The Demoniacs

by John Dickson Carr

  He dropped the key into his inside coat pocket. There was one other object in that pocket tonight: an object so very thin that it took up little space, but long and fashioned of steel for all its slenderness, so that the key made a clinking noise against it. One of the guardsmen at the table, perhaps from hearing more talk of the supernatural, suddenly looked round. Tubby Beresford threw out his hands.

  “Hark’ee, Jeff—”

  “Good-night, I said! Mind you stay within-doors, and don’t see the ghosts which have no existence.”

  Jeffrey left the guard-room without hurry, closing the door with care. Once outside, he hurried under the tunnel of the entrance-arch and out across the wooden carriageway over London Bridge.

  The moon shed such murky light that he could remain unseen unless he ran straight into someone. Nor would his footsteps be heard under a boiling roar of water beneath the piers. If he could not help a feeling that eyes were watching him, yet he knew this must be sheer fancy.

  He reached the Magic Pen, and the street-door to the rooms where Grace Delight had died. With his left hand he touched the keyhole and found the dried soap he had been told was there. With his right hand he unlocked the door, pushed it open very briefly, then closed it and locked it again.

  Afterwards, the errand done, he ran back to the City side of the bridge and up Fish Street Hill as far as the Monument.

  ‘I was slow-witted,’ Jeffrey thought, with inner rage.

  For it caught his eye, that Monument, as he had failed to remark it on Friday night. They had built it to commemorate the Great Fire, within a stone’s throw of Pudding Lane where fire started. The great Doric column towered dark against a moonlit sky, with steps inside the column so that you could mount to an open platform nearly two hundred feet above Monument Yard. By day, when a press of wagons went shaking along Gracechurch Street, visitors could feel the platform sway and vibrate underneath them.

  ‘Slow-witted!’ Jeffrey raved to himself. ‘Considering what can be seen from there …’

  “S-ss-t!” hissed the voice from across the road. “Lad!”

  The officer named Deering, an elderly man with patched clothes and a shrewd, vigorous face, edged out into faint light from the lattice of the Grapes Inn near which he stood.

  Jeffrey, waking up, went over to join him. Deering carried a dark-lanthorn; its shutter was closed, but you could smell heated metal through the other odours of the street.

  “Lad, what were you at? The Magic Pen?”

  “Yes. No sign as yet.”

  “Christ Jesus, I said there wasn’t!”

  “How long were you there? Watching on the bridge, I mean?”

  “All the time.” Deering spoke querulously. “All this perishing day and the night too, up to ten o’ the clock when you said to meet you here. Bread and cheese in my pocket but no drop o’ gin for the guts. Course, I can’t say who might ha’ gone by way of the back window.”

  “Nobody could have gone in or out that window since I was there yesterday. Now open the shutter of your lanthorn: just a little. Here!”

  The quick mutters flew back and forth. A dim ray shone as Jeffrey extended the little finger of his left hand.

  “Soap,” he said. “It was undisturbed in its outline. Observe also: it’s quite clean too. No key has been inside the lock until I used this key to try it a few minutes ago.”

  He extended the key Tubby Beresford had given him.

  “Our quarry used soap to get a mould for a skeleton key. But nobody has touched the lock since then. We’re still in time.”

  “I could ha’ told you that too. The locksmith in Cheapside—” Abruptly Deering’s light went out. “Oh, ay,” he growled in understanding. “If you don’t trust what I tell you—”

  “By this time I trust nobody.”

  “Well, that’s the right thing. That’s what your noddle’s for, lad. Where are we bound now?”

  “If you’re spent, Deering, you will need strong waters against what is ahead. Into the Grapes, then.”

  “Ay? But what if the pretty ‘un should come a-raiding while we’re in the taproom?”

  “In that case, the pretty ’un will linger. Since you’ve not lied to me, we can risk it now.”

  “Easy, lad! I’m not a young man; you’ll break me arm!”

  “I can endure to break somebody’s neck, which may be the best course tonight. Into the Grapes!”

  A drop of rain stung and hissed against the closed dark-lanthorn. On Friday night, when Jeffrey entered the sanded passage beside the taproom, the place had been at least tolerably well lighted. Now only a floating wick burned blue in a bowl suspended at the rear of the passage.

