The Devil at Saxon Wall Read online

  ‘I say! Who’s that?’

  A giggle answered him. Jones began to sweat. He sprang out of bed, located a candle and struck a match. The door opened slowly, and round the edge of it appeared a pallid, terribly expressionless face, and a woman entered the room quietly, and gazed at Jones. She wore a black hat of unimpeachable respectability, a pair of farm boots and a man’s raincoat.

  ‘Good God!’ said Jones, aghast.

  She playfully blew out the candle, and the next instant her arms were about Jones’ neck, and she was clinging to him with all her countrywoman’s strength. Using her considerable weight, and the strategic advantage of having taken him entirely by surprise, she began to force him backwards towards the bed.

  Jones braced himself. It was no time for chivalry. He wrested her arms from about his long thin neck, and flung her away from him. Then he re-lighted the candle and stared at her sternly. She had slid down the wall to a sitting position, her legs stretched out in front of her (the absurd boots looking larger than usual with their toes turned ceilingwards), her hands on either side of her upon the floor and her head dropped forward on her breast, whence her eyes looked up at Jones with an expression of hideous coyness. She dropped them, and put her left thumb into her mouth. Jones seized her ankles, hauled her roughly forward, so that there was a space of about a foot between her back and the wall, darted behind her, grasped her under the armpits and with a heave that strained every muscle of his diaphragm, tried to set her upon her feet. She hung with her whole weight on his arms and would not stand. Swearing savagely, Jones hauled her to the door and pushed her on to the landing.

  ‘Go home! Go home!’ he said, and slammed the bedroom door on her and locked it. The thought that someone might see her leaving his house at that hour of the night occurred to, but did not trouble him.

  He looked at his watch. It was nearly eleven o’clock. For the next twenty minutes, the woman alternately wept and giggled on the landing outside. Then he heard her descending the stairs. He blew out the candle, went over to the window and watched her as, like a shadow, she crossed the front garden. The moment the garden gate had shut itself behind her by virtue of the spring which Jones had fixed on it, he descended the stairs and locked and fastened the ground floor doors and windows.

  His last thought before he fell asleep was a semi-humorous reflection that she had not been mad but drunk. He wondered how she would review the incident when she came to herself in the morning.

  He was still asleep when a decorous tap on his bedroom door announced Mrs Passion’s arrival next day. Jones descended to wash under the pump, as was his custom, and, upon passing the kitchen door, glanced in. Mrs Passion bobbed him her usual greeting. Her hat was still on her head, but her ordinary walking shoes had been replaced by coquettish twin horrors of black patent leather, embellished, garnished and titivated with strips of putty-coloured suede. Between hat and shoes stretched the godly, righteous and sober garments of a village woman out to oblige. Her face was expressionless, her eyes unfocused and serene. Jones began to believe that he had dreamed the last night’s incident. Could she have made her way into the cottage like that in the dead of the night? … He shook his head. The temptation to mention the invasion of the cottage was overpowering, though.

  ‘Headache this morning, Mrs Passion?’ She turned her cow-like eyes on him.

  ‘You heerd the news, then, Mr Jones, like?’

  ‘News?’ said Jones. She picked up a lump of sugar, adroitly immersed it in his cup of tea and nodded as she sucked.

  ‘What news?’ asked Jones. His thoughts went to the vicar, whose nerves were going to pieces. ‘Mr Hallam?’ he said. Mrs Passion shook her head. The black ostrich plumes and the sequins on her headgear quivered with denial.

  ‘Not the vicar, no, sir. Mr Carswell Middleton.’

  ‘Not——?’

  ‘Dead, Mr Jones. Yes, Mr Jones.’ There was an odd little breath of a pause, and then she added: ‘Just about eleven o’clock last night, it must have been.’

  Chapter Nine

  ‘“Murdratus est,” says the sublimer dialect of Gothic ages.’

  DE QUINCEY

  On Murder Considered as One of the Fine Arts.

  IT WAS AT just after half-past six that the police had been summoned by Mr Carswell Middleton’s housekeeper, and at nine Mortmain dropped in on Jones.

