Of course, we all liked the house. It had the most modern of lighting and heating arrangements, though the plumbing sent ghostly noises and clanks far down into its interior whenever you turned on a tap. But the smell of the past was in it; and you could not get over the idea that somebody was following you about. Now, at the host’s flat mention of a certain possibility, we all looked at our wives.
‘But you never told us,’ said the historian’s wife, rather shocked, ‘you never told us you had a ghost here!’
‘I don’t know that I have,’ replied our host quite seriously. ‘All I have is a bundle of evidence about something queer that once happened. It’s all right; I haven’t put anyone in that little room at the head of the stairs. So we can drop the discussion, if you’d rather.’
‘You know we can’t,’ said the inspector: who, as a matter of strict fact, is an Assistant Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police. He smoked a large cigar, and contemplated ghosts with satisfaction. ‘This is exactly the time and place to hear about it. What is it?’
‘It’s rather in your line,’ our host told him slowly. Then he looked at the historian. ‘And in your line, too. It’s a historical story. I suppose you’d call it a historical romance.’
‘I probably should. What is the date?’
‘The date is the year sixteen hundred and sixty.’
‘That’s Charles the Second, isn’t it, Will?’ demanded the historian’s wife; she annoys him sometimes by asking these questions. ‘I’m terribly fond of them. I hope it has lots of big names in it. You know: Charles the Second and Buckingham and the rest of them. I remember, when I was a little girl, going to see’ – she mentioned a great actor – ‘play David Garrick. I was looking forward to it. I expected to see the programme and the cast of characters positively bristling with people like Dr Johnson and Goldsmith and Burke and Gibbon and Reynolds, going in and out every minute. There wasn’t a single one of them in it, and I felt swindled before the play had begun.’
The trouble was that she spoke without conviction. The historian looked sceptically over his pince-nez.
‘I warn you,’ he said, ‘if this is something you claim to have found in a drawer, in a crabbed old handwriting and all the rest of it, I’m going to be all over you professionally. Let me hear one anachronism –’
But he spoke without conviction, too. Our host was so serious that there was a slight, uneasy silence, in the group.
‘No. I didn’t find it in a drawer; the parson gave it to me. And the handwriting isn’t particularly crabbed. I can’t show it to you, because it’s being typed, but it’s a diary: a great, hefty mass of stuff. Most of it is rather dull, though I’m steeped in the seventeenth century, and I confess I enjoy it. The diary was begun in the summer of ’60 – just after the Restoration – and goes on to the end of ’64. It was kept by Mr Everard Poynter, who owned Manfred Manor (that’s six or seven miles from here) when it was a farm.
‘I know that fellow,’ he added, looking thoughtfully at the fire. ‘I know about him and his sciatica and his views on mutton and politics. I know why he went up to London to dance on Oliver Cromwell’s grave, and I can guess who stole the two sacks of malt out of his brew-house while he was away. I see him as half a Hat; the old boy had a beaver hat he wore on his wedding day, and I’ll bet he wore it to his death. It’s out of all this that I got the details about people. The actual facts I got from the report of the coroner’s inquest, which the parson lent me.’
‘Hold on!’ said the Inspector, sitting up straight. ‘Did this fellow Poynter see the ghost and die?’
‘No, no. Nothing like that. But he was one of the witnesses. He saw a man hacked to death, with thirteen stab wounds in his body, from a hand that wasn’t there and a weapon that didn’t exist.’
There was a silence.
‘A murder?’ asked the Inspector.
‘A murder.’
‘Where?’
‘In that little room at the head of the stairs. It used to be called the Ladies’ Withdrawing Room.’
Now, it is all very well to sit in your well-lighted flat in town and say we were hypnotised by an atmosphere. You can hear motorcars crashing their gears, or curse somebody’s wireless. You did not sit in that house, with a great wind rushing up off the downs, and a wall of darkness built up for three miles around you: knowing that at a certain hour you would have to retire to your room and put out the light, completing the wall.