  A handbill in smeary type, pasted against one wall, announced the arrival or departure of coaches with grandiose names. But the passage was too dark to read any type. It seemed drained of all life; the shadows gave this commonplace inn an air faintly foreign and more than a little sinister.

  And Jeffrey came face to face with the same fat, suspicious landlord he had met two nights ago.

  “Yes?” said the landlord. “What do you want?”

  “I desire—”

  “Whatever it is, begone! There’s none to serve you in my taproom on a Sunday night.”

  “Now this, mine host,” Jeffrey said, “is the fine English hospitality we meet so often. Have we some law an innkeeper must close his taproom on Sundays?”

  “There is no law. But there is my convenience.”

  Then the landlord went from fret to elaborate sarcasm.

  “This house of mine, like the Bull and Mouth in St. Martin’s-le-Grand, is the coaching-station for the north of England. You don’t know that, of course?”

  “I know it.”

  “By the law you’re so fond of, I must serve hot food to passengers. You don’t know that either, I suppose? You think this easy, don’t you, for a man with his wife in the megrims and his tapsters drunk?”

  “At least, mine host, their reasons are observable.”

  The landlord began to yell, and then controlled himself.

  “I’ll give you more than reasons. The Rolling Thunder for York leaves here at midnight. If you would bespeak a place in the coach, or a room at my house either, come in and be welcome. If you wish only to swill’ in my taproom, you’ll go elsewhere and be quick at it.”

  “Stop!” said another voice in tragic tones. “Stop!”

  Out from the taproom, with a lofty and spiritual air which was not assumed but deeply felt, sallied the Rev. Laurence Sterne.

  “Good man,” he addressed the landlord, “let me teach you Christian duty towards your wife and all mankind. I am a passenger by that coach. I don’t know the ragged fellow, but that gentleman there,” and he nodded towards Jeffrey, “is a near and dear friend. They shall drink in your taproom if they wish, and I engage they shall drink with moderation. You’ll serve them, surely?”

  “Why, sir …”

  “Wine is a mocker,” said Mr. Sterne, “and strong drink is raging. They shall be sober men, as I live. Fellow and gentleman, pray enter.”

  “Upon consideration,” Jeffrey began, “I scarcely think—”

  “Enter! D’ye hear me? Enter!”

  In the taproom, with its black beams and sweating walls, a candle was stuck in the neck of a bottle on the table by the chimney-piece. Here, before a very small fire, Mr. Sterne’s loftiness became tinged with emotion.

  “No, no,” he continued, as though they had plied him with questions, “I had not intended to return to York so soon as this. But my pastoral duties call, and so does my poor wife. Besides, in strictness between ourselves, I am not sure I have carried myself altogether as befits my cloth and station. A small lapse; it shall not occur again. And certes I shall be sorry to go.”

  “We shall be sorry to lose you, Mr. Sterne,” Jeffrey said politely. “At the same time, this is a long and arduous journey; and the more so when it begins at night. Don’t you think it advisable to take an hour or two’s rest
first?”

  “Arduous?” said Mr. Sterne, who was whistle-drunk but carrying it pretty well. His scorn reached into corners. “Arduous, pish! ’Tis a matter of but two days, barring mishap. And there are compensations. Do you like fair hair?”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Fair hair and blue eyes?” asked Mr. Sterne. “There is a lady engaged to travel by the same coach. Not too young, but who likes ’em too young? Not too tall; but who likes ’em too tall? She is handsome, divinely shaped, and of the true bon ton. I am not yet acquainted with her; she won’t speak to me; nor could I see her last name when she wrote it for the way-bill. But I know her first name, which is Lavinia. Good sir, what will you drink?”

  Deering, about to put down the dark-lanthorn on the table, nearly dropped it.

  Jeffrey looked round from the fire. “Lavinia?” he said. “Does the lady stay here at the inn, then?”

  “No. Oh, by great ill fortune, no! The dear creature crept in with all but furtiveness, and so crept out again.”

  “Does she travel alone?”

  “Alas, no. She wrote a second name, though I could not see whose. Still! Even if it should be a husband, much may be accomplished on a night journey when husbands doze.”

