The Valancourt Book of Horror Stories

by James D. Jenkins

  ‘Where will you live?’

  ‘I’m having a sort of flat done up over the stables. It wasn’t easy to arrange – the work permits and so on were endless – but they agreed finally because I shall still be farming the land. It’ll be quite comfortable and I shall still be living more or less in my own home. And if things go well after the war, perhaps we can move back.’

  ‘Government concerns are like women. Easy to get into a house, impossible to get out.’

  Richard laughed.

  ‘We want no cynicism from departing heroes,’ he said.

  Then Anne rejoined us.

  ‘Robin is asleep,’ she said. ‘He put Uncle Jonathan before Mummy and Daddy in his prayers tonight. Afterwards he told me it was just this once, because Uncle Jonathan was going away to the war.’

  And two big tears had rolled slowly down her cheeks.

  This, then, was the family to which I was returning after so long. My sister Anne, her gentle husband with his cherished acres of Kentish soil, and my nephew Robin – now, I must suppose, an unknown quantity. And, of course, the last bottle of 1912. How wonderful it would be to sit with them all again, above the stables or perhaps in the old house itself, hearing Richard’s quiet voice tell of the crops or the summer’s cricket, persuading Robin to take me back into his life and to talk of his school and his friends, and drinking the noblest of all wines from Anne’s beautiful glass. I was not ashamed that I thought almost as much of the wine as of the people I loved, for the bottle of wine had become a symbol to me as the years went on. It was the symbol of my return; when it appeared, cradled in Richard’s careful hands, it would be a sign that the years of pain were finally done and that at last and for ever I was home. What more seemly offering to the returning soldier and what more fitting object for his thoughts? Wine, that maketh glad the heart of a man.

  My aeroplane was punctual, but in London I came up against a mild difficulty. I had promised in my letter from Delhi to warn Anne as soon as I reached England. Enquiring from the telephone exchange, I found that Richard’s house was now listed as ——— Hospital, and that they had no number for Richard himself, whom I must presume was still living with Anne above the stables. That Richard should not be listed was really natural enough, because at the time when he had the stables done up to live in, neither love nor money could procure private telephones and this, according to the exchange, was still the case. But how to warn Anne? I toyed with the idea of ringing the Hospital and asking them to take over a message, but did not fancy talking to some sniffish Matron who would make me feel she was being put upon. In the end I dictated a wire, incurring some expense by making it elaborately plain in the address that the recipient lived in an annexe of the Hospital. I should be arriving by train, I told Anne, at nine-thirty that night.

  There was no one to meet me at the station (no petrol? Had that wretched wire misfired after all my trouble?), so I took a taxi to the gate of the park where, having only a small case, I yielded to a sentimental impulse and paid off the driver. I would walk up the drive, I thought, at once delaying and giving spice to the arrival I had dreamed of so often. Although it had been dark some time, there was a fair three-quarter moon and I could relish the familiar trees and hedges. At first I was surprised to find myself walking, not on gravel, but on concrete; then I remembered that government hospitals have money to spend. I hoped they had not spent too much, for I cared little for alteration, let it be a cause that was never so excellent. On the whole I was reassured. There were two or three shapeless huts in the fields on either side, but perhaps Richard would find them useful when the hospital left or be able to remove them. And as I approached the house, I saw that its low and graceful front, long and white and welcoming, was the same as ever; save for a couple of ambulances parked at the bottom of the steps nothing indicated disturbance or even change. Inside of course . . . But I could hear about that later. Now I must go to my family. To the bottle of 1912. I turned along a wall, went through a door, stepped into the stable yard. And there to greet me, with his head sticking out of a window above the stables, was my nephew Robin.

  ‘Uncle Jonathan,’ he called, ‘uncle Jonathan.’

  ‘Robin,’ I said, ‘oh, Robin.’

  ‘I knew you were coming,’ he called.

  ‘You had my telegram all right?’

  ‘I knew you were coming. Go through that door in front of you and up the stairs. I’m in the first room at the top.’

