We all went to church, and listened respectfully to Mr. Dane Calthrop’s scholarly sermon on a text taken from Isaiah which seemed to deal less with religion than with Persian history.
“We’re going to lunch with Mr. Venables,” explained Rhoda afterwards. “You’ll like him, Mark. He’s really a most interesting man. Been everywhere and done everything. Knows all sorts of out-of-the-way things. He bought Priors Court about three years ago. And the things he’s done to it must have cost him a fortune. He had polio and is semi-crippled, so he has to go about in a wheeled chair. It’s very sad for him because up to then he was a great traveller, I believe. Of course he’s rolling in money, and, as I say, he’s done up the house in a wonderful way—it was an absolute ruin, falling to pieces. It’s full of the most gorgeous stuff. The sale rooms are his principal interest nowadays, I believe.”
Priors Court was only a few miles away. We drove there and our host came wheeling himself along the hall to meet us.
“Nice of you all to come,” he said heartily. “You must be exhausted after yesterday. The whole thing was a great success, Rhoda.”
Mr. Venables was a man of about fifty, with a thin hawklike face and a beaked nose that stood out from it arrogantly. He wore an open wing collar which gave him a faintly old-fashioned air.
Rhoda made introductions.
Venables smiled at Mrs. Oliver.
“I met this lady yesterday in her professional capacity,” he said. “Six of her books with signatures. Takes care of six presents for Christmas. Great stuff you write, Mrs. Oliver. Give us more of it. Can’t have too much of it.” He grinned at Ginger. “You nearly landed me with a live duck, young woman.” Then he turned to me. “I enjoyed your article in the Review last month,” he said.
“It was awfully good of you to come to our fête, Mr. Venables,” said Rhoda. “After that generous cheque you sent us, I didn’t really hope that you’d turn up in person.”
“Oh, I enjoy that kind of thing. Part of English rural life, isn’t it? I came home clasping a most terrible Kewpie doll from the hoopla, and had a splendid but unrealistic future prophesied me by Our Sybil, all dressed up in a tinsel turban with about a ton of fake Egyptian beads slung over her torso.”
“Good old Sybil,” said Colonel Despard. “We’re going there to tea with Thyrza this afternoon. It’s an interesting old place.”
“The Pale Horse? Yes. I rather wish it had been left as an inn. I always feel that that place has had a mysterious and unusually wicked past history. It can’t have been smuggling; we’re not near enough to the sea for that. A resort for highwaymen, perhaps? Or rich travellers spent the night there and were never seen again. It seems, somehow, rather tame to have turned it into a desirable residence for three old maids.”
“Oh— I never think of them like that!” cried Rhoda. “Sybil Stamfordis, perhaps—with her saris and her scarabs, and always seeing auras round people’s heads—she is rather ridiculous. But there’s something really awe-inspiring about Thyrza, don’t you agree? You feel she knows just what you’re thinking. She doesn’t talk about having second sight—but everyone says that she has got it.”
“And Bella, far from being an old maid, has buried two husbands,” added Colonel Despard.
“I sincerely beg her pardon,” said Venables, laughing.
“With sinister interpretations of the deaths from the neighbours,” added Despard. “It’s said they displeased her, so she turned her eyes on them, and they slowly sickened and pined away!”
“Of course, I forgot, she is the local witch?”
“So Mrs. Dane Calthrop says.”
“Interesting thing, witchcraft,” said Venables thoughtfully. “All over the world you get variations of it—I remember when I was in East Africa—”
He talked easily, and entertainingly, on the subject. He spoke of medicine men in Africa; of little-known cults in Borneo. He promised that, after lunch, he would show us some West African sorcerers’ masks.
“There’s everything in this house,” declared Rhoda with a laugh.
“Oh well—” he shrugged his shoulders—“if you can’t go out to everything—then everything must be made to come to you.”
Just for a moment there was a sudden bitterness in his voice. He gave a swift glance downwards towards his paralysed legs.
