by S. T. Joshi
“She certainly fits the classic image of the witch,” said Blake. “An old woman, living alone in the woods—I take it she had no relations?”
“Definitely not,” said the inspector. “We thought there might be a family member wanting to get even with Mr. Potter, but we were unable to find a single relative. Or even her own birth record.”
“Poor old woman,” said Miss Belhaven. “No children and nobody to talk to, and a pet rat, called a witch by everyone.”
“Being a witch was not such a bad thing,” said the inspector. “It was because of her reputation that she lived rent-free. All the local farmers used to bring round gifts of food. They’re a superstitious crowd here; nobody wants their cows’ milk turned sour.”
There was a long leather case against the bed, a gun case, and an unopened box of shells by it on the window sill. Blake noted they were Number Nine shot, useless for any except the smallest game, generally employed for shooting rats in barns.
“Maybe Potter was going to shoot some rabbits,” said Blake, thinking aloud. He did not remember any rabbit holes in the wood. “Or maybe he was thinking of killing himself, but found another way out.”
The inspector shrugged and puffed his pipe.
“He brought a lot of books for a weekend stay,” said Miss Belhaven. The books were lined up on a shelf with two bottles of relish for bookends. She looked at the volumes and passed them to Blake.
“Margaret Murray . . . Montague Summers . . . and good old Frazer.” Blake held up The Witch-Cult in Western Europe. “So Potter had a genuine interest in witchcraft. He brought quite a little reference library with him.”
There were more books beside the bed and next to the stove. All were on similar topics, including a rare, unexpurgated copy of Hartmann, as well as von Junzt’s work on diabolic cults. This last book included illustrations of hieroglyphs. Blake found one which resembled the carving they had seen, and pointed it out to the inspector. It was associated with the Horned God. To Blake the shape suggested an unhuman three-lobed eye.
“Yes, we saw that,” said the inspector, bored. “Magic, but not the variety practised by Harry Houdini, the sort that might actually help solve the case. To me those books and the sigil on the tree stump look like an attempt to highlight the spurious supernatural connexion. He might as well have left a note: ‘I can hear her ghostly fingers scratching at the door . . .’”
“Potter had been studying witchcraft for years.” Blake showed the inspector the date and initials inscribed inside the flyleaf. “You know Margaret Murray’s theory? She thinks that the witch-covens were survivors of a pre-Christian pagan cult. This would be the right place for it. There was a long tradition of the charcoal-burners in these woods practising a form of pagan worship, away from the church—”
Blake broke off, aware the inspector was no longer listening. He started again:
“I don’t suppose you know if there’s a Celtic altar in the wood? Just a block of stone probably?”
“I don’t suppose I do,” replied the inspector. “It would hardly be germane, since we are not going to be charging a Celtic deity with the disappearance, are we now?”
“If you’re only interested in material facts, I’m not sure what you expect of me,” said Miss Belhaven.
The inspector gave her a cold smile.
“Your role, Miss Belhaven, is to give us some insight into more practical matters. Spirit-mediums are well known for their tricks. The medium is tied up, or placed in a locked closet, but still manages to produce writing on a chalk-board, or play musical instruments, when the lights are out. They use clever little devices with fishing line and such. Perhaps with a bit of string you could turn a key in the lock from the other side. Or lower a bar on the door, with a line and a knot that can undone afterwards. We couldn’t do it, but perhaps we need someone who knows the tricks of the trade.”
Miss Belhaven coloured as the inspector said this. Blake placed an arm on her shoulder before she could speak.
“You’re accusing her of being a fraud,” said Blake. “That’s a rotten way to treat someone who’s come here to help. If you wanted a stage-magician, you should have invited one.”
The inspector shrugged again, as if to say he might try that next, and drew on his pipe.
“You might be able to sense something,” Blake said, turning to Miss Belhaven. “If anything happened here, there might be a psychic imprint, or whatever the term is.”
