The Devil at Saxon Wall Read online

  It was repeated, too, that the devil himself had visited Mrs Fluke at the cottage which Jones was occupying, and there had made his pact with her. Jones was amused and interested, but could find nothing sinister about the cottage itself, which was clean and in good repair, and overlooked arable fields. Mrs Fluke herself, when her daughter spoke of her to him, seemed to be a much-maligned old woman, poor, honest and respectable.

  ‘You wait till they quarrels,’ his other next-door neighbour, the simple-minded Mrs Pike, informed him. She was mild-mannered and clean, and possessed the most pronounced squint that Jones had ever seen, but apart from this, and the fact that she had a beautiful fair-haired, delicate-looking son, a boy of nine or ten, who appeared to have sufficient intelligence for the pair of them, Jones found her unremarkable. She expressed her goodwill by sending the boy along with presents of vegetables out of the garden. Jones, who liked garden peas, returned the compliment by sending in chocolate and bananas from the village shop. He had suggested paying for the peas, but Mrs Pike had burst into tears.

  Her devotion to him soon became sycophantic, but not sufficiently obtrusive to be annoying. Her greatest joy was to encounter him in the village street so that he should raise his hat to her, and this usually occurred upon another walk that Jones took through the village, which was a very straggling one, out past a big house standing in a park. He tried to find out the history of the house, for it appeared that no one except a caretaker had lived there for some time, but the villagers were peculiarly, and, to Jones, who had the writer’s lust for a story, irritatingly reticent. They told him the name of the mansion, Neot House, and that was all.

  Gradually the desire to write his book began to leave him. He no longer took it out twice a day, sighed, and put it away again. He began to go to bed earlier and to sleep better. He had never known such peace of mind and body in his life. He lived sparely, and spent very little money. He received no letters—for nobody, except his wife, who was beginning to tire of Nice, and the people at the shop to which he had sent for the new bed and other necessaries, knew where he was living, and his publisher re-commenced to telephone his London flat in vain. He ceased to be Hannibal Jones, accursed best-seller of novels the proofs of which he could not bear to read and correct, and became Mr Jones of the village of Saxon Wall, again at last a nonentity, but one in a state of grace.

  Chapter Two

  ‘Indeed, I must confess that the study of the Anglo-Saxon laws often reduces me to a state of mental chaos. I may know, as a rule, the meaning of individual words; I can construe, though not invariably, the separate sentences. But what it all comes to is often a total mystery.’

  CHARLES PLUMMER

  The Life and Times of Alfred the Great.

  BY THE TIME he had lived six weeks in the village, Jones’ acquaintance with its affairs was wide but not particularly profound. He knew, for instance, that about half a mile from the vicarage there was a ruined castle, but he could not discover by hearsay who had lived there, or when or for what reason it had been abandoned. He knew not [only] that at the other end of the village, on the road which led to the coast, was Neot House, unoccupied save for a caretaker; he knew also that in its grounds stood a dower house which had been let to two maiden ladies, sisters, who were known in the village as Miss Harper and Miss Phoebe. Opinion, so far as he could gather, was divided about them on account of their pet goat. This creature, which, needless to say, and without regard for what Miss Somerville and Miss Ross call ‘the accident of sex in the brute creation,’ they had named Gerald, was permitted the run of the house, and was taken out for exercise and on shopping expeditions. One section of the habitués of the Long Thin Man, where Jones repaired mid-mornings and every evening for a glass of the excellent ale, apparently regarded the goat with affectionate veneration from their having conceived a mistaken idea in respect to the significance of the theory of the scapegoat in Holy Writ; the others, who were in the majority, confined themselves to head-shakings and mutterings, except for the very boldest, who talked loudly of cloven hoofs and observed that they would like to know what sort of things went on inside the Dower House at certain phases of the moon.

  Jones made the acquaintance of the two Miss Harpers and their goat outside the post office one afternoon. He had been in to buy tobacco, they to purchase stamps and a ball of string. A mongrel dog, the village scavenger, began to bark at the goat, and nanny, for the animal was female, undeterred by the noise made by the dog, rushed at him, jerking his lead out of Miss Phoebe’s hand. Before the Amazonian Miss Harper could interfere, Jones had driven off the dog with a well-directed half-brick, which scared but did not strike it, and had placed the end of the goat’s lead again in Miss Phoebe’s hand.