‘I regret to say,’ went on our host, ‘that there are no great names. These people were no more concerned with the Court of Charles the Second – with one exception – than we are concerned with the Court of George the Sixth. They lived in a little, busy, possibly ignorant world. They were fierce, fire-eating Royalists, most of them, who cut the Stuart arms over their chimney-pieces again and only made a gala trip to town to see the regicides executed in October of ’60. Poynter’s diary is crowded with them. Among others there is Squire Radlow, who owned this house then and was a great friend of Poynter. There was Squire Radlow’s wife, Martha, and his daughter Mary.
‘Mistress Mary Radlow was seventeen years old. She was not one of your fainting girls. Poynter – used to giving details – records that she was five feet tall, and thirty-two inches round the bust. “Pretty and delicate,” Poynter says, with hazel eyes and a small mouth. But she could spin flax against any woman in the county; she once drained a pint of wine at a draught, for a wager; and she took eager pleasure in any good spectacle, like a bear-baiting or a hanging. I don’t say that flippantly, but as a plain matter of fact. She was also fond of fine clothes, and danced well.
‘In the summer of ’6o, Mistress Mary was engaged to be married to Richard Oakley, of Rawndene. Nobody seems to have known much about Oakley. There are any number of references to him in the diary, but Poynter gives up trying to make him out. Oakley was older than the girl; of genial disposition, though he wore his hair like a Puritan; and a great reader of books. He had a good estate at Rawndene, which he managed well, but his candle burned late over his books; and he wandered abroad in all weathers, summer or frost, in as black a study as the Black Man.
‘You might have thought that Mistress Mary would have preferred somebody livelier. But Oakley was good enough company, by all accounts, and he suited her exactly – they tell me that wives understand this.
‘And here is where the trouble enters. At the Restoration, Oakley was looking a little white. Not that his loyalty was exactly suspect; but he had bought his estate under the Commonwealth. If sales made under the Commonwealth were now declared null and void by the new Government, it meant ruin for Oakley; and also, under the business-like standards of the time, it meant the end of his prospective marriage to Mistress Mary.
‘Then Gerald Vanning appeared.
‘Hoy, what a blaze he must have made! He was fresh and oiled from Versailles, from Cologne, from Bruges, from Brussels, from Breda, from everywhere he had gone in the train of the formerly exiled king. Vanning was one of those “confident young men” about whom we hear so much complaint from old-style Cavaliers in the early years of the Restoration. His family had been very powerful in Kent before the Civil Wars. Everybody knew he would be well rewarded, as he was.
‘If this were a romance, I could now tell you how Mistress Mary fell in love with the handsome young Cavalier, and forgot about Oakley. But the truth seems to be that she never liked Vanning. Vanning disgusted Poynter by a habit of bowing and curvetting, with a superior smile, every time he made a remark. It is probable that Mistress Mary understood him no better than Poynter did.
‘There is a description in the diary of a dinner Squire Radlow gave to welcome him here at this house. Vanning came over in a coach, despite the appalling state of the roads, with a dozen lackeys in attendance. This helped to impress the Squire, though nothing had as yet been settled on him by the new regime. Vanning already wore his hair long, whereas the others were just growing theirs. They must have looked odd and patchy, like men beginning to
grow beards, and rustic enough to amuse him.
‘But Mistress Mary was there. Vanning took one look at her, clapped his hand on the back of a chair, bowed, rolled up his eyes, and began to lay siege to her in the fulldress style of the French king taking a town. He slid bons mots on his tongue like sweetmeats; he hiccoughed; he strutted; he directed killing ogles. Squire Radlow and his wife were enraptured. They liked Oakley of Rawndene – but it was possible that Oakley might be penniless in a month. Whereas Vanning was to be heaped with preferments, a matter of which he made no secret. Throughout this dinner Richard Oakley looked unhappy, and “shifted his eyes”.
