‘Nowt to tell ee. I reckon you knows more now than I do, though how it come about you do is more than I can make out,’ replied the old woman. ‘Shan’t trouble denying there’s witches after this, I shan’t, say parson what he like. Tebbutt and our Eliza brought Hanley Middleton back to Saxon Wall, and they kept him close, too, but not so close we didn’t soon know all there was to know about their goings-on. And our Martha and me, we guessed there was something behind it all. But a main sight too smart was that Tebbutt—such a life he led that poor boy of hisn, too and all.’
‘Hanley Middleton was being blackmailed by the Tebbutts, then, because they knew he had murdered his wife?’ said Jones.
‘Who can tell?’ replied old Mrs Fluke, giving a coquettish push to the night-cap. ‘That there Tebbutt thought he knew how to manage mad people, you see, him having minded ’em in a lunatic asylum once upon a time before he married, and thinking you only had to be cruel to ’em to make ’em do just what you wanted. Of course, our Martha laid her head to theirs, her knowing all about Pike and having that to lay against Hanley, and I don’t know but what I wouldn’t have told ’em what I knowed about him trying to kill poor Miss Constance by black magic earlier on, soon after they was married, but none of ’em wanted me to have my share, not even our Martha, curse her for a greedy guts and a bad lot and a fair trial to her poor old mother from her birth onwards! Anyway, one day, soon after Mr Jones got here, Hanley turns round on Tebbutt and tells him he’s Moses, and he’s going to live at the parsonage. Told him he would lead the village forty years in the wilderness, he did, and off he went. Well, that Passion our Martha married, he went and helped Hanley and Tebbutt put parson in the underground of them old ruins. He done that, Passion did, because he once heard parson talk of him as a Natural—which he is, if ever there was one—and that heathen man that does parson’s housework, he was fair outrageous to find him when it happened. Well, that Japanee, he found out where they put him, because he took a nasty hold of Passion, that hurt him like the devil’s pincers, so Passion told us afterwards, and Passion helped get him out.’
‘Out of the cellar in the ruins?’ asked Jones.
‘Ay. The parson, he went up along to Neot House to ask about the water and to tell Tebbutt, private like, that he better persuade his master.
‘Hanley had gone up there hisself—beguiled, we thought he was, by Tebbutt—and Tebbutt, he was going to kill him, because they couldn’t hold on to him any longer, and was afraid he’d tell the police on ’em.’
‘For blackmailing him?’ asked Jones.
‘Ay. And being cruel to him, and such.’
‘So that’s why everybody had an alibi!’ said Jones.
‘Yes, child,’ said Mrs Bradley. ‘You remember that, for the murder of Tebbutt, all the alibis were a little late. For the murder of Middleton they would have been better timed.’
‘I see.’
‘Ay,’ broke in old Mrs Fluke, unwilling to be robbed of the position of raconteuse, ‘our Eliza made out to be our Martha’—she chuckled, apparently at a vision conjured up of Mrs Tebbutt in hat and boots—’she were always a bolder piece than Martha, only she knew better how to do the best for herself, Eliza did! And Martha, she were late up there for the fun, I think, because she was dosing that there Natural of hern——’
‘Oh, yes,’ said Mrs Bradley. ‘That reminds me. The sick man in bed whom the police could not arrest——’
‘Passion,’ said Mrs Fluke. ‘We kept him down with foxglove.’
‘Didn’t Doctor Mortmain attend him?’
‘No. He used to come, but there! We never let him in except to look at our Eliza’s veins.’
‘I told you the vicarage garden needed weeding,’ said Mrs Bradley to Jones.
‘Passion’s got a wonderful constitution,’ Mrs Fluke continued. ‘He got over it. Us let him go later on. He’s got his uses, Passion has, though you wouldn’t think it to look at him.’
‘But Hallam’s—no Middleton’s—alibi. The taking out of the glass,’ said Jones.
Mrs Fluke shook her head.
‘Hanley didn’t take no glass. That was parson, because he feared, if the drought ended up in thunder rain, that little window like the four-leaved clover might get broke, I think. Hanley, he only climbed!’
‘Climbed?’
‘Ay.’
