The Dreadful Hollow

by Nicholas Blake

  He broke off abruptly, and a slow flush came over his face.

  “—and confides in her, you were going to say?” murmured Nigel, smiling at him.

  “Oh, nonsense, nonsense. A lot of people confide in me, but you don’t suspect me of writing poison-pen letters. Or do you?”

  “Writing one to yourself?”

  “Well, don’t they often do that? To avert suspicion? Or is it something neurotic makes them do it—split mind?”

  Nigel gazed at the vicar noncommittally. “Would you call the other Chantmerle sister neurotic? I’ve heard—”

  “I must say, I’ve never been pumped so hard in my life. I take it Sir Archibald primed the pump?”

  “He did seem rather down on Rosebay Chantmerle.”

  After a pause, the vicar said: “She’s not had an easy time. All these years playing second fiddle and unpaid nurse to her sister. She’s a sulky sort of girl. Full of repressions, I dare say. Never got much change out of her myself. But anonymous letters—no.”

  “You sound very certain of that.”

  “I am. You don’t write those sort of things when you’re in love. She and Charles Blick have been about together a lot these last few weeks.”

  “And is he in love with her?”

  “He’s constantly up at the Little Manor. Opinion in the village seems about equally divided as to which of the sisters he is courting,” said the vicar dryly. “Let’s move on, shall we?”

  They returned to the track and went on up till it ended in an old quarry cut from the northern face of the hill. The side of the quarry was a sheer drop of about a hundred feet. Yellowish water lay in its bottom, and the air seemed suddenly cold as Nigel leaned over the strands of wire which ran on rough stakes along the edge. The yellow water stared up at him from the pit, like a saurian eye. Shivering a little, he turned his back on it. He was now facing a short stretch of turf, thickly planted with daffodils, beyond which lay a plantation. Through this plantation ran a turf drive, leading to the Little Manor, two hundred yards away. Patches of celandines and windflowers glimmered among the trees.

  It was a still afternoon, but some current of air created by the quarry or the hillside’s configuration made the daffodils twitch and shudder spasmodically, while in the wood one branch suddenly rubbed on another, with the sound of a man grinding his teeth in an uneasy sleep, and was silent again.

  “An enchanting spot, isn’t it?” said Mark Raynham.

  “The grove of Avernus,” Nigel found himself muttering. “A queer place to plant daffodils, I must say. Who can see them here?”

  “Funny you should say that. The village people never come up here, though you’d think it was a most eligible nook for courting couples.”

  “Why can’t the damned things stand still?” asked Nigel, as the daffodils suddenly shivered again. “I’ve never seen such a nervous lot of flowers.”

  The vicar gave his strenuous laugh. “You’d better complain about them to Miss Chantmerle. By the way, she’s asked you to lunch tomorrow. It’s her birthday, actually. I’m going, and you’ll meet Charles Blick too.”

  As they skirted round the left-hand edge of the wood, Nigel asked idly: “Why do the villagers shun that place?”

  “You’d better ask Joe Summers—he’s the landlord of The Sweet Drop; lived all his life here. You’ll find him a mine of information. Now, look; isn’t it an exquisite house?”

  They were passing through a field to the left of the Little Manor. Solid and elegant, its gray stone glowing as if with the remembred sunshine of centuries, the Chantmerles’ house looked southward over a terraced garden toward the Hall and the pastoral country beyond. The garden was not large, but packed and glowing with flowers and flowering shrubs, which set off the modest Quaker-gray of the house.

  The vicar waved to a man mowing a grass path between the flower-beds.

  “That’s Herbert Petts. He does the gardening and odd jobs. They’ve a woman living in—Charity Cooper—quite a character, and a girl comes up from the village for rough cleaning.”

  “Can the elder sister get about at all?”

  “She’s got an electric invalid carriage.”

  Nigel filed mentally another question. How do they keep all this up when the father lost his money?

  They came out on the road, to the left of the Little Manor drive, crossed it, and went through a gate along a field path. This path soon forked, the right-hand branch leading to the Hall, the left-hand taking them down into the village.

