“Agoy! what’s that?” exclaimed one of the men, recoiling from the foot of the ladder.
“By Jen!” ejaculated the other, in equal surprise.
“Good gracious!” gasped the Vicar, who, seeing indistinctly a dark mass lying on the floor, had stooped to examine it, and placed his hand upon a cold, dead face.
The men drew the body into the streak of light that traversed the floor.
It was the corpse of Toby Crooke! There was a frightful scar across his forehead.
The alarm was given. Doctor Lincote, and Mr. Jarlcot, and Turnbull, of the George and Dragon, were on the spot immediately; and many curious and horrified spectators of minor importance.
The first thing ascertained was that the man must have been many hours dead. The next was that his skull was fractured, across the forehead, by an awful blow. The next was that his neck was broken.
His hat was found on the floor, where he had probably laid it, with his handkerchief in it.
The mystery now began to clear a little; for a bell—one of the chime hung in the tower—was found where it had rolled to, against the wall, with blood and hair on the rim of it, which corresponded with the grizzly fracture across the front of his head.
The sack that lay in the vestibule was examined, and found to contain all the church plate; a silver salver that had disappeared, about a month before, from Dr. Lincote’s store of valuables; the Vicar’s gold pencil-case, which he thought he had forgot in the vestry book; silver spoons, and various other contributions, levied from time to time off a dozen different households, the mysterious disappearance of which spoils had, of late years, begun to make the honest little community uncomfortable. Two bells had been taken down from the chime; and now the shrewd part of the assemblage, putting things together, began to comprehend the nefarious plans of the sexton, who lay mangled and dead on the floor of the tower, where only two days ago he had tolled the holy bell to call the good Christians of Golden Friars to worship.
The body was carried into the yard of the George and Dragon and laid in the old coach-house; and the townsfolk came grouping in to have a peep at the corpse, and stood round, looking darkly, and talking as low as if they were in a church.
The Vicar, in gaiters and slightly shovel hat, stood erect, as one in a little circle of notables— the doctor, the attorney, Sir Geoffrey Mardykes, who happened to be in the town, and Turnbull, the host—in the centre of the paved yard, they having made an inspection of the body, at which troops of the village stragglers, to-ing and fro-ing, were gaping and frowning as they whispered their horrible conjectures.
“What d’ye think o’ that?” said Tom Scales, the old hostler of the George, looking pale, with a stern, faint smile on his lips, as he and Dick Linklin sauntered out of the coach-house together.
“The deaul will hev his ain noo,” answered Dick, in his friend’s ear. “T’ sexton’s got a craigthraw like he gav’ the lass over the dints of Scarsdale; ye mind what the aid soger telt us when he hid his face in the kitchen of the George here? By Jen! I’ll ne’er forget that story.”
“I ween ’twas all true enough,” replied the hostler; “and the sizzup he gav’ the sleepin’ man wi’ t’ poker across the forehead. See whar the edge o’ t’ bell took him, and smashed his ain, the self-same lids. By ma sang, I wonder the deaul did na carry awa’ his corpse i’ the night, as he did wi’ Tam Lunder’s at Mooltern Mill.”
“Hout, man, who ever sid t’ deaul inside o’ a church?”
“The corpse is ill-faur’d enew to scare Satan himsel’, for that matter; though it’s true what you say. Ay, ye’re reet tul a trippet, thar; for Beelzebub dar’n’t show his snout inside the church, not the length o’ the black o’ my nail.”
While this discussion was going on, the gentlefolk who were talking the matter over in the centre of the yard had dispatched a message for the coroner all the way to the town of Hextan.
The last tint of sunset was fading from the sky by this time; so, of course, there was no thought of an inquest earlier than next day.
In the meantime it was horribly clear that the sexton had intended to rob the church of its plate, and had lost his life in the attempt to carry the second bell, as we have seen, down the worn ladder of the tower. He had tumbled backwards and broken his neck upon the floor of the loft; and the heavy bell, in its fall, descended with its edge across his forehead.
Never was a man more completely killed by a double catastrophe, in a moment.
