The Demoniacs

by John Dickson Carr

  And so he had pushed into a sanded passage beside the taproom, coming face to face with the landlord.

  If the landlord at the Golden Cross had been lean and unctuous, this one was fat and suspicious.

  “A lady?” he had asked in reply to Jeffrey’s question. “A young lady? Come, can you describe her?”

  “You will know if you have seen her. Very dark eyes, much alive, with glistening whites. Hair of a soft light-brown, a little piled up and falling in one or two curls at the back of the neck. Very pretty though overpainted. A lavender-coloured gown with red decoration; and, I think, having money in a purse at her girdle.”

  “A young lady? And pretty? And having money? And abroad at this hour?”

  “Yes. That is what I fear.”

  “Come, what cause have you to think this young lady called at my house?”

  “None whatever, save that yours is the only light in the street. She may have asked the way to a print-seller’s shop on London Bridge. She may have asked for a linkman with a torch to light her there.”

  “I have not seen her. Is she mad?”

  “At times. No matter! Since she was not here …”

  “I did not say she was not here; I said I had not seen her.”

  Jeffrey, shivering in his cloak and about to retire, swung back again.

  “If such an one walked forthwith into my tap-room, no doubt frightened but venturing there all the same and addressing a tapster to the great scandal and vexation of my wife, can I be everywhere at once? Am I to blame for runaways girls who may draw brothers or fathers after ’em? This is an honest house, young sir!”

  Here the landlord’s round face swam out at him.

  “The girl, sir,” said this host, “was not in my house above two minutes’ time. She then flew away without linkboy or light either. You can’t speak to the tapster she addressed; he is drunk and abed. But there’s no harm if you have a word with the doctor.”

  “What doctor?”

  “A doctor of physic,” retorted the landlord, “but no quack, as most of ’em are. He is called Dr. Abel. He dwells on London Bridge, or will until they drive him from it. Each night he comes here to drink his two or three bottles like an honest man. The girl addressed him too. He is in the taproom still. And this is an honest house; there is a clergyman with him.”

  Jeffrey hurried past.

  The taproom, black-beamed and with sweating walls, lay deserted except for a man sitting at each side of a table by the fire. The elder of the two, thick-bodied and of early middle age, smoked a long pipe as he listened.

  He wore no sword. The badge of his physician’s office, a tall cane with a brass head polished to resemble gold, was propped against the table. For all his weary and embittered air, for all the seediness of poverty that clung to snuff-coloured coat and white stockings, Dr. Abel had in his face a real kindliness—as unexpected, by that bleak fireside, as though you found it in an engraving by Mr. Hogarth of Leicester Fields.

  His companion, a thin cadaverous-faced man in clerical black gown with white-linen bands, might have seemed sprightly or even sly by reason of a humorous nose and large soulful-looking eyes. But the parson was too much in earnest. He leaned across the table, speaking in a hushed and grave voice. Jeffrey might have hesitated to Intrude if the scene had not exploded in a different emotion.

  “Now, God damn my soul,” said the clergyman, springing to his feet in tears, “but this is a mighty disobliging thing. ’Twas a civil question, Doctor, most civilly put! If a morsel of female flesh should prove less sweet than it seemed, and a poor unhappy divine should catch the French sickness through no fault of his own, is there no swift and sovereign cure for it?”

  “Reverend sir, you must consult a surgeon and not a physician. Besides, as I say—”

  “Doctor, Doctor! I am but newly arrived upon a visit to town. Is this London courtesy?”

  “Reverend sir,” said the doctor, relenting in spite of himself, “I have told you I do not deal in such cures. There are too many people a-dying of causes that can’t be prevented.”

  “And dying with your help, past doubt?”

  “With my help, I suppose,” Dr. Abel said wearily. “I can’t claim to be Hunter of Jermyn Street. But there is no true remedy for the French sickness, I apprehend; certainly no swift one. If we would avoid it altogether, sir, we must try to stop at home and behave ourselves.”

