The Dark and What It Said Read online

  The crowd waited. There were farmers, some with their families, and merchants and tradesmen, some also with their families. For the day of a hanging was a social event, and there was not a little amount of eating and drinking among them. Some leered, some were drunk, some just stared at the spectacle being enacted before them.

  Only one, a grey-haired man of middle years, kept his eyes averted from the grim proceedings. Mr Arthur Francis, Squire of Anningley Hall, sat astride his horse a little apart from the crowd, and it was plain from his uneasy manner that the whole transaction was repugnant to him. He was here as a matter of form, being lord of the manor, and because he had been the prosecutor in the trial of John Gawdy, a notorious poacher who had been unlucky enough to shoot the keeper who had caught him one night in the woods behind the hall.

  The hangman pulled the rope through the seven twists forming the knot of the noose, bringing it tight against Gawdy’s neck and up under the man’s left ear.

  Despite Gawdy’s crime it gave Mr Frances no satisfaction to see him hanged, for the Squire was a gentleman of country leisure with the soul, and often the skill, of an artist who liked all things pleasant about him. Coming so soon upon the death of his young wife Emma in childbirth, he found Gawdy’s crime, trial and now execution upsetting in the extreme.

  With the noose in place and the hangman waiting with a rough cloth hood ready in his hand, for the first time in these proceedings Mr Francis turned his face to the condemned. Holding a scented handkerchief to his nose – the wind had shifted and was now coming from the direction of the crowd – he said in a high, faltering voice, “John Gawdy, do you have any last words?”

  The man in the cart, the man with the rope about his neck, fixed the Squire with a steady eye and said in a voice betraying almost no emotion, “Sir, I have no kin, and though I come from a family of noble stock, today you end my line. But I –“

  The Squire made an impatient gesture and the hangman with a deft motion pulled the hood down over Gawdy’s head, silencing anything further he might have said. The cart rolled off and the rope finished the job.

  ***

  Later that same month or early in the next, Squire Francis set off for London in his carriage, there to affect the rest cure recommended by his physician against the fatigues and stresses of recent events.

  Elliott the butler stood solemn and rigid in the portico, watching the carriage depart down the long drive of Anningley Hall. Beside him Mrs Forbes the housekeeper held the young heir of the estate in her big motherly arms, raising the infant’s tiny pink hand to wave good-bye to his father.

  Out the gates went the carriage, the rattle of the wheels, the clash of the horses’ hooves, audible in the still country air until they passed the church nearby and faded into distance.

  “Did Master take his engraving tools with him, Mr Elliott?” asked Mrs Forbes. “All those etching pens and blades and fine-hair brushes?”

  “He did,” replied the butler, looking across at the small bed of withering primroses once tended by the late mistress of the manor. “An immersion in his art and a change of scene will go far to salve his shattered nerves.”

  “What Master really needs is to find a new wife,” said Mrs Forbes. “This child” – she jiggled the gurgling baby in her arms – “needs a mother.”

  “All in good time, Mrs Forbes. All in good time. Let the Master first regain his composure of mind.”

  “Well, Mr Elliott, though it not be my place to say, Master should be looking to his child before his composure of mind. Sometimes it is as if this poor lamb has been left orphaned all together, the way Master so seldom finds time for him. Bad enough his mother never had so much as a chance to hold her little baby before she was taken from us.”

  “Which is precisely why peace is what the Master requires now more than anything. Coming on top of his bereavement, the trial and hanging of Gawdy was an arduous thing. But a poacher is a thief who comes in the night, and one who also shoots a keeper as Gawdy did deserves nothing less than the rope he got.”

  “I’ve heard it said Gawdy’s people were once lords of the manor,” said Mrs Forbes, “and that he could show a row of tombs in the church belonging to his ancestors.”

  “Perhaps he could, but he will not be joining them. The north side of the church is good enough for the likes of Gawdy. Mr Francis is Squire now, as will be young Master William some day.” The grim and solemn Elliott spared an affectionate glance at the babe-in-arms. “If the fortunes of the Gawdys descended, what of it? And if the fortunes of the last of that name descended to the end of a hangman’s rope, then he has none to blame but himself.”

  “As you say, Mr Elliott,” said Mrs Forbes, and wrapped the baby close against a sudden chill wind whispering out of nowhere. “All I’m saying,” she continued, “is that a child needs a father as much as a child needs a mother, just as much as a mother needs her child.”

  If Elliott attended the housekeeper’s opinion, he made no indication. He looked out across the expanse of lawn fronting the manor as if he saw something, though he saw nothing. With some brusqueness he said, “Come, Mrs Forbes. It is not our purpose to stand here idle. Even with the Master away we have a household to maintain and staff to administer.”

  And so they passed to the ordinary labours of the day.

  ***

  In the small hours of the next morning an old moon shone above Anningley Hall. It picked out in cold white the frames of the three rows of sash windows and the vases at the angles of the parapet, and it silvered the long front lawn where at one edge some dark shadow was beginning to intrude.

  Upstairs in the nursery the young heir slept in his cradle, with Mrs Forbes dreaming nearby in her bed. But all was not as quiet or as still as it should be, for something walked in the darkness of the house. Towards the rear of the building an indistinct figure crept down the service stairs. Reaching the bottom it padded silently along the polished wooden floor in slow, measured steps, edging by dark doorways and family portraits whose eyes, were it light enough to see, might have followed its passage along. It passed the nursery with its sleeping occupants; it passed down a short gallery hung with framed examples of Squire Francis’s work in mezzotint, engravings of houses, churches and landscapes. At the head of the main stairs the figure paused, remaining a moment in the shadows before hesitantly stepping into a pool of moonlight, revealing for the first time what manner of creature it was.

  It was Elliott the butler, not so grim and solemn now but almost smiling, hair awry, in shirt-tails and barefoot, and most desirous to be seen coming from his own quarters in the morning rather than from the attic room of Edith the kitchen maid.

  With only the briefest of guilty glances left and right he hastened along. Had he lingered, however, had he glanced through the sash windows, he might have seen a figure, a good deal muffled up in some black garment with a white cross upon its back, creeping towards the house on all fours. He might have seen it rise as it reached the portico and approach the window left of the entrance. Had Elliott not now been entering his own door and closing it softly behind him he might have heard a scratching at the glass and a fumbling at the latch, might have detected the faint odour of decay on the night air. But the door was now shut, and none of this did Elliott see or hear or smell.

  A short interval elapsed before the silence of Anningley Hall was disturbed again, if ever so slightly, this time by the quiet creak-creak of the main stairs being climbed in stealthy fashion.

  At the top of the stairs the figure moved swiftly down the corridor, black draperies swirling, past the gallery of engravings and past darkened doorways until it reached the nursery.

  Mrs Forbes stirred in her bed as the door of her room opened. With bobbing head the intruder entered, stepping lightly across to stand over her as she lay sleeping. For several seconds it stood thus, silent and still. Then slowly, deliberately, it turned away to where slept the baby and for a moment was busy about the cradle.

  ***
/>   Mrs Forbes could not tell what awoke her. She sat bolt upright in her bed, eyes wide. The door, she could dimly see, was open, and she had the impression someone or something had just passed through it in a swirl of darkness.

  Though not a young woman and of matronly character, Mrs Forbes was out of bed at once, aquiver with the conviction that something dreadful had happened or was about to happen. A door was open that should not be open; and the room, she realized, smelt like an unclean kitchen where the fat has burnt and the meat had turned. At the door however she hesitated, seized with the sudden idea that something unnatural stood just the other side. Though she knew not why, she was certain it was gaunt, robed in darkness and aware of her in particular. So it was with some considerable effort that Mrs Forbes fought down this nameless fear and dared to look out.

  At the end of the corridor she saw something that moved away. A moment more and the passage was empty.

  “The babe!” she gasped, only now thinking of her charge, and reached out in the dark for the cradle. She felt its wooden frame, its blankets still warm. But the baby was gone.

  Her frantic cries brought the other servants hurrying with candles and lanterns. A search was made all over the house and all around the house, but no trace of the missing child was discovered. All they found were some queer narrow foot prints on the front lawn: widely spaced as if made by someone running, but so lightly indenting the grass.

  ***

  The Squire received the fateful news via special messenger and returned post-haste from his holiday in London to a house steeped in gloom and mystery. Ponds were dragged, neighbouring farms were searched, and a passing band of gypsies were questioned and their wagons examined, all without result.

  For a time the staff at the Hall, from Elliott the impeccable butler and Mrs Forbes who had had devoted care of the child, down to the lowest scullery maid and stable boy, lived and worked under the apprehension, not of the slightest, that at any moment they may fall prey to the suspicions of the law and find themselves in the dock, charged with abduction or worse. But no finger was ever pointed at any of them, for in truth they had nothing to gain and everything to lose by such a crime. Eventually it was put down in a vague sort of way to an act of revenge for the hanging of the poacher John Gawdy. Some friend, it was supposed, some criminal associate of Gawdy’s – not a relative for he’d been the last of his family – had decided to steal Squire Francis’s boy and put an end to his line too. However inquires in that direction, like the search for the missing child, also ended in a No Thoroughfare.

  So the mystery lay.

  ***

  The double tragedy of the loss of a son and heir coming close upon the death of a loved wife proved too much for Arthur Francis, the man who liked everything pleasant about him, and he soon retreated from all society, living in complete retirement at the Hall. If he had ever entertained ideas of marrying again, they were now at an end. He found his only solace in his work in mezzotint which gradually consumed more and more of his time.

  It was a little before sunrise on a morning during one of these bouts of passion in his art – in fact the third anniversary of his son’s disappearance, a date Mr Francis marked well – that he was seated at his work table in his ground floor studio, a fine-haired brush in his hand, having just completed an engraving of Anningley Hall itself by inscribing A. W. F. sculpsit in one narrow margin. Round about him on the walls hung engravings of his wife Emma and son William, over and over again, almost to the point of obsession. His late wife was represented as a young and beautiful woman with a high forehead and a straggling fringe peeping from under her bonnet, often with a primrose cameo within the engraving, her favourite flower. The boy was less well represented, both in quality and quantity: the face of a baby asleep, the face of a baby pouting, but never the face of a baby smiling.

  Within the engraving newly completed and propped up on the table, Anningley Hall, with a waning moon sailing through clouds above it, stood out in vivid detail: three rows of sash windows, a portico at the centre, a vase at each angle of the parapet. Trees either side gave the picture balance while a large expanse of lawn led the eye from the foreground to the house in a pleasing manner. It was, as Mr Francis observed to himself, his best work yet.

  A gust of wind rattled the window of his studio, rattling it almost as if an intruder were trying to get in. Mr Francis rose and latched it firmly. Outside the trees were nodding while the lawn rippled like a surging sea. A blustery winter’s morning promising a blustery winter’s day.

  Returning to his table he picked up his fine-haired brush for some final cleaning of the engraving – and dropped it in utter astonishment.

  On the edge of the lawn at the very front of the picture where a minute before nothing had been, there was now the head of a man or woman, a good deal muffled up, face turned looking toward the house.

  A moment more and without apparent movement, the figure was now upon the lawn and in the act of crawling towards the house on all fours, a figure swathed in some black garment with a white cross on its back.

  Mr Francis leapt from his seat and sprung to the window, staring out at the lawn in the early morning gloom. Nothing was there, nothing in black crawled. Back at the engraving he saw the figure had disappeared, though the window to the left of the portico was open.

  He looked at that open window, knowing with a terrible certainty what was now happening within the house within the mezzotint.

  He may have blinked, he may have swooned and revived, for now the open window was shut and the figure was once more on the lawn. Not now crawling cautiously on all fours but pictured erect and stepping swiftly away from the house on thin, bony legs. The arms, equally thin, were tightly clasped over an object that gave Mr Francis a jolt of sick horror to realize was his lost son. The moon was behind the figure, and some black drapery hung down over its face so that no more than a white, high forehead and a few straggling hairs were visible, and it was this that made him gasp in recognition.

  “Emma!”

  On came the spectre of his dead wife, now in the middle of the lawn, now in the foreground, nearer and yet nearer in a series of static images, growing larger as she ran, clutching the child she had never seen, had never nursed, had carried but had never held. On and on she came, the head bobbing as if to say “Yes!” and “Yes!” and “Yes!” in mad maternal glee – and Mr Francis gave one long, loud shuddering scream gagging on gusts of rot and decay, putting his arms over his eyes, sure the apparition was about to leap from the mezzotint and thrust her dead face close into his.

  ***

  After what he determined a judicious time had elapsed with Mr Francis still not having emerged from his studio, Elliott the butler knocked discretely on the door. Receiving no reply he ventured to enter.

  His master was sitting upright at his work table, dead and cold. His arms were crossed on his breast and his head was tilted to one side with the most dreadful face of fear that could be imagined. On the table itself was the recently completed mezzotint showing Anningley Hall, early morning, three rows of windows, a portico, trees, an expanse of lawn, all quiet under the moonbeams.

  But oddest of all, as Elliott would later attest, was that within that winter studio was the faint odour of springtime primrose.

  Dolls for Another Day

  Mr and Mrs Merewether were alone in the dining room of Ilbridge House in the English parish of Coxham. The evening meal was over and only wine and glasses were left on the table. They were sat close together, he in blue satin, she in brocade, arranging their plans for later that night.

  “So it falls to me to do the deed,” said Mrs Merewether in an earnest whisper, her eyes glinting in the light of the single taper burning in its silver candlestick on the sideboard.

  “It is your place to give him his medicine,” said her husband in a similar low tone. Then, his voice taking on a harder edge, he added, “You do not scruple because he is your father?”

  “And the grandfather of
my children, which should have made him think better of his intentions. Instead he makes it the crux of his claim on them.” Her dark ringlets bobbed as she shook her head. “No, James. I do not scruple. We brought this on ourselves, it is true. Now we must end it while we still can.”

  “Elizabeth … do you regret ever marrying me?”

  “A young architect with no prospects above a talent in miniatures?”

  “There is no need to wound me with the truth.”

  “The truth often wounds, one way or the other. That is why lying was invented. James, the truth is that if it were not for my father’s … workings, who can say where we would both now be. We could never have afforded all this.” She plucked at her rich clothing, then with a sweep of her hand indicated the cut crystal glasses, the vintage wine on the solid oak dining table, the silverware on the sideboard, and by extension the white stone mansion they possessed. “We sold ourselves, James. Not that I countenance it, especially now with the price being asked of us.”

  “Demanded of us,” he corrected her.

  “The children –” She broke off and turned suddenly to the window in an attitude of listening, as did her husband. For a moment they held their breaths; but there was nothing to hear. “I thought I heard the approach of that infernal man.”

  Mr Merewether flinched at the word his wife had chosen to describe their impending visitor: it had been a little too apt.

  ”James,” she went on, looking out at the night, “do you not feel there are eyes out there, looking in at us?”

  He glanced through the windows, at the darkness beyond. “There is nobody there. As to our visitor, men who smell of dust and rat-gnawed book bindings are never punctual. We have yet time to make ready.” All the same he went to the window, opened it and put his head out with his hand to his ear. Nothing was heard but the wind in the trees of the surrounding park and the distant cries of owls and other night birds.