The bells and the contents of the sack, it was surmised, he meant to have conveyed across the lake that night, and with the help of his spade and pick to have buried them in Clousted Forest, and returned, after an absence of but a few hours—as he easily might—before morning, unmissed and unobserved. He would no doubt, having secured his booty, have made such arrangements as would have made it appear that the church had been broken into. He would, of course, have taken all measures to divert suspicion from himself, and have watched a suitable opportunity to repossess himself of the buried treasure and dispose of it in safety.
And now came out, into sharp relief, all the stories that had, one way or other, stolen after him into the town. Old Mrs. Pullen fainted when she saw him, and told Doctor Lincote, after, that she thought he was the highwayman who fired the shot that killed the coachman the night they were robbed on Hounslow Heath. There were the stories also told by the wayfaring old soldier with the wooden leg, and fifty others, up to this more than half disregarded, but which now seized on the popular belief with a startling grasp.
The fleeting light soon expired, and twilight was succeeded by the early night.
The inn yard gradually became quiet; and the dead sexton lay alone, in the dark, on his back, locked up in the old coach-house, the key of which was safe in the pocket of Tom Scales, the trusty old hostler of the George.
It was about eight o’clock, and the hostler, standing alone on the road in the front of the open door of the George and Dragon, had just smoked his pipe out. A bright moon hung in the frosty sky. The fells rose from the opposite edge of the lake like phantom mountains. The air was stirless. Through the boughs and sprays of the leafless elms no sigh or motion, however hushed, was audible. Not a ripple glimmered on the lake, which at one point only reflected the brilliant moon from its dark blue expanse like burnished steel. The road that runs by the inn door, along the margin of the lake, shone dazzlingly white.
White as ghosts, among the dark holly and juniper, stood the tall piers of the Vicar’s gate, and their great stone balls, like heads, overlooking the same road, a few hundred yards up the lake, to the left. The early little town of Golden Friars was quiet by this time. Except for the townsfolk who were now collected in the kitchen of the inn itself, no inhabitant was now outside his own threshold.
Tom Scales was thinking of turning in. He was beginning to fell a little queer. He was thinking of the sexton, and could not get the fixed features of the dead man out of his head, when he heard the sharp though distant ring of a horse’s hoof upon the frozen road. Tom’s instinct apprized him of the approach of a guest to the George and Dragon. His experienced ear told him that the horseman was approaching by the Dardale road, which, after crossing that wide and dismal moss, passes the southern fells by Dunner Cleugh and finally enters the town of Golden Friars by joining the Mardykes-road, at the edge of the lake, close to the gate of the Vicar’s house.
A clump of tall trees stood at this point; but the moon shone full upon the road and cast their shadow backward.
The hoofs were plainly coming at a gallop, with a hollow rattle. The horseman was a long time in appearing. Tom wondered how he had heard the sound—so sharply frosty as the air was—so very far away.
He was right in his guess. The visitor was coming over the mountainous road from Dardale Moss; and he now saw a horseman, who must have turned the corner of the Vicar’s house at the moment when his eye was wearied; for when he saw him for the first time he was advancing, in the hazy moonlight, like th
e shadow of a cavalier, at a gallop, upon the level strip of road that skirts the margin of the mere, between the George and the Vicar’s piers.
The hostler had not long to wonder why the rider pushed his beast at so furious a pace, and how he came to have heard him, as he now calculated, at least three miles away. A very few moments sufficed to bring horse and rider to the inn door.
It was a powerful black horse, something like the great Irish hunter that figured a hundred years ago, and would carry sixteen stone with ease across country. It would have made a grand charger. Not a hair turned. It snorted, it pawed, it arched its neck; then threw back its ears and down its head, and looked ready to lash, and then to rear; and seemed impatient to be off again, and incapable of standing quiet for a moment.
The rider got down
“As light as shadow falls.”
But he was a tall, sinewy figure. He wore a cape or short mantle, a cocked hat, and a pair of jackboots, such as held their ground in some primitive corners of England almost to the close of the last century.