  ‘A police inspector has just arrived from Stowhall,’ he said. ‘Middleton’s been murdered. Poker seems the likeliest weapon. Housekeeper, a London woman, found his body at six this morning and ’phoned the police. Died between half-past ten and a quarter-past eleven last night. As it happens, the woman and her son can fix the time, and their statement coincides with the police doctor’s opinion. I haven’t seen the body myself, but the Tebbutts, people who have until quite recently been in the employment of the late Mrs Middleton’s parents, are certain that Middleton went up to his bedroom at half-past ten. They noticed the time because it was so unusually early, and appear to have commented about it and so fixed it in their minds.

  ‘Then at a quarter to eleven the housekeeper and her husband went up to their room, but the son, a lad of about sixteen, remained in the housekeeper’s room downstairs to finish a threepenny blood.

  ‘At just about a quarter past eleven this lad himself went to bed. He had finished his book, and, feeling certain in his own mind that his employer was safely in bed, he confesses that he sneaked along to the dining-room to help himself to a handful of biscuits out of the sideboard cupboard. He was still outside the room when he saw to his very great astonishment that Middleton was not, after all, upstairs. He was lying on his back on the leather-covered settee, the boy says, with one arm dangling to the floor, and his knees drawn up, just as the boy had seen him often enough when he was resting or reading. Oh, and they found a dead cat, a pretty mangled one, on the floor.’

  ‘And the lad hopped it up to bed without saying anything to Middleton, I suppose?’ said Jones.

  ‘Exactly. But here’s the queer thing. The pool of blood on the floor, where Middleton must have tumbled against the edge of the fender and cut his head when the murderous blow was struck, is at least ten feet, they say, from the settee on which he was found. Of course the head had bled a bit on to the settee as well, but it’s easy enough to see where he fell when the blow was struck. It caught the left——’

  ‘Won’t mean anything to me,’ said Jones apologetically.

  ‘Well, the point is that the murderer must have lifted him up and placed him on the settee in an attitude which would be recognised by anybody who happened to glance into the room. That implies two things.’

  ‘First that the murderer was a person who knew the dead man’s habits,’ said Jones, nodding.

  ‘Quite. And, secondly, someone with considerable physical strength. Middleton weighed somewhere about twelve or thirteen stone, I should imagine.’

  ‘As much as that? A woman couldn’t have done it, then,’ said Jones.

  ‘What makes you think of a woman?’

  Jones told him what he knew of Mrs Passion.

  ‘Sounds feasible,’ the doctor said. Jones shook his head. ‘Why not?’ persisted the doctor. ‘Motive’s everything in a case of murder, and she certainly had a motive.’

  ‘Oddly enough, I can give the wretched woman an alibi,’ said Jones, ‘if the time of the murder was as you suggest. How long, should you think, does it take to get from Middleton’s house to this cottage?’

  ‘A quarter of an hour, good,’ the doctor answered promptly.

  Jones shook his head.

  ‘Twenty minutes, at a good brisk walking pace,’ he said. ‘It’s quite a bit more than a mile, you know.’

  ‘I suppose it is. But what if one ran the distance?’

  ‘Mrs Passion didn’t run.’

  ‘No, I imagine not. But——’

  ‘She walked in here at about ten minutes to eleven last night, fresh as paint and wearing a raincoat a hat and a pair of boots, and I
had to chuck her out. I thought at first she was mad, but I conclude now she was tight.’

  ‘Ten to eleven? Sure?’

  ‘Near enough.’

  ‘But——’

  ‘Not on your showing. Couldn’t have done it in the time. How could she? Middleton went upstairs at half-past ten. She’d have had to get him downstairs, kill him, put the body on the settee, get rid of her bloodstained clothing and possibly wash her hands, and get to me all in the twenty minutes which was what she had at her disposal.’

  ‘How was she dressed when she broke in on you?’

  ‘Oh, a raincoat, a hat and some boots.’

  ‘Good Lord! Not Mrs Passion?’

  ‘Yes. That’s what I keep saying.’

  ‘She’ll have to be certified.’

  ‘Oh, I really think she was drunk.’

  ‘You have to be damned drunk to break into someone’s cottage at eleven o’clock at night.’

  ‘Of course, if she had just done the murder she may have been trying to give herself an alibi.’

  ‘Yes, but why advertise the fact that she was up and doing at that time of night when the murder was committed?’