“‘The world is so full of a number of things,’” he quoted. “I think that’s always been my undoing. There’s so much I want to know about—to see! Oh well I haven’t done too badly in my time. And even now—life has its consolations.”
“Why here?” asked Mrs. Oliver suddenly.
The others had been slightly ill at ease, as people become when a hint of tragedy looms in the air. Mrs. Oliver alone had been unaffected. She asked because she wanted to know. And her frank curiosity restored the lighthearted atmosphere.
Venables looked towards her inquiringly.
“I mean,” said Mrs. Oliver, “why did you come to live here, in this neighbourhood? So far away from things that are going on. Was it because you had friends here?”
“No. I chose this part of the world, since you are interested, because I had no friends here.”
A faint ironical smile touched his lips.
How deeply, I wondered, had his disability affected him? Had the loss of unfettered movement, of liberty to explore the world, bitten deep into his soul? Or had he managed to adapt himself to altered circumstances with comparative equanimity—with a real greatness of spirit?
As though Venables had read my thoughts, he said: “In your article you questioned the meaning of the term ‘greatness’—you compared the different meanings attached to it—in the East and the West. But what do we all mean nowadays, here in England, when we use the term ‘a great man’?—”
“Greatness of intellect, certainly,” I said, “and surely moral strength as well?”
He looked at me, his eyes bright and shining.
“Is there no such thing as an evil man, then, who can be described as great?” he asked.
“Of course there is,” cried Rhoda. “Napoleon and Hitler and oh, lots of people. They were all great men.”
“Because of the effect they produced?” said Despard. “But if one had known them personally—I wonder if one would have been impressed.”
Ginger leaned forward and ran her fingers through her carroty mop of hair.
“That’s an interesting thought,” she said. “Mightn’t they, perhaps, have seemed pathetic, undersized little figures. Strutting, posturing, feeling inadequate, determined to be someone, even if they pulled the world down round them?”
“Oh, no,” said Rhoda vehemently. “They couldn’t have produced the results they did if they had been like that.”
“I don’t know,” said Mrs. Oliver. “After all, the stupidest child can set a house on fire quite easily.”
“Come, come,” said Venables. “I really can’t go along with this modern playing down of evil as something that doesn’t really exist. There is evil. And evil is powerful. Sometimes more powerful than good. It’s there. It has to be recognised—and fought. Otherwise—” he spread out his hands. “We go down to darkness.”
“Of course I was brought up on the devil,” said Mrs. Oliver, apologetically. “Believing in him, I mean. But you know he always did seem to me so silly. With hoofs and a tail and all that. Capering about like a ham actor. Of course I often have a master criminal in my stories—people like it—but really he gets harder and harder to do. So long as one doesn’t know who he is, I can keep him impressive—but when it all comes out—he seems, somehow, so inadequate. A kind of anticlimax. It’s much easier if you just have a bank manager who’s embezzled the funds, or a husband who wants to get rid of his wife and marry the children’s governess. So much more natural—if you know what I mean.”
Everyone laughed and Mrs. Oliver said apologetically:
“I know I haven’t put it very well—but you do see what I mean?”
We all said
that we knew exactly what she meant.
Six
Mark Easterbrook’s Narrative
It was after four o’clock when we left Priors Court. After a particularly delicious lunch, Venables had taken us on a tour of the house. He had taken a real pleasure in showing us his various possessions—a veritable treasure-house the place was.
“He must be rolling in money,” I said when we had finally departed. “Those jades—and the African sculpture—to say nothing of all his Meissen and Bow. You’re lucky to have such a neighbour.”
“Don’t we know it?” said Rhoda. “Most of the people down here are nice enough—but definitely on the dull side. Mr. Venables is positively exotic by comparison.”
“How did he make his money?” asked Mrs. Oliver. “Or has he always had it?”
Despard remarked wryly that nobody nowadays could boast of such a thing as a large inherited income. Death duties and taxation had seen to that.
