The Devil in Velvet

by John Dickson Carr

  His tone was that of an elderly uncle speaking to a girl of eight or nine years old, whom he will presently reward with a shilling.

  “No, no, my dear!” he added, still kindly but with a note of warning.

  “You must not occupy the same chair as my good friend Professor Fenton. My broad-mindedness, I think, is well known. But this would (how shall I put it?) disturb the concentration of you both. —Go and sit on the ottoman, my dear.”

  Meg, turning her face away from Fenton, walked over unsteadily and sat down, huddling the yellow bedgown round her.

  Fenton spoke, but the horrors were on him and he had first to clear his throat.

  “One question!” he said to the devil. “May I ask one question?”

  “My dear fellow! By all means.”

  “When I foolishly asked to be carried back into the seventeenth century, did Mary Grenville sell you her sou … that is, offer to join your household, if she could accompany me? For my idiot’s sake?”

  The visitor did not commit himself.

  “And if she did?” he insinuated, like a shopman in Cheapside.

  “Sir,” replied Fenton, “my own soul is a poor and mean thing. But I offer it to you freely, if you will restore hers.”

  Daring everything, Meg sat up.

  “No!” she cried to Fenton. “He hasn’t the power to make such a bargain, even if he would! Don’t listen to him!”

  Meg stopped, her hands over her face, and rolled back on the couch as though she had been struck by some immense hand. Yet nothing had moved in the room; nothing at all.

  The shape in the chair seemed to turn suavely towards Fenton.

  “Why,” it said, “the girl is quite right. She has been, as you so delicately put it, a member of my household since she was about eighteen. She was converted, I think, in 1918, because she found the world insufferably dull and she was overfond of men.”

  Fenton began to speak, but could not manage it.

  “She passed her novitiate long ago,” the devil assured him. “In general she is a tractable girl and an admirable servant.” Now his tone grew kindly and soothing. “Yet for some reason (forgive me) obscure even to myself, her affections have always centred on you. When she begged in her prettiest way to travel back with you, could my kind heart refuse?”

  “Then there is no way to restore …?”

  “None.”

  “Yet if—”

  “Would you insult my household, sir? The girl is quite happy.”

  And then the devil’s tone became one of sharp mockery.

  “But your own offer, professor! It was very handsome of you. It was even quixotic, as often you so foolishly are. Offer your own soul? Now why should I bargain for what I already own?”

  Inside Fenton’s head his thoughts seemed to speak almost audibly.

  “Now,” they whispered. “Now’s the time. Hit him!”

  And so Fenton spoke out very clearly.

  “Oh, no, you don’t!” he said.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “You don’t own my soul. You never did. And now, by God’s grace, you never shall.”

  The fire popped and crackled. Fenton braced himself for an outburst, one of those terrifying waves in which the cruel small boy predominated over the suave philosopher. But the heavy silence seemed even more menacing.

  “Your—er—evidence for that statement, Professor Fenton?”

  “It is in your own theology.”

  “You must be more particular, I think.”

  “With pleasure. Sir Nicholas Fenton was born on December 25th. In case it has escaped your notice, so was I. December 25th is widely known as Christmas Day.”

  Fenton leaned forward.

  “In my reading,” he continued, “I discover that a man or woman born on Christmas Day cannot sell his soul to the devil, save that he lose it by free gift or believe your hoaxing: which I do not. Any pact I may make with you is null and void before it is signed. Do you deny this?”

  “You have accepted favours from me. You must pay for them.”

  “Granted. According to rule, on each December 25th I must give you a Christmas gift in token. When the proper time comes this year, I shall be happy to present you with a silver toasting fork or an illustrated Bible. Come, didn’t you know all this?”

  “Oh, I knew it. But I wondered whether you did.”

  “Wondered?” echoed Fenton. “Are you not, in the popular mind, supposed to know all things?”

  “Yes, I know all things. As you shall presently discover in sorrow and pain. But sometimes, when I deal with a foolish quixotic soul like yours,” the visitor almost snarled, “a bandage is briefly set across even my eyes …”

  “By One far greater than yourself?”

