The Devil at Saxon Wall Read online

  Jones, deliberately interrupting her, replied that he thought there must be rain on the way, and, talking gravely on past a counter-interruption from the lady, led her back to her starting point. He guessed that the bulk of her remarks so far had been in the nature of a digression from the main theme, although intended as an introduction to it. Re-started on the subject of the social life of Saxon Wall, Mrs Corbett picked up the scent in faultless fashion from where she had made her detour, and headed for open country with an animation which suggested that she found the acquisition of a fresh auditor for a more than twice-told tale peculiarly stimulating.

  ‘Well, that was four of us, and Corbett you might say five, and Mrs Birdseye six, although farmers’ wives in general I don’t know whether they make such good company, and the wife of the Baptist minister before she died, poor woman, although, between ourselves, Mr Jones, well, perhaps it’s not for me to criticise, belonging to something a bit more toney, which I always think the Church is, somehow, but all that shaking hands at the chapel door on Sunday nights with every member, well, I call it American, myself, but it’s not for me to judge, but, to my mind, not altogether in the best of taste, somehow.’

  ‘The Middletons, I suppose, were not often living up at the house?’ said Jones.

  ‘Well, of course, it was just a week before we came when it all happened,’ continued Mrs Corbett, smoothing her black silk apron over her thigh, and warming to the tale, ‘and of course we was all too shocked to start our thoughts about it all straight away, but when both the funerals were over, and the new nurse came and took the Middleton baby away, and then Mrs Pike never bringing hers into the light of day, which, fresh air or not, as you believe in it, it did seem queer she didn’t want to show it off to people a bit, and then Mrs Passion’s own little baby dying, well, you see, it struck us a bit funny.’

  ‘I see,’ said Jones patiently. ‘You mean you thought that there was something extraordinary about Mrs Pike’s baby? That it was deformed, perhaps?’

  Mrs Corbett shook her head. ‘Nothing of that sort at all, Mr Jones. But, if you’ll believe me, and to crown all, the little Pike to be the very living image of dead and gone Middletons unto the third and fourth generations, as anybody could see who had ever been over the picture gallery up at the house on a Bank Holiday, and if that can’t be called proof positive, I’d just like to know what can!’

  ‘Proof positive of what?’ asked Jones; but Mrs Corbett could not stop to explain. She merely flicked her head, and continued: ‘But just fancy that Mrs Passion daring to do it! And her own baby four months old if a day, and the little Middleton only three weeks, if that! And his father and mother—well you’d really wonder they wouldn’t rise out of their graves!’

  ‘You think, then, that Mrs Passion substituted her own four months’ old baby for Baby Middleton, and that Mrs Pike is in the plot and is bringing up young Middleton as Henry Pike, her own child having died?’ said Jones. ‘Quite likely, I should say. Such things have been done before.’

  ‘That’s what I think, Mr Jones, I do, really. Can you imagine it! But one thing I don’t believe, and that is that poor, simple Mrs Pike knows anything about it. She’s nothing but a Natural.’

  ‘But she must know whether Henry is her child or not. Even if she’s half-witted she’d know that.’

  ‘Ah, that, yes. She’d know whether he was her own child or not, I daresay. Although, really, she’s that simple! But I reckon she had young Middleton passed on to her as a Passion. That’s what I reckon, Mr Jones.’

  ‘Then why should she have hidden him within doors as you say? If she thought Mrs Passion had parted with Baby Passion … anyway, what happened to Baby Pike?’

  ‘Why, as like as not, that wicked woman told her that she’d lose the child if people found out it weren’t hers, you see. And what I think is, little Pike, he died. You go and see Mrs Pike when you get the chance, Mr Jones. She’d take in anything. I never, not in any village—and we kept a house in the Epping Forest district before we came here and bought the Long Thin Man nine year ago—see anyone so simple. And she fair dotes on the little boy. No doubt of that. It would be cruel to take him away. That’s what troubles me, Mr Jones. What to do for the best. It don’t seem right that woman should push her own child into the Middleton money and lands if it belongs of right to little Henry Pike, and yet——’

  ‘It’s hardly little Passion’s fault,’ said Jones, ‘if things are wrong.’

