“A few years went by.
“People died and people were born, and the dread night was effaced by more recent happenings.
“Young Piper never mentioned it, as he had married someone else and did not care to mention Kitty Quested.
“And then one night Cephas Quested did not return home.
“It was in November, and there was snow upon the Bier-Walk. They found him there on the morning of the fourteenth. He had been trampled by a horse; for the marks of a great shoe showed livid on his temple. Yes. He had been trampled to death on the Bier-Walk, which was significant.
“From that day Johnny Jolt became a wreck. He drank more heavily, and his eyes were haunted with a fear. He sought company, but there was none where he was welcome. He was always asking people what day of the week the thirteenth of November fell on, and whenever that unlucky day came he moved from his lonely cottage and bought board and lodging at the Chequers Inn for the night.
“The inn changed hands, and the new landlord did not approve of Johnny Jolt. He thought that the presence of a drunken hangman kept good custom away, and he did not intend to give the creature house-room upon the thirteenth of November. The day came, and with it the Hangman.
“He was drunk by noon, but had the sense to sit quiet and soak in the corner. It drew on towards midnight and the cronies left. The ex-Hangman—for he had lost his job—steered himself to the bar.
“ ‘I always sleep here upon this night,’ he enunciated slowly. ‘I have done so for many years. It is the night when I cannot sleep in the cottage by myself. I dare say you know the reason.’
“ ‘Ah, yes, sir,’ answered mine host. ‘That is quite right. You honour the house every thirteenth of November, I remember. Now please, sir, I wish to close the doors. Drink up if you please.’
“ ‘I will have one more before going to my room.’
“The Landlord gave him another. ‘I will prepare your room for to-morrow night, sir.’
“ ‘No, for to-night,’ corrected the ex-Hangman.
“ ‘I thought it was for the thirteenth you ordered it.’
“ ‘Well?’
“ ‘It is the twelfth now, sir.’
“ ‘No—the thirteenth.’
“Looking at a calendar the Landlord shook his head. But the drunkard wanted to see for himself. The Landlord brought the calendar and leant across the bar.
“ ‘Here you are. November. That’s right. Here’s the thirteenth. Tuesday, as large as life. To-day’s Monday, and as you see, the twelfth.’
“ ‘So it is,’ admitted the drunkard. ‘Even the Constable told me wrong.’
“ ‘To-morrow, then, sir?’ queried the Landlord, putting away the calendar. ‘I’ll get the pot-boy to light a lantern for you and pilot you up the church steps. It’s your quickest way.’
“When they had gone, the Landlord chuckled to his wife: ‘I’ll tell him to-morrow that we were looking at the calendar for next year. I got it to-day on purpose.’
“Johnny Jolt chuckled to the pot-boy as they climbed the steps. ‘Nearly let myself in for two nights at the inn. Couldn’t have run to that, with prices as they are now.’
“The pot-boy asked him why he wished to spend a night at the inn when his own cottage was so near.
“ ‘For company, lad. Did you never hear the tale of the mad and murderous Sexton?’
“ ‘Never, sir,’ lied the pot-boy, who wanted to hear it first-hand.
“ ‘Then sit down here in the porch, and I’ll tell you while my legs get sober.’
“The pot-boy thought it stupid of Mister Jolt to drink any more brandy if he really wanted to get sober, but he kept his mouth shut while the ex-Hangman talked and drank from the bottle in his hand. The story was finished about the same time as the brandy. Then Mister Jolt turned to the pot-boy and said, ‘Now you see why I spend the thirteenth at the inn. If there is such a thing as ghosts that there Sexton will be one, and I ain’t taking chances with him.’
“ ‘But you are. It’s the thirteenth now.’
“ ‘What do you mean?’ screamed the Hangman. ‘What’s to-night?’
“ ‘Well, yesterday was Sunday, and we had psalms for the Twelfth Evening. The parson don’t make mistakes, I hope.’
“ ‘If that’s true, I’ll break that Landlord’s neck. But are you sure?’
“Before the pot-boy could answer, there came the sound of a galloping horse, and at the same time the church clock began to chime for midnight. Mister Jolt’s teeth chattered.
“ ‘Listen. What’s that?’
“ ‘A horse galloping,’ whimpered the boy.
“ ‘Coming close, ain’t it?’
“ ‘Yus!’
“ ‘Stopping, ain’t it?’
“ ‘Yus!’
“ ‘What’s that noise?’
“ ‘Clock striking twelve.’
“ ‘No. The other noise.’
“ ‘What? That sort of shuffling scuffle?’ snivelled the potboy.
“ ‘Yes. It is skeleton feet.’
“ ‘No. It ain’t.’
“ ‘What is it, then?’
“ ‘Dunno.’
“ ‘I do. It’s the Sexton. The Sexton on his horse. He’s ridden up the Bier-Walk. He’s dismounting under the bracket. He’s come to take me. But I won’t be took. I won’t. I say I won’t.’ The Hangman swung the lantern round his head and, raising the bottle with the other hand, pointed into the darkness, screaming, ‘Look!’
“The pot-boy sprang out of the porch and the Hangman brought the lantern down with a crash on to his head, and then came at him with the bottle.
“The boy had a dim recollection of thrusting his hand against the madman’s throat, and of gripping hard. Then the bottle came down, and he remembered no more.
“Half an hour later the Landlord and two ostlers came from the ‘Chequers’ to look for the pot-boy. He was lying insensible upon the pavement. They gave him brandy and brought him round, when he screamed out: ‘Mister Jolt. Where’s Mister Jolt?’
“They found Mister Jolt on the Bier-Walk, beneath the lantern-bracket, his arms across his face and his legs crumpled under him.
“ ‘He has fallen from the wall,’ said one of the ostlers. ‘Broke his legs, by the look of it.’
“ ‘Drunk. It will give my house a bad name,’ muttered the Landlord, as he uncovered the dead man’s face. When he saw it he sprang to his feet. ‘Run for the Doctor. I think he’s dead.’
“When the Doctor came and looked at the distorted face he said, ‘Yes—he’s dead. A seizure. I warned him to keep off spirits.’
“ ‘He had none to-night at the “Chequers,”’ lied the Landlord in his own defence. ‘Wouldn’t let him. Has to think of the “Chequers’” good name. Not a drop of hard liquor, I assure you.’
“ ‘I dare say,’ nodded the Doctor. ‘He carried it with him. See.’ He unclasped the dead man’s fingers, which were clutching the broken neck of a bottle. It had cut deep into his hand, which was caked with congealed blood.
“ ‘Hallo. Finger-marks on his throat. How’s that?’
“The pot-boy looked at the Doctor and stammered, ‘It’s what he feared, sir. The Sexton’s ghost come for him. It’s the thirteenth of November.’
“ ‘Nonsense,’ snapped the Doctor. ‘You must have seized him by the throat when he came at you.’
“ ‘I was knocked senseless with his lantern,’ answered the pot-boy stubbornly.
“ ‘Hallo. What’s this?’ The Doctor had turned the dead man’s head, and they all saw the mark of a great hoof on his face.
“ ‘I couldn’t have done that now, could I, sir? It’s the Sexton’s horse, like when Mister Quested was found here.’
“ ‘More likely this, I think,’ answered the man of science lifting a great cart-horse-shoe from the gravel. ‘He was raving drunk, and he fell on this.’
“ ‘Put it down, sir,’ whispered the Landlord.
“ ‘Horse-shoes won’t harm us. They
are lucky,’ said the Doctor.
“ ‘That’s been dropped by the Devil’s horse,’ shuddered an ostler.
“The Landlord suddenly pulled the Doctor’s hand from the corpse. ‘Look! That proves it,’ he cried, and pointed to the wall.
“From a crevice in the old stones there appeared a gigantic and glossy worm, which slithered and dropped upon the Hangman’s neck and slipped in under his shirt before the Doctor could free his hand to take it.
“And so, my dear Kent, it became a local ghost-story. The general opinion was that the Sexton’s horse had trampled him as it had Cephas Quested, and the Sexton’s bony fingers had finished the job by throttling. Then the King Worm had come to claim him, and from that day not a soul who had been at the hanging would venture up the Bier-Walk upon November the thirteenth.”
At the end of this story my host got up from his knees, for as he had described the Doctor’s examination of the dead Hangman he had knelt on the carpet using the side of the chair for the Bier-Walk wall. In fact, the whole narrative had been a very subtle amalgamation of conversational style linked into movements that had been highly dramatic. The whole thing had gripped me as though I had been in a theatre, watching a great actor in some moving drama. Indeed, I thought it a pity that since he had confessed he had been on the stage at one point in his curious life, he had not continued to grace the boards, as they say.
So moved was I that I could not speak or even think of what to say until he had picked up the spade and taken it across the room to the specimen case. Then he gave me my cue, by asking, “Well, what do you think? Curious story, isn’t it?”
“Well—I think I’m very glad not to be sleeping in the Chapel. I also think that if the other stories in your collection are one-half as grim, our friend Carnaby could not have given you a better title than ‘Master of the Macabre.’”
“Which reminds me that I have not yet opened Carnaby’s packet,” he laughed. “As I told you, however, during dinner, my whole mind is at the moment occupied with our friend Porfirio, and the experiences we both had last night. It’s always as well, I find, to keep to one thing at a time, and pursue it relentlessly. It gets one further in the long run.”
“Then since we are, or at least I am, entirely engrossed with the story of your murderous Sexton and your Hangman,” I replied, “I am entirely in agreement with your theory, and before we embark on anything else, please satisfy my curiosity on one or two points. How, for instance, did you obtain these relics of a tragedy that happened a hundred years ago?” I had picked up the pathetic little curl, found myself actually blaming young Piper for being so unromantic as to marry somebody else.
“You are quite right, my dear Kent,” he replied. “We think along the same lines, and the manner in which I got possession of the poor relics is a fitting end to the whole story.”
He came back to my chair and, taking the curl from my hand, gently replaced it in the shelter of the spade’s handle. He then strolled over to the fire-place, put on another log, and stood facing me.
“There are still Questeds living in Aylesford, you see,” he explained. “Perhaps fortunately for my collection they have no love of what they termed ‘the morbids,’ and were glad enough to exchange that poor little relic from their grandmother’s Bible, though nothing would have induced them to part with a curl of their own brat’s head of hair—and a nasty little bit of work it was. The price of our poor Kitty’s curl was a particularly nasty-looking tea-service they had set their minds on. It made me feel quite hot when I went to pay for the thing.”
“And the spade—was that in Aylesford too?” I asked.
He laughed. “Stolen property of the church, I’m afraid—though I was not the purloiner. And do you know, hardened as I am in horrors, I shouldn’t like to dig with it. I feel its history would bring bad luck to any work it was put to. It certainly led me a dance of some thousands of miles to get hold of it. It was easy enough to get on its track. Until a few years ago it had hung in the Sexton’s tool-shed at Aylesford—and then one of the present sexton’s sons emigrated to Canada. Without a by-your-leave of the Vicar, he took with him any spare churchyard tools he could find, the spade amongst them. Now—I have always found that travel has been a good means of adding to my collection, so I didn’t hesitate to follow the spade. One meets with queer talkers in the smoking-rooms of liners. Anyway, Hoadley and I packed up and went to Canada, where we ran our sexton’s farmer-boy to earth, and with him the spade just as you see it now. He couldn’t tell me who had put the horse-shoe on the handle, but he did know certain details of the old story which I had not been able to draw from the old inhabitants. These days the Aylesford people seem particularly cagey about the tragedy. The churchgoers feel that the story is somewhat a reflection against their parish.
“I must own that I was glad to find the spade still in use, and he was more than glad to hand it over for a modern tractor which he wanted for ploughing. He thought, of course, that I was making a fool bargain. A spade for a tractor—but then—I preferred the spade. By the way, there is another relic of the affair which you had overlooked. Probably didn’t realize it belonged or didn’t know what it was. As a matter of fact, I got it from the present Doctor of Aylesford. He found the bottle all labelled with a lot of other junk when he bought the practice some years back.”
“The Hangman’s brandy bottle?” I guessed.
“No. Much more grisly. Look.”
He handed me over a sort of glass jam-jar containing some object in spirits. It had a label on it bearing an inscription in old-fashioned copper-plate handwriting.
“Pickled—what?” asked my host, smiling.
“Good God, man—how awful,” I ejaculated, shuddering. Then I read the inscription out loud:
“VER REX
Taken from the deceased body of Mr. John Jolt, sometime Hangman of Her Majesty’s Prison at Maidstone and placed in spirits by me Alroy Silvester, physician and surgeon, for exhibition at the above’s inquest.”
I looked up at my host as I handed him back the jar which had preserved the fat coils of the largest worm I had ever seen in England. Then counting on my fingers, I recited the following list: “A pretty girl with hair like the harvest moon: her infatuated lover: a mad and murderous sexton: a drunken executioner: a terrified pot-boy: a hanging horse: and then the great star—KING WORM. What a cast.”
My host struck a comic attitude of an old actor, as he replied: “Aye, laddie, as you say, what a cast. And what ‘props’ they had to furnish them withal.” He too began counting on his fingers: “Fireworks: human bones: a coffin rope: a bell-rope: a premature calendar: a Devil’s horse-shoe: a hank of hair: a blood-stained spade: a Bier-Walk lamp-bracket: the overhanging branch of a churchyard elm: a lantern: a brandy bottle: and chimes of midnight off. All the ingredients for a fugue macabre. And now another glass of port and so to bed.”
I managed to cross the hall to the sturdy oak staircase with the aid of the crutches, and then discarded them for the stout banisters on one side and the Master’s shoulder on the other, Hoadley following with the crutches. In this way by hoppings and hoistings I reached the landing.
“And now,” warned my host, “you want to be careful not to slip. We take rather a pride in keeping these floors polished, eh, Hoadley?”
“I’ll go careful,” I said.
Looking down at the magnificent black oak beams so perfectly joined to make a solid floor, I remarked upon their width. “The upstair floors of most of the old houses I’ve seen have been inconveniently sloped and creaky. But here we might be walking on polished marble.”
My host nodded. “The builders of this place knew what was required of them. Only the best work did for an archbishop’s house privileged to entertain royal princes. They certainly didn’t stint their material. During the renovation we had occasion to examine underneath this floor from the ceilings below, and we found that each plank is rounded—a complete half section of tree trunk cut to match. Each trunk runs
solid the whole width of the house. You’ll certainly not be kept awake up here with creaking boards. I often wonder what grim or exciting secrets lie in the thickness of these walls, especially as the rich altar treasures of the monastery can’t be traced. It’s known that old Islip didn’t take them to Maidstone when he robbed Peter to pay Paul. It would be fun to find them. Now, my dear Kent, the Tapestry Room is that door, but en route come and have a look at my Spanish walls. This door opposite yours.”
I followed him to the room while he switched on the lights.
“You put a fire in Mr. Kent’s room, Hoadley?” he added.
“Why—yes, sir. Of course,” said the old man.
“I call that rank favouritism, when you haven’t got one yourself,” I protested.
“Don’t you worry,” he laughed. “I have. You see, I’m not sleeping here to-night. Hoadley has made up the bed for me in the Chapel. I want to see if your experience of last night will be repeated on me.”
“I call that exceedingly brave of you,” I said, not envying him in the least.
“Not a bit,” he answered lightly. “Just curious. Besides, this room hasn’t been very active lately. Maybe the spooks are getting bored with me.”
“More likely that they’re afraid you’ll terrify them with your stories. This is a splendid room,” I said, looking with awe at the richly embossed leather stretched over the walls—“but,” I hesitated to say what I was thinking.
“Come along, then,” urged my host. “A splendid room—but——?”
“Well—being pretty tired and anticipating a good night, if I had to sleep here, I somehow wouldn’t bet on its not being very active, as you say. P’raps I’m sensitive or something.”
“It’s a grand thing to be. Don’t despise it.” He put his hand on my shoulder and patted me with frank affection. From that moment, indeed, I knew that he and I were good friends. “I’m afraid you’re going to suit this house too well for your peace of mind till you get to know it better. It may drive you at first: almost bully you into giving it your complete understanding. I’ve lived in queer places but never in a house so real, so alive as this. It’s just like a human being with moods. You’ve got to humour it. You’ve got to understand its mind.”
The Master of the Macabre Page 8