  “Does Stanford Blick live alone there?” asked Nigel, pointing toward the beech grove which shrouded the Hall from sight.

  “Most of the time. His brother keeps a sort of flat in the house, but he has to be at the works in Moreford all day, and some nights too. Hard-working chap, Charles is. The mother died years ago, and Sir Archibald does not favor us with his presence very often.”

  “He told me his elder son was a bit of a recluse.”

  “Well, that’s one way of putting it. He’s certainly a tearing eccentric. Pots of money; but they say the Hall is like a pigsty.”

  “You’ve never been in it?”

  Mark Raynham grinned. “Stanford attended my first service here. Took against my sermon. We had a set-to afterward over a doctrinal point in it—all quite amiable, but as a consequence I’ve never been invited up there. Keep off theology if you meet him.”

  “It’s a subject I seldom moot.”

  The field track brought them, past some allotments, onto the main road through the village. Like all West-Country villages at almost any time of any day, Prior’s Umborne appeared to have been totally evacuated, as if it lay in the path of an invading army or the wake of some annihilating plague. The road through it was scoured of all signs of human or animal life, and dead silent but for the murmur of the stream which bordered one side of it, running in a stone conduit. From the windows of thatched cottages there peered no faces, only geraniums or cyclamens. So it startled like thunder from a clear sky when this picturesque trance was broken by a scream—the scream of a child in abject terror.

  “Don’t hit me! No! Please don’t—”

  “Are you going to tell us, or—”

  “Let me go, Greta! I’ll tell my Mum on you!”

  There was the sound of a hard smack, and a bubbling wail from the child. The vicar went limping fast, round to the back of one of the cottages. Following close behind him, Nigel saw a girl of seven or eight struggling in the grip of a tall, fierce-eyed woman. Two other village women were leaning over the fence which separated the back gardens.

  “Stop this at once!” Mark Raynham’s voice cracked out like a sergeant major’s. “Greta Smart, let go of her this instant! Now, Reeny, come over here. It’s all right.”

  The child, a nasty red patch already showing on the side of her face, stumbled toward him and clutched his coat.

  “I done nothing! She hit me!”

  All three women started talking at once, volubly. Mark Raynham appeared to ignore them altogether, as he stroked the little girl’s hair and gradually quieted her convulsive trembling. Only when she had stopped crying did he look at the woman—a look of such sternness that he was transformed from the pleasant, easy-going fellow Nigel knew into a man of power, a militant, uncompromising Christian.

  “Well, now, Greta, what’s all this about?”

  “Mrs. Warren here saw Reeny creepen down to the post office, late last night, with some letters.”

  “I wasn’t then!”

  “Oh, you little liar! I see you!”

  “I was’n creepen.” The little girl was nearly in tears again.

  “That’s enough. Run along home, Reeny. Tell your mother I’ll be round to see her presently.”

  The vicar’s ascetic face was pale as he turned upon the women.

  “You’ve had a bad time, Greta. But that’s no excuse for bullying children. Are you going to torment every child in the village whose mother sends her to post letters? You know what Christ said. What
ever you do to one of these little ones, you do to Him.”

  One of the women by the fence muttered: “And did’n ’E say an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth?”

  “He did not. Go home and read your Bible. I’ll have no more of this blasphemous nonsense from you.” Mark Raynham lifted a finger to heaven, like a prophet in the full tide of denunciation. His tones held such conviction that the gesture seemed inevitable. “I tell you, God is watching you. Get this poison out of your hearts before it’s too late. Cruelty is never right—it works out its own damnation.”

  “God wasn’t watching when my brother killed ’eeself,” said Greta Smart sullenly.

  Mark Raynham laid his hands for a moment on her shoulders, making her look up at him. “You know that is not true. He is merciful, and one day you’ll see it, whatever you feel now.” There was a rough, tonic confidence in his voice, more effective than any arguing and commiseration. The woman’s shoulders suddenly shook with sobbing. “Now I want you to come along with me presently and see Reeny’s mother. Let’s have it out in the open. We’ll ask her about those letters, and I expect we’ll find there’s some quite simple explanation.”

