whatever might have been in there. He killed old Timothy because Timothy surprised him, and he killed Martin because Martin would have learned his secret if he'd read the paper in the vault. . . What do you expect to find down there now?"

  Dr. Fell hesitated. "I'm not sure. But we should have to do it, anyhow."

  "I dare say." Sir Benjamin drew a long breath. "Well. Tomorrow morning I'll get a, couple of constables-'

  "We should have all Chatterham round us if we did it that way," said the doctor. "Don't you think this had better be kept among ourselves and done at night?"

  The chief constable hesitated. "It's damned risky," he muttered. "A man could easily break his neck. What do you say, Mr. Rampole?"

  It was an alluring prospect, and Rampole said so.

  "I still don't like it," grunted the chief constable; "but it's the only way to avoid unpleasantness. We can do it tonight if the rain clears off. I'm not due back at Ashley Court until tomorrow, and I dare say I can put up at the Friar Tuck. . . . Look here. Won't lights in the prison, when we go up to attach that rope-well, won't they attract attention?"

  "Possibly. But I'm pretty sure nobody will bother us. Anybody from the village would be too frightened."

  Dorothy had been looking from one to the other, the lids tightening down over her eyes. There were small lines of anger round her nostrils.

  "You're asking him to do this,
" she said, nodding at Rampole, "and I know him well enough to be sure he will. You can be cool. And you say none of the villagers will be there. Well, you may have forgotten somebody who is very apt to be there. The murderer."

  Rampole had moved round to her side, and unconsciously he had taken her hand. She did not notice it; her fingers closed over his. But Sir Benjamin noticed it, with a startled expression which he tried to conceal by saying, "Hem!" and teetering on his heels. Dr. Fell looked up benevolently from his chair.

  "The murderer," he repeated. "I know it, my dear. I know it."

  There was a pause. Nobody seemed to know what to say. The expression of Sir Benjamin's eyes seemed to indicate that it wasn't British to back out now. In fact, he looked downright uncomfortable.

  "Then I'll be on my way," he said at length. "I shall have to take the magistrate at Chatterham into my confidence, by the way; we need ropes, spikes, hammers things like that. If the rain holds off, I can return here about ten o'clock tonight."

  He hesitated.

  "But there's one thing I want to know. We've heard a great deal of talk about that well. We've heard of drowned men, and ghosts, and bullion and jewels and plate and God knows what. Well, doctor, what are you looking for down in that well?"

  "A handkerchief," said Dr. Fell, taking another drink of beer.

  Chapter 15

  MR. BUDGE had been spending an edifying evening. Three nights a month he had to himself. Two of these he generally contrived to spend at the motion pictures in Lincoln, watching people being placed on the spot with gratifying regularity, and refreshing his memory anew with such terms as "scram," "screwey," and other expressions which might be useful to him in his capacity as butler at the Hall. His third evening out he invariably spent with his good friends, Mr. and Mrs. Rankin, butler and housekeeper at the home of the Paynes in Chatterham.

  In their snug rooms downstairs, the Rankins greeted him with a hospitality whose nature rarely varied. Mr. Budge had the best chair, a squeaky rush rocker whose top towered far above the head of any sitter. Mr. Budge was offered a drop of something-port from upstairs, from the Paynes' own table, or a hot toddy in wet weather. The gaslights would sing comfortably, and there would' be the usual indulgent baby-talk to the cat. Three rocking-chairs would swing in their separate tempos - Mrs. Rankin's quick and sprightly, her husband's more judicially, and that of Mr. Budge with a grave rolling motion, like an emperor being carried in his litter.

  The evening would be spent in a discussion of Chatterham and the people of Chatterham. Particularly, when the pretence of formality was dropped about nine o'clock, the people of the big houses. At shortly after ten they would break up. Mr. Rankin would recommend to Mr. Budge's attention some worth-while book which his master had mentioned in the course of the week; Mr. Budge would gravely "make note of, it, put on his hat with the exactitude of a war helmet, button up his coat, and go home.

  This evening, he reflected as he started up the High Street towards the Hall, had been unusually refreshing. The sky had cleared, pale and polished and gleaming, and there was a bright moon. Over the lowlands hung a faint smokiness, and the moist air smelt of hay. On such a night the soul of Mr. Budge became the soul of D'Artagnan Robin Hood Fairbanks Budge, the warrior, the adventurer, the moustache-twister - even, in mad moments, Budge the great lover. His soul was a balloon, a captive balloon, but still a balloon. He liked these long walks, where the stars were not merry at the antics of the other Budge; where a man could take a savage pass at a hayrick with an imaginary sword, and no housemaid the wiser.

  But, while his footfalls were ringing on the hard white road he was delaying these pleasant dreams as a luxury for the last mile of his walk. He reflected on the evening. He reflected particularly on the enormous news at the end of it....

  There had been at first the usual talk. He himself had discussed Mrs. Bundle's lumbago with affection. On the other hand, there had been the news that Mr. Payne was going on another of his trips to London for a legal conference. Mr. Rankin had dwelt upon this fact in the most impressive terms, and mentioned mysterious brief-cases which were as awesome as the wigs of judges. What impressed them all most about the legal profession was that you had to read so many books in order to become a member of it. Mrs. Payne was in a rare bad temper, but what could you expect, she being her?

  Then, again, it had been bruited about the village that - the rector's uncle from Auckland was coming to visit him.

