by Ashby, R. C.
HE ARRIVED AT DUSK
R. C. (Ruby Constance) Ashby (later Ruby Ferguson) was born in Yorkshire in 1899. She was educated at the Girls’ Grammar School, Bradford, and matriculated at St Hilda’s, Oxford in 1919, from which she graduated in 1922 with a degree in English Literature.
Before she began her literary career, Ashby worked in a variety of jobs, including secretary, teacher, journalist, book reviewer, and publisher’s reader. Her first novel was published in 1926 and she went on to write a total of eight novels under the name R. C. Ashby between 1926 and 1934, the best-known of which are He Arrived at Dusk (1933) and Out Went the Taper (1934). All of these books are quite scarce today.
After her marriage to Samuel Ferguson in 1934, she published exclusively under her married name, and her works underwent a complete change of style. Her next book, Lady Rose and Mrs. Memmary (1937), a romantic novel, was popular and well-received and was said to be a favourite of the Queen Mother. She continued to publish a number of romantic novels but was best known for her series of “Jill” books for children, which have remained almost continuously in print since the first “Jill” book appeared in 1949.
Later in life, Ferguson and her husband moved to Jersey, where she died in 1966.
Mark Valentine is the author of several collections of short fiction and has published biographies of Arthur Machen and Sarban. He is the editor of Wormwood, a journal of the literature of the fantastic, supernatural, and decadent, and has previously written the introductions to editions of Walter de la Mare, Robert Louis Stevenson, L. P. Hartley, and others, and has introduced John Davidson’s novel Earl Lavender (1895), Claude Houghton’s This Was Ivor Trent (1935), and Oliver Onions’s The Hand of Kornelius Voyt (1939) for Valancourt Books.
Cover: The cover reproduces the extremely scarce jacket art of the first British edition published by Hodder and Stoughton in 1933.
By the Same Author
AS R.C. ASHBY
The Moorland Man (1926)
The Tale of Rowan Christie (1928)
Beauty Bewitched (1928)
Death on Tiptoe (1931)
Plot Against a Widow (1932)
He Arrived at Dusk (1933)
One Way Traffic (1933)
Out Went the Taper (1934)
AS RUBY FERGUSON
Lady Rose and Mrs. Memmary (1937)
The Moment of Truth (1944)
Our Dreaming Done (1946)
Winter’s Grace (1948)
Turn Again Home (1951)
Apricot Sky (1952)
A Paint-box for Pauline (1953)
The Leopard’s Coast (1954)
For Every Favour (1956)
Doves in my Fig-Tree (1957)
The Cousins of Colonel Ivy (1959)
The Wakeful Guest (1962)
A Woman With a Secret (1965)
Children at the Shop (1967)
THE JILL SERIES
Jill’s Gymkhana (1949)
A Stable for Jill (1951)
Jill Has Two Ponies (1952)
Jill Enjoys Her Ponies (1954)
Jill’s Riding Club (1956)
Rosettes for Jill (1957)
Jill and the Perfect Pony (1959)
Pony Jobs for Jill (1960)
Jill’s Pony Trek (1962)
HE ARRIVED AT DUSK
by
R. C. ASHBY
With a new introduction by
MARK VALENTINE
Kansas City:
VALANCOURT BOOKS
2013
He Arrived at Dusk by R. C. Ashby (Ruby Ferguson)
First published London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1933
First Valancourt Books edition 2013
Copyright © 1933 by R. C. Ashby (Ruby Ferguson)
Introduction © 2013 by Mark Valentine
The Publisher is grateful to Mark Terry of Facsimile Dust Jackets, LLC for providing the reproduction of the original dust jacket art used for the cover of this edition.
Published by Valancourt Books, Kansas City, Missouri
Publisher & Editor: James D. Jenkins
20th Century Series Editor: Simon Stern, University of Toronto
http://www.valancourtbooks.com
All rights reserved. The use of any part of this publication reproduced, transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, or stored in a retrieval system, without prior written consent of the publisher, constitutes an infringement of the copyright law.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Ferguson, Ruby, 1899-1966.
He arrived at dusk / by R.C. Ashby ; with a new introduction by Mark Valentine. – First Valancourt Books edition.
pages cm
ISBN 978-1-939140-44-9 (alk. paper)
1. Detective and mystery stories, English. I. Title.
PR6011.E7I5h4 2013
823’.914–dc23
2013009651
All Valancourt Books publications are printed on acid free paper that meets all ANSI standards for archival quality paper.
Set in Dante MT 11/13.5
INTRODUCTION
There are perhaps few parts of England, unlike the other nations of Britain, that are truly lonely and remote: major roads and significant towns are seldom far away. But the least populated is probably the region of great moors in the most northerly part, the land around and beyond the Roman Wall, in furthest Northumberland. It is also one of the coldest areas, with frost that seldom leaves the hills in winter, and biting winds. It has historically been a ‘debateable land’, with more castles than any other county in England, its borders for centuries contested with Scotland, or between rival clans and families. As late as the 1745 uprising, much of Northumberland declared for Bonnie Prince Charlie and was the scene of skirmish, plotting, torn allegiances and betrayals. Aside from the grand sweep of history, it was also riven by local disputes, cattle-raiding, plundering, and outlawry. Feuds of blood are soaked into the desolate hills and fortified houses of the land. Yet there is also a fine beauty in the long horizons, dawns of pale gold and purple sunsets, and a latent mystery in the brooding hills and haggard stone.
