The Dreadful Hollow

by Nicholas Blake

  “Damn those noisy brutes,” he said, as a clamor of dogs, driven hysterical by the engine’s din, became audible. “It’s not right yet. I can’t get that timing perfect. Never mind, old girl”—he slapped the shining cylinder block affectionately—“we’ll fix you up.”

  “It must be an expensive hobby, all this.”

  “So-so. But it’s not a hobby.” A fanatical gleam appeared in Stanford’s eyes. “I’m out to produce a world-beater. Do better than poor old B.R.M., you know. Pop can’t see it; but there’s money in a thing like this, as well as prestige.”

  Nigel thought it was time to take his leave. Having wished Stanford good night, he stepped out into the yard. He had only gone a few paces, however, before he heard his name called. Stanford was at the door, distractedly smacking his high, domed forehead.

  “I knew I’d forgotten something. Should you have any other ideas about Durdlepots, keep them under your hat at lunch tomorrow, like a good sport, will you? Verb. sap. What the ear don’t hear, the heart won’t grieve for.”

  Nigel was pondering these enigmatic words as he walked back to the village. He had decided to take the other way—a footpath which led to the Little Manor and, just beyond the plantation north of the Hall, met the track going down from the Little Manor to the village. He had almost reached the intersection when he heard footsteps slurring on the grass. On an impulse, he froze still by the gap in the hedge he had been approaching. It was dark. But not so dark that he could not recognize, as it passed on the path from the Chantmerles’ house to the village, the tall, stooping figure of Daniel Durdle. It moved with a sliding gait, as if on wheels or a caterpillar track, and unnaturally fast, it seemed; then the hedge gap framed nothing but the night’s darkness again.

  5 The Plymouth Brother’s Father

  AT TEN O’CLOCK the next morning, Nigel walked along to the post office. After a hard frost, Prior’s Umborne sparkled in the sunshine. Today there were a few people to be seen; but they stood in a knot by the crossroads, and Nigel’s “good morning” was met with silence and averted eyes, not the usual cheerful West-Country greeting for a stranger. Prior’s Umborne was a poisoned village, no doubt about that. Nigel found himself quoting, “Where each man walks with his head in a cloud of poisonous flies.” The cordial sunlight, the clean brisk air seemed a mockery. He felt a spurt of anger against the unknown who had done such havoc—this maniac with a hypodermic syringe in his pocket. Or was it, not madness, but a coldly-calculated move in some game whose goal could not yet be seen?

  The bell jangled as Nigel stepped into the post office. Mrs. Durdle, rigid behind the counter, squeezed out a quarter inch of smile for him.

  “Daniel is waiting for you in the parlor,” she said. But Nigel showed no disposition to hurry to the appointment. He commented on the beauties of Prior’s Umborne, the neatness of the shop. Had Mrs. Durdle kept it for many years? Was she a native of the village? Her face stony with suspicion, the woman grudgingly admitted that she had lived here all her life, and had taken over the shop and post office from her husband when he died, just before the war.

  “It must have been lonely for you during the war, with your son away.”

  “I made do. Others had to.”

  “Your son was working in the North, I believe?”

  “Yes, up in Lancashire. He was on airplane engines—some special parts for them. Skilled work. He was always clever with his hands. They thought very well of him at the Grammar School. If he’d had his rights, he should have gone to College.”

  Once again Mrs. Durdle’s curious defensive-aggressive pride in her son showed itself. Nigel remarked negligently: “I suppose he took after his father?”

  If an iron bar could grow visibly more rigid, this is how Mrs. Durdle looked. A flush came over her sallow face, and she snapped: “What might you mean by that?”

  “Well, he doesn’t look very like you, does he? But I really meant his mechanical skill. And his brains. His father must have been a remarkable—”

  “Daniel is as God made him,” the woman formidably replied.