  I opened the door and, with some difficulty, picked my way up the narrow and uncarpeted stairway. War-time work, I thought; shoddy. But there was nothing shoddy or uncomfortable about the room in which I found my nephew. There was a polished table and a bright fire. Robin himself was standing near the window, behind a beautifully covered sofa which I remembered from the house in the old days. He had grown up splendidly, my godson. Straight fair hair, a round, honest face with a clear if slightly pale complexion. Bright eyes. A sound, well-proportioned build, suggesting that he was ten or eleven rather than nine. Robin had always been big for his age. He made a handsome figure standing there behind the sofa in his blue pyjamas, allowed to wait up – how else on such a night – to welcome his uncle home.

  ‘I’ve waited so long for you to come,’ he said, ‘to welcome you back from the war. And then today they told me you were coming.’

  ‘I took a lot of trouble to address the telegram right,’ I said.

  Then I waited for him to come to me. He did not move. Boys of nine dislike demonstration, I thought, they don’t want to be kissed and mauled about even by mothers and long-lost uncles. He is shy, reserved, as I knew he would be. Let him come in his own time.

  ‘Where are Mummy and Daddy?’ I asked.

  ‘I always knew you were all right,’ he said; ‘I knew you would come back.’

  I could wait no longer.

  ‘Then come and shake hands with me, Robin. Let me have a look at you.’

  Still he did not move.

  ‘I knew you would come back. The wine is ready for you.’

  He pointed to a small side table. On it stood a decanter, gleaming, purple, imperial, and by it one of Anne’s most beautiful glasses, into which some wine had already been poured.

  ‘The 1912?’ I asked. ‘The last bottle?’

  ‘Yes, Uncle Jonathan. The last bottle. Now you must drink.’

  ‘But where are Mummy and Daddy? I must wait for them.’

  ‘They don’t want you to wait, Uncle Jonathan.’

  ‘Then surely you will drink with me, Robin? You are a big chap now. A small glass won’t harm you.’

  ‘No, thank you, Uncle Jonathan. But you must drink.’

  So I lifted the full glass that stood on the table and raised it in front of my face.

  ‘To you, Robin,’ I said, ‘to my nephew and godson, who has grown into such a fine boy.’

  ‘Thank you, Uncle Jonathan,’ he said.

  I sipped the wine. For a moment the magnificent flavour, first deep and distant, then rich, then subtly apologetic for its richness, bringing the assurance that life was good and God was merciful, was there as it always had been. Then I was alone in a cold, bare room, with only the moon to shine on the cracked and filthy glass in my hand and with a taste of vinegar and ashes on my tongue.

  At the reception desk of the hospital they gave me my bundle of letters, the letters which had followed me to Delhi and had been sent back to my next of kin in Kent. There were only a few from Anne and Richard, and one scrawl in capitals from Robin, at the bottom of the pile. Above these was the buff envelope, and the sheets of thin war-time paper inside it, which told how they had all three been killed, in the late summer of 1943, when a braking ambulance skidded off the gravel drive and crashed into them where they stood by the park gate.

  Ethel Lina White

  ‘WITH WHAT MEASURE YE METE . . .’

  Ethel Lina White (1876-1944) was an extremely popular and influential author of crime novels, including Some Must Watch (1933), famo
usly filmed as The Spiral Staircase, and The Wheel Spins (1936), basis for the Hitchcock film The Lady Vanishes. White was not a horror author, though she flirts with the supernatural in some of her works, such as Wax (1935), republished by Valancourt, which features deadly doings in a creepy wax museum that seem at first to be attributable to supernatural causes. ‘With What Measure Ye Mete . . .’, a rare foray for White into the horror genre, first appeared in the periodical Black and White in 1906.

  Extract from the Diary of Desmond Clay

  17 November: Had a most extraordinary and startling experience two days ago – so utterly inexplicable that I have not written it up till today. Took car on Friday at Kennington Gate to Streatham. Felt pretty much the same as usual. Passed Brixton Station, and remember looking at the clock. Time was 4.45. Next thing I knew was that I was near Streatham Common, taking the turning to the left. On consulting watch, found it was 5.25. The intervening time is an absolute blank. Try as I will, I cannot piece it together. It is impossible to conclude that I fell asleep, as I had evidently got out of the car at Streatham Hill Station, as I originally intended. Am worried and perplexed at this strange lapse, and, at first recurrence, shall consult a specialist. Saw Enid; she grows dearer every day. A compensation, I suppose, for my past bitter experience of treachery and pain. However, de mortuis – for I hear Mrs Laflèche is dead; something sudden. Forty minutes wiped clean out – sponged away from my memory. Wish I could remember – or else forget all about it.

