The Demoniacs

by John Dickson Carr

  Suddenly Sir Mortimer clenched his first and smote the table.

  “Nay, now, Lavvy …”

  “My dear man, do you fancy me not devoted to your honour and your interest, if none else is?”

  “Nay, Lavvy, I—I know it. But why be harsh with the boy?”

  “Why be harsh with the girl?” asked Mrs. Cresswell.

  Gently opening her fan, she advanced towards him with a pinkness on her waxy forehead and her upper lip lifted above a pale, prim, handsome mouth. Candlelight caught gleams from the gold-and-ruby pendant round her neck.

  “Or do you fancy me deluded by your bluster, by this playacting at being Squire Western in the tale by the late Mr. Fielding? I am not deluded. You will ‘kill’ her, you say? What will you do? How will you chastise her as she deserves, for having run away like this? Will you in truth chastise her at all?”

  “Nay, Lavvy, be easy! She’s my dead brother’s child. I brought her up.”

  “Truly you did. That’s evident in your speech and hers. There is good blood in your veins, no doubt. But you are a country bumpkin and so is she.”

  “Lavvy—”

  “Saw you ever such cozening eyes? Such tricks and wheedles of a milkmaid to gull stupid men? You can’t help bringing her up a bumpkin; you need not have brought her up a slut. Is she fit for the company of His Gracious Majesty at St. James’s Palace?”

  “‘Gracious Majesty,’ is it?” shouted Sir Mortimer. “That tub-o’-lard booby who’s not even learned to talk plain in English, and with no more wits than anybody else out o’ Hanover?”

  “Still a Jacobite, dear man? Still with schoolboy’s love of the Stuarts? Don’t tremble for your neck; these Jacobites are dead and done with. But do you indeed desire to see your loutish girl mingle in good society, as you say you do? Or must there be stronger means used to curb you for your own good?”

  “Lavvy, Lavvy, I can’t deny you anything. God’s death, have it as you please. What’s to be done with Peg, then?”

  “She must be stripped naked and thrashed with a strap. Afterwards you will have her committed to Bridewell for a month on a charge of common harlotry. What’s she to you, or you to her, when there are others who truly love you? And you need not flog her; I would not have it so; you are too soft of heart. My good brother, Mr. Tawnish, is below-stairs to render the service.” Mrs. Cresswell swung round to Jeffrey. “You spoke, young man?”

  “I did, madam.”

  “May one ask what you said?”

  “I said, madam, that your good brother will touch Miss Ralston at his own risk.”

  “Indeed?” enquired Lavinia Cresswell, who was not impressed. “Have you met my brother, Mr. Wynne? Or his near friend Major Skelly?”

  “I have not that doubtful honour.”

  “Nor are you quite an accomplished swordsman, I believe?”

  “No, I am not. And I have no taste for heroics in any case.”

  “Again I commend you. Few fortune-hunters are so wise. Now where is this poor persecuted one? In what room is she skulking?”

  “I can’t say.”

  “You mean you won’t say. Then I fear I must fetch her for myself. Or do you design to prevent me?”

  “Not even that, madam. Yet a moment ago you made reference to a tale of the late Mr. Henry Fielding. Were you acquainted with Mr. Fielding?”

  Mrs. Cresswell looked at him. Her gown was of cream-coloured velvet, with a pink sacque and wide lace double-sleeves from elbow almost to wrist; the ruby pendant rose and fell at the very low, square-cut opening of the bodice.

  “I am a person of taste; it may be, not ashamed to shed tears at an affecting page. But his work is coarse and abhorrent, unlike Mr. Richardson’s. That most moving and impassioned book Clarissa—”

  “My question, madam, was not as to your literary pretensions. Are you familiar with him in another capacity? Or with his half-brother and successor, the blind magistrate at Bow Street? With those who most stealthily are called ‘Mr. Fielding’s People’?”

  “I am familiar with blind insolence, at all events. May I go below-stairs, or may I not?”

  “Be pleased, madam, to go below-stairs or to the devil.”

  “You will regret this,” said Mrs. Cresswell.

  The door opened and clapped shut. Two candle-flames jumped and undulated. A wind rushed over Charing Cross into the mouth of the Strand, through streets which one who knew them had described as being ‘in a downright state of savage barbarism.’ Perhaps it was not so different indoors.

  “Sir—” Jeffrey began.

  “You never thought, boy,” said Sir Mortimer Ralston, “to see me like this. Confess it! You never thought to see me fall so low.”