  “Mr. Sterne, surely you asked the landlord for the name of the other passenger?”

  Lean and cadaverous, Mr. Sterne turned his head in much dignity and some astonishment.

  “Asked the landlord? Asked the— Come, I have it!” Enlightened, he tapped the side of his nose. “You fancy it was here she bespoke passage?”

  “Well?”

  “Not so, damme! It was at the coach office at Green Man Cellar in the Strand, where I betook myself this morning after my devotions at St. Clement’s. Afterwards, it is true, I did ask our surly host of the Grapes. His own way-bill may not arrive until near the time of the coach’s departure at midnight; he don’t know.

  “But I will tell you what, fellow and gentleman!” added Mr. Sterne, beginning to bristle. “We will deal a shrewd blow at this knavish landlord who won’t tell me news and won’t serve you drink. We’ll deprive him of profit, God damme! In my bedchamber above-stairs is a bottle of brandy, I vow, only half drained this night. I will fetch it; you shall join me; we’ll show him. Eh?”

  “Mr. Sterne—”

  “Nay, don’t move! It is good of you to offer to accompany me, but I’ll not hear of it. Call for glasses; cock a snook at the rogue; I will return in an instant, I do assure you!”

  Stately, pushing his hands out as though he would push them away, he marched under full sail out of the taproom.

  Jeffrey looked round. No drop of rain had fallen since that first spatter on the dark-lanthorn. But the wind was rising, as it had risen on Friday when rain threatened; he could hear it sing at the eaves and growl in the chimney.

  “Lad,” Deering said in a fierce whisper, nodding towards the door, “did you expect this?”

  “No, of course not! And we don’t know it’s the same woman. But I can see now the odds were in favour of it.”

  “Then you can see more than me, which you can anyway. York?” Deering rapped his knuckles on the table. “Mr. Fielding’s People might ha’ put questions at all the coaching houses from here to Finchley before anybody thought o’ York. Why York?”

  “I don’t know; there may be many reasons. Yet it is not far from Hull—which is a seaport.”

  “Seaport! Seaport! Oh, ay. Well, we have something. Part o’ the quarry at least should be here well before midnight.”

  “What is the good of that, if the main quarry shall not go near the bait in the trap?”

  “Well, what if neither of ’em goes near the trap? Had you thought o’ that?”

  “Believe me, I had. We are not finished, but it would be a damned unsure close-run thing. Deeringl”

  “Ay, lad?”

  “Much as I mislike depriving you of brandy or even of gin after a whole day on watch …”

  “We go back to the bridge on watch? Is that it?”

  This was the point at which they heard the street-door of the inn open and close. A voice, startling Jeffrey far more than it startled Deering, boomed with hoarse and hollow effect along the passage.

  “Hey, now!” called the voice. Then, after a hard-breathing pause: “Hey, now, lackaday! Landlord! Who’s here?”

  Jeffrey, enjoining silence with finger at lip, seized Deering’s arm with his other hand and dragged him towards the door of a smaller room. Here he pointed through it to still another door at the back of the inn.

  “You return to watch,” he whispered. “I will meet you as soon as I may. You return to watch.”

  “How? That’s only the way to the jakes, ain’t it?”

  “No. It will lead you to a lane, and by any alley from there to Fish Street Hill. Make haste!”

  Deering yanked loose his arm and darted back into the taproom. But it was only to pick up the dark-lanthorn from the table. Afterwards he saluted his companion, tiptoed through the smaller room, and was gone.

  Jeffrey himself went to the table. Drawing out a chair, letting it rattle against bare floor-boards, he sat down diagonally facing towards the broad doorway to the passage.

  Footsteps, at first a little uncertain, lumbered down that passage. Whereupon uncertainty seemed to vanish. Somebody struck a heavy stick against the wall outside. The footsteps hurried.

  In the doorway, breathing stertorously, stood Sir Mortimer Ralston.

  XVI

  Life-in-Death

  “HEY, NOW—!” SIR MORTIMER blurted.

