Sorcerer's House

by Gerald Verner

  “My dear Miss Ferrall,” said Major Chipingham. “You surely don’t believe that there can be any connection?”

  “Why not, Chippy?” cried Gale. “Why not?” He leered ferociously at the Chief Constable.

  “Because it’s ridiculous,” snapped Major Chipingham. “How can a sort of child’s fairy tale—”

  “There was a light when the man was killed on the motor-cycle,” interrupted Avril Ferrall. “There was a light when the tramp died—”

  “And there was a light last night when Meriton was killed,” said Gale, rubbing his hands together almost gleefully. “You can’t get away from that, Chippy, old boy. Ridiculous, rubbish, fairy tales—all the words that mean the same thing, don’t explain that away—”

  “You’re not going to tell me that you think—” began the major.

  “I do—frequently,” interrupted Gale, with a burst of laughter. “And you’d be surprised at some of the things I think about, you old mule.”

  “Nothing concerning you would ever surprise me,” retorted the Chief Constable stiffly. “And I object strongly to being referred to as a—”

  The remainder of the sentence was lost in a prodigious gasp as Simon Gale gave him a hearty slap on the back and knocked all the breath out of him. It was intended for an affectionate pat but was rather like the kick of a horse.

  “Don’t get huffy, Chippy,” he said. “I’ll see this thing through for you. I feel like beer—a lot of beer! Let’s all go down to the pub and have a drink. You come along, too, Avril...”

  “I’ll have to change...” She hesitated but the suggestion obviously appealed to her.

  “Well, go on then. What are you waiting for?” He strode over to the door and held it open impatiently. “We’ll give you three minutes.”

  “Look here, Gale,” said Major Chipingham, as she went out. “Hatchard and I can’t waste time drinking. This is a murder investigation. We’ve got to see the Coroner about the inquest...”

  “All right, all right,” said Gale, sweeping aside the objection with a wave of his huge arm. “What time did it start raining last night, hey?”

  “About ten to twelve,” answered Flake before the major could reply. “It was just before we went indoors. Do you remember, Mr. Boyce?”

  Alan nodded. He remembered everything about that evening very vividly.

  “What time did Meriton leave with the Ferralls?” inquired Simon Gale, cocking a disapproving eye at a picture over the mantelpiece and suddenly making a hideous grimace at it.

  “Just before eleven,” said Flake.

  “Ah-ha!” Gale swung round with such a violent movement that he nearly knocked over a small table beside him. “The plot thickens. They left just before eleven, did they? And she said”—he jerked his head towards the door—“that it was just starting to rain when they left Meriton at his gate. Get that? It’s only five minutes’ run by car from Bryony Cottage to Meriton’s house. Five minutes. And they took nearly an hour. By the nine lives of Grimalkin, what did they do in the interval?”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  The village of Ferncross, considering its size, is very well provided with public houses. There are three in all: the Red Lion, facing the small railway station; the Horse and Groom, at the upper end of the short and narrow High Street, and the Three Witches on the fringe of the Green.

  The Three Witches, if not the largest and most imposing of the trio, is a pleasant-looking white-washed building of great age, with a thatched roof and oak beams, and full of shining copper and old pewter. It stands on the site of an ancient cottage—part of the original building still remains—that once belonged to three sisters who were accused of practising witchcraft by the infamous Mathew Hopkins, and subsequently burned at the stake.

  The bars are low-ceilinged and raftered; the fireplaces, of ancient, mellowed brick, wide and deep, with oak settles, and in the principal bar, now dignified with the title ‘Saloon Lounge’, there is a cosy ingle-nook. The entire atmosphere is a pleasant mixture of age and solid comfort, and the majority of the residents of Ferncross forgather in the oblong bar for such refreshment and company as they desire outside their own homes, under the genial auspices of the landlord, Mr. Jellyberry.

  Simon Gale was a regular and popular frequenter of the Three Witches. The quality of the beer was better than at either of the two rival establishments, and on most evenings he was to be found leaning against the bar, consuming vast quantities of this delectable brew, and holding forth in his booming bass upon a variety of subjects to the edification and, it must be admitted, the amusement of those present. His views on most things were anything but conventional and he had a passionate hatred of all forms of cant and humbug. He delighted in taking a tradition, or an established institution, and twisting it inside out so that its ridiculous aspect was the only thing that remained. Whatever his opinion, he would always take the opposite side of an argument for the sheer love of controversy, and when he had demolished his opponents’ arguments completely, would blandly turn round and declare that he entirely agreed with everything they had said and order up fresh drinks.

  When he strode into the bar, followed by Alan Boyce, Flake and Avril Ferrall, he was greeted by the stout, rubicund landlord with a beaming smile.

  “ ’Mornin’, Mr. Gale, sir,” he said without stopping the vigorous polishing of the glass he was holding in his chubby hands. “Goin’ ter be another powerful ’ot day, I’m thinkin’. ’Mornin’, Miss White. ’Mornin’, Miss Ferrall.”

  “Good morning, Jellyberry,” greeted Gale, in a voice that set the bottles and glasses ringing. “I want beer—lots of beer! What are you going to have?”

  “I’d like a large gin and french,” said Avril. “Booth’s gin.”

  “I’d like one, too, please,” said Flake.

  “Beer for me,” said Alan. “I’ve heard a lot about English beer—”

  “Oh yes—you’re American, aren’t you?” said Simon Gale. “No such thing as decent beer in America. Wishy-washy stuff without any body in it. And they can it. Bah! If this is your first taste of real beer you’ve come to the right place, eh, Jellyberry?”

  “Well, Mr. Gale,” said the landlord, wiping his hands on the cloth with which he had been drying his glasses, “though I say it as shouldn’t, I don’t s’pose you’ll find a better drop o’ draught bitter anywhere...”

  “Dish it out, man,” said Gale. “Fill the flowing bowl. I’ve a thirst—a real, full-grown, hundred-percent thirst! Produce two of the largest tankards you’ve got.”

  The landlord complied. He set before them, on the age-blackened oak of the bar, two gins-and-french and two gargantuan tankards topped with frothing foam.

  “Ah!” cried Gale. He seized his tankard, lifted it to the level of his bearded lips, threw back his head and poured a prodigious quantity down his throat, apparently without bothering to swallow. “That’s better,” he said, banging the tankard down on the bar and wiping the froth from his beard with the back of his hand. “I needed that.” He looked at Alan. “Well, young feller, what d’you think of real beer, eh?”

  Alan nodded over the top of his tankard. “I guess I like it,” he replied.

  “You’d like it better if you drank it instead of sipping it,” grunted Gale. “Go on, swallow it, man! Beer was made to be quaffed, not sipped like a parson taking tea with an old maiden aunt.” He drained the contents of his own tankard in one gulp. “That’s the way to drink beer, my lad. Fill it up again, Jellyberry.”

  “We haven’t all got your capacity, Simon,” said Flake.

  “Or practice,” murmured Avril maliciously.

  “It’s neither capacity nor practice,” retorted Simon Gale. “It’s an art! We’ll teach Boyce to acquire it, if he stays here long enough. Swallow it down, young feller, an’ have another.”

  The tankard must have contained nearly a quart, but Alan dealt with it valiantly, if a trifle breathlessly.

  “We’ll all have another—on me,” he said, gaspin
g a little as he set down the empty tankard.

  “That’s the stuff,” cried Gale, slapping him on the back with a huge hand and knocking all the remainder of his breath out of him. “We’ll make you a beer drinker, yet—eh, Jellyberry?”

  The beaming landlord nodded as he refilled glasses and tankards.

  “There’s them that’s beer drinkers an’ them that ain’t,” he said. “Now, poor Mr. Meriton—’e liked whiskey...”

  “Why do you say ‘poor’ Mr. Meriton?” demanded Gale quickly.

  “Well, I did ’ear that ’e’d met with an accident,” said Mr. Jellyberry placidly. “Up at that there ’ouse of ’is on the ’ill, it ’appened, so I’m told.”

  “And who told you all this?” asked Gale.

  Mr. Jellyberry pushed forward two full tankards and picked up a bottle of Noilly Prat.

  “Well, it was the wife,” he said, “but she did ’ear it from Tanner’s boy—”

  “And Tanner’s boy heard it from the postman, who got it from the baker,” interrupted Gale, with a huge grin. “In other words, it’s all round the village, hey?”

  “I suppose that’d be about it, sir.” Mr. Jellyberry’s large fat face creased into a smile. “Is there any truth in it?”

  “I’m afraid there is,” said Simon Gale. He took a huge gulp of beer, and Alan watched in fascinated amazement. The capacity of this huge, bearded man was extraordinary. “And it wasn’t an accident.”

  The beaming expanse of Mr. Jellyberry’s face changed, smile vanished and was replaced by a look of concern.

  “You don’t mean as it was...?”

  “It was murder,” answered Simon Gale. “Somebody bashed Meriton’s head in an’ threw him out the window.” He picked up his tankard, glared at it ferociously, flung back his head, swallowed the remainder of its contents.

  “More beer,” he said, banging the tankard down on the bar.

  Frowning thoughtfully, the landlord mechanically refilled it. Alan thought that he looked more puzzled than surprised.

  “That’s a queer thing to’ve ’appened, now, ain’t it, sir?” he remarked.

  “Queer?” echoed Gale. “By the cloven hooves of Pan, it’s remarkable. There was a light in the window the night before it happened.”

  “Yes, sir—I did ’ear about that,” said Mr. Jellyberry. “That’s what made me say it was queer.”

  “Do you believe in the local superstition?” put in Alan.

  “Well, sir,” the landlord was hesitant, “most o’ the folk these parts do.”

  “Answer the question,” said Gale, like a Q.C. with an unwilling witness. “Mr. Boyce said, ‘Do you believe in it?’ ‘

  “I don’t really know ’ow ter answer,” said Mr. Jellyberry. His small eyes were perplexed and wary. “Yer see, there be some things that folk can’t explain, now ain’t there…?”

  “That’s how I feel about it,” breathed Avril Ferrall. “I don’t actually believe...but there might be something in it.”

  “Ah-ha.” Gale grinned down at her, his beard almost bristling. He really is, thought Alan, a most objectionable man. “Of course there’s something in it.”

  “Does that mean that you believe it?” asked Flake.

  “Lights have been seen in that window,” replied Simon Gale, “and people have died—violently. That’s an irrefutable fact.”

  “But is there a connection?” said Alan sceptically.

  Gale looked at him. He said, in a voice that was no longer deep and booming, but low and thoughtful: “Ah, that’s the question... Is there a connection...? Fill up those tankards, Jellyberry, and let’s have two more gins-and-french.” The latter part of this was a reversion to his former boisterous manner. The change was so sudden that Alan looked round for the cause. Somebody had come quietly into the bar. He was a middle-aged man with a straggling greyish-ginger moustache, rather shabbily dressed, and possessing a large nose, the reddish colour of which spread over his thin cheeks, which were otherwise very pale, producing a rather startling effect. The mouth below the unkempt moustache was loose, with wet lips, and under this was a very small pimple of a chin. He was rather like a photograph of George Moore that Alan had once seen in his father’s office.

  He came over to the bar with a curious hesitant step, as though he wasn’t quite sure where he was going.

  “Good morning, Mr. Veezey,” greeted the landlord. “The usual, I s’pose?”

  The newcomer nodded jerkily, his watery eyes moving restlessly over the four other occupants, but with such a dull, dead-fish expression, that Alan was convinced he had no idea what he was looking at.

  “Yes...yes, please,” he murmured tremulously, and fumbled in his pocket.

  Mr. Jellyberry turned to his stocked shelves, selected a bottle of Scotch whiskey, poured out a generous double, and pushed the glass gently across the bar.

  Mr. Veezey continued to fumble in his pocket, apparently failed to find what he was seeking, and transferred his search to another. Eventually, first from one pocket and then from another, he produced a number of coins which he laid in a row before the landlord. Then he picked up his glass and with one swift movement swallowed the contents.

  “Again, please,” he murmured, pushing the empty glass across the counter.

  Mr. Jellyberry, preparing to execute the order, caught Alan’s eye and winked, slowly and ponderously. He poured out another double whiskey and placed it before Mr. Veezey. Once more the previous performance was repeated to the astonishment and secret amusement of the American. Mr. Veezey found, with apparent great difficulty, sufficient money from his various pockets to pay for his drink. As before he carefully placed the amount in front of Mr. Jellyberry, swallowed his whiskey and, politely raising his battered straw hat, drifted out with his peculiar, uncertain step.

  “Say, that’s quite a character,” remarked Alan when the back of Mr. Veezey had disappeared from view.

  Mr. Jellyberry rested his large forearms on the counter and uttered a rumbling chuckle.

  “That he be,” he agreed. “That’s ’is breakfast... Two double whiskies,” said the landlord, nodding. “Day in an’ day out—”

  “Does he always go through that queer act of searching for the money?” asked the American.

  “Yer’d think ’e was ’ard up, wouldn’t yer?” grinned Mr. Jellyberry. “Bless yer, ’e’s got more money than what I ’ave. That just be ’is way, that be—“

  “Poor Mr. Veezey,” said Flake. “He always looks dazed—as if he hadn’t quite wakened up—”

  “Drink,” said Alan laconically.

  “You’re wrong, m’lad,” said Simon Gale, shaking his head. “Those two drinks are the only ones Veezey’ll have today. That rosy flush that suffuses his nose and cheeks is not the result of alcoholic intemperance but of acne—common or garden acne.”

  “Tha’s right, sir,” said Mr. Jellyberry, nodding in agreement. “Not another drop’ll pass ’is lips until the same time termorrow...”

  “Peter says he’s crazy,” Avril Ferrall’s voice joined in the conversation. “Living all alone in that little hut—”

  “Hut?” said Alan.

  “Well, that’s all it is,” said Avril. “It was an old army hut when Veezey bought it...”

  “He’s made it look very nice,” remarked Flake.

  “Aye, that ’e ‘as,” said Mr. Jellyberry. “Proper nice bit o’ garden ’e’s got...”

  “But if he’s well off, why does he want to live in a hut?” said Alan.

  “Because he likes it—and that’s the best reason in the world.” Simon Gale waved the eccentric Mr. Veezey out of existence. “Drink up, all of you. We’ll have another an’ then I must be off. I want to see Meriton’s housekeeper...”

  *

  On either side of the narrow rutted lane were thick woods and the great trees met overhead, their leaves vivid and translucent the sunlight. On the dusty path splashes of bright yellow, like the spilled pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, flickered and danced as th
e breeze stirred the branches overhead.

  Alan Boyce, walking along this leafy green tunnel with Flake beside him, thought that all he had heard about the restful beauty of the English countryside had not been an exaggeration.

  His eyes were hot and heavy, but the tiredness which had overwhelmed him earlier had given place to a restless, nervous energy. He knew this was but an extension of his previous weariness—that what his whole mind and body craved for was rest—but he also knew that his present state of nervous overstrain would not let him rest.

  Flake felt the same. She had told him so when he had suggested that she ought to go home and lie down.

  “It wouldn’t be any use,” she said, shrugging. ‘I’ve gone past it. What I need is fresh air, lots and lots of it...”

  They had left Simon Gale to seek his interview with Mrs. Horly, Paul Meriton’s housekeeper, and Avril to return home, and set out on a desultory, circuitous ramble back to Bryony Cottage.

  The countryside surrounding the village was lovely in the haze of that hot morning. The oppressive heat of the previous night had gone. It was still very hot, but it was a different heat. There was more energy in it, and everything looked fresh after the heavy rain. The scent from hot sun on rain-soaked earth came refreshingly to their nostrils and partially, if not quite, drove away the memory of the horrors of the night.

  The moment when he had found Meriton lying, wet and dead, under the window of the Long Room at Sorcerer’s House would never fade entirely from Alan Boyce’s mind, but it was no longer a vivid terror. Curiosity had taken the place of fear...

  “How long have you known the Ferralls?” he asked suddenly, breaking a long silence.

  Flake wrinkled up her nose in the delightful way which he found so attractive.

  “About three years, I think,” she answered. “since Dr. Ferrall bought old Dr. Wycherly’s practice.”

  “What do you think of them?” he said.

  She gave him a quick sidelong glance, looking up under her long dark lashes.