The Devil at Saxon Wall Read online

  ‘So you’ve heard it too? Is it true?’

  ‘I should say so. Some people called Tebbutt seem to have taken the place of the original caretaker, who was a relative of Birdseye, and I understand that the new owner has already installed himself. I’d always understood that he was expected to turn up some day and take over the property. The younger of twins, I heard.’

  ‘The elder, I think, isn’t it? Well, thank you again, for Crevister’s address. I want to ask him if he knows what Hanley Middleton died of.’

  ‘Peritonitis,’ said Doctor Mortmain. ‘Crevister told me about it. He himself didn’t think an operation would do any good, but for some reason it was performed.’

  ‘And the patient died as a direct result of the operation?’

  ‘Don’t think the operation made any difference really. Man was in the last state of collapse, according to Crevister. Remember talking it over with him when I first took over the practice. Incidentally—although it’s most indecorous of me to say so—he’s the most fearful old fathead you’re ever likely to meet, and decidedly old-fashioned and prejudiced, especially as regards the dispensing of physic. Don’t let him prescribe for you, whatever you do.’

  Jones laughed.

  Chapter Seven

  ‘“Pen,” she said, holding it to her eye to make sure that the nib was clean. She stood back to see that the arrangements were satisfactory; then suddenly clicked her tongue and threw up her hands.

  ‘“Herr Gott, blotting paper,” she cried.’

  ANTHONY BERTRAM

  The Avenger.

  AFTER WINCHESTER, JONES found the way plain sailing, and he reached the Public Library at a little after two, having lunched with his aunt and taken his time over the meal.

  The retired Doctor Crevister lived in a small, neat, rather obviously detached house in a road which Jones found without much trouble, and his daughter, a woman of forty-six or so, who kept house for him and for her brother, another doctor, recognised Jones’ name and person, the first because she was an admirer of his books, the second because she had seen his photograph at the top of some of his earlier reviews.

  After desultory conversation, Jones explained his errand. The daughter, fortunately, had a better memory than her father.

  ‘Surely you remember, dear, the Middletons of Saxon Wall. I’ll go and get your case-book for the year that Mr J. Hannibal Jones refers to. Let me see. About nine years ago, Mr Jones, you think?’

  ‘Nine or ten,’ said Jones. There were advantages, he could see, in being a household word. To no obscure seeker after truth would the same welcome have been extended, or the same willingness to fall in with his whims have been displayed. He sat expectant, and discussed Test Match cricket with the old man until the daughter returned with the book.

  ‘This will be the one, I think,’ she said, as she handed it to her father. It took the doctor a long time to find what Jones required, for he was continually lighting upon some forgotten case which caught his interest, and the details of which he seemed compelled to re-absorb as he lived over again those hours which had held birth, death, dread illness and quick recovery in their careless hands, and had disposed the destinies of sufferers as fate decreed.

  At last he came to the case of Constance Middleton.

  ‘Septicaemia. Yes, yes, I remember. Most annoying. Really very provoking indeed. A boy baby and, afterwards, some utterly uncalled-for carelessness on the part of the midwife. Certainly the woman seemed very much upset, but so was I! The case should have presented no difficulties, none whatever. Everything going well. Then, through somebody’s wretched carelessness, the young mother contracts puerperal fever. Irritating. Irritating.’ He clicked his tongue, in anger rather than in sorrow, over Constance Middleton’s untimely death.

  ‘Yes, I see,’ said Jones. ‘And—er—when was the husband taken ill? Could you tell me anything about that? We have to establish identity, you see,’ he added, hoping that the vaguely-worded excuse would suffice to account for his persistence.

  ‘The husband, yes. Now that was rather odd. I was called in by one of the servants—Pike, I think she called herself—she had nursed Mrs Middleton, you know, and I shouldn’t be a bit surprised if she were the extremely careless person who allowed that wretched fever to—well, it’s no use to think about that now, I suppose, but still—well, never mind. The thing is that I was called in to attend a man in her cottage who was—who obviously needed to be operated on. Well, I sent to the town—what’s it called now?’

  ‘Stowhall,’ said Jones.