  His reward for this service was to be invited there and then to tea at the Dower House after a short, audible and trenchant colloquy among the sisters and Mrs Gant, the shopkeeper and postmistress.

  ‘Cheese cakes, sister?’

  ‘Of course, sister. I made them this morning whilst you were going the rounds of the runner-beans.’

  ‘Now what about a pot of your strawberry jam, Mrs Gant?’

  ‘Thank you, ma’am. Eightpence, please, ma’am. Thank you, ma’am.’

  ‘What else, sister? There’s the carraway cake.’

  ‘Gentlemen detest seed cake, sister. Isn’t there a clutch of eggs in the house?’

  ‘Yes, sister. Birdseye sent them in this morning.’

  ‘Then all is well. Will you come to tea with us this afternoon, Mr Jones?’

  Tea over, Jones stayed longer than he had intended, for the ladies gave him the gossip of the village, together with the history of Neot House. He learned that the owner of the house was a boy of nine, a heavy-faced, unresponsive, sullen child—according to the sisters—who was at school in Sussex and spent his holidays in London with one of the trustees of his estate.

  ‘Such a dreadfully sad story, poor child. No wonder he is such a quiet boy,’ said Miss Harper. ‘His mother, Mrs Middleton, died when he was born, and his father three weeks afterwards—of grief, they say, although personally I am more inclined to think that it was—that he took his own life. Too terrible.’

  ‘You ought not to say such things, sister,’ observed Miss Phoebe. ‘After all, surely a doctor’s word should be believed.’

  ‘Oh? What did the doctor say he died of?’ inquired Jones, who found it difficult to conceive that a medical practitioner would countenance the suggestion that Mr Middleton had died of grief.

  ‘Oh, Doctor Crevister thought at first that it was heart failure following a severe bout of indigestion,’ said Miss Phoebe, ‘but later on they operated for appendicitis, in my opinion most unwisely.’

  ‘Nonsense, sister.’

  ‘But, sister, he was sick. Dreadfully sick. You know what Mrs Passion said.’

  ‘Yes, of course I do. But he might just as easily have poisoned himself.’

  ‘Well, the doctor didn’t think so. After all, he couldn’t have been as fond of his wife as all that.’

  ‘Why not?’ asked Jones.

  ‘Well, you see,’ began Miss Harper enjoyably, but she was called to order by her sister.

  ‘Now, Sophie, please! Mr Jones does not want to listen to scandal.’

  ‘Of course he does!’ retorted Miss Harper. ‘Everybody wants to listen to scandal. It’s most interesting. Shall I continue, Mr Jones? Just as you wish, of course.’ She looked malevolently through gold-rimmed glasses at her sister, and then changed her expression to one of triumph and pleasure, as Jones diffidently confessed to a taste for scandal as long as it was not malicious in intention.

  ‘There you are, you see!’ she said. ‘I wonder where Sheridan would be if everyone were as pernickety as you!’

  ‘Does it matter, sister?’

  ‘Of course it matters! What else could I produce at Christmas with the Girls’ Guild? Even the vicar approves of Sheridan.’

  ‘Really, sister, even if the vicar does approve, I
ought to remind you that our dear mother did not. If I can trust my memory, Sophie, she would never allow a copy of his collected works within the four walls of our house.’

  ‘That was Shelley, not Sheridan, sister. Or Shakespeare, possibly.’

  ‘Another subversive writer,’ said Miss Phoebe angrily.

  Jones gently recalled them to the subject under discussion. ‘What was the scandal connected with Mr Middleton, then?’ he asked. Miss Harper leaned forward confidentially and, undeterred by Miss Phoebe’s headshakings and grimaces, answered readily:

  ‘They say he was unfaithful to his wife!’

  ‘Before marriage, Sophie!’

  ‘It’s the same thing, sister.’

  ‘Rubbish, sister. You can’t be unfaithful to your wife before marriage! Ask Mr Jones.’

  Jones modestly disclaimed any special knowledge of the subject, and the situation was not improved by Miss Harper’s sibilantly relieving herself of the word ‘Gaffe! Gaffe!’ in her sister’s pink and embarrassed ear. It was a most effectual interruption of his protestations, however, and, with a last withering glance at the now utterly defeated Miss Phoebe, Miss Harper continued with great eagerness.

  ‘And they do say that the child down in the village—the Widow Pike’s little boy—is as like the late Hanley Middleton as a son can be like his father.’

  ‘Really!’ said Jones. ‘Is that the little boy the villagers say is a changeling. He lives next door to me.’

  Miss Harper nodded, and Miss Phoebe, suddenly recovering her poise and, with it, her good-humour, said suddenly and explosively:

  ‘I never would have thought it of the Widow Pike, from what I know of her! A most respectable woman, quiet and hardworking.’

  ‘Not very intelligent,’ said Miss Harper, pursing her lips. ‘Not very intelligent, would you say?’

  ‘Mentally defective, in fact,’ said Jones, whose training in morbid psychology caused him to take an interest in Mrs Pike’s deficiencies.

  ‘Well, I cannot speak as to that,’ Miss Phoebe admitted candidly, ‘but there certainly have been no lapses on her part since we came to live in the village, Phoebe, have there?’

  ‘You weren’t at the Dower House, then, when Mr Middleton was alive?’ said Jones, who had not grasped this fact.

  ‘Oh, no. But we came soon after the funeral. We have been here just eight years at the end of the present month. We come from Tunbridge Wells. Do you know Tunbridge Wells, Mr Jones?’

  Jones had an aunt there, but he was determined not to allow the promising story of Hanley Middleton to be side-tracked in favour of a discussion on English spas, so he shook his head and said:

  ‘But little Pike is supposed to resemble the late Mr Middleton?’

  ‘He’s supposed to be the image of him.’

  At this point the conversation again showed signs of petering out, and Jones was about to take his leave when Miss Phoebe suddenly inquired:

  ‘And how does Mrs Passion do for you?’

  ‘Oh, admirably,’ said Jones. ‘She doesn’t bother me, and she keeps the cottage as clean as one can expect, and there’s always something to eat when I go in to meals.’

  ‘Hm! You want to beware of those Passions, though,’ said Miss Harper. ‘I am not sure you wouldn’t have done better with the Pike.’

  ‘Oh, but she drinks,’ said Miss Phoebe. ‘They say that just before Mrs Middleton’s confinement—Mrs Pike was the midwife, you know. Not certified, of Course——’

  ‘Certificated, sister.’

  ‘It’s all the same, sister. As I was saying, Mr Jones, one can’t expect everything in Saxon Wall, but there had been some talk of getting a nurse from London or Manchester or somewhere——’

  ‘Do you know Manchester, Mr Jones?’

  ‘Sister, please! But of course it’s something to have a woman like Mrs Pike who will wash her hands. But for all that it was blood-poisoning which caused the poor young woman’s death.’

  ‘You’ve left out the part about Passion being taken ill, sister.’

  ‘Dreadfully ill, Mr Jones——’

  ‘Poison, someone hinted.’

  ‘But it proved to be nothing but the drink. His wife said he was always taken with melancholy if ever she had to leave him.’

  ‘It was dreadful, though, while it lasted, I should imagine. Mrs Gant at the post office told us all about it. Really too nauseating. Just like the effects of arsenical poisoning, according to a murder trial that she was following at the time, she said.’

  ‘Most revolting,’ said Miss Phoebe, breaking in again upon what she regarded as her story. ‘Dreadfully sick, you know, and really not at all himself for some time afterwards.’

  ‘It sounds as though he must have taken a good deal,’ said Jones.

  ‘Seventeen pints of stout, sworn to by the landlord of the Long Thin Man,’ said Miss Harper impressively. ‘Besides, they found the empty bottles at the bottom of the garden.’

  ‘And Passion had the hardihood to declare that he had never touched a drop of it,’ said Miss Phoebe. ‘And there were the seventeen bottles to confute him.’

  ‘And to do the same thing again just before Mr Middieton died!’ exclaimed Miss Harper.

  ‘Good gracious!’ said Jones. ‘How extraordinary!’

  ‘They say he didn’t want his wife to go off and nurse Mr Middleton through his illness, and that was why he did it.’

  ‘He believed his wife would stay at home and nurse him instead of going up to Neot House, apparently.’