  ‘Then you wouldn’t go to law, sir?’

  ‘Difficult,’ said Jones. ‘You couldn’t prove anything from the ages of the children, and I doubt whether a family likeness would count for much in a court of law. Besides, the present little Pike, né little Middleton, may be the illegitimate off-spring of a Middleton-Passion union. Had you considered that point?’

  ‘But a little Middleton, legitimate, was born, Mr Jones, and has to be accounted for. Besides, the family likeness was the spit and image both ways.’

  ‘Both ways?’ said Jones, befogged.

  ‘Yes. Henry Pike for the Middletons, and little Middleton—so-called—for that Passion woman. There isn’t any doubt, Mr Jones, about that. I’ve talked to people, and I know.’

  ‘Well, I don’t know. It’s difficult,’ said Jones, amused by the story and not prepared to commit himself to the extent of offering advice. ‘To my mind, the best plan, possibly, might be to wait until the little Pike comes of age, and then persuade him formally to claim the estates. But, at present, where’s the money coming from, even if you thought he had a case?’

  ‘I see what you mean, Mr Jones. Yes, better let it rest, it being not of our business whichever way you look at it, except that right is right, and personally we have always kept a most well-ordered house.’

  ‘Of course, you ought to have your facts quite clear about all three of the children, in case anything ever turns up,’ said Jones as he rose to go. ‘Let’s see. Little Passion was four months old, you said, at the time when Mr Middleton died. Then little Middleton would have been three weeks old at the time of his father’s death, and little Pike must have been—how old, would you say?’

  ‘Two months, almost to a day, Mr Jones. Oh, I can see well enough what you meant about not proving anything, but it’s a crying shame he shouldn’t have his rights!’

  ‘Yes, but, you see, as Mrs Pike kept her little chap—or possibly someone else’s little chap—so carefully under cover for the first few months of his life, it wouldn’t be at all easy to prove that substitution had taken place. The thing seems self-evident, I grant you. She must have made the substitution following, or even just before the death of Mr Middleton. I wonder how long he was ill?’

  ‘Oh, it was all most sudden, Mr Jones. Of course, he grieved after his wife, as was only natural, seeing they hadn’t been married so very many years and the baby being their first-fruits, as you might say. But die! Nobody didn’t think that of him. A big surprise to everyone it was, and he such a villain to her all the time with his light-of-love behaviour.’

  ‘Was there an inquest, then?’

  ‘Oh, dear me, gracious no! There didn’t have to be no inquest, Mr Jones. The doctor wrote out the certificate all right. It was Doctor Crevister then. Now it’s Doctor Mortmain. Quite a nice man he is, but all in favour of these operations. Told me Jay did ought to have had his tonsils out when he was a little boy, but there, as I said to him, all our family have outgrown them quite all right, and there’s no doubt Jay will do the same. I don’t believe in all these operations. “Sawn asunder, slain with sword,” as the hymn book tells us, and quite right too. “I don’t believe in interfering with Nature, Doctor Mortmain,” I said, “nor in making the crooked straight before its time.”’

  Chapter Five

  ‘In this same interlude it doth befall

  That I, one Snout by name, present a wall.

  And such a wall as I would have you think

  That had in it a crannied hole or chink,

  . . . . . .
. .

  And this the cranny is, right and sinister …’

  WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

  A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Act V, Scene I.

  BETWEEN THE MYSTERIOUS Birdseye and the Reverend Merlin Hallam there existed a complete and inviolable understanding, based on the necessity for preserving in the middle of the village green a well-rolled, closely-mown and jealously guarded cricket pitch.

  Cricket was not a pastime native to Saxon Wall. Jones, in fact, watching one of the Saturday matches between the vicar’s eleven and Birdseye’s eleven, came to the conclusion—inevitable in the circumstances—that the object of the fielding side was not to get the batsmen out but to disable them. Even put in the most charitable words—those, incidentally, of the doctor—it appeared that body-line bowling had been practised in Saxon Wall long before its introduction into first-class cricket.