  Nigel had noticed, when he came in, that the door between shop and parlor was open. He wondered how Daniel, no doubt listening in there, would receive this comment on his creation. He began asking Mrs. Durdle about the postal arrangements. She cleared the box and stamped the letters whenever there was a slack period in the shop; but the regulations bound her to clear it again fifteen minutes before the postal van was due, and yet again when the van arrived. Yes, her son sometimes did the clearing and stamping for her. If there were a great many letters in the final clearance, she was allowed to send them into Moreford unstamped, so that the van driver should not be kept waiting. But she was supposed to make sure that no letters posted here to Prior’s Umborne addresses went in to Moreford first. On a rough average, the village post office handled between one hundred and three hundred letters a day, outgoing and incoming. No, neither she nor Daniel had particularly noticed the anonymous letters, even the second batch of them. A lot of the village people addressed their envelopes in capitals. It wasn’t her business to go prying into correspondence.

  “It’s funny they should all have been posted here, isn’t it? You’d think it’d be safer to post them, say, in Moreford. Unless, of course, the person who wrote them is somehow tied to this place—or is someone who would be particularly noticed posting letters in Moreford.”

  Mrs. Durdle’s eyes were like sparks struck off flint, but she said nothing.

  “I mean,” went on Nigel, smiling at her with the greatest amiability, “it would look pretty queer, you or your son posting letters there, for instance—sort of coals to Newcastle.”

  “We’ve had all that with the police. It’s downright wicked, making such suggestions. And, anyway, if somebody wanted a Moreford postmark on the letters, they don’t need to go into Moreford for it,” Mrs. Durdle added, on a note of dialectical triumph.

  “Oh? How’s that?”

  “You just put them in the box at the other end of the village, opposite the New Inn. The mail van clears them from there and takes them direct to Moreford G.P.O.”

  The doorbell jangled, and a customer came in. At the same moment, Daniel Durdle’s head appeared around the corner of the parlor door, with the blind, weaving motion which Nigel had noticed yesterday.

  “Ah, Mr. Strangeways. I thought I heard your voice. Step this way, sir.”

  The little parlor was as crowded, scoured, meticulously tidy as the shop. Aspidistras and maidenhair ferns on the window sill gave it a greenish gloom. Daniel Durdle might have been a caterpillar shut up in a matchbox, with green stuff thoughtfully provided. Pointing Nigel to a black, shiny armchair, he curled himself down onto the sofa.

  “Are your investigations bearing fruit, sir?”

  “Almost too much. A positive fruit salad.”

  Daniel gave a polite laugh. “Well, that is good news. We shall all be rejoiced here when the evildoer is caught in his own snare.”

  “Will you? All of you? This person must have friends, relatives, someone who loves her—or him.”

  “You take me up too quickly, sir. It would be a grievous burden to bear, indeed, for those near and dear. Nevertheless—”

  “Nevertheless, ‘If thine eye offend thee, pluck it out’?”

  The man’s thick spectacles flashed as he lifted his head. His sleek voice took on resonance, a tone of authority.

  “The Elect are not judged by the judgment of this world.”

  “You think the poison-pen writer is one of the Elect, do you?”

  The thin mouth in the lard-white face quirked a little. “That is what you think, isn’t it, sir? I heard what you said to my mother.”

  “I made no accusations against your mother. But if you ask what I think . . .” Nigel paused; he wanted to shake this man, so apparently impregnable behind his pebbly spectacles and his Scriptural phrases; but even more he wanted to make any sort of human contact with him. “If you ask what I think, I’ll
tell you. First, anyone living in a post office has special facilities for the sending of anonymous letters. Second, people who write them usually have some grudge against life. Third, such people often get it into their heads that they’re divine instruments for the exposure and punishment of wickedness.”

  “We are all divine instruments,” replied Durdle in a flat voice. Nigel made no comment, but allowed the silence to protract itself till the ticking of the grandfather clock sounded like a slow torture. Finally, Daniel Durdle leaned forward.

  “What grudge against life should we have, Mother or I?”

  “Well, with your abilities, you’re cut out for something better than this”—Nigel gestured round the poky, ugly room. “And your mother—don’t tell me she’s a contented woman, or a resigned one. And don’t tell me, either,” he added, “that you’re happy in the humble estate to which God has called you.”

  “Happy! That’s the cant of the unregenerate,” said Daniel contemptuously.

  “Is that your father?” Nigel asked, gazing at a large, framed photograph on the wall behind Daniel’s head, which jerked sideways, as if trying to avoid the words.

