Sorcerer's House

by Gerald Verner

  The Chief Constable looked as though he would like to comply with this demand literally.

  The blood suffused his face until Alan thought he was going to have a stroke. He said, in a strangled voice:

  “This is outrageous”

  “Keep calm, Chippy,” advised the bearded man soothingly. “Bad for your blood pressure to get excited.” He whipped a battered tin box from his trousers pocket, extracted from it a pinch of black tobacco and a cigarette paper, rolled a cigarette with amazing dexterity, and lit it with a match which he struck on the sole of his shoe. “Now then, let’s have it—all of it.”

  “Look here, Gale,” said the Chief Constable, when he was again capable of coherent speech. “This is a serious investigation’—”

  “I know,” interrupted Gale, blowing out a cloud of acrid, evil-smelling smoke with great enjoyment. “That’s why I’m here. Now tell me all about it.”

  Major Chipingham gulped. He looked as if he were swallowing something sour. He made a sudden, helpless gesture. He said with an obvious effort at self-control: “All right, all right. We’ll tell you all about it.”

  “Go ahead,” said the bearded man, coolly. “An’ don’t dither!”

  The Chief Constable looked at Inspector Hatchard. “You tell him,” he said.

  Rather to Alan’s surprise, the inspector seemed only too willing. He laughed, turned back the pages of his notebook, and began, gently massaging the bald spot on his head while he talked. His recital, the American thought, was a model of what such a recital should be. It was clear and concise and omitted nothing that was important.

  Gale listened intently, puffing furiously at his foul cigarette When Hatchard’s voice finally ceased, he flung the end of the cigarette into the fireplace and rubbed his hands.

  “Chippy,” he said, “this’ll give you something to chew on! Who bashed Meriton over the bean in the haunted room at Sorcerer’s House? A nice hefty little problem, eh? Don’t worry you port-swilling old rascal, I’m going to help you with it—”

  “I should prefer, Gale, that you kept out of it,” broke in the Chief Constable, clutching at the remnants of his dignity. “And I object, most strongly, to your unfounded reference to port-swilling...”

  “A form of endearment,” said Gale, waving an impatient hand. “I always liked you, though I did have to do the difficult work for you at school. Just you relax an’ leave it to Simon Gale. This isn’t robbing hen-roosts or impounding straying cattle. This is something big—B.I.G.” He clutched at his beard and frowned ferociously. “Have you been up to the house yet?”

  The Chief Constable, rendered speechless, shook his head helplessly.

  “Then what are we waiting for?” exclaimed Simon Gale, leaping to his feet with a single bound. “Come along—let’s go! I want to see the haunted room. ...”

  He strode out the door, taking it for granted that they would follow him. Major Chipingham sighed and got to his feet.

  “We might as well go with him,” he said resignedly.

  Alan found himself beside Flake as they straggled out into the hall.

  “Who is he?” he asked in a whisper.

  “Simon?” she said. “A little startling, isn’t he?”

  “You’re telling me,” he said. “I thought the Chief Constable was going to have a fit.”

  “Oh, they’re great friends, really,” she laughed. “They went to the same public school and were at Oxford together.”

  “What is he—an artist?” he asked.

  “He’s a little bit of everything,” answered Flake. “He paints and he writes, but mostly he just does anything that appeals to him at the moment—” She stopped abruptly as they joined the others, who had congregated in a group by the front door.

  “You don’t want me, do you?” said Henry Onslow-White.

  “No, Henry, no,” answered Simon Gale, flinging the words over his shoulder. “You can stay at home and put your feet up! I don’t want anybody but Chippy and Hatchard...oh yes, and you, young feller,” he added, swinging round on Alan. “You found Meriton, didn’t you? I want you.”

  “I was there, too, Simon,” said Flake.

  “You can come along if you want to.” His gesture dismissed her as unimportant. “Let’s get a move on. We don’t want to waste all day—”

  “I’m going back home,” said Ferrall. “There’s no need for me to come, and I’ve got plenty to do.”

  “You’ll be hearing from the Coroner’s officer, sir,” said Inspector Hatchard, and Ferrall nodded.

  The huge, ungainly figure of Simon Gale was already several yards away up the road. He had seized the Chief Constable by the arm and was dragging that perspiring individual along so fast that he had to keep on breaking into a trot to keep up with him. They heard little breathless gurgles of protest, which Gale completely ignored.

  Inspector Hatchard hurried after them, and once more Alan found himself alone with Flake.

  “Tell me some more about our friend,” he said. “I’m interested. What do you mean by ‘he just does anything that appeals to him’?”

  “Exactly that,” she answered. “His idea is that, in order to enjoy life, you should have no fixed occupation, but be able to do exactly as you please, when you please…”

  “That’s all right if you’ve got enough money...”

  “Simon realized that. He decided to work really hard for years so that he could spend the rest of his life as he liked invented and patented a new breakfast food—-’Gale’s Golden Flakes’...”

  “Gee, is that his?” exclaimed Alan in surprise. “They sell all over the States.”

  “All over the world,” said Flake. “Simon formed the original company and at the end of his five years he sold out. Since he has done as he likes.”

  The object of this conversation was still striding along at a great pace, gesticulating violently, and they could hear the booming bass of his voice.

  “What’s made him so interested in this business?” asked Alan, after a pause.

  “Just a passing craze, I expect,” she answered. “He’s like that. He takes up something new, gets wildly enthusiastic about it, and then drops it like a red-hot brick. A month or two back it was fireworks—”

  “Fireworks?”

  “Yes. He made them, and gave a display on the Green. They were lovely. That’s one of the things about Simon. Whatever he takes up he’s successful.”

  “Lucky man,” he said.

  She looked at him quickly. “You don’t like him?” she challenged.

  “Not very much,” he admitted.

  “You will when you know him better,” she said. “Don’t take any notice of all that bounce and bluster. That’s just a pose, like the beard and the emerald shirt. Mind you, he doesn’t realize he’s posing, but that’s all it is.”

  Alan felt a rush of irritability flood over him.

  “You seem to like him, anyway,” he remarked curtly.

  “I do,” said Flake. “Most people do when they really know him.”

  They continued in silence. Alan knew that his there was no excuse at all for his bad temper, because this girl beside him happened to like a man she had known for years—known before she was even aware that he existed. It was ridiculous and

  childish...

  They came to the entrance to Threshold House, looking different now in the bright sunlight from what it had on that night of storm and rain.

  Simon Gale, the Chief Constable, and Inspector Hatchard had stopped just inside the drive. Gale’s strident voice reached them as they came up. He was saying with a wealth of gesticulation:

  “...You’ve got to get an idea of the pattern, that’s what you’ve got to get. Or the rhythm, if you prefer it—”

  “That’s all very well,” Major Chipingham snorted. “It sounds very impressive. But all we’ve got here is a man who’s been bludgeoned to death and thrown out of a window. Where’s your pattern and your rhythm in that?”

  “There’s bound to be
pattern an’ rhythm, d’you see?” said Gale. “It had a beginning an’ it’s got an end. Meriton’s murder is part of something else—”

  “Not necessarily,” broke in the Chief Constable, argumentatively. “Supposing he was killed by a tramp?”

  “It applies just the same,” retorted Simon Gale, “If it was a tramp, something led up to murder, didn’t it? An’ the tramp’s going on living his life, isn’t he? He existed before the murder and he’ll go on existing until the hangman drops him. The murder was only a dot on the line of that existence. D’you see? Like a station on a railway line. An’ the principle’s the same whoever killed Meriton... Come on, let’s get up to the house. I want to see that blasted room.”

  He turned on his heel and the Chief Constable, his face flushed, shrugged his shoulders and followed.

  The drive, with its carpet of weeds and moss, was still soggy from the rain, and the leaves of the bushes and trees shot sparks of fire in the sunlight as though they had been set here and there with diamonds.

  The porch yawned, blackly, behind a bored-looking constable standing on guard, and who hastily stamped out a cigarette as he saw Inspector Hatchard—an action which the inspector diplomatically pretended he hadn’t noticed.

  Inside the great hall, where the light filtered frugally, it was cold and dank. Alan experienced some of the sensations he had felt on the previous night when he had stood there looking up the gloomy staircase...

  “Now, don’t move, anybody.” Simon Gale’s voice was tossed back from walls and ceiling so that it sounded hollow and unreal. He stood, a little in advance of the others, sniffing the mildewed air like a great shaggy dog. “Those are the footprints, are they? Meriton’s and the other man’s? Two lots of the other man’s. One set going up and one set coming down... By the Seven Plagues of Egypt, who messed ’em all up like that?”

  “I’m afraid we did,” said Inspector Hatchard apologetically. “We’ve got tracings of them, though, and photographs...”

  “You have, eh?” cried Gale. “Well, that’s something anyhow.”

  He stooped, almost bent double, and his eyes darted back and forth. He muttered to himself, a completely unintelligible rumbling. After two or three minutes he suddenly straightened up.

  “Come on upstairs,” he said abruptly.

  They followed him over to the staircase. He shook the balustrade as he went up, pulled out a couple of banisters that were loose, looked at them, and flung them down into the hall, where they hit the floor with two hollow thwacks.

  They entered the Long Room.

  Sunlight was streaming in through the great window, making the trailing ivy outside almost translucent and tingeing the light with green. Its only effect was to make more evident the signs of decay and dilapidation which were visible everywhere, and to show up with greater clearness the dark spots on the dirty boards.

  “So this is where it happened, eh?” muttered Gale, staring about and tugging at his beard. “This is where somebody smashed in Meriton’s head and pitched him out of the window. What did the murderer hit him with?”

  “We haven’t found the weapon yet,” said Major Chipingham.

  Gale ignored the remark. He went over and peered down at the confused scrabble of footprints and the spattered blood spots. Then he stood up and looked out of the window, still tugging ferociously at his beard.

  “Shall I tell you where the weapon is?” he said suddenly, twisting round and facing them. “Somewhere down there in that tangle of shrubbery.” He jerked his thumb over his shoulder. “That’s where it is. Now I’ll tell you what it is. One of those heavy banisters from the staircase. There’s one missing near the top. Did you notice that…?”

  *

  Inspector Hatchard and the constable, after a comparatively short search among the bushes, found the banister, and Simon Gale was as delighted as a child who has done something clever.

  He chuckled, rubbed his hands, and looked triumphantly at Major Chipingham.

  “There you are, Chippy,” he said. “What d’you say now, hey?”

  “I don’t see how you knew,” grunted the Chief Constable.

  “Brains, my little man, brains,” cried Gale, thumping his forehead violently. “If you’d just socked a man a wallop over the head, pitched him out of a window, and wanted to get rid of the weapon, what would you do with it, hey? You’d chuck it out too, as far as you could fling it... Here, let me have a look at that thing...”

  “Be careful, sir,” warned the Inspector, anxiously. “There may be prints—”

  “I shouldn’t think there was a chance in hell,” grunted Gale “but I’ll humour you.” He laughed, snatched the immaculate wash-leather gloves that Major Chipingham was carrying and before that annoyed and long-suffering gentleman could protest had thrust his large fingers into them.

  “Really, Gale…really...” stuttered the Chief Constable.

  “Don’t fuss! Give ’em you back,” said Simon Gale, and took the heavy banister from the reluctant hand of the inspector. His eyes darted along its length and back again.

  “No blood,” he remarked. “Rain would have washed it off, of course. Done the same for any prints, too, I’ll bet.”

  He thrust the banister back at Hatchard, pulled off the gloves and tossed them over to the Chief Constable.

  “The Sorcerer’s den,” he said, striding about the room with great energy. “The house of hocus-pocus, charlatanism, abracadabra, sigils, chants, incantations and what not...” He pounced suddenly on Alan. “That light, young feller. What was it like?”

  “It was just a light,” answered Alan, feeling so tired that his mind almost refused to function at all.

  “Just a light, eh? What d’you mean by that?”

  “Well, it’s difficult to describe...”

  “Did it look like a torch?”

  “No,” Alan shook his head. “It may have been, but I don’t think so...”

  “It was very dim and looked bluish,” said Flake.

  “You saw it too?” Simon Gale swung round on her.

  “Yes, from my window. That’s why I followed Mr. Boyce here. I guessed that he had seen it and that that was where he had gone.”

  “You heard him go out.” He tugged at his beard. “I wonder if anybody else saw that light?”

  “Avril Ferrall saw it the night before last,” began Flake.

  “What’s that?” cried Gale. “Avril Ferrall saw a light here—from this window?”

  “Of course. Do you think anyone in Ferncross would be interested in a light from any other window?”

  “Did you know about this, Chippy?” demanded Simon Gale.

  “Yes, of course—” began the Chief Constable irritably.

  “Then why,” broke in Gale, “didn’t you tell me before? Why leave out the thing that’s important?” He waved his arms impatiently and strode over to the door. “Come on,” he said. Don’t stand there like petrified dummies—come on...”

  “Where are you going now?” demanded the Chief Constable.

  “To the Ferralls’, of course,” bellowed Gale, already clattering down the staircase. “I want to hear more about this light, and I want to hear it straight from the horse’s mouth.”

  His long legs covered the ground at such a rate that they struggled to keep up with him. The result was a queer kind of straggling procession headed by Simon Gale, a good twelve yards in front, with Major Chipingham gamely bringing up the rear, very red in the face and gasping for breath.

  “Heck,” said Alan huskily, falling into step beside Flake, “I am tired.”

  She gave him a quick sidelong glance. “So am I, I’m going to bed after lunch and I’m going to sleep and sleep and sleep...”

  “Do you think we shall be allowed to sleep—any of us?” he said.

  “I’m not going to ask anybody’s permission,” she answered. “I’m just going to bed and lock my door. If you’re wise you’ll do the same.”

  Dr. Ferrall had gone out on his morning rou
nd of visits when they reached the house on the Green, but Avril was at home and received them in a house-frock of eau de nil velvet with long princess sleeves that made her look, Alan thought, like Lady Macbeth. Her face was pale and there was a faint puffy redness about her eyelids as though she had been crying...

  “Isn’t it dreadful,” she said, and her deep, rich voice was marred by a slight huskiness, “about poor Paul? Peter told me—”

  “Murder is always dreadful when it actually happens and you don’t read about it in books,” broke in Gale. “I’m told you and Ferrall drove Meriton home last night?”

  Avril, who had flinched at the word ‘murder’, nodded slowly.

  “What happened?” he demanded.

  “Why… nothing happened,” she answered, quickly, but she looked uneasy. “We…just dropped him at his gate, that’s all.”

  “You didn’t go in?”

  “No. It was getting late and the rain was beginning. Peter and I were very tired...”

  Simon Gale picked up a vase from the mantelpiece, looked at it with an expression of loathing, and put it down again.

  “The night before last, you saw a light in Threshold House,” he said suddenly. “What time was it and what was it like?”

  Why was he so interested in what the light was like ? thought Alan, irritably. What the hell did it matter what it was like, anyway? A description of the light wasn’t going to tell them who had killed Paul Meriton...

  “It was about half past twelve,” said Avril. “I’d been out to dinner and I was late coming home. It was a very dim light—”

  “Bluish?” asked Gale quickly.

  “Yes.” She nodded. “I told Flake about it last night... When we were all sitting in the garden... Didn’t I, Flake?”

  “You did,” agreed Flake. “You also said you wondered who was going to die this time...”

  Avril caught her breath and pressed a hand against her breast.

  “You said that, did you?” cried Gale. “Why did you say that? Did you expect that Meriton was going to be murdered?”

  “No, no,” she said. Her hands, smoothing down the sides of her housecoat, were trembling. “Of course I didn’t... But every time there has been a light in that window somebody has died!”