They Walk in Darkness

by Gerald Verner

  ‘Now what about this discovery of yours, sir?’ went on the inspector, when they were on their way to the police station. ‘You say you know how and who killed those people in the cottage. Suppose you . . .’

  ‘Wait till we get to the police station,’ interrupted Peter hastily. ‘I’ll tell you all about it then.’

  They found Fendyke St. Mary in a state of seething excitement. Refugees who had been lucky enough to get away from the flooded area before the rising of the waters stood about in uncertain groups with such belongings as they had been able to get together and bring with them, in forlorn little bundles. Rescue parties were being hastily organized to go to the help of the less fortunate who had been marooned. Timber for the construction of improvised rafts was being requisitioned and boats of all sizes and types were arriving on trucks and carts. The usually placid village was now a place of feverish activity. Near the church of St. Mary, Peter caught sight of the Reverend Amos Benskill talking to a man and a woman, obviously two victims of the flood, and pulled up. The vicar recognized him and came over to the car, his fat face worried and anxious.

  ‘This is a terrible catastrophe, Mr. Chard,’ he said. ‘Terrible. The low-lying portions of the district are already completely under water and it is still rising . . .’

  ‘We nearly got caught in it,’ said Peter. ‘We were close to Witch’s House when the sluice gate went . . .’

  ‘It is monstrous,’ said Mr. Benskill, his face reddening with righteous indignation, ‘that the Conservancy Board should have neglected to attend to the sluice. Absolutely criminal! Hundreds of people have been completely cut off and are in considerable danger. We are doing our best. Mrs. Dilly is providing hot coffee and sandwiches at the vicarage, and the schoolroom and the church are being prepared for those poor souls who have been rendered temporarily homeless. We need volunteers for the rescue work, Mr. Chard. As many as we can gather, for this is a case of working against time. I should be glad if we could count on your help? Your car would be invaluable . . .’

  Peter looked at Donaldson.

  ‘I s’pose we ought to do what we can, sir,’ muttered the inspector. ‘There’s no doubt about the urgency of it . . .’

  ‘You can count on us,’ said Peter, and the vicar beamed.

  ‘Splendid, splendid,’ he cried, rubbing his hands together. ‘Your aunt and your wife are already preparing to look after some of the stranded. Perhaps you would go and see Tom Acheson, who is organizing transport? I’m afraid I must go and see what has happened to the mattresses and blankets . . . All these poor people will have to be provided with somewhere to sleep tonight and until their houses have been rendered habitable again . . . I wish I could find my curate. His help would be invaluable at this crisis, but I haven’t seen him since this morning when he left the vicarage with Mrs. Sherwood . . .’

  ‘What’s that?’ said Peter curtly.

  ‘I said I hadn’t seen the Reverend Gilbert Ray since this morning,’ repeated the vicar, looking rather astonished at Peter’s tone. ‘Mrs. Sherwood called to see him and they went out together . . . All right, I’m coming, I’m coming.’ Somebody called to him from across the street and he went trotting away to see what they wanted.

  ‘So that’s where she went?’ said Peter. He should, he thought, have guessed that, all things considered.

  ‘The question is, sir,’ remarked Donaldson, ‘where did she go to afterwards — when she left with Ray? And where are they both now? You know, Mr. Chard, it’s a very queer thing that she should have gone to Ray at all. It almost looks as though she had the same idea about him as we have . . .’

  ‘It wouldn’t surprise me to know that she did,’ answered Peter, sending the car moving slowly forward. ‘Look here, Donaldson, suppose we shelve the whole thing until we’re through with helping to rescue these people from the flood?’

  Donaldson gave a sidelong glance and his lips curved into a slight smile.

  ‘Twice you’ve put off telling me your idea about the murders in Witch’s House, sir,’ he said. ‘And now you’re putting it off again . . .’

  ‘I know,’ said Peter, ‘but a few hours won’t make much difference, will it . . .?’

  ‘I don’t know about that, sir,’ disagreed the inspector. ‘It might make . . .’

  ‘I can assure you it won’t,’ broke in Peter. ‘You can take my word for that.’

  ‘I’ve got an idea that we’re thinking very much along the same lines, sir,’ remarked Donaldson, shrewdly.

  ‘That wouldn’t surprise me,’ said Peter.