‘On the church?’
‘Ay.’
‘Come, come,’ said Mrs Bradley to Jones. ‘He had just murdered Tebbutt. What else should he do but climb?’
‘Oh, Sigmund Freud?’ He breathed a sigh of relief and comprehension.
‘They only chased parson out of it and took a hold of him and shut him up again,’ continued Mrs Fluke, to ensure once again she was not being elbowed out of the conversation. ‘The Tebbutts see that parson would spoil their game if he knowed what was on. They might have killed him but they didn’t dare, once you had made a friend of him, you see!’
‘Why ever not?’ said Jones. Old Mrs Fluke wagged her head. On the whitewashed wall of the cottage the shadow of her night-cap made a terrifying devil-dance.
‘We all knowed you soon as we seed you, Mr Jones. We’d all been waiting a thousand year or more. And when you came walking in—so pleasant and friendly you was—we waited and we watched. And then we knowed. And then we told Tebbutt what didn’t know.’
‘Knew what? I don’t see how you mean.’
She wagged her head again.
‘Me and our Martha, ay, and others, too, we all took all the looks at you we could, and we see what we did see.’
‘And what was that?’ asked Jones.
‘The long thin man and his shadow. The long thin man and his shadow, Mr Jones.’
‘But I’m not the long thin man! The long thin man is a myth. He’s a—he’s a village tale. He isn’t anyone!’
Old Mrs Fluke looked upwards at the rafters.
‘I smell the rain on the wind. You don’t know who you be, and you don’t know what you be. The village’ll go to church tomorrow. Ay! And the rain’ll wash ’em clean! Sure, it’ll wash ’em clean.’
It was after midnight when Jones and Mrs Bradley reached the vicarage.
‘I suppose Nao has gone to bed,’ remarked Mrs Bradley.
‘Not yet,’ said the Japanese, apparently from under their feet. Jones gave an exclamation at his sudden appearance, but Mrs Bradley appeared unmoved by it.
‘Everything ready for the Chief Constable?’ she inquired.
‘All is in order, honourable madam,’ replied the Japanese politely. His face was impassive and his eyes secret, and Jones, staring curiously at him, was aware that behind that smooth mask there was laughter.
‘What’s the joke, Nao?’ he inquired.
‘That that which was said to be, is; and that which once was, is not; and who knows what an exhumation order from the Home Office may bring to light?’ said Mrs Bradley, in what was, Jones sorrowfully informed her, an unnecessarily airy and flippant tone.
‘And whatever has happened to the village?’ he inquired. ‘Have they sunk their differences with Mr Hallam?’
Nao smiled.
‘After death of lamented Middleton——’ he said.
‘What?’ said Jones.
‘Hanley Middleton has been dead some little time,’ said Mrs Bradley in a reassuring tone.
‘After death of aforesaid beastly person,’ Nao continued urbanely, ‘I removed corpse of one Tebbutt from coffin disinterred for the purpose, and substituted—adroitly, I trust—one corpse as per label. Coffin is in status quo, and tomorrow Mister the Chief Constable will be shown suicided body. Dog eat dog,’ explained Nao, benignly.
‘It was the best way,’ said Mrs Bradley, when the Japanese had gone. ‘The police will exhume Middleton’s body, and the late Mrs Middleton’s mother will be called upon to identify it. She won’t realise that it has not been dead as long as it ought to have been.’
‘But what about Tebbutt?’
‘The Chief Constab
le knows some of the truth. Nobody will be arrested and charged with the murder of Tebbutt, because it will be established beyond a doubt that Middleton murdered him and then committed suicide.’
‘You know,’ said Jones, ‘I still don’t know what happened to Middleton.’
‘He fled when they set the vicarage on fire that night.’
‘Where did he go?’
‘To the castle ruins, child. And the villagers followed him there.’
‘Oh?’ There was a very long pause; then Jones said anxiously: ‘But you didn’t know that at the time?’
‘Oh, yes, I did,’ said Mrs Bradley.
‘But—then we could have stopped them! You remember you wondered what all the noise was about?’