‘When the men got drunk after dinner, Vanning spoke frankly to Squire Radlow. Oakley staggered out to get some air under the apple trees; what between liquor and crowding misfortunes, he did not feel well. Together among the fumes, Vanning and Squire Radlow shouted friendship at each other, and wept. Vanning swore he would never wed anybody but Mistress Mary, not if his soul rotted deep in hell as Oliver’s. The Squire was stern, but not too stern. “Sir,” said the Squire, “you abuse my hospitality; my daughter is pledged to the gentleman who has just left us; but it may be that we must speak of this presently.” Poynter, though he saw the justice of the argument, went home disturbed.
‘Now, Gerald Vanning was not a fool. I have seen his portrait, painted a few years later when periwigs came into fashion. It is a shiny, shrewd, razorish kind of face. He had some genuine Classical learning, and a smattering of scientific monkey tricks, the new toy of the time. But, above all, he had foresight. In the first place, he was genuinely smitten with hazel eyes and other charms. In the second place, Mistress Mary Radlow was a catch. When awarding bounty to the faithful, doubtless the King and Sir Edward Hyde would not forget Vanning of Mallingford; on the other hand, it was just possible they might.
‘During the next three weeks it was almost taken for granted that Vanning should eventually become the Squire’s son-in-law. Nothing was said or done, of course. But Vanning dined a dozen times here, drank with the Squire, and gave to the Squire’s wife a brooch once owned by Charles the First. Mistress Mary spoke of it furiously to Poynter.
‘Then the unexpected news came.
‘Oakley was safe in his house and lands. An Act had been passed to confirm all sales and leases of property since the Civil Wars. It meant that Oakley was once more the well-to-do son-in-law; and the Squire could no longer object to his bargain.
‘I have here an account of how this news was received at the manor. I did not get it from Poynter’s diary. I got it from the records of the coroner’s inquest. What astonishes us when we read these chronicles is the blunt directness, the violence, like a wind, or a pistol clapped to the head, with which people set about getting what they wanted. For, just two months afterwards, there was murder done.’
* * *
Our host paused. The room was full of the reflections of firelight. He glanced at the ceiling; what we heard up there was merely the sound of a servant walking overhead.
‘Vanning,’ he went on, ‘seems to have taken the fact quietly enough. He was here at the manor when Oakley arrived with the news. It was five or six o’clock in the afternoon. Mistress Mary, the Squire, the Squire’s wife, and Vanning were sitting in the Ladies’ Withdrawing Room. This was (and is) the room at the head of the stairs – a little square place, with two ‘panel’ windows that would not open. It was furnished with chairs of oak and brocade; a needlework-frame; and a sideboard chastely bearing a plate of oranges, a glass jug of water, and some glasses.
‘There was only one candle burning, at some distance from Vanning, so that nobody had a good view of his face. He sat in his riding-coat, with his sword across his lap. When Oakley came in with the news, he was observed to put his hand on his sword; but afterwards he “made a leg” and left without more words.
‘The wedding had originally been set for the end of November; both Oakley and Mistress Mary still claimed this date. It was accepted with all the more cheerfulness by the Squire, since, in the intervening months, Vanning had not yet received any dazzling benefits. True, he had been awarded £500 a year by the Healing and Blessed Parliament. But he was little better off than Oakley; a bargain was a bargain, said the Squire, and Oakley was his own dear son. Nobody seems to know what Vanning did in the interim, except that he settled down quietly at Mallingford.
‘But from this time curious rumours began to go about the countryside. They all centred round Richard Oakley. Poynter records some of them, at first evidently not even realizing their direction. They were as light as dandelion-clocks blown off, but they floated and settled.
‘Who was Oakley? What did anybody know about him, except that he had come here and bought land under Oliver? He had vast learning, and above a hundred books in his house; what need did he have of that? What had he been? A parson? A doctor of letters of physic? Or letters of a more unnatural kind? Why did he go for long walks in the woods, particularly after dusk?
‘Oakley, if questioned, said that this was his nature. But an honest man, meaning an ordinary man, could understand no such nature. A wood was thick; you could not tell what might be in it after nightfall; an honest man preferred the tavern. Such whispers were all the more rapid-moving because of the troubled times. The broken bones of a Revolution are not easily healed. Then there was the unnatural state of the weather. In winter there was no cold at all: the roads dusty; a swarm of flies; and the rosebushes full of leaves into the following January.