  One of Sir Benjamin Arnold's oldest friends, he was; got the rector his appointment, he did; and he (the uncle) and Sir Benjamin had been with Cecil Rhodes in the Kimberley diamond-fields years ago. There was speculation about that. There was also a little speculation about the murder, but a very little, because the Rankins respected Mr. Budge's feelings. Budge felt grateful for that. He was morally certain Mr. Herbert had committed the murder, but he refused to think about it. Each time the ugly subject popped up in his mind, he closed it like the lid of a jack-in-the-box repressed, but it could be held down....

  No, what he was thinking about most concerned the rumour of an Affair. The capital letter was logical; it had a much more sinister sound, even in the imagination, and sounded almost French. An affair between Miss Dorothy and the young American who was stopping at Dr. Fell's.

  At first Budge had been shocked. Not about the affair, but about the American. Odd - very odd, Budge reflected with a sudden start. Walking here, under the swishing tireless trees in the moonlight, things seemed different from their normal appearance at the Hall. Possibly it was Budge the swashbuckler, who could wink at an indiscretion as easily as ("canaille!") he spitted a varlet on a rapier-point. The Hall was as stuffy and orderly as a game of whist. Here you wanted to kick over the table and sweep off the cards. It was only ... well, these confounded Americans, and Miss Dorothy!

  Good Lord! Miss Dorothy!

  His earlier words came back to him, as they had formed in his mind that night Mr. Martin was murdered. Miss Dorothy: he had almost said a cold little piece. Dominating everything, what would Mrs. Bundle say? The idea would have turned him cold at the Hall. But here the beams of the silver screen made the soul of Mr. Budge gleam like armour.

  He chuckled.

  Now he was passing some hayricks, monstrous black shadows against the moon, and he wondered that he had come so far. His boots must be covered with dust, and his blood was heating from the rapid walk. After all, the young American had seemed a gentleman. There had been moments, certainly, when Budge had suspected him of the murder. He came from America;. Mr. Martin had spent several years in America; there was an ominous inference. Even, for a delightful moment, there had been the suspicion that he might have been what Mrs. Bundle described as a gunster.

  But the hayricks had turned to castles for the Due de Guise's cannon, and the night as soft as the velvet a swordsman wore; -and Mr. Budge grew sentimental. He remembered Tennyson. He could not at the moment think of anything Tennyson said, but he was sure Tennyson would have approved a love-affair between Miss Dorothy and the Yankee. Besides, Lord! what a secret satisfaction to see somebody bring her to life!-Ah! She had been absent from the Hall that afternoon, saying she wanted no tea. She had been absent from tea-time almost until the hour Budge had left for Chatterham. Ha! Budge was her protector by this time. (Had she been absent, demanded the police magistrate, deadly notebook at attention. And the dauntless Budge smiled at disaster, and replied, No.

  He stopped. He stopped exactly in the middle of the road, and a trembling quivered down one knee, and he was looking across the meadows to his left.

  Ahead of him towards the left, clear against the moonlit sky, rose Chatterham prison. The light was so pale-sharp that he could even distinguish the trees of the Hag's Nook. A yellow gleam was moving among those trees.

  For a long time Budge stood motionless in the middle of the white road. He had some vague idea that if there were dangers ahead, and you stood absolutely still, they could not hurt you-as, they said, a fierce dog would no
t attack a motionless man. Then, very meticulously, he moved his bowler hat and wiped his forehead with a clean pocket handkerchief. One queer- little idea was twisting through his brain, almost pathetic in its intensity. Over there, where the goblin-light fluttered, was a test for the adventurer Budge. He had come home in the high night with the swagger within him. So, later on, the butler Budge must look at his white bed with a small shame, and realize that he was only the butler Budge, after all....

  Whereupon Mr. Budge did what, for his butler-self majestically moving in the Hall, would have seemed an insane thing. He climbed the stile, bending low, and began to move up across the slope of the meadow towards the Hag's Nook. And it is to be recorded that his heart suddenly sang.

  It was still squashy from the recent rain. He had to climb the slope in full moonlight, and too late he remembered that he could have approached the Hag's Nook by a more circuitous route. Still, it was done now. He found himself puffing, with little saw-like cuts being drawn up and down in his throat; and he was hot and damp. Then, with an obedience which an eighteenth-century Budge would have accepted without thanks and even without comment, the moon slid behind a cloud.

  He found himself on the edge of the Hag's Nook. There was a beech tree ahead, against which he leaned with a feeling as though his bowler were tightening against his brain, and a throat sore from running. He panted now.

  This was mad.

  Never mind the adventurer Budge. This was mad.

  Ahead, the gleam showed again. He could see it near the well, some twenty or thirty feet ahead, through the twisted boles of trees. It flashed as though for a signal. Evidently in reply, another gleam winked out high above and away. Budge, craning his neck upwards, could have no doubt: it was from the balcony of the Governor's Room. Somebody had set down a light there. He saw the shadow of a very stout man bending over the railing, and this shadow seemed to be doing something to the rail.

  A rope shot downwards, curling and darting with such suddenness that Budge jumped back. Hitting the side of the well with a dull plop, it straggled and then slid over the edge. Fascinated, Budge poked his head forward again. Now the light beside the well had turned into a steady beam; it seemed to be held by a small figure-almost, he thought, like a woman. A face moved into the beam; a face craning upwards, and a hand was waved towards the balcony far above.