‘I knew then what all the noise was about,’ said Mrs Bradley quietly. ‘They hunted Middleton through the ruins, fell upon him, and beat him with loaded sticks.’
‘Adder-hunting!’ exclaimed Jones.
‘Old Satan,’ added Mrs Bradley in parenthesis.
‘But surely you didn’t allow a man to be beaten to death! It’s indefensible!’ said Jones. He gazed at her in horror. Mrs Bradley nodded.
‘Indefensible,’ she said. ‘You see, when the first man found him, he was already dead.’
‘How do you know?’
‘Nao flung him from the battlements of the ruin, and he fell on his head and was killed. When the others came upon him he was already dead. Middleton could not help being cruel, you remember. He did not treat Nao very well, I fancy, during the time he was impersonating Hallam. Nao asked my permission to kill him, and it seemed much the simplest way out of a difficulty. The villagers, you see, were certain to fall upon him once the well at Neot House as well as the water at the vicarage was put beyond their use.’
‘But if he was dead they couldn’t chase him through the ruins.’
‘No. It was Nao they chased. I explained the situation to him, and he saw at once that the people must have their sport. His brother is valet to a fox-hunting marquis, he informs me. He understands the English love of the chase.’
‘So he led them a dance as far as Middleton’s body?’
‘Yes, child, which looked as though it had fallen from the battlements, the body of a suicide.’
‘Hm!’ said Jones. ‘Your sex’s morals are peculiar to your sex, thank goodness.’
All day the rain held off. Black clouds raced across the heavens, torn, chaotic and ragged, and in the still rainless evening a very big congregation filled the tiny church. Late that night Mrs Bradley invited Jones to accompany her into the village. She led him to the cottage he had occupied, and told him to knock on the door. He thought at first that the cottage was untenanted. However, he knocked again, but again there was no response.
‘Now what?’ he asked, turning to Mrs Bradley.
‘Knock once again,’ she said. The cottage was in darkness. Once again Jones thundered on the door. The door opened this time.
‘Come along in,’ said Mrs Passion’s dull and heavy voice. ‘I been expecting of ee this good hour an’ ’alf.’
Prodded from behind, Jones entered. Mrs Bradley followed. Mrs Passion, carrying a lighted candle, preceded them into the parlour. Jones looked apprehensively about him for lumps of sugar, but there were none to be seen.
‘There’s storm in the wind,’ said Mrs Passion, suddenly. The brilliant moon was swallowed up by clouds. The air was sulphurous with thunder. Lightning from over the top of Guthrum Down cut the room suddenly and vividly in twain, discovering Jones staring wildly into Mrs Passion’s face.
‘Where’s Middleton?’ he cried. Mrs Passion giggled.
‘Happen Hanley Middleton’s in hell. Your Japanese have broke his neck,’ she said. ‘How be my little Richard? Tell me, how be he?’
‘He’s well,’ said Jones. ‘You can come and see him on his birthday.’
‘Not I,’ said Mrs Passion shaking her head. ‘It shan’t be me to stand in his way no more.’
The longest and loudest peal of thunder Jones had ever heard drowned the last two words. A flash of lightning that made of their tense pale faces staring masks, heralded another and a louder thunder clap.
‘The skies are falling!’ said Jones.
‘Ay, so they are!’ said Mrs Passion wildly. ‘’Tis the devil abroad! He’s falling adown the wind! He’s cast out of heaven, and Michael’s master there. Michael’s the master of the fort of heaven! Praise be to God! Praise be to God, I say!’
Rain that hissed and pelted, rain that came straight and heavy, rain that dashed down upon the hard-baked earth and leapt away again, rain that saturated trees and the unreaped crops and tore down fruit from the overloaded branches and beat out flat the heavy summer flowers, fell as though the bowl of the sea were inverted, and floods greater than Noah’s were spilt upon the earth.
None of them had seen such rain. It fell like an avenging cataract of fury, relentless, unceasing, terrifyingly noisy and triumphant; they stood there listening to it, awe-stricken in the face of the terrible mercy of God.