  ‘Yes, yes, that’s right. And a certain Doctor Little came prepared to operate. It was hopeless to think of moving this fellow to a hospital or anywhere, you understand—that’s why I was so astounded when—well, never mind that now—but, anyway, I’m not a bit surprised the chap died. Nasty case of strangulated hernia, you know, and acute peritonitis was the result. Well, now, the extraordinary thing was this: When I came to see this chap the second time, he had completely disappeared.’

  ‘Disappeared?’ exclaimed Jones.

  ‘Absolutely. We sought him everywhere, and found him—where do you think?’

  ‘I couldn’t hope to guess,’ said Jones, thoroughly roused and excited.

  ‘Up at Neot House. It hadn’t been Pike at all, but Middleton in Pike’s cottage. Now, what can you make of that?’

  ‘Had Middleton—of course he had all the usual symptoms?’ asked Jones, cursing himself for his abysmal lack of medical and surgical knowledge.

  ‘Symptoms! God bless my soul, yes! All the symptoms! All the possible symptoms. Shivering, vomiting, severe pain, rapid and shallow breathing, knees drawn up almost to his chin, temperature of 105 degrees Fahrenheit—my dear fellow, if he’d known what the symptoms were he couldn’t have thought of many more! Doctor Little operated, but the fellow died. I really wasn’t surprised.’

  ‘Thank you very much,’ said Jones. ‘I mustn’t trouble you further.’

  ‘Oh, Mr Jones, you’ll stay to tea?’ begged the daughter almost tearfully. ‘We can have it now at once, if you’re in a hurry.’

  So Jones stayed to tea, and, after tea he signed all of his own works that Miss Crevister possessed, and was about to take his leave when Doctor Crevister suddenly smote the table and said loudly:

  ‘I didn’t note it down, although I always meant to. Here’s a queer example of mental aberration if you like!’

  ‘Yes?’ said Jones, fidgety to get away because of the long drive home, but disguising the fact beneath a mask of almost sycophantic interest. ‘What was that, Doctor? Sounds amusing.’

  ‘Well, I don’t know about amusing. I had a note from Doctor Little the very next day after the operation to say: “Regret patient died so that operation now unnecessary.”’

  ‘Whatever did he mean?’ asked Jones. The doctor chuckled.

  ‘I’ve no idea. I never heard from him again.’

  Jones was as anxious now to hear the whole of the story as he had been to get away. He said, trying not to sound too eager:

  ‘Tell me, sir. When the operation was performed—it was Middleton who was operated on?—were you in the room with Doctor Little?’

  ‘Oh, yes. I helped administer the anaesthetic.’

  ‘But—look here, Doctor, there’s something extraordinary behind all this. Did you know Doctor Little?’

  ‘Oh, no. I telephoned the hospital, that’s all.’

  ‘You didn’t know him, even by sight, I take it?’

  ‘No, no. Of course I didn’t. And, of course, in his surgeon’s dress——’

  ‘So any one could have passed himself off to you as Doctor Little? You wouldn’t have known the difference?’

  ‘But why on earth should any one ever think of such a thing? Besides, the operation was perfectly performed. A very good job.’

  ‘Oh, really?’

  ‘Oh, yes. A nice, bold job. I admired it very much. Incidentally, it was Doctor Little who diagnosed the cause of the peritonitis.’<
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  ‘And you were in there all the time with him?’

  ‘Yes, certainly.’

  ‘Er—in what condition was the patient when—look here, I suppose you’re sure it was Middleton?—how was he, would you say—er—well—before the anaesthetic was administered?’

  ‘In pain, of course. The pain was exceptionally severe, and there was vomiting. It struck me, as a matter of fact, that the patient was very near collapse. I suggested to Doctor Little that an operation was really beside the point. I believed the patient to be approaching insensibility and death. He disagreed, however, and the anaesthetic was administered. But wasn’t that odd of Doctor Little to forget the operations?’

  ‘So odd,’ said Jones slowly, ‘that I suppose he wasn’t right, by any chance, and really had received an intimation that you no longer required him to perform the operation because the patient was already dead?’

  ‘You mean that it was I who suffered from mental aberration? But the doctor came, I tell you, and the operation was actually performed.’

  ‘Yes, I know. I didn’t mean that,’ said Jones. He felt helpless. ‘Well, I do indeed think it extremely odd, Doctor,’ he said lamely. Then the obvious psychological explanation came to him, and, with it, a feeling of deflation and disappointment. Doctor Little must have been suffering from that Forget-because-it’s-something-that-gives-me-pain-and-annoyance-to-remember form of amnesia noted by Freud and other psychologists. He had been upset because the operation had been unsuccessful, and therefore he had forgotten that he had performed it, and had even invented, unconsciously, the message from Doctor Crevister.

  But the point that Pike had disappeared was exceedingly interesting. It opened up distinct possibilities of villainy on the part of Middleton. Jones decided that he would have to question Mrs Pike, to see whether she could give any indication as to the seriousness of her husband’s condition when she had gone for Doctor Crevister. If only it could be proved that Pike had been suffering from appendicitis—or arsenical poisoning!

  He had reached this point in his musings when he was recalled to a sense of his surroundings by Doctor Crevister, who suddenly exclaimed:

  ‘Young fellow, I believe you’re right!’

  ‘In what way, sir?’ Jones inquired.

  ‘To ask me whether I’m certain the man was Middleton! You know, I’d not attended either of ’em before—before I was first called in by Mrs Pike, I mean.’

  ‘Neither Pike nor Middleton?’

  ‘Neither of them. And, really, what with their symptoms being identical——’

  Jones became more than interested.

  ‘You think it was Pike after all?’

  Doctor Crevister shook his head.

  ‘How could it have been? The operation was performed at Neot House. You’re hypnotising me, young man!’

  Chapter Eight

  ‘She is rotten and unsound from stem to stern.’

  From a report made in 1852 on the battleship ‘Warrior’.

  FULL OF THE problem of Pike’s disappearance and the uncanny resemblance of his symptoms to those of Hanley Middleton, Jones returned to the vicarage at about half-past nine that night to enlist the vicar’s interest and aid on behalf of the new owner of Neot House.

  It proved to be an inauspicious time to attempt to interest him in anything, for the vicar, his face completely muffled in an enormous woollen scarf, to the left side of which the devoted Nao insisted upon holding hot bricks, announced in a voice husky with agony that he was suffering so severely from neuralgia that he doubted his ability to entertain his guest in any manner whatever. He seemed so morose and ill-humoured that Jones, whose sympathy would have been aroused fully by the spectacle of anybody in such sorry plight, felt particularly unhappy to think that it should be Hallam to suffer so. He found himself a little surprised that pain should have had quite the effect on Hallam which he perceived—indeed, the man seemed altered almost beyond recognition—but he reflected that no one is proof against hideous agony.

  ‘What have you come for?’ was the vicar’s next remark.

  Jones described his visit to Doctor Crevister.

  ‘But what do you want to meddle for? It’s nothing to do with you,’ said the vicar, muffled, peevish and annoyed.

  ‘But what about Mr Carswell Middleton? I can’t stand by and watch him being done to death,’ protested Jones.

  ‘Of course you can’t. But why should he be done to death?’ asked the vicar. Jones said impatiently:

  ‘Isn’t he the heir to the property? What’s to become of young Middleton-Passion now he’s turned down in favour of this long-lost uncle? And if the man happens to be married, and has children of his own——’

  ‘He isn’t married,’ said the vicar. ‘Mrs Tebbutt, the housekeeper he brought with him, told Mrs Gant at the post office.’

  ‘That’s something, anyway,’ said Jones.

  ‘So you need not allow your imagination to run away with you,’ said the vicar. Jones’ long mouth set obstinately.

  ‘There’s no imagination about it, except the kind of imagination that’s needed to put two and two together and make it into four, Hallam,’ he said. ‘There’s something terribly wrong about this Middleton business, and I’m going to find out what it is before I leave this village.’

  ‘There’s something terribly wrong about the village itself,’ said the vicar, beginning to giggle, ‘but murder isn’t part of it. Nothing as clean as murder. Nothing as definite. You’d be amazed. Really, I know you would.’

  ‘Yes?’ said Jones, suddenly watching him closely. The vicar, blinking his eyelids very fast and speaking in a hoarse, broken whisper, launched into a chronicle of Sodomic excess which left Jones speechless. As a novelist Jones was unshockable, but as a psychologist he was appalled by the vicar’s obvious pleasure in the details of the recital.

  ‘And that old woman Fluke,’ the vicar concluded. ‘Cut the head off a Rhode Island cock and strung its tail feathers from side to side of my summer house doorway, so that I can’t get in.’

  ‘Can’t get in?’ said Jones. Instinctively he gripped the mantelpiece, conscious that he did not want to hear what the other was going to say.

  ‘No!’ said the vicar, his voice rising dangerously. ‘Can’t get in! Can’t—get—in!’ He gave a sudden shriek of laughter and began to beat his breast. Jones flung him down on to the sofa, held him there, and shouted for the housekeeper. In came the Japanese respectfully, and stood with folded hands. The vicar lay quietly.

  ‘Get water, man!’ said Jones. ‘Your master’s ill!’

  ‘No water,’ said the Japanese politely. ‘All the water very bad. Plague of frogs in the water. Frogs all dead. Very bad water when frogs all die. The water is poisoned master, and the frogs are poisoned. Yes, I think so.’

  The remark about the frogs seemed to revive the vicar. He put Jones’ hand aside, sat up, and whispered, pressing his hand against his aching jaw:

  ‘The frogs may be poisoned, but the water is not.’

  ‘All right, of course it isn’t,’ said Jones, endeavouring to sound soothing. The vicar laughed, but this time in a more natural manner, although still in a voice oddly unlike the one that Jones remembered.

  ‘I mean it. My well is too deep, you see, for frogs, so if there are dead frogs in it, they were killed before they entered the well,’ he said.

  ‘I see,’ said Jones. ‘Well, let’s go and inspect the well.’

  Even in the semi-dusk of the summer evening, the well was not a pretty sight. At least two dozen bloated-looking frogs, with here and there a puffy, spotted toad, blotched, hard and repulsive, lay on its brink with the vicar’s fox-terrier looking at them doubtfully, his head on one side. When he saw the vicar, he snarled angrily. Nao swept him up in his arms and bore him off, while Jones inspected the frogs.

  ‘Nasty,’ said Jones sympathetically. The vicar went over to the woodshed and brought thence a garden fork and spade. Without a word, without any sign of repulsion, he
went to the nearest flower bed, dug over the hard dry ground with the fork, took out loose earth with the spade, and then, shovelling up the frogs and the toads in heaps, he interred them, stopping occasionally to twitch into place the scarf which was still about his head.

  ‘Look here,’ said Jones, when they were back again in the house. ‘You want a rest. Why don’t you see a doctor, or go for a holiday or something?’

  The vicar shook his head.

  ‘No, I’m all right. The frogs and things are old Mrs Fluke’s reminder that it’s time I gave in to the village, and prayed for rain. I don’t mind those, but the feathers are a different matter. I’ve lived in the West Indies, you know, and I’ve seen some rather odd things.’

  ‘Come home with me tonight,’ suggested Jones.

  ‘I’m all right. It’s the heat. I’ll go easy for a day or two, perhaps. But there’s nothing to worry about.’ He looked at Jones as though he hated him. Jones smiled patiently and waited at the garden gate until he had given him time to return to his study, which was at the back of the house. Then he ran swiftly and on tip-toe to the summer house. There, visible in the eerie half-light of the midsummer dusk, was the string of dangling feathers stretched across the door. Jones snapped the string, and, twisting it up, crammed the badly-smelling collection into his jacket pocket, and walked quickly but soberly home.

  It had not been his custom to lock his cottage door at night, and, in spite of a slight feeling of panic, he did not do so on this occasion.

  He undressed in the almost-dark, opened the casement wide—for Mrs Passion always closed and fastened it when she swept the room—gazed out over the fields towards Guthrum Down, and then got into bed.

  He was just on the point of falling asleep when he was startled into complete wakefulness by the sound of quiet footfalls on the stairs. He sat up, unconscious that his left hand clutched the counterpane. His voice was loud, and higher-keyed than he intended, when he spoke.