  “Yes, yes, that’s all very well,” sighed the parson. “I am wed to a crazy wife, or as near crazed as makes no difference. I could weep for my poor Eliza”—in fact, he was already doing so—“but that she falls into the shrieking vapours if she finds a man so much as fondle a servant-wench behind the door. And it was behind the door, Doctor, which showed true delicacy on my part.”

  “Are you sure you took the French sickness of this servant-wench?”

  “Nay; how can I be? And it was not the servant-wench; it was the widow in Cheapside I am here to visit, and occurred scarce an hour ago. But at each small lapse I think I have catched it; I fear I have catched it; and that’s near as bad as catching it in sober earnest.”

  “Reverend sir,” said the doctor, sitting up straight, “you have a most singular perseverance in lewd tastes.”

  “Learned doctor,” said the clergyman, “go stick your head in a rat-hole as a fellow of small delicacy and no true feelings. I am the Rev. Laurence Sterne, vicar of Sutton and of Stillington in Yorkshire, and a prebend of York Cathedral too. Were it not for my calling, God damme, I would lay a cudgel across your skull at this minute.”

  (‘Now, why is it,’ Jeffrey Wynne was thinking, with the same despair he had felt so often before, ‘that everyone in this accursed world seems desirous of forcing a quarrel or picking a fight?’)

  “Gentlemen both,” he said aloud, and hurried forward, “I ask your pardon if I interrupt I also am seeking a woman: though not, that’s to say, in the same sense as this good divine. Will you hear me?”

  He rattled out as much of the story as seemed advisable, while Dr. Abel stood up in grave courtesy and the Rev. Laurence Sterne listened all agog.

  “She is handsome, you say?” demanded the latter. “And I was not here! A pox on it, why was I not here?”

  “Sir, be silent,” said Dr. Abel. He was much troubled, and put aside the long pipe. “I was here.”

  “And did the young lady question you, Doctor?” asked Jeffrey.

  “She did. She asked if I had acquaintance with an old woman, name to her unknown, living above the shop you mentioned. I said I indeed knew the woman, who is called Grace Delight. And I strongly counselled the young lady not to go there, though I did not tell her why. There is no harm in the old woman, or so I think. But those premises have a foolish repute for being haunted; and ’tis said men have died there of fright.”

  “Sweet Jesus!” said the clergyman, turning pale under his tears. “Is it truly haunted?”

  “Sir, be silent,” snapped Dr. Abel. “I said a foolish repute.”

  “Ay, but—!”

  “These things are of the mind. Men have scared themselves to death, as I can testify from my own knowledge. I counselled the young lady to go to her home. She replied that she had no home, or at least that there was none anywhere who loved her.”

  Jeffrey, head down, stalked away from the table and then back again.

  “If she would await me while I fetched my case of phials,” and Dr. Abel nodded towards a door across the taproom, “from where I had put it against being kicked or trampled by the tipsy people here, I said I would escort her. When I returned she had run away.”

  “Come, but this is a mighty mysterious and romantical business,” said the Rev. Laurence Sterne. “Now, why should a young lady of breeding, if such she be, desire to visit these premises on London Bridge?”

  “I can’t say. It was none of my business to pry.”

  Here Dr. Abel, broad-faced and rather blear-eyed under a fraying old wig, rubbed his hand across his forehead.

&n
bsp; “No, let’s not lie,” he said. “Being myself too tipsy and far too comfortable, I did not even follow as I should have done. There is no harm done, I hazard. And yet, unless I am greatly mistaken, that girl was sure upset and in need to be comforted. I will go now, if you like. But you, young sir: do not wait at all. I counsel you to make haste before me.”

  And Jeffrey had not waited.

  He knew why no sentry challenged him from the gatehouse on this side of the bridge. Half a dozen soldiers of the 1st Foot Guards, grenadier caps laid aside, lounged at a fire-place within the gatehouse. He could see them through the window, with their shadows on a whitewashed wall; presumably they had been there all evening.