END PAPERS
1. CONSTANCE MIDDLETON. Constance Middleton’s mentality would have pleased a student of Gestalt psychology. A Freudian would have perceived in her a powerful Inferiority Complex, and might have suspected inhibitions due to an Œdipus perversion (as Mrs Bradley prefers nowadays to call it) but the fill-the-gap type of mentality which she exemplified, and about which the other modern schools become so tiresomely circumlocutary and so wildly inventive, is sufficient justification for the whole Gestalt theory.
2. HANLEY MIDDLETON. Hanley Middleton was in Pompeii (see Part I, Chapter I) from sadistic and morbid inclination, and had spent most of his time in the small museum there gazing upon the bodies of the slain. The carcass of the dog had given him particular pleasure.
Elms (see Part I, Chapter I) are the trees peculiarly devoted to witch-craft and the practice of magic.
The burying of a sheaf which has been fashioned in the likeness of a human being is Irish magic. Atavistic instinct may have caused Constance to destroy the sheaf. It is not at all likely that she realised that Hanley was working magic with intent to kill her by causing her to rot away with the rotting grain.
Hanley’s madness was of the circular type as exemplified in Clouston’s Cycle. That is to say, Hanley suffered from periodical melancholia followed by actual mania, from which he emerged into sanity before relapsing again into melancholia. The rhythm of the three periods is always irregular, and in Hanley Middleton approximated (as near as Mrs Bradley could calculate from the meagre material at her disposal) to Clouston’s third cycle:
Melancholia two years.
Mania three years.
Sanity one year, and so on in rotation.
There is distinct evidence that Hanley was launched into a ‘sane’ period immediately after the murder of his wife. The arrangements for the substitution of Seaman Pike for himself, and the fact that Doctor Crevister accepted him as the surgeon from Stowhall hospital are not proof positive of Hanley’s sanity at the time, but do give some indication of the state of his mind.
3. BEER. Not only the inhabitants of Saxon Wall, but Jones himself, (an author, and therefore no mean judge) found that the beer at the Long Thin Man in the time of the Corbetts was of excellent quality.
4. GOATS. The other goat (see Part II, Chapters II, XV, XXII) which was never satisfactorily accounted for, was, as a matter of fact, the property of Birdseye, and had been borrowed by the Misses Harper (he thought) for breeding purposes.
5. HALLAM. The real vicar of Saxon Wall, although interested in cricket, was a keen golfer. A propos of this, Jones informed Mrs Jones, later, when they were in London, that Hallam was ‘a putter of sitting balls; devotee of a game invented and perfected in a land where, for historical and topographical reasons, it was almost impossible to conceive of sports and pastimes being conducted in the team spirit or played on the level.’
6. SPEECH IN SAXON WALL. The adage that speech is intended
to conceal rather than to reveal thought certainly held good in Saxon Wall. Nevertheless, Mrs Passion (see Part II, Chapter VI) apparently intended to warn Jones that it was proposed to hide the captive Hallam in part of the ruined castle. Unfortunately she expressed herself so obliquely as to render her warning useless.
Mrs Bradley later expressed the opinion that the inhabitants of Saxon Wall were incapable of making straightforward statements. In her unprejudiced opinion, even their lies were elliptical.
She hazarded a guess that this peculiarity dated from the days of the Norman Conquest, when the Saxons of those parts, too cunning to tell direct lies to their overlords, resorted to these maddening half-statements and oracular pronouncements.
Jones, however, thought that they were hag-ridden people, who were afraid that the powers of evil could weave words into nets and thus catch the unwary away to the devil. Jones, of course, was half-Welsh, and all his scientific training had not persuaded him to prefer a rational explanation to a romantic one. That is why, until weaned from the pernicious practice, he wrote bestsellers.
7. TIME TABLE.
Middle of June, Hannibal Jones discovered Saxon Wall.
July 27th.
Jones takes tea with the Misses Harper.
Quarrel betwen Mrs Fluke and Mrs Passion.
Jones listens to Mrs Corbett.
July 28th.
Jones talks to Passion.
August 2nd.
Jones interviews Doctor Crevister.
The vicar has neuralgia.
Jones has an unwelcome visitor.
August 3rd.
Jones hears about the murder.
Arrival of Richard.
Jones knocked out.
The Devil at Saxon Wall Page 25