  “Oh, I couldn’t do that, Mr. Raynham.”

  “Of course you could, Greta. What are you afraid of? Being proved wrong? I’ll call for you in half an hour.” The vicar turned, and limped out into the street, saying, more to himself than to Nigel: “It’s like a forest fire. Stamp it out in one place, and it starts up in another.”

  “You did a good job then.”

  “It’s my work.”

  Nigel was impressed by Raynham’s neither apologizing for his recent outburst nor depreciating it, now that he was alone with a sophisticated person; he had the simplicity of his convictions.

  “They would pick on Reeny’s mother. She used to be the village tart.”

  “You’ve reformed her?”

  “I don’t honestly know. I’ve tried.”

  “Reeny’s illegitimate, then, I take it?”

  “Yes. Not that that worries the village. If half what one heard was true, there’s hardly a child here conceived in holy wedlock. There’s even a legend that the austere Mrs. Durdle slipped up in her younger days. No, it’s because Rosie Venn was quite unashamed about her goings-on that we draw aside our skirts from her,” said the vicar in lowered tones.

  They had reached the post office, a raw, red-brick building by the crossroads, its window displaying the usual multifarious articles, from hair nets to tinned salmon, which the village shop-cum-post-office provides; but they were arranged with unusual neatness, and the interior had been swept and garnished till it looked like something out of an Ideal Small Traders’ exhibition.

  “Do I say what you’re here for?” Raynham whispered, as the jangling of the shop bell died away.

  Nigel nodded. A woman of about fifty emerged from an inner room and stood behind the counter, the fingers of her large red hands splayed out upon it. Her narrow, upright figure seemed not so much corseted with whalebone as composed of it, and the same constriction showed in her brow: the dark hair, which might once have been beautiful, was drawn back so tightly into a knob that it almost gave one a headache to look at. The whole face had a strained, skimped, scraped expression, nor did it in the least relax when Mark Raynham said pleasantly: “Good afternoon, Mrs. Durdle. Lovely weather, isn’t it?”

  “What can I do for you, Mr. Raynham?”

  “This is Mr. Strangeways. He’s a private investigator. Sir Archibald Blick has asked him to come down and look into this little trouble we’re having. You’ll give him all the help he needs, won’t you?”

  The woman looked at them defensively. “I don’t know, I’m sure. We’ve had the police in and out for days now. It isn’t very nice.”

  “Just think of me as one more policeman,” said Nigel briskly. “The Chief Constable will vouch for me, if you ring him up.”

  “Oh, well, if it’s official-like, I suppose it’s all right. I was worried what the head postmaster would say.”

  “We’ll square it with him. But of course the police are looking after the technical side of it, so to speak. I’m more concerned with the human element—the people who’ve been getting these letters. I’d like to have a talk with your son some time.”

  Mrs. Durdle’s adamantine face yielded momentarily to some mixed emotion, in which both apprehension and pride featured. Turning her head, she called out: “Daniel! Shop!”

  There was the sound of feet descending stairs. Then a remarkable figure appeared. Nigel’s first impression was of a caterpillar which had outgrown its strength. Daniel Durdle must have been quite six and a half feet tall; but he had a habitual stoop which made his body the shape of a question mark. The black serge suit he wore accentuated the whiteness of a roundish, pasty face, which was surmounted by bright auburn hair, hanging lank and thin about his temples. As he entered, the head on its long neck groped round toward the visitors, moving from side to side like that of a caterpillar rearing up from a leaf. He came to stand behind the counter, his mother making way for him. Nigel noticed that his hands were surprisingly delicate and well shaped, though the fingers were stained yellow.

  “Good afternoon, Reverend,” he said, in a sleek yet vibrant voice.

  The vicar introduced Nigel and said his piece again. Nigel was conscious of Daniel Durdle’s eyes upon him; but their expression was indecipherable, his glasses being so thick that he seemed to be peering out through ship’s portholes.

  “We must give the gentleman every assistance, Mother.”