“Someone told me,” he added, “that he started life as a stevedore but it seems most unlikely. He never talks about his boyhood or his family—” He turned towards Mrs. Oliver. “A Mystery Man for you—”
Mrs. Oliver said that people were always offering her things she didn’t want—
The Pale Horse was a half-timbered building (genuine halftimbering not faked). It was set back a little way from the village street. A walled garden could be glimpsed behind it which gave it a pleasant old-world look.
I was disappointed in it, and said so.
“Not nearly sinister enough,” I complained. “No atmosphere.”
“Wait till you get inside,” said Ginger.
We got out of the car and went up to the door, which opened as we approached.
Miss Thyrza Grey stood on the threshold, a tall, slightly masculine figure in a tweed coat and skirt. She had rough grey hair springing up from a high forehead, a large beak of a nose, and very penetrating light blue eyes.
“Here you are at last,” she said in a hearty bass voice. “Thought you’d all got lost.”
Behind her tweed-clad shoulders I became aware of a face peering out from the shadows of the dark hall. A queer, rather formless face, like something made in putty by a child who had strayed in to play in a sculptor’s studio. It was the kind of face, I thought, that you sometimes see amongst a crowd in an Italian or Flemish primitive painting.
Rhoda introduced us and explained that we had been lunching with Mr. Venables at Priors Court.
“Ah!” said Miss Grey. “That explains it! Fleshpots. That Italian cook of his! And all the treasures of the treasure-house as well. Oh well, poor fellow—got to have something to cheer him up. But come in—come in. We’re rather proud of our own little place. Fifteenth century—and some of it fourteenth.”
The hall was low and dark with a twisting staircase leading up from it. There was a wide fireplace and over it a framed picture.
“The old inn sign,” said Miss Grey, noting my glance. “Can’t see much of it in this light. The Pale Horse.”
“I’m going to clean it for you,” said Ginger. “I said I would. You let me have it and you’ll be surprised.”
“I’m a bit doubtful,” said Thyrza Grey, and added bluntly, “Suppose you ruin it?”
“Of course I shan’t ruin it,” said Ginger indignantly. “It’s my job.”
“I work for the London Galleries,” she explained to me. “Great fun.”
“Modern picture restoring takes a bit of getting used to,” said Thyrza. “I gasp every time I go into the National Gallery nowadays. All the pictures look as though they’d had a bath in the latest detergent.”
“You can’t really prefer them all dark and mustard coloured,” protested Ginger. She peered at the inn sign. “A lot more would come up. The horse may even have a rider.”
I joined her to stare into the picture. It was a crude painting with little merit except the doubtful one of old age and dirt. The pale figure of a stallion gleamed against a dark indeterminate background.
“Hi, Sybil,” cried Thyrza. “The visitors are crabbing our Horse, damn their impertinence!”
Miss Sybil Stamfordis came through a door to join us.
She was a tall willowy woman with dark, rather greasy hair, a simpering expression, and a fish-like mouth.
She was wearing a bright emerald green sari which did nothing to enhance her appearance. Her voice was faint and fluttery.
“Our dear, dear Horse,” she said. “We fell in love with that old inn sign the moment we saw it. I really think it influenced us to buy the house. Don’t you, Thyrza? But come in—come in.”
The room into which she led us was small and square and had probably been the bar in its time. It was furnished now with chintz and Chippendale and was definitely a lady’s sitting room, country style. There were bowls of chrysanthemums.
Then we were taken out to see the garden which I could see would be charming in summer, and then came back into the house to find tea had been laid. There were sandwiches and homemade cakes and as we sat down, the old woman whose face I had glimpsed for a moment in the hall came in bearing a silver teapot. She wore a plain dark green overall. The impression of a head made crudely from Plasticine by a child was borne out on closer inspection. It had a witless primitive face but I could not imagine why I had thought it sinister.
Suddenly I felt angry with myself. All this nonsense about a converted inn and three middle-aged women!
“Thank you, Bella,” said Thyrza.
“Got all you want?”