  “Yes. Yes, that’s Dad. Why do you ask?”

  “I’m interested,” replied Nigel, getting up to scrutinize the picture more closely. “Extraordinary.”

  “I don’t see anything extraordinary in—”

  “Oh, please forgive me. I didn’t mean that. It’s a good face. Generous. No, I was thinking about something else: the anonymous letter you got.”

  “I don’t follow you.”

  “It’s rather difficult. You mustn’t take offense. One of the things I’ve heard since coming down here is that you are not Mr. Durdle’s son. No, wait a minute! It’s just silly village gossip, no doubt. But why didn’t the anonymous writer put that in his letter, instead of some nonsense about strong liquor? It’d have been much more wounding, much more his style.”

  Daniel’s delicate, stained fingers were writhing in his lap. Insulated behind those thick lenses, there must be some look of naked emotion, Nigel was sure; but was it grief, shame, indignation, or sheer vindictive hatred? He went on quickly: “There’s another thing I wanted to ask you. Don’t you think it very strange that Miss Chantmerle hasn’t received a letter?”

  Durdle uncoiled himself, and towered stooping over Nigel.

  “Get out! Get out! I’ve had about enough from you!” He was trembling all over, his face twisting uncontrollably.

  “No, not yet. Why should that question upset you so?”

  “Why should I answer your questions at all? Who do you think you are, poking your nose into our affairs?”

  “Is Miss Chantmerle your affair?”

  Daniel Durdle’s mouth set in an obstinate line, the image of his mother’s. He would not reply.

  “Are you protecting somebody else?” Nigel persisted. Daniel’s face was turned away, like a stubborn child’s. Nigel’s pale-blue eyes scrutinized him with merciless curiosity. “Well, then, I’ll be going. I shall see you again.”

  Daniel turned his head, where he stood by the mantelpiece. Nigel was startled to see a covert, arrogant, childish smile on his face.

  “You know you can’t do anything about it,” said the man.

  “It’s difficult to convict poison pens, if that’s what you mean. But one can give them a thorough good fright, and hope they won’t do it again. Good-by.”

  Back at the inn, Nigel took out a sheet of paper. His memory was phenomenal, but he liked to set out its results and clarify his mind in writing. After half an hour, the paper read as follows:

  The Letters

  (i) All except the vicar’s and J. Smart’s (and possibly Templeton’s?) based on gossip and/or observation. How was information obtained about vicar’s wife and Smart’s past? Answer surely obvious; but verify with vicar’s friend. And police must find out if Smart’s mother ever got a letter from him. Also, police should work from other end—all cases of suspected sabotage in 1940.

  (ii) The second letter box, opposite New Inn. This surely clinches it.

  (iii) Why no letter to Chantmerles? Or Charles Blick? Verify.

  (iv) Motive: (a) bloody-mindedness; (b) madness—sex and/or religion: (c) sabotage of Moreford factory—foreman and secretary out of action: work suffering, according to Sir A.

  Interesting, if irrelevant

  (i) Sir A’s unveiled hints.

  (ii) Source of Chantmerles’ money: financing of Stanford’s experiments.

  (iii) Rosebay’s “difficulties.”

  (iv) Stanford’s relationship with R. Also his parting remark.

  (v) Daniel’s walk last night.

  (vi) Mark Raynham’s mixture of indiscretion and reticence.

  The answer to one of his questions was forthcoming sooner than Nigel expected. Just after midday, the landlord put his head in at the parlor and said:

  “There’s a lady come to see you, sir. Miss Rosebay.”

  Nigel’s first impression of the younger Chantmerle sister was that her father, who gave his children such far-fetched names, had chosen better than he knew. Her hair was a rich bay-red color, luxuriant and glossy. It seemed darker now, in the dim little parlor, than it had looked by the light of Stanford’s workshop window; but there was no mistaking the hurried, slouching, apologetic gait which he had seen for a moment last night. The woman came rapidly in, half tripping over the mat at the door.

  “I’m awfully sorry,” she said.

  “It’s the mat’s fault. You mustn’t apologize to it.”