“Take him, lad,” said he to old Scales. “You need not walk or wisp him—he never sweats or tires. Give him his oats, and let him take his own time to eat them. House!” cried the stranger— in the old-fashioned form of summons which still lingered, at that time, in out-of-the-way places—in a deep and piercing voice.
As Tom Scales led the horse away to the stables it turned its head towards its master with a short, shrill neigh.
“About your business, old gentleman—we must not go too fast,” the stranger cried back again to his horse, with a laugh as harsh and piercing; and he strode into the house.
The hostler led this horse into the inn yard. In passing, it sidled up to the coach-house gate, within which lay the dead sexton—snorted, pawed and lowered its head suddenly, with ear close to the plank, as if listening for a sound from within; then uttered again the same short, piercing neigh.
The hostler was chilled at this mysterious coquetry with the dead. He liked the brute less and less every minute.
In the meantime, its master had proceeded.
“I’ll go to the inn kitchen,” he said, in his startling bass, to the drawer who met him in the passage.
And on he went, as if he had known the place all his days: not seeming to hurry himself— stepping leisurely, the servant thought—but gliding on at such a rate, nevertheless, that he had passed his guide and was in the kitchen of the George before he had got much more than halfway to it.
A roaring fire of dry wood, peat and coal lighted up this snug but spacious apartment—flashing on pots and pans, and dressers high-piled with pewter plates and dishes; and making the uncertain shadows of the long “hanks” of onions and many a flitch and ham, depending from the ceiling, dance on its glowing surface.
The doctor and the attorney, even Sir Geoffrey Mardykes, did not disdain on this occasion to take chairs and smoke their pipes by the kitchen fire, where they were in the thick of the gossip and discussion excited by the terrible event.
The tall stranger entered uninvited.
He looked like a gaunt, athletic Spaniard of forty, burned half black in the sun, with a bony, flattened nose. A pair of fierce black eyes were just visible under the edge of his hat; and his mouth seemed divided, beneath the moustache, by the deep scar of a hare-lip.
Sir Geoffrey Mardykes and the host of the George, aided by the doctor and the attorney, were discussing and arranging, for the third or fourth time, their theories about the death and the probable plans of Toby Crooke, when the stranger entered.
The new-comer lifted his hat, with a sort of smile, for a moment from his black head.
“What do you call this place, gentlemen?” asked the stranger.
“The town of Golden Friars, sir,” answered the doctor politely.
“The George and Dragon, sir: Anthony Turnbull, at your service,” answered mine host, with a solemn bow, at the same moment—so that the two voices went together, as if the doctor and the innkeeper were singing a catch.
“The George and the Dragon,” repeated the horseman, expanding his long hands over the fire which he had approached. “Saint George, King George, the Dragon, the Devil: it is a very grand idol, that outside your door, sir. You catch all sorts of worshippers—courtiers, fanatics, scamps: all’s fish, eh? Everybody welcome, provided he drinks like one. Suppose you brew a bowl or two of punch. I’ll stand it. How many are we? Here—count, and let us have enough. Gentlemen, I mean to spend the night here, and my horse is in the stable. What holiday, fun, or fair has got so many pleasant faces together? When I last called here—for, now I bethink me, I have seen the place before—you all looked sad. It was on a Sunday, that dismalest of holidays; and it would have been positively melancholy only that your sexton—that saint upon earth—Mr. Crooke, was here.” He was looking round, over his shoulder, and added: “Ha! don’t I see him there?”
Frightened a good deal were some of the company. All gaped in the direction in which, with a nod, he turned his eyes.
“He’s not thar—he can’t be thar—we see he’s not thar,” said Turnbull, as dogmatically as old Joe Willet might have delivered himself—for he did not care that the George should earn the reputation of a haunted house. “He’s met an accident, sir: he’s dead—he’s elsewhere—and therefore can’t be here.”
Upon this the company entertained the stranger with the narrative—which they made easy by a division of labour, two or three generally speaking at a time, and no one being permitted to finish a second sentence without finding himself corrected and supplanted.
“The man’s in Heaven, so sure as you’re not,” said the traveller so soon as the story was ended. “What! he was fiddling with the church bell, was he, and d—d for that—eh? Landlord, get us some drink. A sexton d—d for pulling down a church bell he has been pulling at for ten years!”