  Throughout Mrs. Cresswell’s remarks he had not moved from behind the table or raised his eyes from the floor. Now he lumbered out, half turning. His wig was askew. One white stocking, the left one, had slipped the buckles of his knee-breeches and tumbled down over a big shoe. And so he halted, peering red-faced over his shoulder in the firelight, like a gross and swollen schoolboy.

  “I’m besotted with the woman, d’ye say? Well, damme, and what if I am? I can’t resist her, d’ye say? Well, damme, and what if I can’t? Am I the first man to be taken so?”

  “Not the first or the last, if it were only that.”

  “As you are besotted with Peg. D’ye think I don’t know you are? Only you hide it the better. I can’t hide it. I’m a plain blunt man.”

  “Sir, you are anything but a plain blunt man.”

  “Ay?” demanded Sir Mortimer, with his natural colour and truculence flowing back. “You’d fathomed that, had you?”

  “Something of it.”

  “How much of it? D’ye guess why I sent you on that cloud-cuckoo quest of Peg when I could have had her found and haled back a dozen times by a dozen men of mine in Paris?”

  The cloak still hung across Jeffrey’s arm. He thought of cursing to high heaven, of taking that cloak and hurling it on the floor in a gesture like one of Sir Mortimer’s. But he only looked back.

  “A dozen men of yours in Paris? Do you emulate Sir Francis Walsingham?”

  “Who’s Sir Francis Walsingham?”

  “He is dead. Once, or so we read, he employed a legion of spies for Good Queen Bess.”

  “Ay; book-learning,” snarled Sir Mortimer. “I respect it, mind; but there’s a mort too much of it and too little hard sense. It was not for spying I put capital behind Hookson’s the goldsmith’s of Leadenhall Street. We’ve been at war with the Mounseers this twelvemonth and more. But bankers don’t go to war; bankers get rich. Keep this to yourself, hark’ee; they’d drive me from home in my shirt, these people of fashion would, if they learned I had interest in trade. Still, there’s my answer.”

  “Your answer to what? What did you send me into France?”

  “Why, damme, because somebody must wed Peg. I design YOU shall wed her; who else? I’ve had a mind to it from the first, when I could make you prove your mettle and show yourself nothing of the cursed timid fellow you affect to be.” He caught Jeffrey’s eye. “Nay, now, don’t resent it. I like you. If you’re besotted with Peg, and she’s still more besotted with you, now where’s the harm in that or in my design either?”

  “There is no harm in it. But there is a grave error. The error, sir, is that I won’t have her.”

  “How?” cried the other, outraged. “You won’t have her?”

  “No, I will not.”

  Sir Mortimer lumbered forward, his shoulders rising and thickening against candlelight.

  “Because she’s no virgin, hey? I can’t prove ’twas you first lay with her; the wench would spit on me before she said one word against you; but I’ve no need to prove it like a demnition lawyer. In any case, what’s the small matter of a maidenhead in a gel with so large a wedding-portion as Peg? Is it her virtue?”

  “No, it is not. This female virtue seems to me a much overprized commodity, and mysterious for the veneration in which they to
ld it. To praise a woman because she has never exercised her sex is as though you should praise a man because he has never exercised his brains.”

  “Well, that’s good sense. Don’t say it so loud, mind; you’ll have the whole pack o’ parsons in full cry after us. But it’s good sense, and what ails you?” Then Sir Mortimer stared. “It’s not the rhino, is it? You’re not too proud-stomached to take Peg’s money, when any young man of family expects to mend a ruined fortune with a rich marriage and quite right of him too? For sure it’s not the rhino?”

  “No, it is not the money. At least—”

  “Then what a fiend’s name is amiss? Do you deny you love this wench?”

  “In my heart I don’t deny it. But I’ll cut my throat before I wed with her or so much as acknowledge I desire to.”

  “Now, who are you, sirrah, to say what you’ll do or what you won’t do? What are you? Lavvy may be perplexed when you talk of ‘Mr. Fielding’s People.’ I’m not perplexed. Mr. Fielding’s People are the thief-takers from Bow Street, the scum who work in secret and betray robbers or murderers for blood-money. And you’re one of ’em. Is there any scavenger worse than that?”

  “Have a care, sir.”