  When Iris Devine married Syd Laflèche with his £12,000 a year, the world said she was a lucky girl. It made the identical remark seven years later, when she became his widow – but with a sympathising accent this time. Yet, regarding the affair from its purely commercial aspect, it was not without its points. Iris had given youth, a moderate portion of good looks, and little else beside, in exchange for a gentleman of agreeable characteristics, very shady antecedents, and an unimpeachable banking account. The flaw in the transaction was the fact that Iris was not a free asset. Yet this item had been quickly discounted by the girl. Born of a struggling theatrical family, her life had been played out, to a considerable degree, in the fierce glow of limelight, which had dried up the dews of youth too soon. The fact that the path that led to her union with Laflèche was paved by a human heart, only made the way for her feet softer.

  Yet among the many parts she had played she did not look forward to dismissing her quondam lover. However, she counted on Desmond’s gentleness and lack of emotion, feeling she would score heavily through his hatred of a scene. There would be no disagreeable reproaches, she argued – Desmond would not forget that he was a gentleman.

  But in this she was mistaken. Desmond did forget, and when he passed out of Iris’s life as a personal element it was to remain there as a vaguely disquieting memory.

  Then the great Wheel of Change snatched her up and whirled her through a cycle of prosperity, excitement, and disillusionment, finally shaking her off and dropping her suddenly into the Kennington Road one foggy November day, just at four o’clock. The fog was creeping on with the stealthy advance of a foe – swelling and darkening in the shadows, and gathering in the corners, only to shrink back before the glow of the street lights. The cars whirled by in an intermittent procession, their red eyes gleaming through the mist. Iris watched them with fascination. They represented her old life – the car and omnibus era. Seven years of carriages and motors had ousted them from a willing memory, but today they seemed to regain their old ascendancy. Each name revived old recollections – the struggle to capture this, the easy conquest of that.

  Suddenly yielding to an impulse, Iris hailed the next car, and climbing the narrow stair with difficulty, as the car lurched on, she groped along the shaking platform on the top and dropped heavily into the nearest seat.

  ‘Free!’ she cried, and then laughed out again into the chill air. ‘Free!’

  The mean houses slid by, yellow patches gleaming through the fan-lights. Iris hailed them with delight. She held up her muff, to ward off the damp air, and laughed again, as the soft fur caressed her face. The six brief weeks of widowhood had found her stunned; today, for the first time, she realised her position, and her liberty.

  She nodded familiarly to a beer-palace, resplendent with flaring lights. ‘Seven years’ penal servitude,’ she whispered. ‘Free!’

  ‘All fares.’ The man came to take her ticket. Iris had not troubled to notice the destination of the car.

  ‘All the way,’ she said, recklessly, and then the woman of wealth, suddenly smitten by habit, found herself keenly counting the coppers that the man gave her for change. That made her laugh again, and she gripped her hands tightly in an ecstasy. ‘Free! Seven years’ hard!’ Then she frowned slightly. ‘Now, am I really free, or – ticket-of-leave?’ The thought amused her, and she toyed with it.

  ‘Ticket-of-leave! Then I must be really good, for a bit, or else – back again! And it may be a life-sentence next time. Oh, lucky woman! Free!’

  But the car refused to run to this tune now, and it whirred along rapping out in uneven jerks: ‘Ticket of leave! Ticket of leave!’

  Iris laid back dreamily, soothed by the sway of the motion. Imperceptibly, her thoughts slipped away to the crime that held the sentence.

  Suddenly, a thick curtain of blue shot down, blotting out the grey world, and spreading over the fog. It hung there for a fraction of a second, and then split in two pieces, and half was the calm turquoise sky, and half the restless, heaving sea. The tide of Memory, in sweeping round the world, had, in a momentary back-wash, left Iris stranded high and dry on the recollection of her parting scene with Desmond.

