They Walk in Darkness

by Gerald Verner

‘That blasted feller, Twist,’ interrupted Colonel Shoredust.

  ‘No, sir.’ Odds shook his head. ‘I’m satisfied that Twist has nothing to do with it. He’s just a bit soft . . .’

  ‘You never can tell with these fellers,’ said the Colonel, stubbornly. Tom Twist had been his favourite, and only, suspect, and he was reluctant that he should be so completely dismissed. ‘Damned cunning.’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ said the superintendent with a patience he was far from feeling. ‘But Twist has a constitutional aversion to the sight of blood.’ They were not his own words. He was quoting Doctor Culpepper. ‘It makes him sick, an’ there’s no fake about it. We had him tested by two doctors . . .’

  ‘Doctors!’ grunted Colonel Shoredust, disparagingly.

  ‘They both asserted,’ Odds went on, without taking any notice of the interruption, ‘that if Twist had wanted to kill, he wouldn’t have killed that way. They were absolutely convinced of that.’

  The Chief Constable uttered a sound that was suspiciously like a snort. It was quite evident that he placed no reliance at all on the verdict of the two doctors and would have been equally unimpressed if the doctors had numbered two hundred.

  ‘Well,’ he remarked, ‘there’s not much point in proving who couldn’t have done it. What we’ve got to do is to blasted-well prove who did do it. If you could hit on some bright ideas about that . . .’ The bell of the wall telephone broke out loudly and insistently, and so unexpectedly, that Sergeant Quilt gave a violent start and his elbow slipped off the mantelpiece. To save himself from falling, he grabbed wildly at the shelf, dislodging a tea cannister which fell with a clatter into the fireplace.

  ‘Clumsy fool!’ muttered Colonel Shoredust under his breath, but not so softly that Quilt didn’t hear the comment and glared at his superior ‘Odds! For God’s sake answer the blasted thing . . .’ The order was superfluous for Superintendent Odds was already at the instrument.

  ‘Hello?’ he called, with the receiver to his ear. ‘Oh, yes, sir . . . No, I’m afraid not . . . Yes, sir. I will, certainly . . . I’m very sorry . . . We’re doing everything we possibly can . . . Yes, sir, I’ll let you know at once.’ He hung up the receiver and looked at Colonel Shoredust. ‘It was Doctor Culpepper, sir. Wanted to know if we’d heard anything. It seems that Mrs. Coxen is very ill with shock, an’ in a dangerous condition. The doctor’s been with her most of the night . . .’

  ‘Damned sorry,’ said Colonel Shoredust. He passed a stubby hand over his thinning hair, and frowned. ‘Look here, you know,’ he burst out suddenly, striking the desk in front of him with his fist, ‘this can’t blasted-well go on. We’ve got to damned-well pull ourselves together and go into action.’

  ‘What do you suggest, sir?’ asked the superintendent.

  ‘This business has got to be put a stop to,’ replied the Chief Constable ‘This blasted butcher has got to be found . . .’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ said Odds. ‘We’re all agreed on that, but how?’

  ‘If we can’t do it off our own bat,’ said Colonel Shoredust, ‘we’ll blasted-well get help . . .’

  ‘You mean Scotland Yard?’ said Odds, and the Chief Constable nodded.

  ‘I don’t like having to ask for help,’ he grunted. ‘Admission of defeat an’ all that. Goes against the grain. But damn it all this can’t go on . . .’

  ‘Do you think, sir,’ said Odds, ‘that Scotland Yard could do any more than we have . . .’

  ‘I don’t know. They couldn’t blasted-well do any less,’ said the Colonel, candidly. ‘Oh, I’m not blaming you fellers,’ he added, as he saw the expression that came into the tired face of the superintendent, ‘any more than I’m blaming myself. We’ve done our damnedest, all of us. But we haven’t been successful, and that’s all that counts.’

  ‘Well, sir,’ said Odds. ‘It’s up to you, of course.’

  ‘There’s nothing else we can do,’ declared Colonel Shoredust. ‘We’ve tried and we’ve failed. If we don’t call in the Yard there’s going to be a damned unholy row, and we shall bear the whole blasted brunt of it. I’ll get in touch with ’em today.’

  He postponed carrying out this decision until the evening of that eventful day and was glad that he had, for by then the horror of Fendyke St. Mary had taken a new turn, and in addition to the slaughter of lambs, and the murder of children, he was presented with a problem so weird and extraordinary, so completely inexplicable, that it was more like the wild imaginings of a nightmare than anything real.

  Chapter Eight

  Mrs. Sowerby came out of her small cottage in the High Street into the cold grey gloom of the morning just as the clock in the tower of Fendyke St. Mary’s church chimed half-past seven. It was not a novel experience, for she left her cottage at that time every morning except Sundays. It allowed her to reach Robin Mallory’s little house on the Green by a quarter to eight, get his breakfast ready, and take it up to him at half-past. Mrs. Sowerby did not altogether approve of Robin Mallory, but he paid well and regularly, and the work was comparatively light. Her disapproval was based principally on the fact that he was an artist and that he invariably stayed in bed until midday. Mrs. Sowerby had strict and rather narrow views about art, and Mr. Mallory’s pictures decidedly shocked her. The naked and unadorned female form should, properly, be confined to the privacy of the bathroom and not allowed to blatantly disport itself, in every conceivable pose, from the walls of dining room, studio, and bedroom, even if it was only in pictures. And some of the pictures . . . well, really, it made her blush every time she saw them. Apart from this, Mr. Mallory seemed to be a fairly respectable young man. He spent a great deal of his time painting in the big room which he used for a studio and, although Mrs. Sowerby had found traces, in the way of bottles, dirty glasses, and laden ash-trays, of innumerable parties, there was no evidence that he indulged in any of the more erotic vices.

  Mrs. Sowerby hurried along with a rather waddling gait, her breath issuing in steamy clouds from her parted lips, and thankful that the night had not brought with it any more snow. There were lights in some of the cottages she passed on her way, but she saw no one during the short distance from her house to the Green. Robin Mallory’s house was one of the few modern ones in the village, which is to say that it was not more than two hundred years old. The exterior was not very beautiful to look at, and had been rendered less so by the door and window-frames which Mallory had painted a vivid orange, and which thoroughly offended the critical taste of Mrs. Sowerby. She let herself in with her key and looked for any signs of a convivial evening. But this morning there were no empty bottles, used glasses, or laden trays of cigarette-ends. The place was fairly neat and tidy — as tidy anyway, as it ever was. She went through to the kitchen and filled a kettle at the sink. Lighting a ring of the gas stove she set the kettle on to boil while she prepared toast and bacon.

  When it was ready, she made the tea, laid a dainty tray — Robin Mallory was rather finicky about the way things were served up to him — and carried it up the stairs to the bedroom. With the edge of the tray she tapped gently on the door. There was no reply, which was unusual, for he invariably answered at once, and after a moment she knocked again. Still receiving no reply, Mrs. Sowerby shifted the tray so that it rested on one arm, and turning the handle of the door, gently went in.

  ‘Well, I do declare!’ she exclaimed in surprised annoyance, for the room was empty. Instead of Mr. Mallory, in flamboyant pyjamas, reclining at ease in the old French bed, it was unoccupied and, apparently, had not been occupied that night at all, for it was as smooth and undisturbed as when she made it on the previous day.

  ‘Well, I do declare,’ said Mrs. Sowerby again, staring about her in resentful astonishment. ‘What can have become of the man.’

  She stood uncertainly, with the large breakfast tray held out in front of her, moving her head from side to side as though she expected Robin Mallory to make a sudden and miraculous appearance. But he did nothing of the sort. Mrs. Sowerby put the tray
down on a table near the bed head and waddled out to the bathroom. After knocking loudly on the door, with no better result than her previous knocking on the door of the bedroom had achieved, she opened the door and peered gingerly in. The bathroom was empty. Mr. Mallory’s rather startling dressing-gown of jade green silk hung on a hook behind the door, but of Mr. Mallory himself there was no sign. Disconcerted and slightly alarmed, for such a thing had never happened before during the entire period she had worked for him, Mrs. Sowerby began a hasty but thorough inspection of the house. The big, untidy studio, with its litter of paints, brushes, and canvases, was empty. The dining room was empty. The small lounge was empty. In another five minutes, during which time she had been all over the house, Mrs. Sowerby was forced to the incredible conclusion that Mr. Mallory was not there and had not been there since the previous day.

  ‘Well, I never did,’ declared Mrs. Sowerby to the world in general. ‘What can have happened to the man?’ Since there was nobody to answer this question, she had to try and find an explanation for herself. And this she did while she ate Mr. Mallory’s breakfast and drank his tea in the kitchen. He must have gone to visit some friends and stayed the night. Certainly he had never done such a thing before, but that was the only thing it could be. Very definitely he hadn’t slept in his own house.

  ‘Oh, well,’ thought Mrs. Sowerby, philosophically, as she set about her work, ‘I suppose ’e’s his own master an’ can do as ’e likes.’

  She began to wash up the breakfast dishes energetically.

  Chapter Nine

  Mr. Felix Courtland woke from an uneasy and troubled sleep and blinked into semi-darkness. His head felt as though it had been stuffed very thoroughly and completely with cotton wool, and his throat was dry and rough. He had tossed and turned through most of the night, and now, at last, when he had succeeded in dropping off to sleep, some infernal racket had woken him.

  The ‘infernal racket’ was, he discovered, only a soft tapping on his bedroom door and he growled a hoarse ‘come in.’ The door opened and a housemaid loomed through the gloom. She carried a tray which she set down on the table beside his bed and then went swiftly and quietly over to the windows and drew back the curtains. Mr. Courtland sat up in bed as light flooded into the room; the weird, artificial light that is produced by the reflection from snow.

  ‘What time is it?’ he grunted, ungraciously and thickly.

  ‘Ten o’clock, sir,’ said the housemaid. ‘I was told to wake you, sir, and ask if you knew where Miss Laura was, sir?’

  She was a very young girl and she was a little nervous and apprehensive of Mr. Courtland, even when he hadn’t a severe cold in the head.

  ‘Where Miss Laura is?’ repeated her master, rubbing his bald head vigorously and looking like a depilated ape. ‘Isn’t she in bed?’

  ‘No, sir,’ said the maid, backing slowly towards the door.

  ‘Well, I suppose she’s somewhere about the house,’ growled Mr. Courtland, turning to the tray of tea and preparing to pour milk into his cup. ‘Why come to me?’

  ‘But she ain’t in the ’ouse, sir,’ said the maid. ‘She hasn’t been in the ’ouse all night, sir . . .’

  Mr. Courtland paused with the jug poised over the cup.

  ‘Nonsense,’ he declared, curtly.

  ‘Miss Laura’s bed hasn’t been slept in, sir,’ persisted the housemaid. ‘When I took in ’er tea it was just like it was yesterday, sir. Miss Laura ’adn’t been to bed . . .’

  Mr. Courtland put down the milk-jug and glared at her with slightly bloodshot eyes.

  ‘What’s that?’ he rasped, and coughed. He continued to cough violently until the tears were running down his fat cheeks. After a minute or so the paroxysm stopped, leaving him red in the face and breathless. ‘Ugh,’ he gasped, wiping his lips with his handkerchief. ‘Now what’s all this? Miss Laura hasn’t been to bed? Why the devil didn’t she go to bed?’

  The maid, having no answer to this question, contented herself with opening her eyes very wide and shaking her head.

  Mr. Courtland blew his nose noisily and with great energy.

  ‘Where did she go last night?’ he said, when this operation was over. ‘Oh, I know. She went to dinner with Miss Wymondham. Probably stayed there. Tell Pitt to ring up Wymondham Lodge . . .’

  The maid was glad of an excuse to escape; Mr. Courtland was equally glad to be rid of her. He poured himself out a cup of tea and gulped it with enjoyment. It eased his dry throat. Confoundedly unpleasant things colds. Why couldn’t the doctors find a quick and reasonable cure? They were pretty good with more elaborate complaints, but the common cold had always beaten ’em . . . Silly to make such a fuss over Laura. She was old enough to take care of herself, and if she didn’t want to, that was her affair. It wouldn’t be the first time she’d stayed out all night . . . usually there was some man or other at the bottom of it. Laura collected them like some people collected stamps or old china. None of ’em lasted very long. Variety, that’s what Laura liked . . . There wasn’t much choice, though, in Fendyke St. Mary . . . She’d have to be careful. You couldn’t carry on in a village like you could in the West End of London . . . It would be just as well if he had a word with her about it. Not that it would do much good. It was impossible to argue with Laura. She just flared up, and that was that . . . Who could be the attraction this time? Must be somebody local, but who? He’d thought for a long while that there was something going on. There’d been a sort of undercurrent of excitement about her for the last year . . . Oh, well, he supposed it must be pretty dull for a girl of Laura’s temperament in a place like Fendyke St. Mary, so if she’d found something to amuse her it would, at least, keep her in a good temper, which was something to be thankful for . . . Oh, damn! here was somebody else to disturb him . . .

  A knock heralded the entrance of Pitt, stout, dark, correctly dressed as a butler should be dressed.

  ‘What is it now?’ demanded Mr. Courtland, irritably.

  ‘I have telephoned Wymondham Lodge, sir,’ said Pitt, respectful without any trace of being servile. ‘Miss Wymondham informs me that Miss Laura left shortly after half-past ten, expressing her intention of returning home because you were ill. She did not do so, sir, and the small car which she took out last night is not in the garage.’

  Mr. Courtland frowned.

  ‘Where the deuce can she be?’ he muttered. ‘If she’d had an accident we should have heard. She must have gone on to some friends of hers . . .’

  ‘Very possibly, sir,’ said Pitt, without emotion. ‘I thought it only right that you should know.’

  ‘Yes, yes, quite.’ Mr. Courtland nodded. ‘You did quite right, Pitt . . .’ He rubbed his chin, continuing to frown.

  ‘Is there anything you would wish me to do, sir?’ inquired the butler, and Mr. Courtland considered for a moment before he answered.

  ‘No,’ he said, at last. ‘No, I don’t think so, Pitt. Miss Laura will probably come back during the morning. When she does, ask her to come and see me at once.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’ Pitt gave a slight bow and went out, closing the door softly behind him. But the morning wore away, and lunchtime came and went, and still Laura Courtland had not come home.

  Chapter Ten

  Old Ted Hoskins, the postman, trudged stolidly through the snow, a bundle of letters in his hand and more in the satchel slung round his neck. The weather made no difference to him. Snow, rain, hail or sunshine, it was all the same. Many years at his job had hardened him. Sometimes there were few letters; sometimes many. That was all the same to him, too. This morning there were quite a number. One for Miss Flitterwyk; three for the Sherwoods; half a dozen for the vicarage, four for the Reverend Amos Benskill and two for the curate, the Reverend Gilbert Ray; a very ornate, perfumed one for Miss Fay Bennett, and one for Miss Helen Wymondham. There was a registered parcel for Monsieur André Severac and a bundle of magazines for Miss Tittleton. Ted Hoskins gradually shed his load, passing from house to house with his shuf
fling hobble which was the result, partly of old age, and partly of bunions. He came at last to the isolated house of Monsieur André Severac which stood in a narrow lane running off the Green. The exterior of the house was neither imposing nor prepossessing, but Hoskins had seen the interior and knew that it was furnished both tastefully and luxuriously, for Monsieur André Severac was a rich bachelor who liked to surround himself with every comfort. Hoskins took the parcel out of his satchel, with the receipt slip neatly tucked under the string, as he hobbled up the short path to the front door. He beat the usual double tat-tat on the bronze knocker, which was in the shape of a coiled snake, and waited. He expected Monsieur André Severac would appear in the heavy flowered silk dressing-gown which seemed to be his habitual apparel indoors. But Monsieur André Severac did not appear, either in the dressing-gown or out of it. Hoskins knocked again, and then a third time, but there was no reply. The door remained closed and no sound came from within.

  The postman frowned. This meant that he would have to take the parcel away and come back with it later. It was very inconsiderate of Monsieur André Severac to be out, and very unusual. Old Ted Hoskins turned reluctantly away and departed, grumbling under his breath, to deliver the rest of the mail.

  Chapter Eleven

  ‘Nice to be some people, that it is,’ grumbled Mrs. Bossom, ‘lyin’ in bed ’alf the day an’ no consideration for people as wants to get on with their work.’

  ‘Do you think I’d best take up ’er tea?’ suggested Rose, the maid.

  ‘No, I don’t,’ answered Mrs. Bossom, pouring herself out a second cup of strong black tea and splashing in a generous quantity of milk. ‘You know what ’appened when we did that once. She flew into such a rage that the roof nearly came off. We’ve got orders not to disturb ’er Royal ’Ighness until she rings.’ She put three spoonsful of sugar into her tea, stirred it vigorously, and swallowed half of the horrible decoction at a gulp.