The Master of Phoenix Hall

by Jennifer Wilde

  “How long will the men remain at Phoenix Hall?” Nan asked.

  “For another month, at least,” Billy replied.

  “Why did he bring them from Devon?” Nan inquired.

  “For meanness,” Billy said, “meanness of heart and of purse. He wouldn’t pay the men of Lockwood decent wages, and they refused to do the work. So he imported these louts from Devon. They’ll work for a pittance.”

  “The men of Lockwood must hate Roderick Mellory,” I said.

  “He ain’t out to win their hearts, that’s for sure,” Billy said. “I think he relishes their hatred. He wants to be hated and feared. It gives him a sense of power.”

  “I should think he would be the one to have fear,” I said, “with all that feeling against him.”

  “If he weren’t his father’s son, he might wake up some day with a knife in his stomach. But he is gentry, and he is Bradford Mellory’s son. That fact protects him when nothing else would.”

  “They loved Bradford Mellory, didn’t they?”

  “If ever a man was more loved by the people I don’t know who. He was like a Saint.”

  “And his other children? How do the villagers feel about them?” I asked.

  “Miss Laurel is exactly like her father. She does all she can for the people and would do more if her brother didn’t interfere. She takes care of the sick and poor when she can, but her brother keeps her away from the people as much as possible. He doesn’t want her to be contaminated by the peasants.”

  “And the boy, Paul? What about him?”

  “No one sees much of Paul Mellory. He’s lame, you know. He stays confined to the Hall and its grounds. I don’t suppose he’s been seen in the village for five years.”

  “What an unusual family,” I remarked.

  “You’d do best to keep away from them, Miss Todd,” Billy said. “A young woman like you—” He clicked the reins, failing to complete his statement. “Some mighty strange things have been happening hereabouts. I’d hate to see you get involved in any of it.”

  He drove on silently and did not elucidate this remark. Nan let out a little cry as she saw a deer wandering across the road. It was a beautiful animal with a silky beige coat and silver-brown antlers. It paused to watch our progress with pensive brown eyes. Billy pointed out a salt lick to us and said that the Mellorys had a number of deer in the park, tame creatures who roamed at will over the green lawns and through the woods. He said I would see many of them near the Dower House and beside the stream.

  “They don’t come too near your place, though,” he remarked. “In the past your aunt set up traps to keep them out of the garden. They used to trample her herbs and vegetables, and she waged war on them. She was a grand old woman.”

  “Did you know her well?”

  “I used to make deliveries to the house,” he said, “and once, when my ma was ill, your aunt came and watched over her and made the pain go ’way. You don’t resemble her, Miss Todd.”

  “She was my mother’s sister. I take after my father.”

  We rounded a bend in the road and I saw the Dower House for the first time. It set beneath the shade of several large oaks and their large limbs cast soft purple shadows over the bleached gray stone. It was two stories with a green slate roof and a crumbly red chimney. The front door was painted green and there were green shutters at all the windows. It was a small house, compact and lovely, bearing its age with a faded grace. There were flower beds in front and gardens on both sides.

  I could find no words to express my emotions. I was speechless at the beauty and serenity of the place. It was like something out of a dream. After so many years in a shabbily furnished boarding-house, I was to live in this home, and it belonged to me. I sat staring at it, seeing it all through the soft mist of tears. Billy unloaded our luggage and set it on the porch. A sleepy brown and yellow cat crawled up to watch the process. Nan lifted her canary cage high and shooed the cat away.

  Mr. Patterson had given me the key to the door, and I opened it, directing Billy to move the bags into the front hall. I did not go inside at first. I wanted to wait a few moments until I had proper control of my emotions. I suppose this was the happiest event in my life and all by the grace of an eccentric old woman I had never known.

  “You’ll need some wood chopped,” Billy said, finishing with the bags, “and I’ll come round this afternoon to cut it for you.”

  “That would be nice,” Nan told him.

  “I’ll bring some fresh eggs and butter and milk, and you can make a list of things you’ll need in the way of provisions. Is there anything else I can do now?”