  He wore an ill-fitting wig and the sort of narrow tricorne hat known as a Kevenhuller. He was wrapped in a cloak, and leaned on a thick cane underneath it. His great height and breadth and paunch gave an illusion of filling the doorway. Though he looked little less haggard than when Jeffrey had last seen him, he had recovered some of his old fire and bluster.

  “You wonder, I’ll warrant,” he roared after a slight pause, “at the reason I am come here. Why, to find you as Peg said I might! Is that what you wonder?”

  “Perhaps.”

  “What’s this ‘perhaps’?”

  “Perhaps I wonder,” Jeffrey said, “you were mad enough to venture out at all. Are you so earnest in intent to kill yourself? Did the doctors permit this?”

  “Doctors! Fiddle-faddle!”

  “Did they permit it?”

  “Fiddle-faddle, I say! I’ll receive no commands from a parcel of quacks.”

  “And receive commands only from Lavinia Cresswell?”

  “Boy,” said Sir Mortimer, “you forget the respect due your elders.”

  “Sir, we have gone beyond showing respect or feeling it either.”

  “God’s death, we have! You are in the right of it there, at least That’s more reason for me to seek you.”

  Sir Mortimer’s face was of an ugly mottled colour above the heavy jowls.

  “Who pitied my condition?” he asked. “Who told me one word of what was passing, from the time I was took but partly ill on Friday night to the time I was struck in a fit nearly twenty-four hours later? This woman of London Bridge, this Grace Delight …”

  “Whose true name,” Jeffrey interrupted, “was Rebecca Bracegirdle.”

  “Whose true name was Rebecca Bracegirdle. I’ll not deny it now; I’ll not deny anything. None told me she was dead, even, still less she was done to death by violence.”

  “Sir, who told you she died by violence?”

  “Peg did, and swears you said it Peg told me this morning, when I waked from a swound and drove away Dr. Elegant Hunter and found Peg a-weeping at my bedside. She’s a good-hearted wench; there is none better. Therefore—”

  He looked round over his shoulder. The landlord of the Grapes, bounding up in slippers, went unheard until he burst into a tirade that his house would be no more invaded by outsiders with no business there.

  “Get out,” snarled Sir Mortimer.

  The old breed of his age behaved a
s such. Groping inside the cloak, he produced a bulging purse and flung it on the floor of the passage with such force that the catch burst and coins rolled.

  “Take it; eat it; use it as you please. But be off and hide.”

  Jeffrey had jumped up to support his arm as he tottered. Help was not needed. That whole incident, with the landlord scooping up coins and flying, went past like an explosion in a dream. Jeffrey sat down again. Sir Mortimer advanced towards the table.

  “Next, as touches Peg. You are pledged to wed her, she tells me. Is this true?”

  “It is.”

  “You’ll not disavow it, no matter what you may hear?”

  “No.”

  “That’s better. That’s sense.” Sir Mortimer breathed relief with a vast puff of cheeks. “You should have seen her this morning, I tell you. At my side and a-begging my pardon. She ask my pardon, ecod! I ask hers, with all my heart. And it like to have broke my heart, too, though you think I have none to break.”

  “This concern for your niece, sir—”

  “Niece?” said Sir Mortimer. “Niece, you young dolt? Peg is my daughter.”

  “Yes,” Jeffrey agreed without inflection. “She is your daughter.”

  The other man, in the act of removing his cloak to show a soiled finery of flowered-satin clothes, flung down the cloak on the floor as he had flung down the purse.

  “You did not guess that? Don’t tell me so: you lie! Other things you may have suspected, as that I had the wench clapped into prison for—for her own sake. Or Peg says you suspected. But my daughter? You did not guess that?”

  “No, I did not guess it. Few thief-takers could have been more mistaken.”

  ”Come, that’s better!”

  “Is it? At least it is comical I should have told Peg, mainly in jeer, she was more like your daughter than your niece. It is comical that none save Lavinia Cresswell should have found the secret you strove so hard to keep. For the truths and the dates were strung like beads on an abacus for any person to count with. Perhaps some other person did count.”

  “Liar!”

  “Yes; be comforted; no other person has guessed.”

  Wind prowled at the eaves. Sir Mortimer, about to raise the heavy cane high in the air, lowered it again.