  “Not greater,” the other replied silkily. “Such speech is dangerous, Professor Fenton. I advise you against it.”

  “Do you admit defeat?”

  “Oh, I cannot take your soul on my own behalf. You must be judged by my Opponent. And He, I hear, is not lenient in these matters. —But you tricked me, Professor Fenton. That is what sticks in my throat. I cannot abide trickery! Why did you trick me?”

  Again Fenton leaned forward, clutching the arms of the chair.

  “Because you yourself are history’s greatest cheat,” he said. “You would not give fair play to a sick dog. And I resolved to win over you.” Fenton was now shouting. “And how did I win over you? Because, like all evil, you are stupid and a fool!”

  Then the outburst came.

  Meg screamed, writhing on the ottoman, though it scarcely touched her.

  The waves of wrath, silent yet deadly, struck at Fenton like an army. Soundlessly he could hear the small boy kicking a tin drum, as well as the towering presence of Sathanas himself. Physically it exhausted him. Yet he muttered certain prayers, and looked straight ahead at what he imagined might be the eyes of the presence.

  Also, he looked at Meg and was horrified. She was now sitting up, back partly turned, knees drawn up under the bedgown. The fire had burned up brightly. Her face (how he should have interpreted it then!) was the same he had seen on the first night of his new life: sly, mocking, withdrawn, essentially of evil. You must not call the devil stupid; this is the one thing he resents.

  Yet the waves beat round him, and he came to no harm.

  Presently they died away, though this was only the end of an outburst. Menace still hung in the room, like fire or edged steel, with Meg’s vicious face behind it. The devil seemed to be musing. When at last he spoke, it was in a tone of unfeigned amusement and genuine interest.

  “Professor Fenton,” he said softly, “did you really think you could outwit me?”

  “I can’t tell—yet.”

  “Indeed? You can’t tell? But I can. Once I had a liking for you. That is gone. I am tempted to tell you the mistakes you made, and the very unpleasant surprises in store for you. But I refrain; you will know soon enough. Let us take only the lightest, smallest thistledown of the errors you made.”

  “Your own lack of intelligence, sir …”

  The visitor ignored this.

  “You,” he said, drawing out the syllable into a long cavern of amusement, “would change history! Yes? And several times, I think, you have already tried to change it?”

  “Yes.”

  “In fact, you spoke to the two most—most intelligent men in England, King Charles the Second and my Lord Shaftesbury, who are even of opposing views. Every word you said will come true. But would either of them believe you?”

  “No.”

  “The King liked you, and was even desirous of believing you. He gave you that cameo ring on your finger now; this, he said, would shield you from all harm”—here the visitor chuckled malevolently—“if you were in danger and sent it to him. Can you be shielded? I think no
t.

  “Stay!” he added. “A final word. Now why were you so astonished, Professor Fenton, when you saw me here tonight? Surely you must have expected me?”

  “Expected you?”

  “Come! The really important date in history, which you were determined to change, was June 10th. On June 10th (as I know, since I know all things) your wife Lydia is destined to die of poison …”

  Fenton sat as though paralyzed, suddenly choked and frightened as the visitor had never been able to frighten him.

  Lydia! Midnight! He had promised to return before then! With fingers all thumbs, he shakily drew his watch out of his pocket. His arm trembled, and the watch almost slipped from his fingers. His tired eyes, by firelight, could not read the numbers on the dial. But it could not possibly be very late.

  “The hour!” he pleaded. “I entreat you, sir: tell me the hour!”

  It was as though the visitor in some fashion raised puzzled eyebrows.

  “The hour?” he inquired. “But doth it matter?”

  Subtly, almost insensibly, the speech of them all crept back to the mode of the later seventeenth century.

  “Yes, yes, yes!” cried Fenton. “Tomorrow, beginning with midnight, will be June 10th. Yet must I be there from the stroke of midnight, lest harm befall Lydia!”