  “I don’t think so,” I replied. I took a few coins out of my bag, preparing to pay him. Billy refused the money. He claimed meeting us was all the payment he needed, and although he used the plural form of pronoun his eyes were on Nan alone. She gave a little curtsy, standing on the porch to watch as he drove away.

  “A fine lad,” she remarked, smiling to herself.

  “Indeed,” I replied, calmer now.

  “Shall we go into our new home, Miss Angel?”

  I took her hand and we went inside. It was cool and dark, and I threw back the shutters to let the sun come in. In a moment the rooms were flooded with silvery white light. Although it had been closed up for a while and had a faint odor of dust and dampness, the house was fragrant of home, of decades of wood fires and flowers, spices and herbs, of people who had lived here and left. There was the aroma of old wood that had been scrubbed and waxed for years.

  Nan and I spent two happy hours exploring the place, going over each room and commenting on it and fingering all the things it held. I was pleased with the simplicity of everything. The walls were a faded gray, silvered with age, the floors golden brown hardwood that shone from years of beeswax rubbed into the grain. The furniture was simple too, hard, sturdy pieces of oak cut down to size, without the ornamental carving so prevalent in this Victorian age. The house was all bright and simple and comfortable, a place in which to live an uncomplicated, orderly life.

  Upstairs there were two bedrooms, one large, one small. I chose the larger one for myself. It looked out over the gardens, and far away, over the tops of the trees, one could see the gables of Phoenix Hall. On the lower floor there was a study with oak desk and bookcase, a small parlor and dining room and a compact little kitchen with a blue and white tiled fireplace, a huge black stove and a zinc drain board. A huge black iron pot hung in the fireplace and black cooking utensils hung neatly on the walls. There was a tiny bedroom next to the kitchen and Nan decided she would prefer it to the extra room upstairs.

  A door in the kitchen opened onto the stone steps that led to the cellar. It was very large, very cool down there, and so dark that we had to light a candle to see our way with. Unlike the rest of the house, it was cluttered and messy in the cellar. On the shelves were hundreds of jars of pickles and preserves and other foods, all neatly labeled, but strands of silky cobwebs stretched over them, and dust coated the tightly sealed jars. On the floor were stacks of jars, pots, boxes, old discarded tools, a broken spinning wheel, a litter of all the things there was not room for upstairs.

  The cellar was as large as the lower floor of the house, and it had a musty, unpleasant odor I did not recognize. There was something I did not like about the place, something creepy and indefinable. I felt the cold dampness of the place and sensed something wrong, something I could not put a finger on. Nan stood on the bottom step, holding the candle. It flickered and spluttered, casting wild shadows over the walls.

  “I don’t like this place,” she said.

  “So you feel it, too?” I replied. “Something—wrong.”

  “Let’s go up, Miss Angel. I feel a chill.”

  “What’s that odor, Nan?”

  “I don’t know. I only know it’s not right.”

  I felt something like fear, standing there on the earth floor, and I tried to laugh at myself, knowing it was foolish to feel this way. The cella
r was messy, it smelled bad, but there was nothing wrong. Or was there? The place seemed so incongruous with the neat, bright rooms upstairs.

  I stepped over to one wall and looked at the opaque brown jugs sitting beside some tiny wooden boxes that contained what looked like dried grasses and roots. I assumed they were some of my aunt’s herbs, but the odor of them was acrid and bitter. Several small jars contained a cloudy green liquid and there were skull and crossbones scratched on the surface of the glass.

  “Poison,” I said. “All kinds of poison.”

  “Poison!” Nan cried.

  “All kinds of it. I suppose my aunt made it.”

  “Whatever for?” Nan asked, shivering.

  “Why—for insects, I suppose, or rodents. Perhaps she sold it to the farmers.”

  “Let’s hurry, Miss Angel,” Nan pleaded.