  “What? Oh, yes. Stupid of me.” She smiled uncertainly. “Am I disturbing you? I thought I’d—but I expect you’re busy.”

  “Not a bit. Come and sit down.”

  She made a plunge for a chair, dropped her bag, said “Sorry,” picked it up and held it tightly to her.

  “This is like the beginning of a Sherlock Holmes story,” said Nigel, smiling at the girl. “A young woman is announced, and appears ‘in a state of high agitation.’ Don’t tell me you’re being pursued by a sinister gentleman with the little finger of his left hand missing!”

  Rosebay Chantmerle took a grip on herself, like a stammerer counting up to five before he speaks; then said: “I’ve come to fetch you for lunch. It’s my sister’s birthday.”

  “It’s very kind of you. But you needn’t have bothered. I know the way.”

  “Well, actually there was something else too. Stanford said I ought to show you—I do hope you don’t mind?”

  As she fumbled in her bag, Nigel studied the down-turned face. It was white, freckled, the bone good, the mouth untidily made up with a disastrously wrong shade of lipstick. Her body, hunched over the handbag, looked narrower, thinner than it was. She doesn’t give herself a chance, thought Nigel. Or perhaps she’s never been allowed to. But surely Charles . . .

  “We got this letter on April 7,” Rosebay began, as if repeating a lesson. “It was addressed to my sister, but I took it. Mark Raynham rang me up the moment he’d got his, and the postman doesn’t reach us till ten minutes later, so I was waiting for it.”

  “Very thoughtful of the vicar. But why should he suppose—?”

  “Oh, it was just in case other anonymous letters were on their way, you know.”

  “So the idea was that you should intercept it?”

  “Of course, when I saw what it said, I didn’t tell Mark we’d had one. I mean, it’s sort of a family secret.”

  “A secret you want to keep from your sister?”

  “That’s awfully clever of you to guess.”

  There was something pathetic in the way she said it, as if she’d read that men should always be flattered, but had had only too few opportunities for practicing the precept. Her green eyes gazed eagerly at Nigel, as she held out the letter.

  “The secret being,” said Nigel, “that your father had an illegitimate son, about thirty years ago? Daniel Durdle?”

  “My God! How did you—who told you that?” Her voice had sudde
nly become sharp and aggressive.

  “The vicar gave part of it away—no, quite unintentionally. And there’s the color of his hair. And his hands. And his brains. And some other things. But d’you mean to say your sister doesn’t know about this?”

  “I’ve always—I kept it from her. She idolized father. It would have been a terrible shock.”

  “You’ve ‘always’ kept it from her. How long have you known?”

  The girl’s face lost all its rather harassed animation. She now looked absurdly sullen and mutinous, her full lower lip sticking out.

  “Well, aren’t you going to read it?” She thrust the letter at him, with one of her ungainly movements.

  “If you like.”

  The letter said:

  Your dear noble Dad a bastard had. So R.I.P. the dirty old rip.

  “H’m. Breaking into verse. And what am I to do about this?”

  Rosebay’s tone was positively scolding now. “Don’t be silly. Find out who wrote it, of course. Doesn’t it help—I mean, the letter itself?”

  “But, don’t you see? I’ve got to find out how you knew about Durdle if you’re going to help me find out how the writer of this thing knew it,” said Nigel patiently.

  “I suppose that means you think I wrote it,” she said, jutting out her lip at him.

  “It doesn’t mean anything of the sort. Durdle was blackmailing you, I imagine. When did it start?”

  “Imagine away, if it makes you happy.”

  “I can’t think why you should want to conceal it from me. What’s the sense, now you’ve shown me the letter?”

  “Oh, very well,” muttered the girl ungraciously. She had risen, and was pacing across the parlor with her queer, loping stride. Suddenly she stopped dead, dramatically, crying: “Isn’t it obvious? Nobody likes showing themselves up. All right, I was feeble, cowardly. I should have told him where to get off. But I’m no good. I’m frightened of him. That’s why he picked on me. Dinny would have stood up to him.”

  “Your sister? You did it to protect her, though. You shouldn’t blame yourself for that.”

  “Protect!” exclaimed Rosebay bitterly, throwing herself back in her chair.