  “Whatever you say.” Mrs. Durdle’s mouth snapped shut, like one of the mousetraps hanging on a card from the shelf behind her. This thin-lipped, grudging mouth was the only feature she had in common with her son.

  “Very kind of you,” said Nigel. “Cigarette?”

  “I don’t smoke,” replied Daniel.

  “Ah, you work with chemicals, then? A hobby?”

  The pebbly stare of Daniel’s glasses fixed Nigel for a moment. It was impossible to tell whether he was disconcerted. “Oh, I see. My hands.” He stretched out the stained fingers on the counter. “A proper Sherlock Holmes. Yes, I do an occasional job for Mr. Blick, up at the Hall, in my spare time.”

  Mrs. Durdle, bridling a little with gratification, began:

  “My son used to—”

  “Now, Mother, these gentlemen don’t want you showing me off to them.”

  Mrs. Durdle folded her hands over her abdomen and was silent.

  “I hope you’ll have a pleasant stay in our humble village, sir—and a successful one, of course. Sin is rife here, as the Reverend knows, and we must stamp out the iniquity even though it bruises our heel.”

  “We must indeed,” said Nigel equably. “And talking of heels—Achilles’ heels, so to speak—I assume there’s no truth in the anonymous communication you received.”

  “There is a truth of the letter, sir, but not of the spirit. I find it necessary to imbibe an occasional glass, for medicinal purposes. My health—”

  “Precisely. But you’re not a roaring alcoholic.”

  Mrs. Durdle’s eyes closed in an expression of pained rebuke. Her son remarked, with a sort of unctuous playfulness: “The letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life.”

  “One of these letters has killed a man,” said Nigel. “And there’s been an attempted suicide as well. I think we had better keep off Scriptural allusions.”

  Daniel Durdle’s glasses flashed as he turned his head.

  “I hope I have not offended your susceptibilities, sir. You are a believer?”

  “I’m a believer in people not writing poisonous letters to their neighbors,” Nigel said. “Perhaps I could have a talk with you tomorrow morning.”

  An appointment was made. Nigel and the vicar withdrew. As they walked up to the vicarage, to fetch Nigel’s baggage to the inn, he said: “What an extraordinary chap.”

  “He does rather give me the creeps,” said the vicar.

&
nbsp; “How old is he?”

  “Thirty-one; thirty-two.”

  “You know, I felt that in some obscure way he was laughing at me. There’s something derisive behind that deferential manner of his. Yes, I think I shall find him quite interesting. Who did you say his father was?”

  “I said there’s a legend that it wasn’t the late lamented Mr. Durdle.”

  For once the vicar seemed evasive. Nigel affected not to notice it.

  “Well, I’d say he was a gentleman’s son—a by-blow of the village aristocracy. I wonder did Sir Archibald Blick ever misconduct himself with Mrs. Durdle.”

  And I wonder, Nigel added to himself, is Mark Raynham’s laughter a sign of relief—that I picked the wrong father for Daniel Durdle.

  3 The Innkeeper’s Story

  A FEW MINUTES with Joe Summers, the landlord of The Sweet Drop, was enough to assure Nigel that here he had an inexhaustible spring of gossip. Joe, a man of over sixty now, had kept the pub for the last thirty years. Indeed, he had never left Prior’s Umborne except to serve in the First World War, relics of which period survived in the photographs of Sergeants’ Messes hung on the walls of the parlor where he and Nigel were drinking tea.

  “I suppose the village has changed a great deal since you first remember it,” said Nigel.

  “You’ve put your finger on it,” replied Joe weightily, “And not by no means for the better. ‘Change and decay in all around I see,’ if you understand me, sir. Not that I’m against progress, mind you. Why, only last year I put a wireless set in the private bar. No one ever switches it on, for sure—they comes here for a bit of peace and quiet. But you’ve got to move with the times.”

  He took a copious draught of tea, sucking the last drops appreciatively out of his Kitchener mustache.

  “The factory in Moreford must make a lot of difference,” Nigel remarked.

  “Well, now, it creates employment, yes. But look at it another way, and what do you see?”