  ‘That’s true.’ Jones fingered his chin. ‘I give it up. I say, if you’re not busy, I wish you’d go along and have a look at Hallam. He’s overdoing it.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘Yes. Someone’s started a Hoodoo or Voodoo or something in his summer house. Look here.’

  He went into his bedroom and took from the side of the window the string of cock’s feathers.

  ‘Blood and all,’ said the doctor. He shook his head. ‘These country parsons ought to be married, Jones. Celibacy plays the deuce with Englishmen.’

  ‘You English?’ asked Jones.

  The doctor laughed. ‘I had an Irish mother.’

  ‘I a Welsh father,’ said Jones.

  Both laughed; then Jones, remembering the doctor’s errand, said:

  ‘Nothing I can do about Middleton, I suppose?’

  ‘Well, there is, if you wouldn’t mind. He was expecting the little boy, the nephew, down today, so the housekeeper’s husband tells me. The child has been sent away from school because of an epidemic. His guardian naturally had handed him over to Middleton’s care since Middleton established his identity, and it appears that at the moment no one is responsible for the little chap. He can’t stay up at the school. They’re afraid they’ve got a case of infantile paralysis. So if you’d meet his train and take him on for a day or two until we can get into touch with the former trustees of the estate——’

  ‘Of course I will,’ said Jones.

  ‘Incidentally, rumour has it that the vicar was up at Neot House last night. You won’t mind, then?’

  ‘No, I shan’t mind a bit. In fact, it will liven me up. How old is the boy?’

  ‘I believe he’s nine or ten.’

  ‘Oh, yes. Of course. He would be. What time is the train?’

  ‘Look here, I could meet the train and bring him to you in my car. Can you have him to lunch?’

  ‘Oh, yes, if they haven’t arrested Mrs Passion by then.’

  ‘Good man. I’ll bring him along, then. How’s the time? Half-past? Just got time to look in on the vicar first. Good-bye. I’ll let the housekeeper know I’ve parked the boy. Tough luck on them. The police are behaving very suspiciously towards them.’

  ‘Are they?’

  ‘Very suspiciously indeed, although the poor devils obviously have everything to lose and nothing whatever to gain by Middleton’s death.’

  ‘I suppose Scotland Yard will come into it if there’s a fuss?’

  ‘I don’t know about that.’

  ‘Later on,’ said Jones, ‘when you’re not busy, I should like to have a serious talk with you about the death of the other Mr Middleton.’

  ‘The death of this Mr Middleton attracts me a whole lot more. It interests the Tebbutts, too, I’ll bet. The man has already taken to his bed, overcome with shock and horror. He’s drugged himself into insensibility, if I’m any judge. The woman looks like death, although she doesn’t say much, and the lad is obviously scared nearly silly. Of course the police are all over the house and grounds, and the police doctor from Stowhall agrees with me that Tebbutt can’t yet be questioned.’

  ‘Funny, isn’t it?’

  ‘Well, it all looks a bit suspicious, certainly. In fact I should say they are behaving very foolishly indeed. Still, it’s no concern of mine.’

  ‘But what about this?’

  And Jones gave the doctor a summary of the information he had obtained from Doctor Crevister.

  ‘I’ve heard the whole story from Mrs Corbett, of the Long Thin Man,’ said Mortmain.

  ‘And do you believe that Middleton died of peritonitis?’

  ‘It sounded like it, from what Mrs Corbett told me.’

  ‘Oh, well, from what Mrs Corbett told me it sounded like arsenic,’ said Jones. ‘And, in view of what’s just happened to the new Mr Middleton—’

  ‘Lot of difference between administering arsenic and coshing a man over the head with a poker,’ said the doctor.

  ‘Academically speaking, yes,’ Jones agreed.

  ‘Psychologically speaking, yes a lot more,’ said the doctor warmly. ‘There’s the whole difference between a man and a woman in the difference between murder by poison and murder by violence.’

  ‘The resemblance of the sexes one to another is more fundamental than their differences,’ said Jones. The doctor smote him between the shoulder blades.

  ‘You lap-dog novelist!’ he said. Jones grinned. He liked the doctor; watched him affectionately as he walked down the path of the cottage garden to his car; had inquired once, in all innocence, what the man was doing in a place like Saxon Wall.