  *

  They worked till it was dark, fetching people and their goods and chattels from the rafts and boats that brought them across the wide expanse of the flood-waters. Mattresses, beds and blankets had been collected and brought to the schoolroom and the church; articles of clothing and food. Miss Wymondham, voluble as ever and full of abuse against the Conservancy Board, whose negligence had been the direct cause of the disaster, took charge of the schoolroom and, assisted by Ann and half a dozen helpers, received the wet, frozen, and exhausted victims of the flood and administered to their creature comforts with dry clothing, tea, and hot soup. When the schoolroom could take no more, they were diverted to the church, where the Reverend Amos Benskill and another band of helpers administered a similar treatment. The devastated area was enormous. Fendyke St. Mary was surrounded on three sides, and the water lapped sluggishly at the foot of the High Street within a few yards of the Red Lion. Hinton was completely cut off and the railway line submerged for nearly a mile. Peter found time for a brief word with Ann while he hastily swallowed a cup of tea and a sandwich.

  ‘Enjoying your holiday?’ he asked. ‘From battle, murder, and sudden death, good Lord, deliver us!’

  ‘Did you see April?’ she said. ‘How is she . . .?’

  ‘I haven’t seen her,’ he answered, quickly. ‘She was out when we got there this morning . . .’ He told her briefly what he had learned from the vicar.

  ‘But, Peter, why did she go to Ray?’ said Ann.

  ‘I think I know,’ said Peter, a little grimly. ‘I think I know nearly everything, or I can guess. I can’t stop now, though, darling. See you later . . .’

  It was late that evening when the last raft-load was brought safely in, and when the shivering old man and his wife and their few belongings had been got ashore, one of the weary rescuers touched Peter on the arm.

  ‘We’ve got sump’n else ’ere, sir,’ he said hoarsely. ‘Bumped agin the raft as we was bringin’ ’er in an’ my mate caught ’old on it an’ towed it arter us. It’s a dead ’un, I’m afeared, sir . . .’

  He jerked his head towards his companion, who was crouching over the side of the raft, dimly visible in the faint light of the hurricane lamp, holding on to something that was invisible in the water.

  ‘We didn’t say nuthin’ to old Copley an’ ’is missus, sir,’ went on the man. ‘All right, George, I’ll give you a ’and now . . .’

  ‘What is it?’ asked Donaldson, coming up and joining Peter.

  ‘A body,’ answered Peter. ‘I think it must be the man we saw come out of Witch’s House . . .’

  The sodden, limp thing, shinily black in the light of the lantern, was hauled on to the raft and turned face upwards . . .

  ‘My God,’ whispered Peter. ‘It’s Ray . . .’

  Chapter Twelve

  Peter and Donaldson sat facing each other across the shabby desk in Fendyke St. Mary’s inadequate police station. They both looked tired and a little haggard. In front of the inspector were two large books with thick board covers and furnished with brass locks. Police Constable Cropps, also looking tired and haggard and in his shirt-sleeves, came in with two large mugs of steaming coffee, set them down on the desk and withdrew.

  ‘Well, these clinch the matter, Mr. Chard,’ remarked Donaldson, after a gulp from his mug. ‘This book’ — he laid his hand on one of the volumes — ‘is a Grand Grimoire . . .’

  ‘The ritual for
the Black Mass?’ interpreted Peter, and he nodded.

  ‘The full ritual,’ said the inspector. ‘Complete in every horrible and ghastly detail. There’s no doubt that they went the whole hog, sir. And this’ — he touched the second book — ‘is a list of the people comprising the coven. And it doesn’t end with being just a bare record of names and addresses, either. One section of it is like a kind of minute book. What took place when the cult met is set out in detail and signed by every member. There’s enough evidence here to hang the whole blasted lot of ’em, and it makes you sick to read it . . .’

  ‘Pretty clever to have got everybody to sign it,’ said Peter. ‘It acted as a complete safeguard against anybody giving anybody else away . . .’

  ‘Yes,’ said Donaldson. ‘And as a pretty good basis for blackmail. There’s going to be a whole lot of people charged with accessory to murder because of this . . . Ray was the head of the whole filthy business, and Mallory, Severac, Bennett, and Laura Courtland formed a kind of committee. Bennett and Courtland seem to have taken a leaf out of Madame de Montespan’s book and acted on several occasions as a living altar . . . There’s a description here of the blood running over Courtland’s naked body as she lay on the altar . . .’

  Peter shuddered and felt his forehead go cold and damp.

  ‘It’s difficult to believe that anyone could be so vilely corrupt,’ he said huskily. ‘When you think of those poor children . . .’

  ‘It doesn’t bear thinking about for long, sir,’ snapped Donaldson, his face stern and set in a hard line. ‘The principal people concerned have paid the penalty and the others have got it coming to ’em. That’s the only comfort we can cling to . . .’ He took another gulp of coffee, pulled a packet of Players from his pocket, helped himself to a cigarette and held out the packet to Peter. He had found the books in a locked bureau in Gilbert Ray’s room at the vicarage. The man’s death had given him the opportunity, and the keys, both to the books and to the bureau, he had found on the body.

  ‘It’s a strange trick of heredity,’ remarked Peter, after a pause. ‘He must have inherited all the characteristics of Gilles de Rais . . . It makes you wonder if there may not be something in reincarnation after all . . .’

  ‘There was a cash end to it as well,’ said Donaldson. ‘The subscriptions for membership to the cult were enormous. He must have made a lot of money . . .’ He smoked for a moment in silence. ‘Now suppose you come across, Mr. Chard,’ he said suddenly. ‘Who poisoned those people in Witch’s House and how did they do the snow trick?’

  ‘You know, don’t you?’ said Peter quietly.

  ‘I may have guessed who,’ answered Donaldson, ‘but I haven’t guessed how. I’m waiting for you to tell me, sir.’

  Peter drank some of his coffee, drew deeply at his cigarette and slowly exhaled the smoke.

  ‘Anthony Sherwood,’ he said.

  ‘I thought that was what you were working up to, sir,’ said Donaldson, nodding. ‘Now tell me how he did it and why?’

  ‘Let’s reverse the order of that, shall we?’ said Peter, ‘and take the ‘why’ first . . .’

  ‘Do you know the ‘why’ . . .?’

  ‘I don’t know it as a provable fact. I don’t suppose we shall ever be able to prove it. If this was a story, Donaldson, Sherwood would have left a full and detailed confession somewhere to be found at the appropriate moment, but it isn’t a story. It’s real life, which doesn’t as a rule make a habit of dotting all the i’s and crossing all the t’s neatly, so I shouldn’t think there was anything of the kind. However, I believe you’ll agree that the motive I suggest is a completely plausible one and, personally, I believe it’s the true one. Anthony Sherwood was very concerned over the murders of those children. The first time I met him, when Doctor Culpepper broke the news about little Joan Coxen, both he and his wife were in a white-hot rage against the person responsible. Now he was, as you know, a student of witchcraft. He knew all about Satanism and Devil-worship and all the hideous details connected with the celebration of the Black Mass. I think he had put two and two together and come to the same conclusion which we eventually came to, that a coven of Satanists was operating in the district and that the child murders were directly attributable to it. I don’t think he had any proof, but I should say that it was possible he suspected that, if such a cult existed, Laura Courtland, Fay Bennett, Mallory, and Severac were probably mixed up in it. It would be natural to suspect them. They were the right type.’

  Donaldson nodded slowly but refrained from comment.

  ‘If you had known Sherwood, even as little as I did,’ Peter continued, ‘you would agree that once he had become certain that these people were what he suspected they were, he would, in his rage and loathing, have gone to any lengths to put a stop to their horrid activities. He would regard them as worse than vermin. In my opinion he did become certain. He discovered, how I can only conjecture, about the rendezvous at Witch’s House on the Eve of All-Hallows. You know we came to the conclusion that this meeting was a sort of subsidiary one before the full meeting of the coven at the barn, arranged between Courtland, Bennett, Mallory, and Severac? I believe they planned it as an additional thrill before the serious debauch of the night and that their object was an attempt to conjure up the Devil, or something of a similar nature. I don’t suppose any one of them expected for an instant that they would be successful, but the idea, on such a traditional night and in such surroundings, offered possibilities for new sensations . . .’

  ‘What about the fifth person, sir, who was supposed to occupy that empty chair . . .?’

  ‘There wasn’t any fifth person in the original scheme. The chair, in my opinion, was to accommodate the Devil, should he materialize. The fifth person who did appear was totally unexpected.’

  ‘Sherwood?’

  ‘Exactly,’ said Peter. ‘In the middle of that weird meal, perhaps while they were reeling off some gibberish incantation, the door opens and not the Devil but Sherwood arrives. Can you imagine the scene? I can. The dark, dirty, dilapidated old room, dimly lit by the candles flickering in the draught, and full of dancing shadows . . . Those four startled people sitting round the table and, probably, in the first instantaneous shock of his appearance believing that they had evoked the Devil . . . And then Sherwood making them admit, at the point of a pistol most likely, all the foul, hideous, and ghastly things of which they had been guilty, and, later, in a cold fury at this revelation of moral corruption and absolute evil, forcing them to drink that poison . . . No wonder their faces were such twisted masks of horror and terror when they were found, for they must have died in a paroxism of fear, facing their executioner . . . That’s what I believe happened in that old cottage that night, or something so near it as makes no difference. As I said in the beginning, none of it is provable, now . . .’

  ‘Yes,’ said Inspector Donaldson. ‘Yes, Mr. Chard. But why are you so sure it was Sherwood . . .?’

  ‘Because,’ replied Peter, ‘he was the only person who could have worked the snow trick . . .’

  ‘I’m waiting to hear how he did that, sir,’ said Donaldson.

  ‘It’s very simple,’ said Peter, and he could not keep a faint trace of triumphant complacency out of his voice. ‘He walked along the top of the wire fence which runs close to the back of the old cottage.’

  Chapter Thirteen

  ‘Sherwood was born in a circus,’ said Peter. ‘He told me that himself and I ought to have guessed then, but I didn’t. It was only when my aunt, Miss Wymondham, was telling us the other night how he used to do tricks with lassoos and tightrope walking at the annual vicarage fête, that the idea occurred to me. Look, you’ll be able to understand better if I show you on paper . . .’ He found an odd scrap of paper on the desk and took out his pen. For a moment he sketched rapidly, pushed the result towards Donaldson and, getting up, came round to the back of the inspector’s chair and leaned over his shoulder. Donaldson frowned at the rough sketch before him.

&
nbsp; ‘He ran a rope from the nearest support of the wire fence to a hook in the post supporting the porch. From here to here,’ explained Peter, his finger moving over the sketch, ‘I found the hook this morning when I went to look for it. It was a double rope, looped over the hook and both ends taken back and fastened to the support holding up the wire fence — they are placed all along at equal distances. All he had to do when he left the cottage, after locking the door on those four dead people, was to walk along the rope to the fence — that, by the way, must have been when Belton saw him — slip down on to the lower wire, give a smart, undulating flip and tug to the rope, which jerked it off the hook and back into his hands — remember that he was an expert with the lassoo — and make his way back along the wire fence to the willows. Result — no marks of any kind on the snow near the cottage.’

  Donaldson drew a deep breath and looked up.

  ‘That certainly explains it, sir,’ he said. ‘When did he fix this rope in the first place, though . . .?’

  ‘Well, it must have been after the snow had started and before it stopped,’ said Peter. ‘After, because there would have been no need for it at all if it hadn’t snowed, and before it stopped, so that any marks he made would be obliterated by fresh snow. I should say it was during the previous night . . .’

  ‘You seem to have worked it out very well, Mr. Chard,’ remarked the inspector, approvingly. ‘Though there are a lot of loose ends . . .’

  ‘There’s bound to be,’ said Peter. ‘There’s nobody who can tell us positively what happened . . .’

  ‘Except Mrs. Sherwood, sir,’ broke in Donaldson. ‘She must have known . . .’

  Peter nodded. His face was suddenly grave and concerned.

  ‘Yes, I am sure she did,’ he replied. ‘But I don’t think she’ll ever be able to tell us. I think Ray took care of that.’

  ‘You mean . . .?’

  ‘I believe she either knew, or guessed, that it was Ray who killed her husband. It must have been Ray, you know, Donaldson. Sherwood had found out too much and was a danger. I think Ray decoyed him to that barn on some pretext or other. Perhaps he demanded proof of the existence of the coven and Ray agreed to hand over the membership record. He could have got him to go to the barn for that purpose . . .’