  Neither Birdseye nor the vicar played in these matches, which were essentially games for the young and active, but it was the custom for Birdseye to release Passion from his cowman’s duties every Friday afternoon so that he might get the pitch into some sort of condition ready for Saturday’s game. If Passion, later on, went into the vicarage for a drink of beer, and remained to earn three-pence by weeding the vicar’s gravel paths, nothing was said about it on either side.

  Jones had made a careful study of the poor little moron, and had come to the conclusion that from him, or from no one, could be learned the truth about the changeling children of Middleton, Pike and Passion. Amused curiosity, alone, and not any desire to assist the righteous Mrs Corbett to establish law, order and justice in the village, impelled him to question Passion upon the subject, but time began to hang on his hands a little, although he was still unwilling to return to his ill-fated novel.

  On the Friday afternoon following his talk with Mrs Corbett, Jones tracked Passion to the village green. He left his cottage at half-past three, followed a shady footpath which led from his home in the direction of Guthrum Down, and, keeping the village roofs in sight, branched off and skirted the village green. Then he lay down in the shade of an oak and watched Passion rolling the pitch.

  At the end of half an hour he rose, brushed himself down, walked over to the solitary worker and hailed him. Passion, torn between the necessity of finishing the rolling and mowing of the cricket pitch, and the inadvisability of offending his wife’s employer, came to an uncertain halt, his hands still on the handles of the cutter, and, wagging his large head mournfully, gave Jones greeting.

  ‘Carry on,’ said Jones. ‘Nearly finished, haven’t you?’

  ‘Ay, nearly finished.’ He hesitated, and then went on with his work. Jones studied his hunched shoulders, tortoise-poking head and snail’s pace, then, concluding that the task would take some time at Passion’s rate of working, stretched himself on the brownish grass again, and tilted his hat over his eyes as a shield against the blinding glare of the sun. Elms at the edge of the green were heavy with summer. Their leaves swam together in the swooning heat of the day, and massed their light and shadow against the sky’s unclouded depth. Beneath them the ground was almost bare where cattle had trodden away the grass when seeking shelter, and bracken, at the far side of the common, was brownish at the edges of its fronds.

  At the end of a quarter of an hour, Passion trundled the roller to the shed, came back for the mower, and then returned with a birch broom. As he swept the pitch, he bent and ritualistically scattered handfuls of short grass behind each wicket.

  Jones had debated carefully within himself the possible means of approach to that nebulous and uncertain entity, Passion’s intelligence, and had decided that shock tactics would probably yield the most satisfying results in the shortest time.

  ‘Passion,’ he said, coming up with him and speaking very sharply, ‘what has your wife been up to?’

  The question had an unforeseen result, for Passion stared at him a moment, his mouth working nervously and his little eyes wide open, and then said explosively:

  ‘Ah, if I only knowed! Sick as a dog again I was! Sick as a dog last night! And all on account of Mr Middleton coming into his own again! I telled she I couldn’t help it. “No fault of mine,” I said. “It was always on the cards,” I telled her. But she! Ah, kill me she will if her beant careful, and so I telled her. Sick as a dog! Sicker nor two dogs! And in all this heat! It’s cruel!’

  ‘Tell me about it,’ said Jones. Passion dropped the handful of grass he was holding, then picked up another and wiped his brow with it before he threw it down.

  ‘It’s that old devil my mother-in-law,’ he said. ‘Can’t tell ee here, Mr Jones. Come you down to the Long Thin Man after you had your tea, and I’ll tell ee, sure enough, if so be you’d want to know.’ He leered cunningly at the prospect of free beer.

  ‘No, no,’ said Jones, ‘you tell me here and now. We’re alone. You’ve finished in rare good time. It isn’t five o’clock yet. Let’s walk to these elms over yonder and sit and smoke.’