  “Now scratch me,” observed the visitor, in horrible imitation of George Harwell, “but I think this man is struck from his senses!”

  Fenton raced forward towards the dying fire, holding the open case and dial of the watch towards red lumps and red embers. The watch had stopped at nine-thirty, the very time he crossed Meg’s threshold.

  Slowly, badly shaken, Fenton replaced the watch. Then he flung himself at the shape in the chair, lunging with both hands for the throat. But there was nobody in the chair. Afterwards Fenton backed slowly away; and there appeared again the shifting, varying outline, once more clearly seen as the red glare of the soap vats rose up.

  And still again, maddeningly, the visitor chuckled.

  “Observe, my child,” he said to Meg, “how your Hector shrivels up like a burnt worm when he thinks of danger to Lydia, and how he is mad for love of her! Can I never convince you?”

  Meg was now kneeling on the ottoman, her teeth exposed in rage and her mouth pulled square like a Greek mask.

  “Stay but a moment, Professor Fenton!” purred the devil. “I ask your pardon for believing you bereft of your senses. For, now I think on’t, there’s a simple way of explaining what perplexed me an instant ago.”

  “There’s … you said what?”

  “I think, good fellow, you have kept your own calendar for the past month? In a plain book?”

  Fenton, impatient with this, hurried to the ottoman to gather up sword, periwig, and cloak. Meg struck at him like a cat, but he threw her aside. He was buckling on the sword belt when the visitor’s next words, musing, made him stop abruptly.

  “The calendar, or diary, whatever you would call it, was locked. The cabinet was locked. You shewed it to no person; you compared days with none! Yes? To no one did you speak of the day, June 10th, which you so dreaded. Yes?”

  “I …”

  “And yet,” continued the shape in the chair, “this very evening, at your own supper table, Mr. Jonathan Reeve cried out truly that the ‘battle’ in Pall Mall occurred on the night of June 7th. Now bethink you! For two days after this ‘battle’ you rested. On the evening of the third day, this evening, you held a small supper. Yes?”

  Automatically, so hard hit that his fingers were steady, Fenton buckled the cloak on his left shoulder. Pie picked up the periwig.

  “It was somewhat stupid of you,” murmured the devil, “yet perhaps excusable. You have forgotten that, on the day after the ‘battle,’ you dozed all day and night under doses of laudanum and did not touch your diary. Next day, you wrote ‘8th’ for ‘9th.’ Your record is one day short.”

  Fenton jammed the periwig down on his head, gripping at the sides.

  “What in hell’s name d’ye tell me?” he shouted.

  “Today was the 10th of June. —And your wife is dying.”

  The silence stretched out unendurably.

  “Liar!”

  “A pox, Professor Fenton! Now why should I give myself the trouble of telling a lie? You will discover it ere long.”

  “The hour! What’s the hour?”

  “Let me say once more that it cannot matter. If perhaps I stopped your watch, this was but a gentle scratch to remind you: a month ago, you jeered me for tampering with dates and clocks. Stay but another moment,” he insinuated, as Fenton went towards the door, “and I will tell you why your wife has been poisoned, and is dying now, partly by your own neglect.”

  “My ne …”

  “Assuredly. You returned from Whitehall Palace this night in (shall I say?) low spirit. Someone, completely unsuspected by you, gave my Lady Fenton a monstrous large portion of arsenic. When the pains racked her, my lady sent a message to you by a Mrs. Judith Pamphlin. You have always believed Mrs. Pamphlin to be … loyal?”

  “Yes!”

  “In a sense, no doubt. But did you never wonder? That Judith Pamphlin would rather see her beloved lady dead than in your hands?”

  Fenton stood motionless.

  “Thus Mrs. Pamphlin brought word only that your lady wished to speak with you. Not one word more could be pressed from her though you used weights at Newgate. You should have suspected some bubble, some trick, when you knew Mrs. Pamphlin had been in your wife’s room. But no. You made haste from the house, seeking solace of another woman.”

  Meg, again kneeling on the ottoman, cried out to the visitor in a different voice.