“You came, sir, by the Dardale-road, I believe?” said the doctor (village folk are curious). “A dismal moss is Dardale Moss, sir; and a bleak cm’ up the fells on t’other side.”
“I say ‘Yes’ to all—from Dardale Moss, as black as pitch and as rotten as the grave, up that zigzag wall you call a road, that looks like chalk in the moon light, through Dunner Cleugh, as dark as a coal-pit, and down here to the George and the Dragon, where you have a roaring fire, wise men, good punch—here it is—and a corpse in your coach-house. Where the carcase is, there will the eagles be gathered together. Come, landlord, ladle out the nectar. Drink, gentlemen—drink, all. Brew another bowl at the bar. How divinely it stinks of alcohol! I hope you like it, gentlemen: it smells all over of spices, like a mummy. Drink, friends. Ladle, landlord. Drink, all. Serve it out.”
The guest fumbled in his pocket, and produced three guineas, which he slipped into Turnbull’s fat palm.
“Let punch flow till that’s out. I’m an old friend of the house. I call here, back and forward. I know you well, Turnbull, though you don’t recognize me.”
“You have the advantage of me, sir,” said Mr. Turnbull, looking hard on that dark and sinister countenance—which, or the like of which, he could have sworn he had never seen before in his life. But he liked the weight and colour of his guineas, as he dropped them into his pocket. “I hope you will find yourself comfortable while you stay.”
“You have given me a bedroom?”
“Yes, sir—the cedar chamber.”
“I know it—the very thing. No—no punch for me. By and by, perhaps.”
The talk went on, but the stranger had grown silent. He had seated himself on an oak bench by the fire, towards which he extended his feet and hands with seeming enjoyment; his cocked hat being, however, a little over his face.
Gradually the company began to thin. Sir Geoffrey Mardykes was the first to go; then some of the humbler townsfolk. The last bowl of punch was on its last legs. The stranger walked into the passage and said to the drawer:
“Fetch me a lantern. I must see my nag. Light it—hey! That will do. No—you ne
ed not come.”
The gaunt traveller took it from the man’s hand and strode along the passage to the door of the stable-yard, which he opened and passed out.
Tom Scales, standing on the pavement, was looking through the stable window at the horses when the stranger plucked his shirt-sleeve. With an inward shock the hostler found himself alone in presence of the very person he had been thinking of.
“I say—they tell me you have something to look at in there”—he pointed with his thumb at the old coach-house door. “Let us have a peep.”
Tom Scales happened to be at that moment in a state of mind highly favourable to anyone in search of a submissive instrument. He was in great perplexity, and even perturbation. He suffered the stranger to lead him to the coach-house gate.
“You must come in and hold the lantern,” said he. “I’ll pay you handsomely.”
The old hostler applied his key and removed the padlock.
“What are you afraid of? Step in and throw the light on his face,” said the stranger grimly. “Throw open the lantern: stand there. Stoop over him a little—he won’t bite you. Steady, cr you may pass the night with him!”
In the meantime the company at the George had dispersed; and, shortly after, Anthony Turnbull—who, like a good landlord, was always last in bed, and first up, in his house—was taking, alone, his last look round the kitchen before making his final visit to the stable-yard, when Tom Scales tottered into the kitchen, looking like death, his hair standing upright; and he sat down on an oak chair, all in a tremble, wiped his forehead with his hand, and, instead of speaking, heaved a great sigh or two.
It was not till after he had swallowed a dram of brandy that he found his voice, and said:
“We’ev the deaul himsel’ in t’ house! By Jen! ye’d best send fo t’ sif’ (the clergyman). “Happen he’ll tak him in hand wi’ holy writ, and send him elsewhidder deftly. Lord atween us and harm! I’m a sinfu’ man. I tell ye, Mr. Turnbull, I dar’n’t stop in t’ George to-night under the same roof wi’ him.”
Gift-Wrapped & Toe-Tagged: A Melee of Misc. Holiday Anthology Page 42