“I thought you were a scientific man, Blake,” said the inspector behind him.
“I believe in radio waves, even though I can’t see them,” said Blake. “I’m not so pig-headed as to think there can’t be other sorts of waves.”
Miss Belhaven closed her eyes and breathed slowly and evenly. Blake looked out the window at the brown carpet of leaves, splashed with patches of blue flowers, under the spreading canopy. Everything was peaceful. Not a bird sang.
“Miss Belhaven—Elizabeth—do you sense a presence here?” Blake asked. “The spirit of a departed one?”
“Oh go on,” said the inspector from his chair. “Do call up Potter and ask him where he’s got to.”
“You’re not obliged,” said Blake.
“It’s so quiet,” she said at last. “There’s nothing here. It’s as though the whole forest is filled with silence. Hushed, like a cathedral. I’m afraid to think too loud—it echoes. There’s just a very faint murmur . . .”
She frowned and opened her eyes again.
“I’d prefer not to stay here too long.” She swallowed. “It’s rather disturbing.”
“Inspector, would you mind if Miss Belhaven went back to the car? Psychic experiments can be risky. Staying here might be harmful for her.”
“I’d prefer the both of you to stay and focus on the matter in hand,” said the inspector. “Perhaps this menacing psychic presence will help motivate you.”
Miss Belhaven paced about the small room, then stooped and picked something off the floor by the stove. She passed a small piece of ivory to Blake.
“The police may be trained in searching,” she said, “but none of them ever had to clean a house.”
Blake examined the object, then got down on to his hands and knees to examine the floor. There were a number of small holes at the base of the wall, which he pointed out to the inspector.
“We thought those might support the fishing-line theory,” said the inspector. “Some arrangement of holes to thread the wire through. But I am told they were made by rodents, who can gnaw through daub-and-wattle construction without difficulty.”
“The holes must be recent if the place has just been renovated,” said Blake, half to himself.
“Of course Mr. Potter may have liquefied himself and flowed out through the holes, being a magician,” the inspector continued facetiously. “But, as with spontaneous combustion or vaporisation, that’s not a hypothesis we are willing to entertain—not without bloody good evidence. Pardon my language, Miss.”
Blake was still looking at the rat-holes. Why were there several holes and not just one?
“Here’s another,” said Miss Belhaven. When he looked up she handed him a second piece of ivory. He then stood up and passed both pieces to the inspector.
“Do these have some sort of magical significance?” the inspector asked.
“They have more significance than that,” said Blake, who had picked up one of Potter’s books and was leafing through the index. “Don’t you recognise human teeth?”
“Did you just hear something outside?” asked Miss Belhaven.
The inspector shook his head and looked enquiringly at Blake.
“Here it is,” Blake said, and skimmed through the relevant passage. “Rats. ‘Mistress Loggard did confess to an imp in the likeness of a rat which the Devil had given to her . . . did then confess that the imp sucked of her blood . . .’”
“Is that a witchcraft trial?” asked Miss Belhaven.
“Get out!”
All three were st
artled by the shout from outside. The door was flung open.
“Get out!” shouted PC Robertson again, and this time they could hear a long, creaking note, counterpointed by rending, tearing sounds.
The three of them bolted from the cottage, right under the shadow of the old oak tree as it toppled majestically. Blake thought he would be crushed, but the tree fell so slowly that he was clear by the time the oak landed squarely on the cottage, the great trunk plunging through the tiled roof and crushing it like an egg carton.
The noise continued for some time as still more of the tree’s sinews snapped, branches crumpled, and the tree settled into its final position.
“Robertson, you damn fool!” bellowed the inspector at the constable, who looked both relieved and unhappy.
“I’m sorry, sir, I was looking the other way, and I didn’t notice the tree until I heard it—”
“Idiot!” The inspector raised a hand as though he would have slapped the constable, but with visible effort he stepped back and mastered his temper.
“It was deliberate,” said Blake, standing by the fallen tree. “The trunk was cut through.”
“With you standing here on guard!” exclaimed the inspector. “We could all have been killed.” He strode over to examine the damage.
“It wasn’t meant to kill us,” said Blake. “Just to force us out of the cottage.”
Blake and the inspector looked up at the same time, to see something watching them from a tree branch overhead. It was the size of a squirrel, with a long, naked tail. But it was not the tail that made both men gasp before the creature scampered out of sight around the tree.
“What’s that sound?” asked Miss Belhaven, moving her head from left to right to catch the source.
“Wind in the trees,” said Blake.
“No,” she said. “It’s the leaves rustling.”
She pointed to where the carpet of brown leaves shimmered like waves on a storm-lashed sea. The waves were approaching across the forest floor, waves thrown up not by the wind but by something several yards across, moving just beneath the surface.
Blake was still gazing on in horror when Miss Belhaven seized his hand and pulled at him, shouting “Run!”
She did not need to see what was coming. They both knew what was coming and how dangerous it would be to stay. The inspector caught on a moment later, and was a few paces behind them, his sense of danger sharpened by the earlier narrow escape.
“Robertson, run!” he ordered, and the bewildered constable started behind them.
Blake’s limp disappeared at times of danger, and he had been a strong runner. Miss Belhaven’s skirt may have been unfashionable but it was not constricting, and she kept pace with him. The inspector struggled to keep up.
The most handicapped of the four was the portly PC Robertson, who did not have the sharp spur of fear driving him onwards. Robertson liked his food and had not much cause to exert himself in the line of duty. He could not have been called fit.
The rushing sound rose to a crescendo, and the wave of dry leaves broke behind them.
It is said that there was a school of dark arts in Toledo, where at their graduation the class of students had to traverse an underground chamber en masse. The devil himself would pursue them through the chamber, catching the slowest member of the class and claiming him. This is said to be the source of the phrase “devil take the hindmost.”
It is also said that a rat can outrun a man over short distances.
Blake glanced back at a muffled sound behind him and saw that Robertson had stumbled and fallen. The brown wave broke over him as hundreds of rats broke out from under the leaves.
Just as the piranha fish of the Amazon are supposed to seethe and swarm over their prey, the policeman was instantly submerged in a mass of writhing, biting rats, many of them of unusual size, driven by a carnivorous ferocity.
PC Robertson gave just one stifled cry as he fell. Blake saw the man’s arms flail around as he rolled and fought to throw off the attackers swarming over him. Several were scattered, two rats flew through the air, but hundreds more converged on the policeman, while more were surging towards Blake.
Blake did not stop running. The second time he looked back, Robertson’s face and head were covered with rats. More rats were already inside his clothing. The blue serge uniform pulsed with them, like a carcass bursting with maggots just beneath the skin.
A hundred yards more and Blake glanced back again, then slowed to a stop. Without his own feet kicking through the leaves, the only noise was from the others ahead of him. There were no sounds of struggle from behind.
“They’ve stopped following!” he called.
Miss Belhaven held on to a tree. The inspector stood poised, irresolute. Blake took off and went back in the direction they had come from.
“You stay here, Miss,” ordered the inspector.
Blake steered around the seething mass where PC Robertson had fallen and burst into the cottage. He tore open the box of shells, dropping them everywhere. At every moment he expected rats to come swarming through the open doorway.
He broke open the shotgun and stuffed in two cartridges, managing to snap it shut on his second try. Blake scanned the trees as he stepped out, looking for anything in the branches. As the inspector appeared through the trees, moving warily, Blake approached the spot where PC Robertson had stumbled, a spot now occupied by a brown, seething, amorphous shape.
Blake had a vague impression of glinting eyes, whiskered noses, and flashes of yellow teeth as the rats scuttled about, of dark, wet fur, and long bare tails whipping around behind them. They swarmed like ants on a log, two deep, the rats running over one another, not distinct as individuals. The pack was entirely intent on the fallen man.
The shotgun boomed. The blast went wide, kicking up an oval patch of leaves a few feet from the body. The rats scattered like a startled flock of birds, fanning out away from Blake and the inspector, disappearing under the leaves and becoming irregular ripples. The ripples spread outward and faded, the great rushing sound dying away as quickly as it had come, the last few stragglers emerging from uniform sleeves and collar.
PC Robertson’s uniform was black with blood. As Blake approached, he saw a hole in the man’s neck the size of a half-crown. A final rat squeezed out, paused a moment, shook itself, and darted away before Blake could raise the shotgun.
“There’s your solution,” said Blake. His voice was surprisingly firm. He might have been introducing a lesson in class. “I hoped to bag a few of them as evidence, but I couldn’t shoot at him. I assume you got a decent enough view, and your testimony must count for something. And any coroner will be able to tell cause of death.”
“Yes, quite so,” said the inspector, not moving any closer to the body. Neither of them suggested checking whether the fallen man might still be alive. “Quite so. Cause of death . . . shouldn’t be much room for doubt there. No doubt at all. My God, look at him. Five minutes ago he was standing there; now look at him . . .”
Blake waited, scanning the trees. Everything was perfectly quiet. They could smell the body now, the tang of fresh blood.
“I don’t suppose there’s any brandy or anything in the cottage?” Blake asked.
The inspector shook his head mechanically.
“Let’s get Miss Belhaven and go back to the car,” said Blake. “We need to get help.”
Blake broke the shotgun open and took the inspector by the arm. The other man moved like a sleepwalker.
Some hours later Blake was in the inspector’s office at the police station. Miss Belhaven’s statement regarding PC Robertson’s death had been taken, and she had been discharged. Blake was helping the inspector draft an account of the case that he would be able to submit, an account that might be believed by those who had not seen it with their own eyes.
“The story for public consumption is this,” said Blake. “Mrs. Attwater was an eccentric old woman with a fondness for rats. She petted them and fed them. Sh
e even allowed one of them to drink her blood. If you check with the coroner you’ll probably find there was an unhealed wound where a rat could have sucked.
“This resulted in a large colony of rats being established near her cottage. The local farmers gave her food—much more than one old woman could have eaten. She fed the rats; they were feral, but like a lion-tamer she could keep them in check with her authority and by controlling their food supply.
“After she died, the rats were hungry. They still associated the cottage with food. They gnawed their way back in. Potter was here, he raised a commotion . . . they overwhelmed him. And they ate him. All of him. Every bit. Rats can gnaw through anything—wood, copper, lead piping. Chewing through the bones may have taken an hour or two; about the only thing they can’t bite through would be his teeth.
“And that’s your locked room mystery solved. Potter’s body left that room in the stomachs of a thousand rats. Only his teeth remained.
“As for today’s events: perhaps the best we can say is that during the investigation, Constable Robertson disturbed the rats’ nest. Because of their vicious nature and lack of fear of humans they attacked him too.”
The inspector’s voice was barely more than a whisper.
“But about that—that thing—on the tree?”
“Oh, that,” said Blake. An hour ago he had wanted to blast the inspector with the whole truth, force him to swallow it in one gulp. Now, hearing the tremor in the inspector’s voice, Blake softened. He was not a vindictive man.
“Ugly little brute, wasn’t it? Just a deformed rat. It startled me too when I saw it. She probably adopted that one because it was unable to fend for itself. You know how people always make pets of the runt of the litter.”
“But its face . . .” The inspector took Blake’s arm.
“A deformed rat and nothing more,” Blake went on smoothly, extemporising from scraps of remembered fact. “Rats have an unusually high rate of birth defects, because of the amount of toxic material they eat. Rats can’t vomit, you know, so they are prone to poisoning. The deformed ones used to be called Sumatran; people thought they were a separate species. They can look strange . . . even the trained mind can fall prey to suggestibility when you spend too long in a witch’s cottage!”