by James Doig
Almost every agent in the city appeared to have “To Let” notices in its grimy windows, some of which were broken, and, my business completed, and consumed with curiosity, I selected the nearest of these, and said I would be interested to look over the premises with a view to rental.
As we walked to the building, I said to the agents’ clerk accompanying me: “I suppose, in the event of a lease, the place would not be sold over my head?”
“There’s no fear of that,” he explained. “The building is part of an estate and is in some legal tangle which is preventing a straight-out sale. You’d be safe for years, I guess.”
He turned the key in the padlock securing the heavy, front doors, and we passed up a few steps into a large, high front room. There were wide stairs immediately before us running up to the first floor, and these diverged left and right from a landing midway to the first floor. But what excited me somewhat was the sight of a row of stone steps descending to the basement, not straightly, but in a curve, so that from the top the door downstairs could not be seen.
“I’d like to look at the basement,” I said, and the clerk led the way.
“I’m afraid it will be pretty dark,” he said. “The light has been disconnected, of course, and it will be awfully grubby.”
He turned the key in the padlock, swung back an iron bar, and opened the door. I remember it creaked on rusty hinges. In the dim light I could see that the place was reasonably big, though low-ceilinged. There was a stone floor, and around the walls at intervals were old-fashioned gas brackets. The place smelt dank, and I was glad to get out of it.
We ascended the curving stairway, and for appearance sake, I inspected the top floor, but gave no more than a perfunctory glance round.
“It certainly isn’t modern,” I commented.
The clerk sensed that I had lost interest in the proposition. He laughed shortly. “Lord knows what the old place could be used for,” he said. “It’s out of date as a Noah’s Ark, and a civic eyesore.”
I thanked him for his trouble, and bade him goodbye. From the opposite side of the road I glanced back at the grimy building looking so ridiculously small between its giant neighbours. It certainly wasn’t garish, and yet, I thought, recalling Jenner and his dream, the coincidence was queer.
A month later—on March 29th—George Jenner murdered his wife.
I read of it with consternation and horror. He had killed her in the middle of the night, and had then walked, in his pyjamas, to the police station and given himself up.
I followed the reports of the trial with the greatest interest, but there was nothing unusual in the evidence. Jenner maintained that she had nagged him and he had picked up a razor and deliberately ended her life. He pleaded guilty, asked for no mercy, made no appeal against his sentence, and was executed at S—on May 29th, just two months after his wife’s murder.
I had occasion to visit M— several weeks later, and again called on the firm which had its office in the J— Street skyscraper. It was late afternoon and almost midwinter, and already dark, but as I turned the corner a blaze of light illumined the roadway, and, glancing across the street, I saw that the onetime grimy two-storey building had been miraculously transformed. It was now brilliantly lit. Neon signs bordered the facade, which had been painted in gaudy colours. Lights of various hue twinkled above the doorway, and stretching across the whole front there was a huge electric sign:
WAXWORKS
Something impelled me to enter. I paid my money and hurried in, turning immediately to the stairway leading to the basement. I ran quickly down the steps. Over the door there was a sign:
CHAMBER OF HORRORS
Almost the first sight I encountered inside was a life-like image, with staring eyes. It was clad in pyjamas, and between its waxen fingers it held a blood-stained razor. At its side was a sign:
GEORGE JENNER
The Hollmsdale Horror
An attendant came along and knelt by the figure. He pulled up the pyjamas, and busied himself with the calf of one leg. A moment or two later he looked up at me, grinning.
“We dropped the old boy’s case off the lorry when we were bringing him in this morning,” he said. “Fractured his leg.” He adjusted the pyjamas again, and rose and stood surveying George Jenner’s waxen face. “A fat lot he cares,” he commented. Then, with a glance at the horrid figures on either side of him: “Well, he’s in good company. I hope he likes it.”
THE PYTHONESS, by Helen Simpson
Lovat Dickson’s Magazine, January 1934
Helen de Guerry Simpson (1897-1940) was a gifted author who died tragically young of cancer in 1940. She was educated in Sydney and Oxford and wrote her first novel, Acquittal (1917), in a fortnight. An obituary in the West Australian described her as follows: “Dark in colouring, square in build and downright in manner, she was a good linguist, an expert cook, a talented pianist and a student of witchcraft. In pursuit of this last hobby she travelled to remote corners of Europe in quest of vampires.” She is best known for her novels, Boomerang (1932) and Under Capricorn (1937), and she collaborated with Clemence Dane on a series of detective novels. Her rare first collection of stories, The Baseless Fabric (1925), contains a number of subtle supernatural tales clearly influenced by the work of Henry James.
Interest in Spiritualism need not imply that an inquirer has the religious temperament. He may attend meetings of a circle for half a dozen reasons; curiosity as to the next life, its habits and values; scientific inquiry; a mere taste for the marvellous; and occasionally, rather pitifully, a genuine and overwhelming desire to get in touch with some loved person lost.
All this is mere preliminary, to explain how I came to be sitting in circle with three men so entirely different from me and from each other as Tarrant, Pybus, Mortimer; and one woman so inexplicable as the medium, Mrs. Bain. Tarrant was one of those people that all the more showy religions cater for; he liked marvels. The blood of St. Januarius liquefies for such as these, and bullroarers whirl in African caves. Pybus was the earnest inquirer. He found spiritualism logical: it satisfied his intellect; having swallowed the camel of survival after death he ceased to strain at the gnat-like tactics of the spirits, who in their endeavours to resume contact with the world moved birdcages, rang bells, and brought from other climes such mementos as safety pins and faded flowers. (Apports was the technical term for these. They were diverse; their one common characteristic was portability. The spirits never, in my experience, astonished us by materialising a grand piano in my dining-room where we sat behind locked doors.)
Then there was the medium. Mrs. Bain had good looks of a large sort, but it would have been difficult to imagine falling in love with her—for me, at least; her natural voice, that most revealing attribute of man or woman, was tinny and self-assured, though it could put on a deeper note in the cabinet. Whether or no she was honest, she gave value for money. I believe the truth to be that she did possess certain powers which she eked out, poor creature, with safety pins and the like; destroying credibility by the very means she adopted to bolster it up.
I repeat that, diverse as were all our needs, she gave us good value, Lance Mortimer in particular. He had been going to her for some time, even before his wife’s death; indeed, I believe it was Aileen, the wife, who induced him to attend this circle in the first place, and naturally after she died he gave it more of his time and interest than ever. Personally I was always a little sceptical about the messages Mrs. Bain obtained for him. She had known Aileen well, and the confection of detailed messages having the ring of truth seemed to me in the circumstances to be a little too easy. Possibly I wrong Mrs. Bain. At any rate Mortimer seemed happy and reassured by the messages, which was the chief thing. He never missed a meeting, and three months after his wife’s death had lost almost completely the dragged and haunted look which came on him during her illness.
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I have said that to me it was impossible to imagine falling in love with Mrs. Bain; impossible that any man of education and intelligence should do so. She appeared to read nothing, to be interested in nothing; she was big and badly dressed. I admit that at moments she was impressive, while the trance was on; there was one occasion when she stripped off every rag of clothing in the cabinet and marched into the room stark, reciting something in a language none of us could follow, and making curious gestures—of libation, I imagine; her empty hands curved themselves to the handles of an imponderable beaker. There was some discussion among the five of us afterwards—this was in Aileen’s lifetime—as to whether we should tell her the details of her performance when she came to, but eventually we decided not to embarrass her. On this occasion she was quite unconscious of her actions; the display was altogether too crude to have been the result of conscious deliberation; nakedness, after first youth has passed, and in a heavy muscular woman, lacks allure. We repeated to her so much as we could remember of what she had spoken—there was a refrain, like the “Pray for us” of a litany, which we were able to write down—and left it at that. I believe, personally, that for once some very old wine was poured into a new bottle.
But this was the performer; the woman was one who would terrify the average man, if he ever looked at her twice. And so I am quite unable to put into words my surprise when, strolling through Hyde Park one evening, in that unfrequented patch near the police station, I saw her sitting on the grass, with Mortimer beside her. She was unmistakable. It was summer and she had taken the hat from her heavy black hair, which had never been cut, and was never tidy; a coil of it had come down, and lay askew on her shoulder, while her dress, though it was of some light-coloured stuff, somehow looked frowsy. She had her back to me, but I could see Mortimer’s face. It was the face you may see often enough in the Park of an evening, eyes intent, mouth restless, desire written plain on it for any passer-by to read. The sight sickened me, somehow. I had known gentle Aileen, his wife, rather well.
Mortimer was talking, urging something, looking steadily, as lovers do, at her mouth. She listened, not interrupting, but her right hand plucked at the grass, and when he seemed to have done she shook her head vigorously, so that the coil of hair slipped down further. When she answered, the timbre of her voice carried, though not the syllables; she seemed to be denying or refusing something, Mortimer became more urgent. On that her restless hand seized the discarded hat, and crammed it on anyhow; then, with an ugly, plunging movement like a cow, she got to her feet and, looking down on him rapped out something final. Unexpectedly she turned my way, and met my eyes. A cloud of red came over her sallow face, but she walked towards me.
“Quite a surprise,” said she, in those tinny accent of hers, shaking her head; the coil of black hair tumbled forward over her shoulder. “I never!” said she, hastily stuffing it under the hat with her thick fingers. “What you must think of me—”
“Hello, Mortimer,” I said, looking past her.
He had risen, and was coming towards the pair of us, seeming none too pleased at the interruption.
“We’ve been getting a breath of air,” Mrs. Bain explained.
“Very wise,” I said; “it’s hot.”
Then there was nothing more to say. I raised my hat to her, and started to move on; it was so very evident that Mortimer didn’t want me. But as I took my first step Mrs. Bain fell in beside me, saying:
“I’m going your way, if you don’t mind being seen with me.”
I said something about my delight. She added, with what seemed deliberate intent:
“Mr Mortimer’s had as much fresh air as he can stand. He ought to be getting home.”
Mortimer said nothing whatever to either of us. He took off his hat and we walked on, leaving him standing on the path.
