by David Pirie
The Doctor continued eating for a moment. ‘In London,’ he said at last, ‘when we were hunting down Hanbury, you had certain feelings of his presence, feelings I will admit I derided. Tell me, do you not feel him here? For I do.’
This was unexpected. The Doctor was rarely given to admitting to instinct before reason. ‘I do not know. But we have no proof he is still here whatever you may feel.’
He smiled at this as he laid down his fork and knife. ‘Then our roles are reversed. Good. That could be useful for both of us.’ I was about to interject but he went on. ‘No, I am not being entirely illogical. You see, as an investigator I am presented here with a puzzle and what I strongly suspect is a crime. You will recall I was mistaken once in Edinburgh about animal blood, believing it was human. It is impossible to be sure but I do not think I am mistaken here. If we were to accept the newspapers’ view that this is a prank, surely by now Jefford would have come forward? It is hardly the publicity-seeker’s way to allow the sensation to fade away before revealing himself. So I stick with the assumption there has been violence, though I can make no assessment as yet even as to the victim. And, moreover, we have clear indications of Cream’s involvement, not least the description of the man seen with Jefford shortly before he died. We also have evidence that Cream was after money and that Jefford had money.’
‘But he may have taken it and left,’ I protested, ‘and be laughing at us from far away.’
‘Laughing even more heartily, Doyle, if we do not reach a successful conclusion here. What you say is possible certainly, but it is equally true we can only move forward at all by unravelling the mystery at hand and exposing any misdeed. Not only is that our duty, but I am glad to say I have a little more than mere instinct to tell me matters are not as simple as you are speculating. We have not, after all, found Jefford with his brains blown out and the empty sacks of gold by his side. There is much more here, not least the mysterious third companion, which tells me we must pursue it as urgently as we can.’
About an hour later we had walked up the hill and could see Greyfriars House, Sir Walter Monk’s large and comfortable farm, which lay in considerable grounds about half a mile north-east of Jefford’s. I call it a farm because people often referred to it as such, but really it was more of a small manor house with a pillared portico and a grey paling of split oaks in a grass clearing.
Langton had sent word to Sir Walter that we would be calling and a grave manservant admitted us to a large hallway, which went right up to the roof with a long gallery above. The hangings were heavy and the atmosphere was hushed. Bell stated our business at once and it seemed we were indeed expected as he led us through a door and corridor and then stopped before another door which was closed.
‘Sir Walter has asked,’ said the manservant in sepulchral tones, ‘that your conversation is conducted in as quiet and polite a fashion as possible. He has a minor hearing condition which makes loud sound intolerable to him.’
The Doctor nodded and the door was opened on to a dark but extremely warm room, almost as warm as a hothouse in summer. There was only a little light streaming into the place from the half-open shutters but it was luxuriously furnished and, as the manservant retreated, we walked forward across a thick carpet. There was a sofa and a chair but the room was L-shaped and we could see nobody until we advanced.
And then we came to the main area of the room and before us was a vast polished dining table in front of a huge flickering fire. There was a pale shape at the end of this table and I saw a white hand with a pen in it and realised that the shape was a man, who stared at us. He was pallid and somewhat enfeebled, with thick beautifully groomed silver hair, indeed he looked more like my idea of a neurotic French marquis than an English landowner. Bell was as surprised as I was.
‘Sir Walter,’ he said by way of introduction, and the man put out a restraining hand, though we had not forgotten the manservant’s injunction. ‘We are sorry to intrude. I am Dr Bell and this is my colleague, Dr Doyle. We are here because we wish to interview your groundsman, Colin Harding.’
Sir Walter nodded and now spoke. The voice though certainly languid was not as feeble as I had expected. ‘Ah yes, Langton informed me you are interested in the Jefford business, it is a tiresome affair. But of course you may interview Harding. Have you a view on the matter, sir?’
‘Not as yet,’ said Bell.