  He stood some twenty yards out under the dim arches, calling Peg’s name, when he heard or believed he heard a woman scream from the waterside. But that was behind him. He ran on towards the first clear, broad opening between the blocks of houses.

  Just ahead, occupying the whole width of the bridge, loomed up the Tudor bulk of Nonsuch House.

  It lifted five or six floors of plaster and wood once richly carved or gilded; many windows; and four corner towers each with its wind-streaming weathercock. A high-sailing moon lit such of the windows as remained unbroken. The rest were eyeless, boarded up or stopped with rubbish, a last touch of the desolate.

  “Peg!”

  In that open space, clear and broad to the railing of the bridge on either side, he thought he saw a movement on the right: up-river, towards Westminster. Jeffrey ran to the balustraded walk they had built thirty years ago, outwards and parallel to the houses, so that foot-passengers might cross without being crushed amid vehicles. But he found nobody; the shadows tricked him. He leaned against the balustrade, looking sideways along a humped line of houses towards Southwark.

  There was good reason for that roaring water. Too much massive stone-work went into piers and starlings, leaving little room for breadth in the supporting arches. Its widest span—the middle one, with drawbridge against siege or attack, unraised since the Middle Ages—was less than forty feet across.

  In the days of the bridge’s glory, when rich men were not ashamed to be merchants, they had laid out gardens on the rooftops. From the backs of many houses a box-like little room projected on supports above-water: the jakes or privy, an enormous luxury in past centuries and not common even today.

  ‘“Grace Delight,”’ Jeffrey Wynne was thinking. ‘“Grace Delight.” A bloated old woman with addled wits and a snuff-cankered lip? Can anyone believe that is her true name? What if Peg should have discovered who the woman really is?’

  ‘Well, and what if Peg has discovered it?’ whispered another voice in his brain. ‘What’s the difference? Does it matter?’

  ‘Ah, but it does matter,’ whispered the first voice. ‘If you are resolved this night to commit a crime, because you must have Peg Ralston despite the devil and the altar, you have chosen a mighty ill time to commit it

  ‘Or are you truly resolved, after all? Is that why you linger and sweat here, so close to the shop? A man of determination would have throttled the hag long ago, and would do it now in risk of Peg’s presence or not. He would …’

  Phosphorescent rapids boiled far below. A great wind played on London Bridge as though on a fiddle. Again Jeffrey turned and ran, being sure this time he heard a woman’s voice cry out.

  He ran through the tunnel under Nonsuch House. He emerged into the carriageway beyond, with beams supporting house-fronts on either side. And there, without warning, he ran smack against someone in the near-dark.

  It is all very well, as Mr. Laurence Sterne might have said, to scoff at superstitious fears. But the thump of his own footsteps dinned in Jeffrey’s ears. His hands had darted out to seize and strangle, witlessly, when he touched a woman’s soft shoulders and knew the woman was Peg herself.

  Afterwards he could only curse under his breath, trying to conquer a husky voice. He took Peg in his arms and pressed her hard against him. She was rigid and near babbling with terror, but at his first word she went limp and then clung back.

  “Well,” he said at length, “you are safe. Now what’s this? What do you think you are at?”

  “Jeffrey—”

  “Speak up and answer! Why did you come here?”

  “Because I thought you might follow.”

  “Indeed? Was that the only reason?”

  “I thought you would follow. And you did follow. And I know why.”

  “Do you so?”

  “I do so. Because you love me.”

  “Because I thought you might be robbed or murdered. For the last time, Peg, a truce to this romantical foolery! I’ll bear no more of it.”

  “Oh, pray stop! You are more romantical than I am. Only you think ’tis weak, and you won’t allow it Don’t you want to kiss me?”

  “In candour, madam, I should much prefer to turn you across my knee and wallop you.”

  “Like that odious Hamnet Tawnish, that man with the long cold hands and the swordsman’s eye? Doing the bidding of his far more odious sister? I saw him through a window at the inn. I think that precious pair would kill me if they could. Where should I take refuge, pray, but in the home of an old and trusted servant?”

