Calamity at Harwood

by George Bellairs

  Calamity at Harwood

  George Bellairs

  MYSTERIOUSPRESS.COM

  “Already linked … to a fell adversary, his hate or shame;

  Which infinite calamity shall cause

  To human life, and household peace confound.”

  (Paradise Lost)

  “I know thee well; I heare the watchfull dogs

  With hollow howling tell of thy approach;

  The lights burne dim, affrighted with thy presence:

  And this distempered and tempestuous night

  Tells me the ayre is troubled with some devill.”

  (Merry Devill of Edmonton, 1631.)

  CONTENTS

  THE BEGINNING OF THE MATTER

  UNINVITED GUESTS

  THE TOLERANT POLTERGEIST

  FLAT TO LET

  FORTITUDE OF SIX TENANTS

  ANOTHER TENANT IN FLAT FIVE

  BED, BATH AND BREAKFAST

  THE MOUSTACHE IN THE POTTING-SHED

  THE OLD SQUIRE TAKES A NEW LEASE

  THE SENTIMENTAL FINANCIER

  WHIRLIGIG

  PRIVATE LIVES

  CONFESSION

  THE APPREHENSIVE DON

  DISASTER AT DEVIL’S DYKE

  CATCH-AS-CATCH-CAN

  DOMESTIC INTERLUDE

  THE MAN IN BROWN SHOES

  PROCESS OF MOPPING-UP

  ANOTHER VICTIM

  MR. SCROPE ENTERTAINS

  KNELL FOR A TRAITOR

  AU REVOIR, BUT NOT TO EVERYONE

  THE BEGINNING OF THE MATTER

  ONE afternoon in the late autumn of 1938, the large, flashy car of Mr. Solomon Burt (né Bernstein) came to an unexpected halt on the London-Brighton road. The uniformed chauffeur sprang out, opened the bonnet and diagnosed a choked jet. Whereat Mr. Burt gave him a week’s notice for carelessness, left him with curt instructions to put the thing right, and climbed out to stretch his legs. He had been trying to buy and sell a lido at Brighton that morning and had failed on both counts. His temper, therefore, was foul. In the London property market Mr. Burt had a reputation for shrewdness and a good eye for a bargain. He possessed, too, uncanny foresight in his purchases and in ferreting-out the means of financing them. As a result, in seven years he raised himself from the desk in an estate agent’s office to a sumptuous suite in Park Lane and a net income of twenty thousand a year from rents alone. Nothing was too small or too large for Solomon. One day you would find him buying rows of slum property in White-chapel or Deptford with a view to turning them over at a paltry profit of ten pounds a house. The next, you would see his name in the headlines as the purchaser of some West-End pile, intent on sweeping away with a stroke of the pen and a gang of demolishers, centuries of memories and associations which cluttered-up an admirable site for “improvement.” He had long grown weary of making offers for the Royal Parks and St. Paul’s and other city churches, but increasing riches only whetted his appetite for further deals and developments.

  Once on the trail, this hunter of land and profit-rentals was relentless. Sentiment, public opinion, protest, hallowed memory, revered history were of no account to Mr. Burt. He entered the world without any restrictions of tradition, breeding, family or name and so he was determined to continue until he was satisfied that he was wealthy enough to assume the responsibilities, vast estates, armorial bearings and synthetic ancestry of a gentleman.

  We meet Mr. Burt on the way home from one of his rare business defeats and it is hardly a good time to make his acquaintance. His small, thick-set, paunchy body bristles with annoyance. He pushes his felt hat, which looks just a shade too large for him, back on his head and discloses a broad, low forehead, from which his thin black hair has long receded. Beneath his heavy eyebrows his little brown eyes bulge aggressively. His face is round and his complexion is red and healthy-looking. Only the lines beneath his eyes and the thin veins in his fat cheeks tell of excesses for which he will have to pay one of these days. For the rest, his nose is remarkably straight considering his origins, but a bit fleshy at the base; his lips are wide and abundant; his chin is losing its contours by doubling itself; and his neck is thick and short. He is well-groomed; dressed in a formal black jacket and grey trousers, with a spotted tie and a cream shirt setting-off the lot.

  Mr. Burt stands in the road and looks challengingly about him. He knows quite well where he is. He is always travelling to and from Brighton, dealing, preying, or else gallivanting for week-ends with a lady friend. He takes a cigar from his case, punches it bellicosely with a small golden tool, lights it with a gold lighter, and wonders how to kill the time.

  The nearest station is Meadford, a small country place a mile to the right, where main-line electric trains halt on their ways to and from the coast and London. Probably the job on his car will be finished before he can reach the place.

  To the left, a signpost proclaims that Harwood is a quarter of a mile away. It thus dodges the main road by a few fields’ distance, thereby saving itself the disfigurement of petrol-pumps and cafe signs, and avoids the endless roar of traffic.

  For want of something better to do, Mr. Burt flings his hat in the car, mops his angry forehead and strolls along the Harwood by-road.

  The chauffeur raises his sweating face from the entrails of the car, glances at the receding back of his employer, spits in the road and snarls. Then, he pours a string of horrible obscenities into the bonnet.

  Meanwhile, Mr. Burt has forgotten his troubles. His frown has vanished, a light shines in his eyes, he pauses and looks to left and to right and scans the distant scene. He halts and ponders. He might be a modern counterpart of Gilbert White, resting in not-too-distant Selbourne, meditating on some new fact or phenomenon for his journal of natural history.

  But, Mr. Burt is not soothed and refreshed by the autumnal glories of nature. He is ruminating concerning the pros and cons of building several blocks of bungalows in the immediate neighbourhood, just by way of a little mental exercise. He surveys fields, hedgerows and surrounding views in calculations concerning lay-out, drainage, road-charges and proximity to the London main line. His meditations are not complete when he reaches Harwood.

  The place is only a hamlet but it is a little jewel. It is lost in huge chestnut trees and is composed of a score or so of cottages, a post-office, an inn, and a church and vicarage. Until the family fell on evil days, it was populated by workers on the estates of the Harwoods, who lived at the Hall standing in its park nearby. Now, the natives, unable to pull up their ancient roots, still hang on to the old hearthstones, but seek their livings here, there and everywhere within walking or cycling distance from home. The Hall, a Georgian dwelling, is in several acres of tree-studded grassland, on a site formerly occupied by a smaller building. It owes its existence to the prosperity of Robert Harwood, a whig banker who flourished under the first George and whose grandson squandered the family fortunes during the Regency, thereby condemning their legitimate descendants to live on mortgages. Theodore Harwood is the last of his line and manages merely to exist thanks to the intermittent cheques of his distant relatives, the Harwood-Conklins of New York, who still acknowledge their allegiance to their penniless family chief in the Old World and like to think of the continued existence of their ancestral home, pictures of which proudly grace their penthouse. Their munificence does not, however, pay for more than food, drink and the services of one old housekeeper, and Mr. Theodore spends his declining days in petulantly and agedly fumbling with piles of unpaid tradesmen’s accounts and unsatisfied loan-interest demands.

  To amuse himself, Mr. Burt is rapidly valuing the old cottages in the centre of the slumbering village and installing electric lighting and modern sanitation when his eye catches the Hall, looking at its
best, with its long, regular frontage and straight chimneys framed by a gap in a line of chestnut trees. He likes the look of it and after pausing to ask a roadman concerning distance from the station, drainage, soil, water, lighting and ownership and finding the answers to this standard estate agent’s catechism satisfactory, he approaches the big house.

  The Hall is not so attractive at close quarters. The main gates at the end of the long, neglected drive are rotting and askew. A tumbledown lodge with dirty, broken windows and blistered doors stands tenantless and choked with ivy and creepers, and leaves the entrance through a ramshackle wicket-gate unguarded. Along the path to the house, unkempt lawns, overrun with untended rambler-roses, neglected shrubs and flower-beds running riot and returned to nature, tell of long-dismissed gardeners. The visitor ploughs his way through masses of sodden leaves, the fruits of many autumns, to the dilapidated front entrance. The cattle and sheep of farmers, who have bought the surrounding parkland from the mortgagees, stop their gnawing and chewing the cud and gaze at the intruder, stupidly placid. All the way, Mr. Burt rapidly and skilfully values and calculates. He greets the wrecked garden, rotten woodwork, rioting flowers, mouldering leaves and the atmosphere of decay and corruption as his allies in striking a bargain. Every one is a deduction from his valuation; each a debit item against the present owner. Climbing the dirty, worn steps, he rubs his hands and tugs at the bell-pull.

  The door is answered, after Mr. Burt’s third united assault on knocker and bell, by a withered old crone in a soiled cap and apron, who pops her head from an upstairs window and squeals down at him. She has all the characteristics of a bird of ill-omen.

  “Go away!” she yells in a shrill, trembling falsetto. “We’ve seen enough of your kind around here lately.”

  Mr. Burt, mistaken for an importunate creditor, uses every weapon in his vast armoury of persuasion to convince the servant otherwise, but fails miserably. At length, the altercation is varied by the voice of the owner himself, unseen, quavering and high-pitched, from behind the still firmly-closed door.

  “What the hell do you want? Can’t I be left in peace among the ruins of my house without being eternally disturbed by a pack of yelling creditors! I’ve nothing for you but a bucket of cold water and two savage dogs. So go your ways and be damned to you.”

  “I’m neither creditor nor broker’s man,” shouts the financier, almost plaintively pleading his cause above the noises of arguing voices and the sounds of moving furniture on the other side of the apparently barricaded door. “I want to buy this place. Buy it from you. I’m open to discuss terms. Very liberal, very favourable terms.…”

  The angry squire inside seems to pass through a series of awful convulsions before he replies. Dogs bark and chains rattle.

  “I’ll see you in hell first!” he screams. “This isn’t my place to sell, but the home of generations and generations of shades before me and heirs to come. Get out, or by God, I’ll set the hounds on you.”

  More barking, savage snufflings and eager whining from within suggest preparations for carrying out the threat, so Mr. Solomon Burt decides to make a tactical retreat.

  All the way home to London, the property man ponders his designs. He has made up his mind to buy Harwood Hall, and once determined, it needs more than a crazy old man to stop him. Already, he sees advertisements in the dailies:

  “Situated half-way between London and the lovely Sussex coast. Quiet and in the heart of beautiful country, yet within a stone’s throw of the main line. Frequent trains to London Bridge and Victoria. An ideal half-way-house between business and the sea. Relaxation after business at the Harwood Park Country Estate.”

  Yes, Harwood Park, that’s it!!

  Mr. Burt savours his literary creation with pleasure and sees visions from the back of his car. The house shall be altered without losing its external grace. He will buy it for a mere song and then …

  Luxury flats with every modern comfort. Tastefully laid-out olde-worlde gardens. Swimming-pools. Squash courts.… They all float before the inward eye of Mr. Burt. And a wealthy clientele of those desiring the country life with West-End conveniences. Eager and willing to pay enormous prices for them.… Mr. Burt’s mouth waters. He is so good tempered with his scheme when he reaches home, that he re-engages his chauffeur and gives him the evening off for breaking down where he did.

  It speaks well for the speed and thoroughness of Mr. Burt’s efforts that Harwood Park Country Estates, Ltd., advertised their eight exclusive tenancies at prices ranging from £350 (top-floor) to £500 (loggia and private sun-lounge) per annum each, inclusive, six months later. Within a month, they had let them all to an assorted body of business men, anxious to see rolling acres as they shaved every morning, jaded actresses eager to become village lady bountifuls, and sundry other families or isolated tenants wishful either to rest in peace or to pursue vice in quiet secrecy.

  For Solomon Burt had not only bought-in all the mortgages at a spanking discount, but had also foreclosed and driven out old Theodore Harwood to an obscure family hotel in Kensington. He had re-decorated the place, installed electricity, modern plumbing, central heating and conditioned air. And he had divided the house into suitably proportioned flats. The gardens blossomed, the old fishpond renewed its youth as a bathing-pool, and the tenniscourts replaced some of the tumbledown greenhouses which, in days long gone, had yielded strawberries in December and priceless exotic blooms all the year round.