  Well she remembered it! The bold cliff, the winding path, and Desmond swinging along by the foam, hurrying to meet her. She shuddered when she saw the light in his eyes, for she knew it was hers to darken it, hers to kill the faith, and banish the joy – hers to murder youth, and imperil her soul – and all in the sacred name of Mammon! She felt so utterly sorry for herself, that she thought he must be sorry, too, and she could hardly understand it, when she saw the joy in the boy’s eyes fade to bewilderment, and then as the baleful light broke through the cloud of doubt, a storm of anger, fierce, ungovernable rage, that blotted the calm face. Iris hardly recognised his voice, though she shrank beneath his reproaches, and bent her head to the tempest, praying for the lull. It seemed to Iris that he raved on interminably, but only one sentence stayed with her.

  ‘It’s a monstrous thing you’ve done, inhuman! To win my heart, and then trample on it. Oh, I know, it has been done before. And it will be done again. But it is no small thing. It is murder! I tell you, it is murder! You have killed the best part of me. I can feel it. And you can’t do it with impunity. There will be a reckoning, I tell you – you must . . .’ The voice dragged incoherently, and then Desmond pulled himself together. He had remembered the fact on which Iris had counted, that he was a gentleman, to whom were barred the rights of primeval man. His face flamed, and in shame-faced manner, he apologised humbly for his tirade. The anger had faded from his face, and only dull pain was there. The victory was with Iris. Raising his hat, he left her, and she watched him go into the setting sun, his white-clad form cutting the purple of the heather. Even as he went, she wanted him. She wanted one last look, one smile, even if grudged; in short, she wanted a conscience-salve.

  She bent her brows, and tightened her mouth under the strain of will-force, and tugged at his consciousness – willing him to look back once more. Desmond had never proved unresponsive to that mute appeal, and even now his head turned involuntarily and their eyes met.

  Iris cried out in a sudden panic of terror. For the first time, she saw Murder look out of a man’s eyes, and the sight rooted her to the spot, panic-stricken.

  She saw his profile sharply outlined against the blue, and then the car jolted over the points, and slithered on to another track. For one minute, the Past still tore desperately at her skirts. The next second the shutter of grey
had slammed down, and she was again in the grip of the Present.

  Only the profile had not vanished. She found that she was still looking at it, and with a thrill, suddenly awoke to the fact that Desmond was on the same car.

  Where and when he had got on, she did not know. Leaning forward, she scanned his face with interest. Just the same old Desmond, in every respect. He sat forward, looking in front of him, with a dreamy unconscious smile on his face – absolutely oblivious to his surroundings. Iris’s glance was almost a caress, as she scanned each feature. Nothing changed! The calm brow – the clear eyes – the dear mouth! A man who was clearly under petticoat government. Dame Fashion had a thrall in him, as was evident in every detail of his well-groomed appearance, starting from the crown of his hat, down to the tips of his fashionable boots, while a point was scored with every detail of his costume. And Mrs Grundy plainly had him under her thumb, and had stamped his whole appearance with the Seal of Conventionality.

  Iris studied his face yet longer, and then she almost laughed at the gentleness and well-bred repose imprinted thereon. Yet, for one brief moment, she had been afraid of this man, and had thought she had seen the ugly spectre of murder peeping from his eyes.

  The car glided on. Desmond still smiled absently at the mist. At last, Iris grew impatient. She wished he would turn and notice her. Desmond was sitting three seats in front, to the left. A stout policeman by her side hedged her in with the majesty of the Law, while across the gangway to her left sat a portly City man. They seemed to represent obstacles, and she grew yet more restless. She found herself counting the roses that clustered on the hat of a girl who sat in front. Five roses of a pinky-mauve shade. And the girl had red hair. Iris shuddered.

  Then she remembered her old powers. Should she will him to once look at her? She set her hat – whose white strings alone marked her widowhood – straight and pondered. She knew that during the past seven years Dame Fortune had only ripened and embellished her charms, though, perhaps, at the last, as if suddenly repenting of her lavish generosity, with a dash of feminine spite, she had pecked out a few lines in the smooth face.