  ‘Not under ellums,’ said Passion. ‘They’m treacherous, ellums be. Yon oak’s the tree for me. There amn’t no caterpillars on her yet, be there?’

  ‘Not yet,’ said Jones, who had not the slightest idea when the caterpillars might be due to arrive. ‘Now you won’t let on to mother as I’ve telled ee aught?’

  ‘Certainly not,’ said Jones. Determinedly he collared the conversation. ‘Now listen, Passion. What I want to know is this. Did you ever have a son?’

  ‘Ay, sure enough. Mother give un away.’

  ‘What?’

  Passion chuckled, pleased at Jones’ surprise. ‘She did that. She’s a clever one, is mother, though her cooking do poison I at times. Ay, she give un away up at the Hall when their little babby died. “Here, take you on mine,” her said to Mr Middleton. And sure enough so ’twas.’

  ‘What happened to the Middleton baby, did you say?’ asked Jones, who found this version of the tale considerably more intriguing than Mrs Corbett’s.

  ‘Poor little fellow died. Ay, and was buried, too and all, and mother give ’em our’n, to quieten and comfort ’em, like, so upset and all they was.’

  ‘But did you agree to that?’ asked Jones, amazed at the half-wit’s simplicity. Passion gave him a sidelong glance, cunning and full of cupidity, and answered slyly:

  ‘Oh, I agreed all right. Why shouldn’t I agree? ’Twas my son as well as mother’s and when the little chap grow up to be twenty-one year of age, the notion were that he’d be having mother and me to live with him, and teach him how to mind his money, like.’

  ‘But does he know that you and your wife are his father and mother, Passion?’

  ‘Not until he’s twenty-one year of age, he doesn’t. Then we shall tell him what mother done. Did ought to be grateful, didn’t un?’

  ‘But surely the Middletons knew nothing of all this?’ said Jones. He was delighted with the story, found it incredible, and wanted to see how far the man would go.

  Passion wagged his ungainly head and leered.

  Jones, although he repeated the question, could obtain no answer, so he tried another method of approach.

  ‘What’s the matter with little Henry Pike?’

  ‘Ah, him,’ said Passion. He hesitated, glanced from left to right, and then at Jones, grimaced at him, turned himself widdershins about, crossed his fingers and then said, softly and hoarsely:

  ‘He’m a changeling, Henry Pike. Grandmother Fluke did that.’

  ‘Really?’ said Jones.

  ‘Ah. Widow Pike, she kept him dark so long as her could, but it wasn’t no manner of use in the end. Out he had to come, soon as he were breeched. Couldn’t keep Master Mischief within cottage doors once he could run about, and then it was “Who’d a’ thought it?” when the village see him. Who do you think they say he is, Mr Jones?’

  ‘I know who they say he is,’ returned Jones evenly. ‘And what’s more, Passion, I believe them!’

  Passion shook his head.

  ‘Oh, no,
you shouldn’t say that, Mr Jones,’ he said. ‘Because you see, sir, mother give ’em ours. No. Henry Pike isn’t no Middleton babby, don’t you believe it. He’s like the Middletons because, you see, he isn’t ’uman. He was give to Widow Pike in place of the little Middleton that died. But no odds now at all.’

  ‘How do you mean?’ asked Jones. Passion looked slyly at him, drew near, and whispered low:

  ‘Mother said as I wasn’t to tell ee.’

  Jones produced sixpence, but Passion shook his head. Jones put another beside it on the palm of his hand. At this the cowman grinned, picked up the coins and said:

  ‘That Mr Middleton as died was but the second eldest.’

  ‘Well?’ said Jones, who had heard this tale before.

  ‘They say Mr Carswell Middleton as died missing in the war has just come home again.’ He hesitated, repeated the sentence to himself, as though to be sure he had it by heart, and then said it aloud again.

  ‘Yes?’ said Jones, trying to sound interested and failing. Passion’s lip drooped sadly.

  ‘Don’t ee want to hear what I got to tell?’

  ‘Of course I do. Go on.’