‘That is wise,’ said Monk. I saw now the pen in his hand was for sketching and I tried to see what he drew. It looked from here like a face, but I could not make out the details. Bell had taken this in too and was staring at the table beside him, as Monk continued in his languid way studying us both carefully with beady eyes. ‘I myself, as you will observe since you are both doctors, live on the sufferance of the almighty. I endure what you might call a certain morbid acuteness of the senses. No doubt you would call it other magical names in your medical books, though to me all of them are like witch’s runes themselves.’
‘Do you think the witch’s rune in the tale is real?’ said Bell. ‘Do you think Jefford found it as he claimed?’
‘Oh, Jefford was a fool,’ said Monk. Then he stopped and corrected himself. ‘Or should I say “is” a fool, for I know no more than you if he is still alive. I believe, though, Harding was a help to Jefford when he arrived here. He did him some service — I have no idea what. I rather think Jefford may have taken advantage of that help and frightened the man with his stories. All I know is Harding claimed he may have seen a rune. No doubt if he did it was some party trick.’
‘But what do you understand by a rune, Sir Walter?’ said Bell with interest.
‘Oh, it is something they talk of hereabouts. If you are in possession of it within a specified time, usually a month, you will die.’
‘Did Jefford tell you of finding the rune?’ asked the Doctor.
‘No, I barely knew him,’ said Monk.
‘Tell me, do you live here alone, Sir Walter?’
‘Apart from my servants,’ came the reply. ‘Of course, much of the time I am in London where I have a tolerable house and many friends. I could not stand the country life too long at one time.’
I am sure Bell wanted to ask more but Monk tugged at a ribbon, which was carefully placed to snake under the carpet and arrive just at his chair. Somewhere outside, a bell quietly tolled. ‘Now you must go about your business and I must go about mine. My manservant will show you out.’ And indeed the manservant was there almost before we could reply. He had evidently been given instructions to stand by.
‘Sir Walter’s physical condition is the least interesting thing about him,’ commented Bell with irritation as we walked the short distance to the outhouse where Harding would be found. ‘It is ninety-five per cent affectation and five per cent dissipation. Yet in other respects he is certainly worthy of our attention. Here is a man with London connections as well as a large house to service, and, for all his protestations, he was not alone in that room before we entered. There was another exit and someone had been there sitting at that table with him. Fortunately its surface is highly polished and I saw the clear imprint of a glass at the place opposite him where he could not possibly reach.’
Having been intrigued by Harding’s employer, we had high hopes for the interview ahead, but in the event it proved far from satisfactory.
We found Harding, a leathery-skinned, clean-shaven man of very broad build in a nearby outhouse sharpening an axe at a lathe. Evidently he knew we were coming, for he grunted acknowledgement at Bell’s introduction, but still glared at us and declared he had told all he knew to the police. When pressed, he went over it again. He said Jefford was a gentleman who had treated him well enough. Harding had given Jefford a little help now and then, for he had no servants and Sir Walter permitted it. But he had never seen any company in his house. He had, however, seen Jefford and two other figures in the twilight of early evening on the first of December. They had not seen him for he was in the woods searching for the sow that
had left its pen. He overheard nothing, for the men walked in silence while one of the figures was masked by the trees, Jefford being the nearest. When pressed on the other figure he had seen, he would only agree he was tall and good looking, that he had a considerable quantity of thick dark hair and that he had never set eyes on him before or since.
‘How would you describe him apart from that?’ Bell persisted.
‘A gentleman,’ said Harding reluctantly. ‘Well dressed, no, heavy but I think he’d have run well in a race. There was a strength about him.’
Bell nodded, for that sounded like our man, but he could get little more. He went on to confirm Harding had happened to pass the cottage the next day and knocked on the door, wishing to ask Jefford if he had seen his pig. He got no answer and, after entering and finding the bloodstain, had gone to raise the alarm.
‘But I have no more to say of it, sir. I have told all I know more than once and if ye will be kind, there is work for me to do.’
‘Of course,’ said Bell, ‘but I have one more question. A simple one. Have you seen the rune?’
The man scowled. ‘And who would be saying that?’ Bell would not answer. ‘For anyone who does is a liar. I ha’ no wish to talk of such things.’
‘But you believe in them?’ the Doctor urged.
‘I cannot say,’ he answered fiercely, his eyes glittering. ‘They are nowt to do with me. I keep awa’ frae all of that and pay no regard to what the rest say. Now if you please, I must get on.’
And so the interview ended. Here was our principal witness and little more could be extracted from him than we had seen in the newspapers. It was clear Bell had found it frustrating and, almost as if to vent this frustration, he returned to the area around Jefford’s house where we spent long and what seemed to me fruitless hours, searching the ground. ‘Obstructive, yes,’ said Bell afterwards, interrupting his silence to answer my question about Harding as we walked back through the woods in the direction of the town, ‘but frightened too. Now why?’
There was a sudden noise from the trees beside us. A rush of movement and a fluttering. We whirled round and could see a figure. It had just grasped something in his hand. It came closer and we saw it was a boy and, in his hands was a live bird, which he held tightly. He was about twelve and there was a brightness in his eyes as he clasped his hands fiercely shut. He did not seem to notice us.
‘Tommy,’ came a shout from behind. ‘Tommy, where have you gone to?’ A man was coming along the road, dressed in smart country walking clothes. ‘Where is my wee Tommy?’ He saw us and smiled. ‘Good afternoon, gentlemen. Have you seen a boy?’ And then he caught sight of him and smiled broadly. The boy had squeezed his hands shut and the fluttering was still. He looked down at what he held with pleasure.
‘Ah there is my boy, it is my son Tommy. What mischief are you doing there, Tommy?’ he asked, beaming with pride. He had a very fleshy face and a florid complexion. ‘I fear I am guilty of failing to introduce myself,’ he said as he turned to us. ‘My name is Edward Norman, I am the local solicitor and this is my oldest boy, Tommy.’
We told him who we were and he nodded vigorously, ringing his hands. ‘Yes, I heard from Inspector Langton you were here, helping us with our mystery. Well, it is only small as befits a small community like ours. Now let us see what poor dear Tommy has got for us. Show, Tommy.’
The boy gave a little smile, which I thought lacked warmth, and opened his hands to reveal what he was carrying. It was a thrush but it was no longer alive. He had rung its neck and the head flopped at a horrid angle. Yet his father’s beam never faltered.
‘Ah, Tommy, you are a very clever boy. He has a wonderful collection of dead birds, don’t you, Tommy? Well, this is splendid. You must come and dine with us, gentlemen. Nella would be only too pleased to see you. Oh and I told Inspector Langton today after hearing of your visit that we made a small discovery of our own last night. Tommy here has a little story. He saw a figure that evening in which everyone is so interested by the pool, did you not, Tommy?’
The boy nodded, though he looked troubled. The father wrung his hands again beaming. ‘Ah yes, he gets everywhere and on that night he had gone up there in search of birds. Is that not so, Tommy? You saw a man.’
‘Did you see his face?’ said Bell without ceremony.
The boy shook his head. ‘Just that he was looking at the ground, is that right?’ His father smiled anxiously. ‘He was staring at the ground by the pool but then Tommy came away and was not seen. Of course, it may be nothing at all. He would not know the man again.’
The boy shook his head to show us this without question.
‘Are you sure it was only one man?’ said Bell with interest.
‘He said there was another figure in the shadows, but I think it was just shadows, was it not, Tommy? Well, we must go back but you will come and dine. It would be a fine thing for us and for Nella and for Tommy.’ He wrung his hands again. Then he raised his hat, took the little boy with his grisly relic by the hand, and was gone.
I have no idea what the Doctor made of this strange duo. He was lost in thought afterwards and clearly not in any mood for conversation. As soon as we had reached the inn, he went to his room without a word.
This left me with little to do. I wondered whether to go and seek out Langton but doubted the Doctor would favour such an action and it was already getting dark. So I decided to read what I could about the history of this strange place and picked up a tome in the inn’s private sitting room, which was set aside for guests. This was not nearly so comfortable a space as its equivalent at the Quarter Moon. Indeed it was little more than a fireplace with three armchairs, but that concerned me not at all as I settled down to what was certainly an extraordinary story.