‘Oakley heard none of the rumours, or pretended to hear none. It was Jamy Achen, a lad of weak mind and therefore afraid of nothing, who saw something following Richard Oakley through Gallows Copse. The boy said he had not got a good look at it, since the time was after dusk. But he heard it rustle behind the trees, peering out at intervals after Mr Oakley. He said that it seemed human, but that he was not sure it was alive.
‘On the night of Friday, the 26th November, Gerald Vanning rode over to this house alone. It was seven o’clock, a late hour for the country. He was admitted to the lower hall by Kitts, the Squire’s steward, and he asked for Mr Oakley. Kitts told him that Mr Oakley was above-stairs with Mistress Mary, and that the Squire was asleep over supper with Mr Poynter.
‘It is certain that Vanning was wearing no sword. Kitts held the candle high and looked at him narrowly, for he seemed on a wire of apprehension and kept glancing over his shoulder as he pulled off his gloves. He wore jackboots, a riding-coat half-buttoned, a lace band at the neck, and a flat-crowned beaver hat with a gold band. Under his sharp nose there was a little edge of moustache, and he was sweating.
‘“Mr Oakley has brought a friend with him, I think,” says Vanning.
‘“No, sir,” says Kitts, “he is alone.”
‘“But I am sure his friend has followed him,” says Vanning, again twitching his head round and looking over his shoulder. He also jumped as though something had touched him, and kept turning round and round and looking sharply into corners as though he were playing hide-and-seek.
‘“Well!” says Mr Vanning, with a whistle of breath through his nose. “Take me to Mistress Mary. Stop! First fetch two or three brisk lads from the kitchen, and you shall go with me.”
‘The steward was alarmed, and asked what was the matter. Vanning would not tell him, but instructed him to see that the servants carried cudgels and lights. Four of them went above-stairs. Vanning knocked at the door of the Withdrawing Room, and was bidden to enter. The servants remained outside, and both the lights and the cudgels trembled in their hands: later they did not know why.
‘As the door opened and closed, Kitts caught a glimpse of Mistress Mary sitting by the table in the rose-brocade dress she reserved usually for Sundays, and Oakley sitting on the edge of the table beside her. Both looked round as though surprised.
‘Presently Kitts heard voices talking, but so low he could not make out what was said. The voices spoke more rapidly; then there was a sound of moving about. The next thing to which
Kitts could testify was a noise as though a candlestick had been knocked over. There was a thud; a high-pitched kind of noise; muffled breathing sounds and a sort of thrashing on the floor; and Mistress Mary suddenly beginning to scream over it.
‘Kitts and his three followers laid hold of the door, but someone had bolted it. They attacked the door in a way that roused the Squire in the dining-room below, but it held. Inside, after a silence, someone was heard to stumble and grope towards the door. Squire Radlow and Mr Poynter came running up the stairs just as the door was unbolted from inside.
‘Mistress Mary was standing there, panting, with her eyes wide and staring. She was holding up one edge of her full skirt, where it was stained with blood as though someone had scoured and polished a weapon there. She cried to them to bring lights; and one of the servants held up a lantern in the doorway.
‘Vanning was half-lying, half-crouching over against the far wall, with a face like oiled paper as he lifted round his head to look at them. But they were looking at Oakley, or what was left of Oakley. He had fallen near the table, with the candle smashed beside him. They could not tell how many wounds there were in Oakley’s neck and body; above a dozen, Poynter thought, and he was right. Vanning stumbled over and tried to lift him up, but of course, it was too late. Now listen to Poynter’s own words:
‘“Mr Radlow ran to Mr Vanning and laid hold of him, crying: ‘You are a murderer! You have murdered him!’ Mr Vanning cried to him: ‘By God and His mercy, I have not touched him! I have no sword or dagger by me!’ And indeed, this was true. For he was flung down on the floor by this bloody work, and ordered to be searched, but not so much as a pin was there in his clothes.
Murder under the Christmas Tree Page 14