  They were drinking bottled beer in Jones’ small sitting-room, and the doctor, gazing thoughtfully into his glass, which was three-quarters full, had answered:

  ‘Illegal operation. Syphilitic lover. I was let off for lack of evidence.’

  ‘Yes, and talking of all that kind of thing,’ said Jones. ‘What’s your opinion on eugenics and so on? Interesting subject in its way. Used it in a novel once, but not particularly satisfactorily, I thought. Not enough sentimentality about it for my kind of stuff.’

  The doctor raised his glass and, shutting his left eye, gazed with his right at the beautiful amber liquid with its crest of froth. Then he wagged his head, and misquoted solemnly:

  ‘“For malt does more than Malthus can

  To justify God’s ways to man.”’

  Chapter Ten

  ‘“Won’t she answer the helm at all?” I said irritably …

  “Yes, sir. She’s coming-to slowly.”

  “Let her head come up to south.”

  “Aye, aye, sir.”

  I paced the poop. There was not a sound but that of my footsteps until the man spoke again.

  “She is at south now, sir.”’

  JOSEPH CONRAD

  The Shadow Line.

  MRS PASSION DID no house-cleaning of any kind for Jones except on Wednesdays and Saturdays, so that, having given him his breakfast, she had left him talking to the doctor while she returned to her own cottage for an hour or so. Having performed such domestic duties there as, presumably, suggested themselves to her, it was her custom to return to Jones at about half-past eleven in order to prepare and cook his midday meal.

  Between her going and her return on the day Mr Middleton had been found dead, no fewer than four persons called upon Jones to give him the news. Miss Harper and her sister were the first, and they had scarcely gone before Mrs Corbett appeared. She was followed by Lily Soudall. In addition to the news, (which, being a girl of some intelligence, she assumed that Jones had heard) she brought a message from the doctor.

  ‘He says he don’t like the sound of the Reverend, and thinks he ought to see a specialist. He wrote out what was the matter with him. Here it is. ‘Suffering from’—I been trying to make out the n
ext word coming along to tell it you, if you couldn’t read his writing. All doctors write bad, don’t they?’

  She was a very different creature from the grief-stricken girl Jones had seen at the vicarage on the occasion of her quarrel with Corbett. Jones smiled.

  ‘That’s so that unauthorised persons shan’t be able to read what they’ve put,’ he said. The gentle rebuke was lost upon Lily.

  ‘What is the word, anyway, sir? My mother’s sure to ask me, time I get home.’

  ‘Hallucinations,’ replied Jones gravely. She looked at him for enlightenment, but Jones, grinning wickedly, gave her sixpence for bringing the note, and went indoors.

  Lily and the returning Mrs Passion encountered one another at the garden gate. Lily spat into the middle of the garden path. Mrs Passion curtsied ironically at the insult, and held the gate open for the girl to pass out.

  ‘You don’t seem popular with Lily Soudall,’ said Jones, a little later. Mrs Passion lifted her lack-lustre eyes to his and answered without apparent ill-feeling:

  ‘She’s been brought up nice, Lily has. A very respectable young woman.’

  ‘Any more news about Mr Middleton’s death?’ asked Jones, watching her closely. Mrs Passion shook her head.

  ‘I been up there this hour or more. The police from Stowhall are there. Both of them. They’ve been very sharp with Mrs Tebbutt and her lad.’

  ‘How do you know that?’ asked Jones.

  She answered: ‘Oh, news travels about, sir, doesn’t it?’

  ‘Sit down, Mrs Passion, a minute, and shut the door, I want to speak to you,’ he said, acting upon a sudden impulse, which, as suddenly, he regretted.

  She sat on the edge of a chair, and rolled her hands in her apron. Jones found it difficult to begin.

  ‘You remember last night, Mrs Passion?’

  ‘I can’t say I do. Not specially, Mr Jones, sir.’

  ‘Good heavens, woman, of course you do!’ said Jones. ‘Your—your coming here, I mean.’

  ‘Oh, that,’ said Mrs Passion. ‘Well, what of it? We settled it to our satisfaction, didn’t we?’

  Completely nonplussed, Jones nodded feebly. Mrs Passion eyed him. Then she added: