The Double Eye

by William Fryer Harvey

  That was all that I saw in the crystal. I was now wide awake. I got out of bed, put fresh fuel on the fire, and wrote this account in my diary, while the picture was still vivid.

  February 19th. Slept splendidly, despite the fact that I was prepared to spend a wakeful night. After a late breakfast I went with Prendergast into the church and had no difficulty in identifying the monument. It is in the east end of the south aisle, immediately opposite the Ankardyne pew and partly hidden by the American organ. The inscription reads:

  IN MEMORY OF

  FRANCIS ANKARDYNE, ESQUIRE,

  of Ankardyne Hall, in the County of Worcester,

  late Captain in His Majesty’s 42nd Regiment of Foot.

  He departed this life 27th February 1781.

  Rev. xiv. 12, 13.

  I brought the Bible from the lectern: ‘There are lives,’ said Prendergast, ‘which can fitly be commemorated by such verses: “Here is the patience of the saints; here are they that keep the commandments of God.” Miss Ankardyne’s is one. And I suppose,’ he added, ‘that there may be some of whom the eleventh verse is true.’ He read it out to me: ‘And the smoke of their torment ascendeth for ever and ever; and they have no rest day nor night, who worship the beast and his image, and whosoever receiveth the mark of his name.’

  I thought at first that he was right; that the 12 might originally have been engraved as 11. But closer scrutiny showed that, though some of the figures had certainly been tampered with, it was not either the 2 or the 3. Prendergast hit on what I believe is the right solution. ‘The R,’ he said, ‘has been superimposed, on an L, and the 1 was originally 5. The reference is to Leviticus xiv. 52, 53.’ If he is correct, we have still far to go. I have read and re-read those verses so often during the day, that I can write them down from memory:

  ‘And he shall cleanse the house with the blood of the bird, and with the running water, and with the living bird, and with the cedar wood, and with the hyssop, and with the scarlet:

  ‘But he shall let go the living bird out of the city into the open fields, and make an atonement for the house; and it shall be clean.’

  Miss Ankardyne told Prendergast that she was dimly aware of something connected with pain and fire and a bird. It is at least a curious coincidence.

  Mason knows nothing about Francis Ankardyne except his name. He tells me that the Ankardyne squires of a hundred years ago had a reputation for evil living; in that, of course, they were not peculiar.

  Spent the afternoon in the library in a rather fruitless search for clues. I found two books with the name ‘Francis Ankardyne’ written on the fly-leaf. It was perhaps just as well that they should be tucked away on one of the upper shelves. One was inscribed as the gift of his cousin, Cotter Crawley. Query: Who is Crawley, and can he be identified with my man in black?

  I tried to reproduce the crystal-gazing under conditions similar to those of the other night, but without success. I have twice heard the bird. It might be either an owl or a cock. The sound seemed to come from outside the house, and was not pleasant.

  February 19th. Tomorrow Prendergast moves into the vicarage and I return home. Miss Ankardyne prolongs her stay at Malvern for another fortnight, and is then to visit friends on the south coast. I should like to have seen and questioned her, and so have discovered something more of the family history. Both Prendergast and I are disappointed. It seemed as if we were on the point of solving the mystery, and now it is as dark as ever. This new society in which Myers is interested should investigate the place.

  So ends my diary, but not the story. Some four months after the events narrated I managed to secure through a secondhand book dealer four bound volumes of the Gentleman’s Magazine. They had belonged to a Rev. Charles Phipson, once Fellow of Brasenose College and incumbent of Norton-on-the-Wolds. One evening, as I was glancing through them at my leisure, I came upon the following passage, under the date April 1789:

  At Tottenham, John Ardenoif, Esq., a young man of large fortune and in the splendour of his carriages and horses rivalled by few country gentlemen. His table was that of hospitality, where, it may be said, he sacrificed too much to conviviality; but, if he had his foibles, he had his merits also, that far outweighed them. Mr A. was very fond of cock-fighting and had a favourite cock upon which he won many profitable matches. The last bet he laid upon this cock he lost, which so enraged him that he had the bird tied to a spit and roasted alive before a large fire. The screams of the miserable bird were so affecting, that some gentlemen who were present attempted to interfere, which so enraged Mr A. that he seized a poker and with the most furious vehemence declared that he would kill the first man who interposed; but, in the midst of his passionate asseverations, he fell down dead upon the spot. Such, we are assured, were the circumstances which attended the death of this great pillar of humanity.

  Beneath was written:

  See also the narrative of Mr C— at the end of this volume.