  We went back upstairs into the sunny brightness of the kitchen. Nan closed the cellar door, and I was resolved to buy a lock and chain to put on it. There was no apparent reason for the distaste I felt for the cellar, and yet I felt it, strongly. Nan had felt it, too.

  “Let’s go out in back,” I said. “I could use the fresh air.”

  The gardens in the back of the house were neat, the beds lined with gleaming white shells, a flagstone path leading from the back door to the grey stone well. An old oaken bucket dangled by its rope, and I dipped it into the water and pulled it up. I ladled out some of the water and tasted it. It was incredibly cold, deliciously fresh. There was a neat small smokehouse behind the garden, damp and cool inside, with hams and bacon and salted meat hanging from pegs. In the metal cooler there were blocks of cheese and butter wrapped in wet white cloths, even a dozen or so eggs, light brown and speckled.

  “It seems that we are well provided for,” Nan said.

  “My aunt died so suddenly. All these things must have been here at the time of her death.”

  “Those hams look good. I will take one inside to cook.”

  “Isn’t this smell heavenly?” I remarked.

  Nan and I walked past the gardens and down a long slope to look at the deserted granite quarries Mr. Patterson had spoken about. They were an interlinking series of great cavities in the earth, all jagged and raw and ugly. They were deep and covered several acres with large, sharp rocks marking the walls and huge boulders littering the floors. If someone fell, it could mean instantaneous death. There had once been a wooden railing around the outer edges, but it had rotted away and collapsed in a heap of splintered slats. I kicked one of the slats with the tip of my shoe and sent it hurtling down into the quarry. It fell for a long time and then smashed on the rocks with a loud crash. Nan gripped my hand.

  “We’ll want to stay away from here,” she said emphatically.

  “It’s a good thing there are no children about,” I remarked.

  We went back inside and began the long process of unpacking. It would take a long time for us to settle in properly. We found linen in the hall closet, fine sheets scented with verbena, and we made up the beds. I wiped dust off the surfaces of furniture, eager to begin a thorough spring cleaning tomorrow morning.

  The sun was setting when Billy Johnson returned. He had a loaf of bread his mother had just baked, a pail of milk, some eggs and a small block of butter. Nan greeted him with enthusiasm and put him to work chopping wood for the fireplace. He came into the kitchen with a pile of small neat logs which he put into the wood box beside the fireplace. I had just made a pot of coffee.

  “Won’t you sit down and have a cup of coffee with us?” I asked.

  He smiled happily, pleased that he would be allowed to stay with us a little longer.

  “This place already looks different,” he remarked. He straddled a chair, his arms resting on the back, his chin resting on his arms. He was watching Nan as she laid the fire, his penny colored eyes full of sparkle. His great size made the sturdy chair seem small.

  “How do you like your new home, Miss Todd?” he asked me.

  “I think it is beautiful,” I replied, smiling.

  “It’ll look nice after we clean up a bit,” Nan agreed. “I made a list of things I’ll need for tomorrow, and I want you to bring them first thing in the morning, Billy Johnson.” Her voice was bossy, but Billy liked it. I thought him rather like a very large Puppy.

  “It is certainly quiet here,” I remarked. “So peaceful. I feel as though I were hundreds of miles away from everyone.”

  “I’d be a little happier if we weren’t quite so alone,” Nan said. “It gives me a funny feeling not knowing there is someone nearby, near enough to hear a scream, for instance.”

  “Surely you’re not frightened, Nan?” I said, laughing.

  “Of course not,” she snapped, though not convincingly. “I just don’t like being so isolated.”

  Billy grinned, seeing an opportunity to tease her.

  “You could scream all you wanted,” he said, “and no one would hear you.”

  “Why should I scream?” she asked. “Surely there aren’t prowlers about?”

  “Some say the highwaymen have their hideout in this area. Lights have been seen in the deserted quarries and in the woods, usually soon after there has been a holdup. A farmer looking for a lost calf in the woods one night claims to have seen a figure in black walking near the quarries. He might have imagined it.”

  “Surely you’re teasing Billy,” I said.