  Burt was warned well in advance, however, that he was not going to have it all his own way at Harwood. As the old squire departed, he turned to his persecutor, who happened to be on the spot with a demolishing expert, with a toothless and malevolent leer.

  “You’ve not finished with the Harwoods yet,” cackled the evicted one. “You’ll find other tenants besides your upstarts from London, you destroyer … you swindler! Just wait!”

  The trouble started shortly afterwards.

  First, the water-pipes burst, although the frost had long since gone. Then, an ornamental ceiling in the fine old dining-room crashed down, filling the place with plaster and dust and leaving laths grinning down on those below.

  Workmen began to suffer, too. Tools disappeared. Jobs finished one day were found undone the next. Accidents galore occurred. Two contractors went bankrupt through extras incurred and workmen went on strike from sheer peevishness, created, it seemed, by the atmosphere which pervaded the whole of the building.

  Old villagers toping at the bar of the local inn, shook their heads and gazed pityingly at the joiners and bricklayers on the Hall job who looked in frequently for a strengthening pint.

  “The old ’uns ’ave started their ’auntin’ agen, sure enough. They never was well-disposed to strangers and changes,” asserted old Moulton, the local patriarch, amid acquiescent nods from his fellows. “A mischievous, plaguy lot to them’s they don’t like. And there’s things goin’ on at the ’all that nobody won’t ever like.”

  A plumber on the sanitary arrangements aptly summed up the views of the labouring classes over a supper of jellied-eels one night.

  “I seems all thumbs when I’m workin’ in that bloomin’ ’all,” he told his wife. “Place seems ’aunted, that’s wot it seems. ’Aunted. And h’extra danger demands h’extra pay. See?” And his wife vigorously agreed with him.

  But Mr. Burt was undaunted by obstacles.

  “Confounded nonsense,” he told a contractor who was pleading for some relaxation of the harsh terms of the signed and sealed document with which Solomon had fully covered himself. “There aren’t any such things as ghosts and all the troubles you’re having down there are through your signing-on awkward and bolshie workmen. It’s your own fault. Damned inefficiency. I’ve a good mind to sue you for non-fulfilment. You’ve a blasted nerve blaming it on ghosts. This is the twentieth century, man.”

  The builder departed sorrowfully to file his petition in bankruptcy and was replaced by another victim.

  At length, the perseverance of
Mr. Burt and the martyrdom of his contractors seemed to bear fruit. The unseen powers acknowledged defeat, ceased from their tormenting and the place was finished. One afternoon in late July, just before the general moving-in began, Mr. Burt rubbed his hands in joy over his list of tenancies. Applications for his flats had rolled in. Nay, in several cases it had been like an auction sale. Higher prices than those fixed had been offered to secure possession. There had been a perfect stampede for Mr. Burt’s Harwood benefactions. So much so, that Solomon himself had been greatly impressed by his own handiwork and taken one of them himself. His register, now complete, read as follows:

  Flat 1.

  Ground Floor.

  Mr. and Mrs. Carberry-Peacocke, Retired City Merchant and wife.

  2.

  “

  Mr. and Mrs. Hartwright, Americans, settled in England for a while.

  3.

  “

  Miss Elaine Freyle, West-End actress.

  4.

  First Floor.

  Arthur Williatt, Author and Playwright.

  5.

  “

  Mr. Solomon Burt.

  6.

  “

  Misses Agnes and Edith Pott, Spinsters of limited means.

  7.

  Second Floor.

  Professor Emil Braun, Celebrated Anthropologist and refugee from Vienna.

  8.

  “

  Ernest Brownrigg, Diamond Merchant, of Hatton Garden.

  Lodge.

  Samuel Stone, caretaker.

  By the end of July, all the tenants had moved-in, with the exception of Mr. Brownrigg. His furniture arrived, but he himself wrote to say that he would not be able to appear in person for some time. He would be absent abroad for most of the summer, but was anxious to retain the flat, for which he enclosed a year’s rent in advance.

  There was a house-warming and Mr. Burt paid for champagne. On this occasion he was eventually put to bed by the rest of his tenants, for he was incapable of climbing the stairs under his own power. As he sank to sleep, he was heard to mutter, “All good pals together.”