  I give the story as I found it, inscribed in minute handwriting on the terminal fly-leaves:

  During his last illness the Rev. Mr C— gave me the following account of a similar instance of Divine Judgment. Mr A of A— House, in the county of W—, was notorious for his open practice of infidelity. He was an ardent votary of the chase, a reckless gamester, and was an enthusiast in his love of cockfighting. After carousing one evening with a boon companion, he proposed that they should then and there match the birds which they had entered for a contest on the morrow. His friend declaring that his bird should fight only in a cockpit, Mr A— announced that he had one adjoining the very room in which they were. The birds were brought, lights called for, and Mr A—, opening the door, led his guest down a flight of stairs and along a corridor to what he at first supposed were the stables. It was only after the match had begun, that he realised to his horror that they were in the family pew of A— church, to which A— House had private access. His expostulations only enraged his host, who commenced to blaspheme, wagering his very soul on the success of his bird, the victor of fifty fights. On this occasion the cock was defeated. Beside himself with frenzy, Mr A— rushed back to his bed-chamber and, declaring that the Judgment Day had come and that the bird should never crow again, thrust a wire into the embers, burned out its eyes, and bored through its tongue. He then fell down in some form of apoplectic fit. He recovered and continued his frenzied course of living for some years. It was noticed, however, that he had an impediment in his speech, especially remarkable when he was enraged, the effect of which was to make him utter a sound like the crowing of a cock. It became a cant phrase in the neighbourhood: ‘When A— crows, honest men must move.’ Two years after this awful occurrence, his sight began to fail. He was killed in the hunting field. His horse took fright and, bolting, carried him for over a mile across bad country to break his neck in an attempt to leap a ten-foot wall. At each obstacle they encountered, Mr A— called out, but the noise that came from his throat only seemed to terrify his horse the more. Mr C— vouches for the truth of the story, having had personal acquaintance with both the parties.

  The supposition that the Rev. Mr C— was none other than the boon companion of Francis Ankardyne did not seem to occur to the mind of the worthy Mr Phipson. That such was the case, I have no doubt. I saw him once in a glass darkly; and I saw later at Ankardyne House a silhouette of Cotter Crawley in an old album, and recognised the weak, foolish profile.

  Who it was who drew up the wording of the monument in Ankardyne church, I do not know. Probably the trustees of the heir, a distant kinsman and a mere boy. Perhaps the mason mistook the R for an L, the 1 for a 5. Perhaps he was a grim jester; perhaps the dead man guided the chisel. But I can picture the horror of Cotter Crawley in being confronted with those suggestive verses. I see him stealing from the house, which after years of absence he has brought himself to revisit, at night. I see him at work, cold, yet feverish, on the tell-tale stone. I see him stricken by remorse and praying, as the publican prayed, without in the sh
adow.

  Part of this story Prendergast and I told to Miss Ankardyne. The family pew is pulled down, and of the passage that connected the church with the house, only the façade is left. The house itself is quieter than it has been for years. A nephew of Miss Ankardyne from India is coming to live there soon. He has children, but I do not think there is anything of which they need be afraid. As I wrote before, it has been well aired by a kindly soul.

  THE TOOL

  I LIKE the long south corridor, with its light-coloured walls and low windows looking on to the garden. I do my writing there, for it is very quiet, especially when Jellerby is off colour and is obliged to keep to his room. He calls himself a Social Democrat, and is eloquent on the rights of man—a wonderfully fluent speaker, with facts and figures at his finger-tips to drive home every argument. But one tires of that sort of thing very easily. Of the two I would rather listen to Charlie Lovel recite his endless pedigree, as he sits dribbling over his knitting.

  I cannot help smiling to myself when I think of yesterday’s sermon. Canon Eldred was the preacher, and was obviously ill at ease, as indeed I should have been in similar circumstances. He has a red cheerful face, with comfortable folds of flesh about the chin; a typical healthy-minded Philistine, whom it did one good to see. However, he was there to speak to us. He took as his theme the Duty of Cheerfulness. The subject was excellent, and what he said was to the point; but I could not help wondering whether he had the slightest idea of the condition of those whom he addressed. Evidently he realised our need, but there was a tendency to regard us less as men than as children. He spoke incautiously of the man in the street, and, in so doing, showed the falsity of his position. We have no use for arguments calculated to satisfy the ordinary man, since we are extraordinary men in an extraordinary position.

  No, ‘the man in the street’ was, to say the least of it, a most unhappy phrase!

  I should like to tell Canon Eldred my own story. He told us that next week he was going away to enjoy a well-earned holiday. Two years ago I was taking my summer holiday too. Autumn holiday it was, in fact, for our vicar—I was senior curate at the time in a big working-class parish in the north of England—had gone off to the sea with his children in July, and Legge, my junior, had claimed August for the Tyrol.

  I had made no definite plans for myself that year. Something, I felt sure, would turn up, and if all my friends were booked elsewhere, I knew that I could depend on ten days at my uncle’s place in Devonshire, or a fortnight of fresh air and plain living on Bob’s disreputable old ketch. But somehow everything fell through. My uncle, who was beginning to be troubled about death duties, had let the shooting for the first time in fifty years; Bob was busy running his craft aground on Danish shoals, and I was left to my own resources. I set off finally at twelve hours’ notice on a ten days’ walking-tour, determined to hunt out some weather-proof barn within easy distance of a river or the sea, where Legge and I could take our boys to camp at Easter.

  I left on a Monday (and I would have Canon Eldred, if he ever reads this, to note the date, because the dates are an important part of my narrative) and Legge came with me to the station, for I had several matters to arrange with him connected with the parish work. I took a ten days’ ticket. It was stamped 22nd September, and, as I said, the 22nd was a Monday.

  That night I slept at Dunsley. It was the end of the season. Nearly all the visitors had left the place, but the harbour was jammed with the herring fleet, storm-bound for over three days, and all the alley-ways in the old town were crowded with fishermen. On the Tuesday I started off with my rucksack, intending to follow the line of the cliff, but the easterly gale was too much for me, and I struck inland on to the moors. I walked the whole of the day, a good thirty-five miles, and towards dusk got a lift in a farmer’s cart. He was going to Chedsholme, and there I spent the night at the Ship Inn, a stone’s-throw from the abbey church. I felt disinclined for a long tramp on Wednesday, so I walked on into Rapmoor in the morning, left my things with old Mr Robinson at the ‘Crown’, borrowed a rod and tackle from him, and spent the afternoon fishing the Lansdale beck. I found a splendid camping-ground, but no barn or building, and saw the farmer, a churchwarden, who readily gave permission for the setting up of our tents, if ever we brought the boys that way. Wednesday night I spent at Rapmoor, Thursday at Frankstone Edge, where I dined with the vicar, a college friend of Legge’s, and Friday at Gorton. The landlady of the inn at Gorton kept a green parrot in a cage in the parlour. It was remarkably tame, and though I am not usually fond of such birds, I remember spending quite a long time talking to it in the evening.

  I set out on the morning of Saturday prepared for a long walk and a probable soaking. Not that the rain was falling, but there was a mist sweeping inland over the moors from the sea, which I was obliged to face, since my track lay eastwards. 1 followed up the road to the end of the dale, and then took a rough path that skirted a plantation of firs past a disused quarry on to the moor. By noon I was right on the top of the tableland. I ate my sandwiches in the shelter of a peat shooting butt, while I tried to find my exact position on the map. It was not altogether easy, but I made a rough approximation, and then looked to see which was the nearest village where I could find lodging for the night. Chedsholme, where I had slept on Tuesday, seemed to be the easiest of access, and though they had charged me just double of what was reasonable for supper, bed, and breakfast, the fare was good and the house quiet, no small consideration on a Saturday night.

  It was after two when I left the shelter of the butt. I had at first some difficulty in finding my way. There were no landmarks on the moor to guide me; the flat expanse was only broken by mound after mound of unclothed shale, running in parallel lines from north to south, which marked the places where men had searched for ironstone many years before. Gradually the mounds grew less and less frequent, and I was beginning to think that I had left them all behind, when one larger than the rest loomed up out of the mist.

  Every man has experienced at some period of his life that strange intuition of danger which compels us, if only it be strong enough, to alter some course of action, substituting for a reasonable motive the blind force of fear. I was walking straight towards the mound, when I came to a standstill. Something seemed to repel me from the spot, while at the same time I became conscious of my intense isolation, alone on the moor miles away from any fellow creature. I stopped for half a minute, half in doubt as to whether to proceed. Then I told myself that fear is always strongest when in pursuit and, smiling at my folly, I went on.

  At the farther side of the mound was the body of a dead man. He was a foreigner, with dark skin and long oily locks of hair. A scarlet handkerchief was tied loosely round his throat. There were ear-rings in his ears. He lay on his back, with his eyes wide open and glazed.

  My first feeling was one, not of surprise or pity, but of intense, overpowering nausea. Then with an effort I pulled myself together and examined the body more closely. I could see at once that he had been dead several days. The hands were white and cold, and the limbs strangely limp. His clothes were little more than rags. The shirt was torn open, and tattooed on the chest—even in my horror I could not help but marvel at the skill with which the thing was done—was a great green parrot with wings outstretched.

  At first I could see no sign of how the man had met his death. It was not until I turned the body over that I noticed an ugly wound at the back of the skull, that might have been made by some blunt instrument or a stone. There was nothing for me to do except report the matter to the police as quickly as possible. The nearest constable would be stationed at Chedsholme, ten miles away; and I decided that the best way of getting there in the mist would be to walk eastwards until I struck the mineral line that runs from the Bleadale ironstone quarries. This I did; and I shall not easily forget the joyful feeling of companionship in a living world that I experienced on hearing the distant whistle of an engine, and saw five minutes later through a break in the clouds
the long train of trucks crawling along the sky-line.

  Once on the permanent way my progress became less slow. Freed from the necessity of maintaining a sense of direction, I began to think more of my horrible discovery. Who could the man be, and why had he been killed? He seemed to have nothing in common with this wild, cold country—a mariner, whom one might have seen without surprise in the days of the Spanish Main, marooned with empty treasure-chests on some spit of dazzling, shadeless sand. And then, the man being killed, why had the murderer done nothing to hide the traces of his crime? What could have been easier than to have covered the body with the loose shale from the mound? ‘I could have done the thing in five minutes,’ I said to myself, ‘if only I had a trowel.’ But it was useless for me to wonder what might be the meaning of this illustration to a story I could never hope to read. I left the line at the point where it crossed the road, and then followed the latter down the ridge to Chedsholme. I must have been a mile or more from the village, when the silence of the late afternoon was suddenly broken by the tolling of a bell.