An ideal place, then, for a chilling story of apparitions, uncanny incidents, and dark legends, and the apt choice made by R.C. Ashby for her sixth novel, He Arrived at Dusk (1933). And what a shrewd title she chose, prompting questions at once in the curious reader’s thoughts. Who arrived? Why at dusk? Where did he arrive? What does he want? What happens after he arrives? We suspect at once some enigma, some cause for trepidation, some pall of gloom.
In this bleak, bare landscape, very evocatively described, there is a remote country house, where one evening the traveller arrives. It is true that this is the beginning of many strange tales: but Ashby makes it her own, depicting the journey from the station, the steadfastness of her chief character, and yet the impact the wilderness of the moors has upon him, with a terse precision. And why do travellers arrive at old houses at dusk? Usually because they must: circumstances compel them.
Her character Mertoun has responded to a commission from, it seems, Colonel Barr, the owner of The Broch, a house named after a nearby ancient stone tower, which looms beyond. The reclusive Colonel is seeking a scholar and specialist to catalogue his antiques and books. Again, the arrival of a young, learned but impoverished figure (often a governess or tutor or companion or secretary) in a lonely house is a device found in many forms of fi
ction. The ambiguous status of such genteel employees, neither part of the family nor part of the domestic staff, is often a cause of at least social tension.
But that is the least of Mertoun’s worries. For he soon finds himself faced with a sequence of eerie incidents, involving the shadow of the broch, the living presence of the Roman past, and tense incidents in the house itself. Moreover, the fate of his employer, a mysterious invalid he does not see, begins to concern him. There are tales of a centurion’s ghost, of a lost brother, of a sinister inscribed slab. There are rattlings and apparitions in the house. It is not too long before we begin to suspect something is amiss with these terrifying phenomena: but we are never quite sure, and if ever a book justified the term “page-turner” it is this one. Throughout, Ashby sets out a strong plot, full of uncanny incident, never letting up, and briskly hurtling the reader through the trials and perils of her likeable and credible protagonist.
All the way through, until almost the very end, the reader is kept in suspense about the cause of the strange and haunting events affecting the house. Are ancient evil spirits abroad, or is a macabre, but mortal, villain to blame? He Arrived at Dusk is the very epitome of a rattling good yarn, written with great gusto, with strong characters and with that splendidly bleak evocation of the stark and treeless Northern moorlands. Perhaps the only comparable dark tale from the period is Jessie Douglas Kerruish’s rather better-known werewolf story The Undying Monster (1936). Although there are important differences between them, both books make the fullest use of the classic motifs of the haunted house and ancient curse story, brought up to date in a contemporary setting. This leads to a new sort of dread. Their characters are uneasy not just about what confronts them, but because there really shouldn’t be such hoary old things in their electric-lit world at all: it makes them feel quaint. They are among the first to reflect with irony upon the anachronism of ghosts and portents in this new age. There is a double intrusion in play: not only the traditional incursion of the unearthly into the human sphere, but an assault on the materialist assumptions of a more sceptical and sophisticated society.
R.C. Ashby (the initials stood for Ruby Constance), was the maiden name of a writer who later became better known under her married name of Ruby Ferguson (1899-1966). As Ashby, she published eight novels, some with strong supernatural implications, and most making use of family legends or folklore. The first, The Moorland Man, was published in 1926, and the last, Out Went the Taper, in 1934. She was clearly determined to be a professional writer, alive to the demands of the market, with an over-brimming imagination, and bringing a great zest to the telling of her tales. Her trademark, somewhat akin to some of the crime-and-witchery novels of Gladys Mitchell, was a blending of Gothic elements (lonely houses, stormy weather, legends, pagan remains) with the antics and inventive vigour of modern young men and women. Death on Tiptoe (1931), for example, is a deft, clever tale, about what goes wrong when the lively new owners play hide and seek in an old castle. There’s something Wodehousian about these bright young things, reckless and bold in their between-the-wars ways, who scamper around and shout “Bungho” at each other, and there’s a touch of the world of Lord Peter Wimsey too.
He Arrived at Dusk was among her most successful thrillers. Announced in February 1933, it went rapidly into a second edition the following month, and was for a while the talk of the book papers, heralded (rather too boldly) as “the return of the ghost story”. The influential critic E.B. Osborn of the Morning Post was particularly enthusiastic. “In reading it I had several splendid shudders. The descriptions of scenery are admirable – you live in the real Northumberland from beginning to end. The characterisation is also excellent. . . .” He praised also “the deepening sense of evil in the atmosphere,” and concluded: “Miss Ashby’s mysteries have always intrigued me, but her latest story transcends all her previous successes and surely entitles her to the chieftainship of the Clan Macabre. It is a piece of living literature, not merely an evening’s entertainment.” Nor was he alone. The Saturday Review, in a brief notice, called it “a well nigh perfect admixture of eerie horror, romance and good detecting.”