  ‘But she did no such thing. She saved him from the stomach pump, but that was all.’

  ‘Of course, there is a look of her about the boy,’ observed Miss Harper, slowly.

  ‘Which boy? Do you mean young Pike?’ Jones asked.

  ‘Oh, no. The little Middleton, of course,’ explained Miss Harper.

  ‘But, sister, Mrs Middleton was certainly brought to bed.’

  ‘But so was Mrs Passion, four months previously. Only her baby died.’

  ‘Not until after Mr Middleton’s funeral, sister. On the Saturday after, wasn’t it said?’

  ‘Mrs Fluke ill-wished that baby. She never liked Mrs Passion,’ said Miss Harper solemnly.

  ‘But they’re mother and daughter,’ said Jones.

  ‘You don’t know this village,’ said Miss Phoebe.

  ‘The things they talk about——’

  ‘And think about——’

  ‘It’s really terrible.’

  ‘But what happened to the baby?’ Jones inquired.

  ‘It went to heaven,’ affirmed Miss Phoebe, nodding her head. ‘Fortunately——’

  ‘Most fortunately——’

  ‘——it had been baptised at three months old.’

  ‘I mean the little Middleton,’ said Jones.

  ‘If it was a Middleton,’ said Miss Harper, avoiding her sister’s eye. ‘My personal, private opinion is that if a man is accused of having been unfaithful to his wife, the boot is often enough on the other foot as well. If the little Middleton was not a Middleton, and the little Pike—well, it’s really rather confusing, but still, there’s no smoke without fire.’

  Jones said he agreed, and, his mind still ringing the changes on Pikes and Middletons and Passions, he rose to go.

  ‘Now do promise us that you will come again, Mr Jones,’ said Miss Harper.

  ‘And we’ll open a pot of our damson jam and see whether you like it as well as Mrs Gant’s homemade strawberry,’ said Miss Phoebe.

  ‘You know,’ said Jones, ‘I don’t believe I’ve got it quite right now. Which was the baby that died?’

  ‘Little Passion,’ said Miss Harper promptly.

  ‘And no wonder, with a father addicted to drink,’ said Miss Phoebe.

  ‘Stout, too, sister.’

  ‘Yes, poor child, it would have had no teeth worth speaking of.’

  ‘Mrs Passion told me that she herself used to be partial to a glass of stout, but after his disgusting orgies with it
, the sight of the froth makes her feel quite ill.’

  ‘No wonder at all, sister.’

  ‘Laced with gin, sister.’

  ‘Disgusting man! And to think we used to employ him in the garden before we knew all this!’

  Chapter Three

  ‘There are no specifics for the reconciliation of these interests; nothing can avail save tact on all sides and a recognition of identity of aim.’

  VON SEECKT

  Thoughts of a Soldier, translated by Professor Gilbert Waterhouse.

  JONES WALKED SLOWLY back to his cottage, and had been sitting at his parlour window for about two hours when he looked up from his book and noticed the old woman in the red flannel petticoat. She had kilted the skirt and was hoeing, why or what Jones was not countryman enough to know.

  He watched her for the best part of an hour. She travelled very slowly up and down the field of crops, chopping with sharp, jabbing movements at the ground. It was fascinating and gruesome, this steady, concentrated hacking of the innocent soil, and (to his later astonishment) Jones found himself watching her with a sick anxiety in which he could imagine that he heard the harsh and gritty sound of the edge of the hoe on stones.

  It was dusk before the old creature abandoned her labours, and Jones, on his way to the Long Thin Man for his evening glass of beer, found himself perturbed by the remembrance of her.

  Next day, at about four in the afternoon, she came on to the field again and continued work. Jones, absorbed in watching her, did not hear Mrs Passion come in, and, his nerves hair-strung and his mind a field whereon the old woman hoed, gave a pronounced start and made a slight exclamation as the tea-tray was dumped on the table beside him.

  According to her usual custom and although she had been told five times that he disliked over-sweetened tea, Mrs Passion dropped two lumps of sugar into his cup and then gazed out of the window.

  She was a large, slow-moving woman with black hair, and a heavy, stupid-looking face, pallid and not very clean, but Jones decided that her lovers in her younger days might have thought her handsome.