  “Lord, lord,” Sir Mortimer said tragically, “but what a generation of vipers we live among. Here’s Peg would be a play-actress at Drury Lane, near the lowest of the low, save that I won’t have it. Here’s you a thief-taker, the very lowest. Here’s both of you in love and won’t wed, and would break my heart for a pair of moonstruck zanies.”

  “Your facts, sir—”

  “Don’t you speak o’ facts, ecod.”

  “Your facts, sir, are incorrect. Mr. John Fielding at Bow Street has brought dignity to a magistrate’s court at last, and dignity to his officers too. As for the playhouse: those two most chilly-faced and precious men of breeding, His Grace of Grafton and Mr. Horace Walpole, are both proud to boast they dine with Garrick at Hampton.”

  “Peg ain’t Garrick, you young whelp. She’s more like that other Peg, the Woffington woman, who fled the stage ere they hissed her off it.” His tone changed. “Lad, lad, attend to me! There’s not much time. At any minute Lavvy will—”

  Sir Mortimer stopped suddenly, his mouth open and one hand at the gold buttons down his coat. Jeffrey nodded.

  “Yes,” he agreed. “At any minute, you were about to say, Madam Cresswell will return. You will cringe before her like a man in the pillory when they fling stones and dead cats. I mean no offence, sir, but what’s amiss with you?”

  “I can’t resist the woman. I owned it. That’s all.”

  “Under favour, sir, it is not all: though some months ago I thought it was.”

  “Well, damme, shall I neglect Peg’s welfare at all times?” She must move in good company, else where’s the use of our taking a house in London at all? Lavvy Cresswell has the ear of Most Gracious and Fat-Behinded King George the Second, who’s as much an impressionable widower as I am. That’s true, and you know it!”

  “It is also a part of the truth, granted. Yet you were never over-impressed by good company. I have seen you pitch a baronet downstairs for saying half of what Madam Cresswell said. What hold has this woman upon you? What threats does she use to tame you? Or is it her good brother, Mr. Hamnet Tawnish?”

  “‘Hold’? ‘Threats’?”

  “Yes.”

  Sir Mortimer spoke after a pause.

  “One day, boy,” he said in a strangled voice, “you’ll awake to find yourself grown old. No longer so safe or assured of yourself at all times.”

  “I have never been assured of myself one tenth of a second. I would to God I could be.”

  “No longer so assured of yourself, I say. Or so quick to think and speak, or even to pen a liar in a corner. But will you see Peg thrashed here, and then jailed on a charge that can be sworn to at a magistrate’s? Thereafter, when she’s had her lesson, to be thrown to Hamnet Tawnish if he’s still of a mind to have her?”

  “Thrown to Hamnet Tawnish?”

  “You said you’d not met him.”

  “Nor have I. He is known to me by repute as a swordsman second only to his crony, Major Skelly, and for other things besides. Peg? Thrown to Hamnet Tawnish!”

  “Ay; there’s the core of it. Who’ll help her if you don’t?”

  “Upon your honour, is this true? With all the resources at her uncle’s command?”

  “Lad, I swear …”

  It was as though Jeffrey caught the echo of another voice.

  “Yes,” he said. “Peg herself swore to a great deal not long ago. Sir, I will be gulled no longer either by you or by Peg either. Thank you, no: I would not stir an inch to help her; no, not if—”

  Quick footsteps rapped along the wooden gallery outside. These chambers at the Golden Cross consisted of the wainscotted parlour adjoining an airless bedroom not devoid of fleas. Footsteps passed the bedroom and reached the parlour. Lavinia Cresswell, followed by a man some half a dozen years older, opened the door and looked at Sir Mortimer while you might have counted ten.

  Mrs. Cresswell did not appear too angry, except that one or two spots of bad complexion stood out against a waxy forehead.

  “This good Mary Margaret of ours,” she said, “has still more to answer for. She is gone.”

  “Gone? Gone where?”

  “That,” replied Mrs. Cresswell, “is what we would wish to know.”

  “Oh, yes,” said the man who accompanied her. “We more than wish to know.”

  If Mrs. Cresswell was short in stature, her companion stood lean and above middle height. He had long hands with long, supple-jointed fingers. Yet these two seemed unmistakably brother and sister, having much the same expression as well as features and bloodless cast of countenance.

  “Your niece, dear man,” said Mrs. Cresswell, “bespoke a room on the plea that she desired to wash herself. Hardly a minute later she ran into the yard, calling for a hackney-coach. The landlord, or so he says, followed and would have dissuaded her. Mistress Peg paid no heed. She was driven away eastwards.”

  “Lavvy, Lavvy,” wailed Sir Mortimer, “this is none of my doing.”

  “I don’t say it was.”

  “And I can’t tell where the lass is gone.”

  “I don’t say that either.” Mrs. Cresswell nodded toward Jeffrey. “But does he know?”

  “No,” said Jeffrey, “I do not”

  “You don’t know much, do you?” asked Hamnet Tawnish.

  Mr. Tawnish shouldered past the woman. His sleek white wig fitted him neatly, a horizontal curl pressing against each ear. His gold-laced coat was of mustard-colour against a blue waistcoat, the coat-cuffs as wide and deep as pockets. His left hand fell on the pommel of a smallsword with a steel-cut hilt and gilded knuckle-guard.

  “You don’t know much, do you?” he repeated.

  “Stay your hand, sweet brother,” said Mrs. Cresswell. Her wide-open eyes were fixed on Jeffrey. “It is known to me, Mr. Wynne, that you have lodgings in Covent Garden Piazza. Almost any coarseness could go unremarked there: Mistress Peg drove eastwards; to the hackney-coachman she gave instructions which, while imperfectly overheard, may be of use. Mr. Wynne, do you lodge at or near any premises with a sign of the Magic Pen?”

  Oddly enough, it was Sir Mortimer who uttered an exclamation.

  Jeffrey’s expression gave no indication, or so he hoped, that the words had meaning for him. But they struck fear for Peg into his mind and heart; instinctively he started towards the door; Hamnet Tawnish, hands dropped, was in front of him.

  “Mr. Tawnish …”

  “Ah, you know me?” enquired the other, lifting his upper lip much as his sister did. “You’ll know me better presently. Have you ears, fellow?”

  “Mr. Wynne,” said Mrs. Cresswell, “I await an answer to my question.”

  “The answer, madam, is that I lodge nowhere near any premises called the Magic Pen.”

  “Then where are you going?”

  “Wher
e I am going, madam, concerns no person except myself.”

  A smile crawled under Hamnet Tawnish’s nose. With his open left hand, brought up almost negligently, he caught Jeffrey so ringing a crack across the cheek-bone that the tricorne hat jumped on his head. With his right hand Hamnet Tawnish whipped his sword from the scabbard.

  “Draw!” he said.

  “Mr. Tawnish, I desire no quarrel with you if it can be avoided.”

  “Belike,” agreed the taller man. “But you have one and you’ll not creep from it. Now draw.”

  “Hamnet,” cried Mrs. Cresswell, “let him got”

  “Sweet sister—”

  “It is plain,” said Mrs. Cresswell, with her eyes turned suddenly towards a corner of the ceiling, “that he can give us no aid. And at best, you observe, he is so poor in spirit that to quarrel were a waste of time. Let him go!”

  The sword-blade thin and needle-sharp in point, yet had no cutting edge. Hamnet Tawnish drew back his arm as if to throw a round-arm cut, as contemptuous as it was harmless, in the direction of Jeffrey’s eyes:

  Jeffrey bowed, fully facing him. Then, with a look too detached even to be called derisive, Mr. Tawnish dropped the point and stood aside. Sir Mortimer cursed into his jowls. Mrs. Cresswell contemplated that corner of the ceiling. And Jeffrey ran for the door.

  III

  The Young Woman, and the Old

  “PEG!” HE CALLED. AND again, more sharply: “Peg!”

  His voice, loud enough to have roused a guard if any had been watching, went up and was lost amid the tumbling echoes of London Bridge. There was still no reply.

  Jeffrey, in agony, glanced back over his shoulder.

  The clocks on the City bank had rung ten. At such a very late hour there would be nobody in the street except cutthroats or drunken people, the latter even more numerous than the former because the law against cheap gin could not be enforced. Some victim of an attacker or of the horrors, in fact, was screaming on an unearthly note from an alley off the waterside. It sounded like a woman, as often it was.

  Jeffrey hesitated. Some ten minutes ago two sedan-chair bearers, at a jog from Charing Cross and trotting fit to burst their hearts, had deposited him in Great Eastcheap at the top of Fish Street Hill. Southwards, near the Monument, was the lattice of a tavern he had seen once before that night. It was more than a tavern, he remembered from a profession he hated despite his brave words: it was the Grapes, a coaching inn which, like the Bull and Mouth in St. Martin’s-le-Grand, served travellers to and from the north country.