But yet the book more or less vanished from view from the Forties onwards. It is only in recent years that there has been a renewal of interest in it. One keen champion is J.F. Norris, who in Mystery File acclaimed He Arrived at Dusk as: “Truly a little masterpiece of a book. Reminiscent of Christie at the height of her powers in its brilliant use of misdirection. . . . Really a classic of its kind. One of the best blending of [the] supernatural and detective novel genres written in the 1930s. Interestingly, this pre-dates Du Maurier’s Rebecca by several years and yet has quite a bit of similarity [to] that book’s use of a frightened narrator whose interpretation of events may or may not always be perfect.” He Arrived at Dusk has become one of those titles that savants recommend avidly to each other, being careful not to give too much away. It has become very hard to find in the original edition.
Her last thriller, probably second only to He Arrived at Dusk for strength of incident and relentless pace, was Out Went the Taper (1934). It is possible that she was hoping for Hollywood interest in her work, because here the characters seem to be selected with an eye to the silver screen, including a fairly implausible young American, a Rhodes scholar, visiting friends in a Welsh mansion. E.F. Bleiler, in his Guide to Supernatural Fiction (1983) was appreciative, praising “a tangled complex of crime and the supernatural” which includes visionary experience and poltergeist activity, and concluding “the supernaturalism is strong . . . a good mystery”.
After her marriage to Samuel Ferguson in 1934, Ashby used his surname for her books. Her first book under her married name was Lady Rose and Mrs. Memmary (1937), a complete change of style from her thrillers. This is a romantic novel described in a Guardian review of a recent reprint as “a curious, affecting confection of high Scots romance and social realism”, but which “does not deny the inequalities of Victorian mores or the shattering of illusions that the 20th century will bring.” The book was said to be a favourite of the then Queen consort (later Queen Mother), Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon, herself the daughter of a Scottish estate such as that depicted in the book. But Ruby Ferguson later won huge popularity as the author of the “Jill” series of pony club books for girls, which began in 1949 and concluded in 1962. They were composed for the delight of her step-grandchildren (her husband had sons from an earlier marriage). She also wrote over a dozen other books under this name.
For a while, even the basic details of her life were somewhat misty, and she rather mischievously could also be creative about some of them. But pioneering and careful work by Alison Haymonds has established a more reliable picture. She has established that “Ruby Constance Annie Ashby was born at home in Birchcliffe Road, Hebden Bridge, Yorkshire, on July 28, 1899. Her father David Ashby was a Wesleyan Minister and her mother was Ann Elizabeth, formerly Spencer. She was educated at the Girls’ Grammar School, Bradford, and matriculated at St Hilda’s, [Oxford] in 1919 when her father was a minister in Farnworth, near Bolton. Ruby gained a third class in English Language and Literature in June 1922.” Ruby’s grand-daughter recalls that she knew she ought to have got a better degree, but spent too much time playing bridge.
Before she began her writing career, R.C. Ashby trained as a secretary and seems to have held a number of jobs in that field: she was apparently also variously a teacher, journalist, book reviewer and publisher’s reader. The impression we get is of a busy, versatile and determined young woman, taking any work that would pay, but with a definite preference for those with some sort of literary element.
However, as Alison Haymonds notes, “Ruby’s marriage transformed her life. The independent working woman became the wife of a wealthy, autocratic man, 13 years her senior, who was a considerable figure both in the business and Methodist worlds.” Her husband was “a remarkable, self-made man, an electrical engineer who became one
of the great Methodist philanthropists.” The couple lived in a large house in Wilmslow, Cheshire, on the outer edges of Manchester. Here, Ashby listed her recreations as “travel, country life, hotel keeping”; and her interests as “English History & Literature, Country Home Management”. The last may have meant her professional work on behalf of her husband, but could also be a teasing reference to the country houses in her novels whose spectral “attractions” require robust management. The couple later moved to the Channel Island of Jersey, where Haymonds notes that she “continued to write, play the piano, paint, play bridge, write for the local amateur dramatic society . . . and enjoy getting involved in her husband’s hotels.”
Ruby Ferguson’s creative autobiography of growing up, Children at the Shop (1967), seems in fact to have included much that was a romantic recasting of her actual life, inventing different backgrounds for her parents, and adding siblings that do not seem to have existed in reality. It was a last flourish of her fictional genius and exuberance of imagination. She died of cancer on November 11, 1966, and her grave is at St Brelade’s on Jersey.
It is perhaps possible to see something of her character in Miss Goff, the spirited, resourceful, determined and independent young woman who devotes herself to looking after Colonel Barr in He Arrived at Dusk, defying all the terrors and travails of the house. The author’s grand-daughter Sarah Ferguson has explained that “she was a delightful down to earth Yorkshire woman with a fabulous imagination and a keen sense of humour” and such qualities are strongly in evidence in all her early books. Powerful and inventive, lively and richly descriptive, with high ingenuity and a strong sense of drama, they are certainly ready for a new readership.