It came out almost as a mumble.
“Yes, thanks.”
Bella withdrew to the door. She had looked at nobody, but just before she went out, she raised her eyes and took a speedy glance at me. There was something in that look that startled me—though it was difficult to describe why. There was malice in it, and a curious intimate knowledge. I felt that without effort, and almost without curiosity, she had known exactly what thoughts were in my mind.
Thyrza Grey had noticed my reaction.
“Bella is disconcerting, isn’t she, Mr. Easterbrook?” she said softly. “I noticed her look at you.”
“She’s a local woman, isn’t she?” I strove to appear merely politely interested.
“Yes. I daresay someone will have told you she’s the local witch.”
Sybil Stamfordis clanked her beads.
“Now do confess, Mr.— Mr.—”
“Easterbrook.”
“Easterbrook. I’m sure you’ve heard that we all practice witchcraft. Confess now. We’ve got quite a reputation, you know—”
“Not undeserved, perhaps,” said Thyrza. She seemed amused. “Sybil here has great gifts.”
Sybil sighed pleasurably.
“I was always attracted by the occult,” she murmured. “Even as a child I realised that I had unusual powers. Automatic writing came to me quite naturally. I didn’t even know what it was! I’d just sit there with a pencil in my hand—and not know a thing about what was happening. And of course I was always ultrasensitive. I fainted once when taken to tea in a friend’s house. Something awful had happened in that very room… I knew it! We got the explanation later. There had been a murder there—twenty-five years ago. In that very room!”
She nodded her head and looked round at us with great satisfaction.
“Very remarkable,” said Colonel Despard with polite distaste.
“Sinister things have happened in this house,” said Sybil darkly. “But we have taken the necessary steps. The earthbound spirits have been freed.”
“A kind of spiritual spring cleaning?” I suggested.
Sybil looked at me rather doubtfully.
“What a lovely coloured sari you are wearing,” said Rhoda.
Sybil brightened.
“Yes, I got it when I was in India. I had an interesting time there. I explored yoga, you know, and all that. But I could not help feeling that it was all too sophisticated—not near enough to the natural and the primitive. One must g
o back, I feel, to the beginnings, to the early primitive powers. I am one of the few women who have visited Haiti. Now there you really do touch the original springs of the occult. Overlaid, of course, by a certain amount of corruption and distortion. But the root of the matter is there.
“I was shown a great deal, especially when they learnt that I had twin sisters a little older than myself. The child who is born next after twins has special powers, so they told me. Interesting, wasn’t it? Their death dances are wonderful. All the panoply of death, skulls and crossbones, and the tools of a gravedigger, spade, pick and hoe. They dress up as undertakers’ mutes, top hats, black clothes—
“The Grand Master is Baron Samedi, and the Legba is the god he invokes, the god who ‘removes the barrier.’ You send the dead forth—to cause death. Weird idea, isn’t it?
“Now this,” Sybil rose and fetched an object from the window sill. “This is my Asson. It’s a dried gourd with a network of beads and—you see these bits?—dried snake vertebrae.”
We looked politely, though without enthusiasm.
Sybil rattled her horrid toy affectionately.
“Very interesting,” said Despard courteously.
“I could tell you lots more—”
At this point my attention wandered. Words came to me hazily as Sybil continued to air her knowledge of sorcery and voodoo—Maître Carrefour, the Coa, the Guidé family—
I turned my head to find Thyrza looking at me quizzically.
“You don’t believe any of it, do you?” she murmured. “But you’re wrong, you know. You can’t explain away everything as superstition, or fear, or religious bigotry. There are elemental truths and elemental powers. There always have been. There always will be.”
“I don’t think I would dispute that,” I said.
“Wise man. Come and see my library.”
I followed her out through the french windows into the garden and along the side of the house.
“We made it out of the old stables,” she explained.
The stables and outbuildings had been reconstituted as one large room. The whole of one long wall was lined with books. I went across to them and was presently exclaiming.
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