In 1200 the town of Dunwich had been one of medieval England’s wealthiest ports, with thriving fishing and wool industries. The chroniclers accorded it fifty-two churches, chapels and hospitals, a King’s palace, a Bishop’s Seat and, of course, a busy harbour with numerous wharves and quays. None of this has survived. The battle with the sea began in the middle of the thirteenth century, when various storms breached the harbour and its walls. Soon after this, the lower town was taken, inaugurating a pattern of moral and physical decline. There seemed almost to be a tradition of dark happenings in Dunwich at Christmas time for it was during the Christmas of 1327 that one of the worst storms raged and literally hundreds of houses were submerged. The town’s battle against the hungry sea was both courageous and haunting, as was the notion of what now lay under the sea beside it. I was astonished to think of all these churches and dwellings and towers at the bottom of the ocean, a veritable Atlantis right on the edge of England. And of course the most famous of all Dunwich legends, more famous even than her witch, was the notion that on a stormy night you could hear the sound of the old town’s bells ringing out under the ocean.
A sound made me look up and I was startled to find I was not alone. A smartly dressed young woman had entered the room in a state of slight agitation. ‘Oh I am sorry,’ she said, ‘I did not wish to disturb you.’
‘Not at all,’ I said quickly. ‘This room is for all the guests. My reading is finished, in any case. I must join my friend.’
‘No please,’ she said, and then stopped as if a little uncertain. She wore a red trim jacket which complemented her fair hair but her face was sad. ‘There is no need to leave. I know some people do not feel it is right for a single woman to travel and visit an inn on her own, but sometimes it is essential …’ She broke off. ‘I am sorry if I ramble. I must introduce myself. I am Charlotte Jefford.’ She could tell at once by my expression the name meant something to me. ‘Oh yes,’ she said. ‘I see you have guessed my mission. I have come today hoping against hope I will find some trace of my poor brother.’
At that point the maid arrived with some tea she must have ordered and, after further introductions, we sat down. I was not quite sure how much to reveal of our own mission and therefore m
erely told her that I was here with another medical colleague on some private business but that this man had taken an interest in the Jefford case and talked to the police and she might find it very useful to meet him. At this, her eyes fairly lit up and she gave a smile that would have melted most hearts.
‘That would be very kind.’ She drank some tea and seemed to be making her mind up about something. ‘I am not pretending, Dr Doyle, that my brother was a very nice man.’ She broke off. ‘And here I say “was”, when I hope he may yet be alive. But some people tell me I should assume the worst and so I must say again that while he was in some ways not a very good man, he certainly does not deserve a fate such as this. He could be foolish, he could be vain, he could be impetuous and even thoughtless. But I swear he was not wicked.’ Her eyes were wide with emotion. ‘And I must know the truth. For I think of it a thousand times an hour and I tell you there is nothing in the world worse than this uncertainty, this never knowing what the future will hold. Nothing could be worse, I swear it.’
We talked in this vein for some time. I suppose a year or so earlier I would have accepted her appeal for sympathy without the slightest question. But it so happened there had been a matter in Southsea in which I was to some extent deceived by just this kind of charitable appeal and I was also aware of how uncertain we were of our ground in this whole affair. Therefore, I tried hard to see if I could detect anything artful about Charlotte Jefford but I could not. There was nothing to suggest she was anything other than a worried and loving sister. After a time, the Doctor entered the room, looking for me, and I introduced them.
Rather to my surprise, he showed only a degree of interest. Of course, he was civil and he scrutinised her appearance as he ascertained when she had last seen Jefford (something I had conspicuously failed to do). Evidently she had not encountered her brother since the funeral of their uncle some months earlier and knew little of his London acquaintances, so it seemed unlikely she would have anything valuable to convey about his recent companions. After this the Doctor expressed his hopes that her brother would be found safely, and offered to send her news as soon as he had any to send. I thought this was an odd thing to say to someone who had just arrived but she thanked him gratefully enough and then we left her.