  “I am the humblest of your servants,” she pleaded. “But torture him no more!”

  There was a sound as of a large, scaly hand rubbed on the oak arm of the chair.

  “My child,” purred the visitor, “you have a certain attractiveness, in particular when you are so careless with that bedgown. But I? Torture someone? You horrify me.”

  And the shape in the chair, with vast inner amusement, seemed to turn towards Fenton.

  “Go now,” it said; “go too late. Your wife, I think—indeed, I am sure—is in her death agony at this moment. If you rode with the wind, if you flew, you could not be with her before she dies.”

  The door banged as Fenton ran out. They heard a plunging clump of boots, a rattle of spurs, recede away down the stairs. When the outer door also banged, there was silence.

  Again there was a noise as of a large, scaly hand on the chair arm. Meg shuddered with repulsion. The fire was of blackening embers.

  “And now, my dear,” cooed the devil …

  Twenty-five minutes later, any person near dark Pall Mall would have heard the black mare approaching at a lathered gallop. Sweetquean swept in, rearing up and almost unseating her rider before he dismounted. Fenton, himself corpse-faced, his periwig awry and his spur rowels bloodied, ran towards a front door which opened before he touched it.

  In the lower hall stood Sam, the door porter, his tipstaff leaning against the wall and a candle in his hand. Near him was Giles, also holding a light, and with a face of collapse. It was so quiet that they heard the leaves whisper outside.

  “This thing cannot be so,” said Fenton, urging on them the reasonableness of what he spoke. “I dreamed it. It is not true. My good and gracious wife, the sweetest that ever …” He paused.

  Giles, who evidently could not face this, turned his back.

  “Sir,” said Giles, after conquering shaky lips. “She—she died near to half an hour ago. She is with God.”

  For a time Fenton contemplated the floor, along a zigzag scar on the wood. A shadow moved on the floor, and he looked up to see that Giles had turned round.

  “Sir,” asked Giles, “we sought you everywhere. None knew whe
re to find you. Sir, who told you that your lady was … dying?”

  “The devil,” said Fenton.

  Sam shied back. The candle fell from his hand and smashed on the floor. Quietly, curtly, Giles ordered him belowstairs. Picking up tipstaff and broken taper, Sam crept away.

  “Sir,” said Giles in a low voice, “your pleasantness is ill-timed.”

  “Look at me! Should I jest? Well?”

  The light wavered back from him. “Nay, sir, I but—”

  “You accuse me, Giles.”

  “Accuse you? Of what?”

  “Of neglect. And you are in the right of it. But who did this thing, Giles? Who poisoned her? It was Judith Pamphlin, I’ll adventure?” Fenton drew his sword slowly, with fine whetted expectation, from the scabbard. “Where’s the woman now, Giles?”

  “Nay, sir! Put by your sword; I beg it! Here’s no need to soil your hands, if you but listen to me!”

  “Where is she, Giles?”

  Frantically Giles clutched at his arm as he moved forward.

  “Master, the woman Pamphlin is belowstairs, guarded by the servants. If—if Pamphlin be guilty, which is likely, she will die very horribly at their hands, because they love you. They await you; you have but to speak a word. But heads are too hot to act now. So is your own. Master, for God’s sake!” cried Giles, and then his pale eyes seemed to find inspiration. “Would your lady have liked the woman to die thus, by your own sword?”

  Fenton, who had been shouldering Giles aside amid wild-flying light, took two steps more before he stood still. For a time he seemed to ponder. Then, with an effort at steadiness, he let the sword slip back into the scabbard.

  Afterwards he and Giles looked everywhere but at each other. It was Giles who spoke first.

  “Would it trouble your heart to see her?”

  “See …?”

  “Your lady, sir. We have cleansed all death’s foulness from the room; the windows are set open, and sweet herbs sprinkled. I think she would have liked …”

  “Damn you, a truce to speaking of her as though she were dead! I’ll not have it!”

  “Your pardon, sir. May I walk before you up the stairs, and light the way?”