  “The home of— How? What’s that?”

  “This woman Grace Delight, though sure it can’t be her name. You told me she had been an old servant of your family.”

  Faint moonlight filtered down through the timbers and the crooked jutting gables. He could just discern Peg’s face, and the premises on the right by which she stood. Her terror was fading, though there was a wild white gleam about the eyes. He had put her away from him, but still held her arms under her cloak. Its hood was back, her hat gone and her hair a little tumbled.

  “No, Peg.”

  “But you said …”

  “No, sweet wench. I said, Peg, that ‘in some sense’ she once served my grandfather. I did not say in what sense she served. It might much astonish you to learn.”

  “No, I doubt it would.” He felt rather than saw Peg’s eyebrows go up. “You would have said, would you not, that she was your grandsire’s kept woman? And once upon a time may have been very pretty?”

  “How the devil’s name do you know that?”

  “Why, because ’twas you who said it,” said Peg. “And by your fashion of saying it. And who but a courtesan, or the like or the worse, would have dreamed of taking such a name as that?”

  “Peg, have you gone into that house there? Have you seen her? No, no, you could scarce have guessed it by seeing her now.”

  “Well, well, no doubt it was all very wicked. But ’twas in our grandsires’ wicked times. And ’tis all one. Even if she was a kept woman years upon years ago, I daresay she is still trustworthy and dependable.”

  “No, she is anything but such. There’s your romantical nonsense again. Yet it’s fitting that today she should cast horoscopes, and wave spells, and be somewhat horribly mad.”

  “Dear God!”

  When the Great Fire of 1666 had burnt a path from the north on London Bridge and was checked short of the first gap, it had jumped not quite so far as Nonsuch House, which was a far older relic of King Harry’s time—or as these houses about them now, which were older still.

  The shop-premises of the Magic Pen had a single broad window fastlocked by wooden shutters. Of two doors set side by side to the left of it, Jeffrey knew, one door led to the shop itself and one to a staircase going up inside. Two more floors in a narrow front lifted above the street; a patchwork of black beams and discoloured plaster with little windows somehow blocked or obscured from inside. The literal sign of the Magic Pen, hanging from a creaky rod above their heads, gave a great jerk and swing as the wind caught it

  “Peg, once more: you did not enter this house?”

  “No, I did not! I had thought to do so. A tapster at the Grapes said where I should find it; I told them I meant to take refuge. Yet I touched the door, and could not enter. I can’t say why;
I did not then fear for ghoulies and ghosties, as I fear now.”

  “Was it you who cried out?”

  “Cried out?”

  “A few minutes ago. I had fancied I heard it. Did you cry out?”

  “No, I did not I stood here an unconscionable great length of time, and could not move. I near died when I heard you running at me. But there was none cried out; assuredly not I.”

  “Well, that’s like enough. I have been fancying so much, what with thinking of you and with my own bad conscience, it’s like enough I dreamed this too. And you have courage; you are Sir Mortimer Ralston’s niece, with so much of his nature you might be his daughter instead. If you did not enter, there is now no need for either of us to enter.”

  “Jeffrey, I but touched the door there on the left. It was un barred or unfastened”

  “A street-door, here or anywhere else, unbarred or unfastened after nightfall?”

  “I can’t help that; it was so! I touched the door, and it swung open an inch or two or three. I had thought to see the inside all little and foul and horrid. It’s little enough, with stairs as steep as a ladder, though less foul than I feared. Yet I pulled the latch shut and durst not enter. And yet there was a wax-light burning above-stairs even so.”

  “A wax-light?”

  “Mercy upon us, is that so odd?”

  “Peg, you have never been poor. None hereabouts would have wax-lights, even though—” he stopped. “The woman Grace Delight would burn a wick in a dish of oil, if indeed she had any light at all.”

  “God, God, do you think I always tell you lies? See for yourself!”

  Peg pulled at the door, flinging it open on leather hinges so that it struck hard against the inside wall.

  And, just after that door struck the wall, someone did scream.