  “No, Ma’am,” he replied. “There’s been lots of talk about the robbers’ den being hereabouts. There’s been search parties, but no one has ever found anything. But the lights have been seen, curious lights like hooded lanterns in the quarries and in the woods. Folks stay away from both places at night.”

  “My aunt was never bothered,” I said.

  “No one has been bothered. There have been no incidents, except for Old Hatcher seeing the black figure, and Hatcher isn’t a very reliable witness. He hits the bottle a bit too often.”

  Nan’s face had grown a little pale, and Billy grinned when he noticed it. He was mischievous by nature and enjoyed frightening her. I could see the boyish devilment sparkling in his eyes.

  “Of course there was a lunatic loose in these parts once,” he continued. “He had a butcher knife he had stolen when he escaped from the Home. Belle James was coming through the woods one night after she had left her boy friend—she was a flighty thing, always doin’ what she had no business doin’—and she met up with him. They found her next morning, a pitiful sight to see.”

  “And—did they catch him?” Nan asked.

  “Not for a while. The men roamed all through the woods with torch lights burning, and they could hear insane laughter. It took them two days and nights, but they finally rounded him up. Poor man was curled up in a cave, babbling like a child. The blood-stained butcher knife was beside him.”

  “You hush now,” Nan cried. “I don’t want to hear any more. It’s all nonsense, anyway! Nothing is going to hurt Miss Angel and me. Not while I’m in possession of all my senses. Let me tell you what I said to the highwayman when he held us up last night—”

  Nan began to babble about the holdup, and Billy continued gazing at her with admiration. I was glad when Billy finally left, for it was late now and I was very tired. Nan told me that he had asked her to go berry-picking with him at the end of the week. She was undecided about going but, holding her head to one side, she guessed that a good berry cobbler would be nice. After a while she went to her room and I undressed to go to bed.

  It was very dark outside, with only a few frosty stars in a black sky. The limbs of the trees rustled in the wind, and I could hear the boughs groaning, the leaves rattling. Crickets chirped, and I heard a dog howling to the night from somewhere far off. I was far too excited and far too happy, and I lay in bed in a state of semiconsciousness and watched the shadows creep across the floor to the edge of the bed. Like Nan, I felt the isolation of Dower House. It was strange not to be able to hear all the noises of London that had sometimes kept me a
wake when I was at the boardinghouse. No carriages rumbling over the cobbles, no horses’ hooves, no nocturnal footsteps moving down the street. Here there was only a serene silence that gradually lulled me to sleep.

  I awoke with a start, completely awake, every sense alert. I had the acute sensation that something was wrong, and the strange, eerie feeling that always comes when one is awakened in the middle of the night. The room was very cold. The window was open, and the chilly breeze blew the curtains inward. They were billowing and rustling. Something had happened. In my sleep, even, I had been aware of it, and it had torn away the layers of unconsciousness and sent me hurtling into a state of tingling awareness. I sat up now, trying to recall what had happened. There was that sensation of aftermath, the air still full of the reverberations of something that had just taken place. The house was still and silent but for the sound of the curtains flapping in the breeze. My heart was pounding and my throat was dry.

  I slipped into my robe, tying the belt with nervous fingers. I had just finished when I heard someone moving downstairs. I stepped to the door of my bedroom and opened it, listening. I heard footsteps on the staircase. My hand flew to my throat. It was paralyzed. I couldn’t scream. The steps came up, and I saw the flickering glow of a candle.

  Nan came into the hall. She was holding the candlestick with a hand that was trembling visibly. The guttering orange light revealed a face pale, with enormous eyes. Her white lace night cap was askew on top of her head. She gave a start when she saw me standing in the doorway.

  “You heard it too?” she whispered hoarsely. “I was coming up to awaken you.”

  “What are you talking about, Nan?”

  “The noise. There’s someone in the cellar, Miss Angel.”

  “Nan—”

  “I heard them. It sounded like someone moving something across the floor. And then there was a loud crash, like something had fallen. That must have awakened you.”