I had nothing in particular to say to Mrs. Bain, but I made some sort of conversation about the dresses and the grass. She answered absently and kept looking at me sideways. At last, just as we were halting to cross the Row, she suddenly spoke.
“I suppose you think there’s something a bit funny going on.”
I could not pretend to misunderstand, though I did not want confidences.
“There’s no reason, you know, why you shouldn’t sit in the Park with Mortimer.”
She answered, in tones that sounded just a little shocked:
“Well, but he’s only been a widower three months.”
“Widowers don’t have to shut themselves away from the world nowadays.”
“No,” said she dubiously; “only a person ought to show respect.”
“Aileen Mortimer was a very generous and sane woman,” I went on, “as you know. You might have sat in the Park with her husband in her lifetime with her full consent. Why should it be different now?”
“I don’t know, I’m sure,” said she; “only it isn’t like the same—”
“Shall we get across?” I asked her, for really I found it intolerable to discuss Aileen with her, and I did not want to be drawn into any comment on Mortimer.
She made no answer, and I hurried her across, through a gap in the traffic. She came meekly enough, head well down as is the way of women; on the opposite, the Knightsbridge side, I stopped, meaning to leave her and walk down alone to Chelsea. To my horror and dismay she was crying. Her great eyes were welling, tears had overflowed, making channels through the brownish powder she used; in another minute she would have broken into noisy sobbing there on the public path. I could hardly leave her boo-hooing after me like a punished dog and so took action at once; gripped her elbow, and piloted her into a providential teashop that I had suddenly remembered—quiet, and no more than a hundred yards away. The place was nearly empty; it was getting on for six; shoppers were on their way home. Mrs. Bain gulped a “thank you” and disappeared without shame into the Ladies’ Room. I was curious, and sorry for her in a detached sort of fashion. It is so difficult to realise that ugly women must have their emotions too.
She came out, powder renewed in a muddy mass on her nose, and sat down by me at the table. Without studying the menu she asked for chocolate—chocolate at a quarter to six—and while the waitress went for it, talked.
“I ought to be ashamed of myself, Mr Findlay; I know that. Making a fool of myself in public”—(“And of me, too,” I thought.)—“like a kid of ten. D’you know how old I am? I’m forty-three.”
She looked it, certainly; she had never taken care, and nature had not been kind at the start. I said nothing. She was in the mood when a woman sees through the usual masculine futilities in the way of placation. She went on.
“Forty-three. Makes you think, doesn’t it? I’ve been earning my living for twenty-five years, and you can believe me when I say I’m sick of it.”
The chocolate came, hot enough to waft steam even on that summer afternoon. I poured out my tea and added lemon, while she sipped the boiling thick stuff, with a spoon.
“You’re interested in your work, though, surely?”
“Look,” said she, pointing her spoon at me; “I’m interested and it’s as honest a way to make a living as most others. Only just—I’m sick of it.”
She sipped more chocolate, and I could feel her waiting for me to make first move. No purpose was to be served by waiting, and I obliged her.
“Mortimer, I suppose, was suggesting an alternative.”
“You’re right, he was. And I refused. Refused dead, like that—” she made a slashing movement of her powerful hand—“and here I am, going on like a kid with a smashed toy.”
The eyes had indeed started to well again. I said hastily:
“Mortimer didn’t mean to offend you, I’m certain.”
“Offend? Offend me? Oh, I suppose you think it was the other thing he wanted. It wasn’t; it was marriage, flat out.”
That did surprise me, and perhaps my face showed it.
“Oh, I know. Mrs Mortimer’s only been in her grave three months. You think it’s not respectful. Nor do I, and so I told him. But it was hard work saying it. I suppose I’m what they call, in love.”
She said that as though it were some remote condition familiar perhaps to doctors, but her face contradicted her, or, rather, it underlined the words, gave them force and beauty, for all the clotted powder and the reddened eyes. I said, smothering my convictions, for I had no wish that she should marry Mortimer:
“Well, you know, there’s really nothing against it. He’s free.”
She answered, staring into the cup, talking as if to herself:
“If only I could be sure—”
“Sure?”
“It’s this way,” she said, and paused to gulp down the rest of the chocolate. “I want to have a home of my own. And I’m fond of him. I don’t deny. Fond—” she considered the word, and altered it. “I’m mad about him. But there’s things to be considered. For one thing, I’m not his class.”
There was no answer to that. It was pretty evident that they could have nothing in common, that there was not one chance in fifty of the marriage being a success.
“For another, I’m older than him. He’s thirty-eight—five years—that makes a lot of difference. And I couldn’t think of marrying him for a year; it wouldn’t be right. That brings me up to forty-four. So, you see, looked at all round, it’s silly. I see that as clear as you do. Only—”
I was sorry for her. This outburst was genuine, and in refusing Mortimer she had done the only possible thing; but the cost of the decision I could fairly estimate. After all, Mortimer made a fair amount of money, lived comfortably, had a position in the world. She was a vagabond, without a home or a future or any background save that which some psychic laboratory afforded. It was much to give up voluntarily, for the sake of common sense; I respected her, and told her so. She said, with a big, tremulous smile:
