They Walk in Darkness

by Gerald Verner

  ‘I know,’ said Peter. ‘But I shall be all right. I’m taking the car.’

  He pulled on a raincoat, wound a muffler round his throat, and picked up his hat. Hewson watched him with frankly astonished eyes as he opened the front door and went out into the cold, wet greyness. The gravel of the path round to the garage was a morass of yellow puddles. The rain had abated very little in violence during the night and there was no sign that it was likely to. The sky was a leaden tent. Peter began to wish that he had not been so impatient to find out if the idea which had come to him during the night was feasible. The morning might have been less depressing after breakfast.

  He unlocked the garage and got into the car. It was only after several attempts that the cold engine consented to function and he backed slowly out . . .

  The light had strengthened when he reached Witch’s House, and getting out of the car, he picked his way towards the desolate old building, avoiding with difficulty the numerous puddles which were the size of small ponds. His objective was the porch. Here, if there was anything in his idea at all, he might expect to find confirmation. And he found it. What his imagination had suggested might be there was there. He felt a glow of satisfaction that his reasoning had proved to be correct. This, then, was how the trick had been worked. This was how the murderer had come and gone without leaving any marks on the snow. As simple as that . . .

  Chapter Ten

  A reply from the Sûreté arrived for Detective-Inspector Donaldson that morning, and he read it while he waited for Peter, who had promised to take him to April Sherwood’s house. He read it with deepening interest, to the neglect of his coffee which grew cold at his elbow. One paragraph in particular he read several times. The report had been forwarded from Scotland Yard after being translated from the original French, and several relevant notes appended. It contained a fairly comprehensive account of the Reverend Gilbert Ray’s career, but, with the exception of that one paragraph, there was nothing that had any bearing on the present case. He had come to England at the age of seventeen and had been ordained at the age of twenty-five. He had held several curacies in various parts of the country but, apparently, had never been very popular. There had been vague rumours, nothing substantiated, linking his name with a number of women, and in no instance had he held an appointment for very long. But there had been no open scandal. Donaldson’s eyes came back to the paragraph which had held his attention before, and dwelt there thoughtfully.

  ‘The name of Ray is an Anglicized version of de Rais. The family is a very old one in France, tracing its origin back to Gilles de Rais of notorious memory . . .’

  Of notorious memory . . .? Donaldson reached out a hand and picked up the volume by Montague Summers, which had come by registered post addressed to André Severac. Turning the pages until he found the place he was seeking, he read slowly and carefully. He was still reading when Peter arrived.

  ‘Good morning, Mr. Chard,’ he said, resting a hand heavily on the open book before him. ‘Have you ever heard of a man called Gilles de Rais?’

  ‘Yes,’ answered Peter. ‘He was a French nobleman who went in for hideous and horrible practices, witchcraft, Devil-worship, and murder. He was tried and convicted with several others for the abduction, torture, and murder of a number of children in 1441, I believe . . .’

  ‘I’ve just been reading about him here, sir,’ said Donaldson, patting the book.

  ‘Not very pleasant reading,’ remarked Peter. ‘He gave a detailed description at his trial of the sensations he experienced when he cut his victims’ throats . . .’

  ‘Gilles de Rais,’ said Donaldson, slowly, ‘was an ancestor of Gilbert Ray.’

  ‘What!’ Peter’s ejaculation was full of startled surprise.

  ‘Ray is an Anglicized version of de Rais,’ explained the inspector carefully. ‘Gilbert Ray comes from the same family as this Gilles de Rais we’ve been talking about . . .’

  ‘How did you discover that?’ demanded Peter.

  ‘The report from Paris has just been forwarded to me from the Yard, sir,’ said Donaldson. ‘There’s very little in it apart from that. Here, you can read it for yourself.’

  Peter picked up the report which he tossed over, and glanced through it.

  ‘There seem to be certain rumours . . .’ he began, and Donaldson interrupted him with a grunt.

  ‘They’re not much good to us, Mr. Chard,’ he said. ‘They may help to confirm our own opinion, but that’s all. It’s evidence we want. Real, concrete, four-square evidence that can be put before a jury. Even the fact that Ray is a descendant of this de Rais is only interesting from a psychological point of view. It wouldn’t cut any ice in a court of law . . .’

  ‘I should say that it was a clear case of heredity,’ said Peter. ‘A throw-back . . .’

  ‘And I agree with you, sir,’ said the inspector, instantly. ‘But it wouldn’t hold water with a jury — not without something more substantial to back it up. I daren’t take any action without more proof. There’d be a colossal row and probably a case for damages . . . We’d better be getting along to see Mrs. Sherwood, hadn’t we, sir . . .?’

  Peter agreed and Donaldson got up and put on his hat and coat. It was still pouring with rain — a steady, determined downpour that seemed to have decided to go on for ever. Everything was wet and grey and cold and unutterably depressing. Even the discovery which he had made that morning, and which he had decided for the present to keep to himself, failed to bring Peter any sense of elation. He should, he thought, as he sent the car splashing through the streaming morning, be feeling very pleased with himself, but he wasn’t. He had found the solution to the puzzle of Witch’s House, but it brought him no sense of pleasure . . . The gloomy greyness of the morning not only surrounded him, but seemed to have seeped through flesh and bone to his innermost being . . .

  The maidservant who had admitted them on the previous evening came to the door in answer to Donaldson’s knock.

  ‘Oh,’ she said, when she recognized them. ‘I’m sorry, but Mrs. Sherwood is not at home . . .’

  ‘But we had an appointment with her for half-past nine,’ broke in the inspector, sharply. ‘Where has she gone?’

  ‘I don’t know, sir,’ answered the servant. ‘She went out just before nine . . .’

  ‘Did she say how long she would be?’ asked Peter.

  The girl shook her head.

  ‘No, sir,’ she replied.

  Donaldson’s forehead puckered with annoyance and he looked reproachfully at Peter as though he were to blame.

  ‘I’m sure Mrs. Sherwood cannot intend to be long,’ said Peter. ‘She was definitely expecting us this morning . . .’

  ‘She didn’t say nothing about it, sir,’ said the girl. ‘Maybe she forgot. She looked dreadfully ill — terrible — an’ she didn’t go to bed all night . . .’

  ‘I think we’d better come in and wait,’ suggested Peter. ‘I’m quite sure Mrs. Sherwood will not be long . . .’

  The girl looked doubtful. She was obviously worried about her mistress and didn’t want to do anything that was likely to cause her any more distress. Rather reluctantly, however, she admitted them and ushered them into the room where they had left April Sherwood on the previous night.

  ‘I don’t like this, I don’t like it at all, Mr. Chard,’ grunted Inspector Donaldson, when they were left alone. ‘I oughtn’t to have agreed last night to leave things until this morning . . .’

  ‘I don’t see what else you could do,’ remarked Peter. ‘She obviously wasn’t in a fit state to answer questions . . .’

  ‘It looks to me as though she was trying to dodge answering questions altogether,’ said Donaldson, who seemed to be still a little ruffled at the turn events had taken. ‘It looks to me as though she’s cleared off . . .’

  ‘Oh, nonsense,’ interrupted Peter, though he was feeling more than a little uneasy about this disappearance of April’s. ‘Why should she?’

  ‘Well, I don’t kn
ow, sir,’ admitted Donaldson. ‘But she isn’t here, is she?’

  ‘She’s probably gone out for a breath of air, or to see someone,’ said Peter, not very convincingly.

  ‘I hope you’re right, sir,’ said Donaldson, dubiously. ‘I hope that’s all it is . . .’

  ‘What else could it be?’ demanded Peter. ‘What’s at the back of your mind . . .?’

  ‘I don’t know, but I wish I’d insisted on carrying on last night,’ answered the inspector, staring gloomily out of the window. ‘This is all wasting time, Mr. Chard. Mrs. Sherwood may be in possession of vital information about her husband’s murderers. She may know why he was killed, or at least be able to offer a suggestion . . .’

  ‘I think you’re right about that,’ interrupted Peter. ‘Look here, Donaldson, I wasn’t going to say anything until we’d seen Mrs. Sherwood this morning, but now I think I ought to. I believe I know who killed those four people at Witch’s House and how the snow trick was worked . . .’

  Donaldson swung round from the window. His face was full of startled surprise.

  ‘You do, sir?’ he said, sharply. ‘You do . . .?’

  ‘I think Mrs. Sherwood knows too,’ went on Peter, rapidly. ‘That’s why her husband was killed. If you come with me to that old cottage I’ll show you what I found this morning and what I think it means. It won’t take long and by the time we get back Mrs. Sherwood will probably have returned . . .’

  ‘Can’t you tell me, Mr. Chard,’ said Donaldson, doubtfully. ‘I don’t want to . . .’

  ‘I want you to see with your own eyes,’ broke in Peter. ‘You’ll understand better that way. We’re not doing any good hanging about here, are we? We can do the whole thing in under half an hour and be back . . .’

  ‘All right,’ agreed Donaldson, suddenly. ‘Who do you believe poisoned those four people?’

  ‘You’ll know that when I show you how the trick was worked with the snow,’ said Peter, ‘because only one person could have possibly done it.’

  *

  They left word with the worried and distressed maidservant that they would be returning in half an hour, and asked her to inform her mistress, if she should come back in the interim, and set out for Witch’s House through the steadily falling rain. Donaldson was curious and a little excited; Peter doubtful as to whether he had, perhaps, been a trifle premature after all in divulging what he had discovered, and unable to shake off the depression that still gripped him. As they passed through the village he saw several groups of people chattering excitedly and apparently heedless of the rain. It was unusual, and he wondered in a lukewarm, detached way what the excitement was about. His mind was too occupied with his immediate errand to give it more than a passing thought, however. On the road leading to the old cottage, a man on a bicycle came splashing towards them, pedalling furiously, and as he went by he shouted something, but the noise of the rain on the roof and the hiss of tyres drowned whatever it was he said.

  ‘What did he say?’ grunted Donaldson, but Peter shook his head.

  ‘Probably something rude because we splashed him with mud,’ he answered. ‘The people who haven’t got cars always resent those who have. The pedestrian dislikes the cyclist and the cyclist dislikes the motorist, and the motorist dislikes the man who has a bigger car than his own. It’s the same with most other things, too. The vast majority of people hate anybody to have anything better than they have themselves . . . Hello, here’s another cyclist. This road seems to be unusually full of traffic this morning . . .’

  The second cyclist seemed to be in as great a hurry as the first. With his head bent down over the handle-bars, he drove his machine forward with powerful thrusts on the pedals, skidding and splashing over the muddy, rutted road. But unlike the first, he slowed down as he saw the car approaching him.

  ‘Get back!’ he shouted. ‘Get back . . .’

  Peter pulled up and lowered the window.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ he called.

  ‘The sluice gate’s goin’ . . .’ panted the man. ‘On the Great Dyke . . . You’d best turn back, mister. They’re doin’ their best, but they say it can’t hold much longer . . . When it does go this bloody road’ll be ten foot deep’n water in a matter of seconds . . .’

  Peter glanced quickly through the curtain of rain to where Witch’s House was mistily visible in the dip. If the sluice went the old cottage would be almost submerged.

  ‘You’d best get a move on, mister,’ warned the man on the bicycle urgently. ‘There won’t be no time when once she goes . . .’

  ‘Look!’ exclaimed Donaldson, suddenly. ‘There’s somebody there — in the porch of the house . . . I saw them move . . .’

  ‘Well, I’m on me way,’ broke in the cyclist, impatiently. ‘You can do what you like, but you’ll be a bloody fool if you don’t turn back an’ quick.’ He thrust off with his foot and began pedalling for all he was worth.

  ‘I can’t see anybody,’ said Peter. ‘What do you think we ought to do, Donaldson. Go back?’

  ‘If there’s danger of the sluice gate going, I suppose we ought, sir,’ said the inspector. ‘There wouldn’t be much chance if we were caught down in the hollow. I’m sure I did see something move in the porch of the cottage . . .’

  ‘Imagination,’ said Peter. ‘This is a damn nuisance. I wanted to show you . . .’

  There was a sudden muted boom, followed by a rending sound, like the falling of a heavy tree in a thick forest, and then a dull roar that grew momentarily louder.

  ‘That’s it!’ cried Peter. ‘That’s the sluice gate . . .’ He pressed on the clutch pedal and slid the gear lever from neutral into first . . .

  ‘Look!’ shouted Donaldson, in alarm. ‘Here comes the water . . .’

  The edge of the Great Dyke running behind Witch’s House was no longer a straight and unbroken line. It seemed to bulge and move and heave like something that was alive. A great boiling mass of water reared up in a solid wall, broke, and thundered down the bank. It came flooding forward; a huge wave that spread with a rapidity that was uncanny, engulfing everything in its path, swirling and hissing and booming; a released torrent that nothing could check. Even as Peter sent the car forward preparatory to turning round, the mass of water reached Witch’s House and broke around it in a deluge of spume and spray. A man burst suddenly from the dark mouth of the porch, was caught by the rushing waters and hurled forward like a piece of driftwood, spinning and bobbing and wildly struggling in the seething whirlpool . . .

  ‘My God!’ cried Donaldson. ‘Did you see that? There was someone there . . .’

  Peter, hurrying frantically to turn the car in the narrow road, said nothing. They were powerless anyway. Whoever it was, was beyond help. The strongest swimmer would be helpless in a fight against that maelstrom. The old cottage was already half submerged and the flood was rushing relentlessly forward; a tumbling, frothing cataract that in a few seconds would reach the car . . . Peter backed it, wrenched the wheel round, and sent it jerking forward. The tyres slithered and slipped in the semi-liquid mud and the right wing scraped the hedge. There was a bump and a jolt that nearly shot them out of their seats and then the car was round and facing the way they had come. Peter’s foot came down hard on the accelerator and the car gave a quivering leap forward, its back wheels sending up a fountain of water and mud as the first wave of the flood came bubbling round them.

  ‘Just in time, I think,’ said Peter, through his teeth.

  Donaldson nodded. As they sped away from the onrushing waters to safety, he looked back. Only the roof and chimney of Witch’s House were visible above the water — the roof and chimney and the thin, tapering branches of the pollard willows . . .

  Chapter Eleven

  April Sherwood had not returned when they got back to the house, neither had there been any message from her. They waited for nearly an hour with growing impatience and uneasiness, but she did not put in an appearance.

  ‘Where on earth can she have got to?
’ muttered Peter, and Donaldson, who was pacing up and down the room, stopped and shrugged his shoulders.

  ‘Heaven knows, sir,’ he grunted, irritably, ‘but there’s going to be a hell of a lot of trouble if she doesn’t turn up, and the brunt of it’ll fall on me. I should never have given her this opportunity, Mr. Chard, and that’s all there is to it. But I never imagined for one moment that she wouldn’t keep her appointment . . .’

  ‘I can’t understand why she hasn’t,’ said Peter, frowning. ‘Unless,’ he added, quickly, as a thought occurred to him, ‘the flood has anything to do with it. Perhaps she has got cut off . . .’

  ‘That might be possible,’ said the inspector, but without any very great enthusiasm at the suggestion. ‘But where would she be likely to go to? Had she any particular friend whom she would be likely to turn to in her trouble?’

  ‘Not that I know,’ said Peter, shaking his head. ‘But then, of course, I’ve only known her for a very short while. Probably Lily could help there . . .’

  Lily, the maidservant, could offer no help whatever. Mrs. Sherwood, she said, knew most of the people in the village and was on friendly terms with nearly all of them, but she couldn’t think of any particular person she might have gone to.

  ‘Well, I can’t hang about here all day,’ said Donaldson, gruffly. ‘Will you tell your mistress to ring me up at the police station immediately she comes in.’ He scribbled the number on a card and gave it to the girl. ‘And please tell her that it is urgently important that I see her as soon as possible.’

  Lily promised. She was obviously both mystified and worried at her mistress’s continued absence.

  ‘She might at least have left a note,’ said the inspector, as they left the house, ‘saying where she was going and how long she’d be. It looks to me as though she were trying to avoid answering any questions about her husband’s murder.’

  Peter made no reply to this. He was wondering if, perhaps, Donaldson wasn’t somewhere near the truth in his surmise.