He Arrived at Dusk

by Ashby, R. C.

  ‘Only that the inquest is the day after to-morrow, and I’m expected to stay. Will you mind?’

  ‘Not in the least,’ he said; ‘it’s necessary, though it’s a bore for you. What does Ingram think?’

  ‘He’s talking of getting a party together,’ I said, ‘to hunt for V.G. And he wonders if you are taking precautions.’

  ‘I?’ said Charlie. ‘Precautions!’ And he laughed; rather an ugly sound.

  When I went to my room that night I looked out and saw moonlight, greenish and gleaming like ice, poured into the rugged crannies of the broch that crouched on the hill. It was lonely now, and lonely it would be. A generation or two would pass before another man became so venturesome; grass and nettles would grow high inside that haunted circle of stone, as untrodden as the peak of Everest.”

  xv

  “The day of the inquest came, and the room at the back of the inn was packed an hour before the coroner arrived. And who do you suppose the coroner was? It was Mackie the doctor, whom the excitement of the moment had so electrified that he found himself sufficiently recovered from his accident to undertake his duties. In fact, he gave the impression that he would have died of chagrin at having missed this inquest. He was carried in an arm-chair by four men from his house to the inn; and when the jurors came forth rather shakily from their ordeal of viewing the body, Mackie set the tone of the whole proceedings by holding up that stained, brass weapon, the Roman sword, and saying impressively, ‘’Twas the glint of this in the hand of that deevil my poor mare saw the night Mr. Ian Barr was murdered.’ A sigh of horror went round the room, and the coroner crossed himself. After that the atmosphere was seething with superstitious fear. The jurymen were so frightened over their duty that all they longed for was a quick verdict and a stiff brandy in the comfortable privacy of the bar-parlour.

  Ingram was there, leaning forward, his chin propped on his fists and his eyes alight with scientific interest. I felt myself that if Gracchus had strode in at that moment with clatter of cuirass and swirl of giant limbs, Ingram would have registered nothing but delighted curiosity.

  The formal witnesses came first; the labourers who had found the body, the constable, the young doctor in his horn-rims giving his first medical evidence with a good deal of unction and an Oxford accent. This part would have been funny if it hadn’t been so tragic; I mean, hard-boiled old Mackie, Irish Catholic, and this young blood from Bloomsbury having a wordy sparring match in exaggerated dialects. It would have made a marvellous music-hall turn.

  Then the woman came on, Blaik’s sister, and told a long tale about the time her brother left his cottage and what sort of a fool she had long since considered him. You could feel the stagnant air of the room quivering, and I felt that if Mackie crossed himself again I should have to relieve myself by kicking Charlie Barr who sat beside me, his arms folded across his chest and his face stony. He kept his eyes down. I wondered if he were thinking of that other inquest on his uncle, not so long ago; it must have resembled this one too strikingly to be easily bearable. How many more? That thought struck me a blow . . . but I was going away and probably should never know.

  Then I was called, and I told my story in a hush through which I, pausing, could hear the faint, faint noise of a winter-bound fly stirring on the dirty panes. I suppose I must have told it with conviction; I couldn’t help it, a story like that, so vividly remembered. When I described how I groped to the spot where a minute before Gracchus had stood, and fell on my knees, frozen with something worse than fright, to wait desperately for the life-giving lighthouse beam, a woman screamed and a score of throats growled for silence.

  The coroner held up the exhibit. Did I recognize this knife?

  I said: ‘When I saw the Roman his hands were empty. It impressed me forcibly that he was unarmed.’

  Well, everybody knew what that meant; it set the time of the murder before nine o’clock.

  I asked: ‘Excuse me, sir, but as a matter of curiosity, are there any prints on that knife?’

  There were not. Ghostly hands leave no prints.

  Then the verdict. To you, the incredible verdict. Death by stabbing, with insufficient evidence to show whether or not self-inflicted.

  As though they were afraid of offending the spirit and bringing down on themselves the wrath of the mighty Gracchus. And it was all over; Blaik in future would be nothing but the memory of a hushed whisper. Charlie Barr had not been called, for which I was thankful and I’m sure he was.

  We walked home in silence, and I sensed no despondency but a kind of new sternness in his attitude. When we got within a few yards of the house this was explained. He said: ‘Mertoun, I want you to come with me to see my uncle. I insist.’

  I said: ‘Of course that’s your affair.’

  ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘it is my affair. That nurse is insufferable. I shall send for her directly we get in and have the matter out. I’d like you to be present. I don’t want to be alone with her—if there’s a scene, you understand.’

  ‘So long as you don’t expect me to take any part,’ I said.

  ‘That’s as you wish,’ he said gravely. ‘If you consider that I’m ill-treating her you’ll probably fly at me, so I’m taking a great risk.’

  I was prepared for a scene; remembering the other night on the stairs, quite a formidable scene.

  Charlie rang from the library. Would M‘Coul tell Miss Goff that Mr. Barr desired to see her? We waited. She came down, looking particularly frozen and unapproachable. Charlie didn’t waste words. He said—as far as I remember, his exact words—‘Miss Goff, Mr. Mertoun and I are going up now to see my uncle. You can prepare him, if you like.’

  The battle that followed was an absolutely silent one, and lasted only a few seconds, but you could feel the tension. Terrific. Then she gave way. She said: ‘Very well, Mr. Barr.’ I dare say you’ve noticed how often that happens; when an interview you’ve dreaded and screwed yourself up to goes off like a song.

  She stood on one side then and hung her head down.

  ‘Aren’t you going up?’ Charlie said.

  ‘Oh, certainly not, Mr. Barr!’ said she, very low and mordant; ‘I wouldn’t think of it.’

  I thought again what a strange woman she was, with her face as white as paper—with temper, I suppose—and her eyes blazing, what you could see of them under the lowered lids.

  I stood back.

  ‘Come,’ said Charlie.

  So I followed him up the stairs to that closed door of mystery. But the greatest mystery was still to break upon us. Mystery, I said. That was the least of it. The surmise was the worst. For when we opened that door we found an empty room. An empty bed. Empty and yet undisturbed, the sheets coldly spread. I heard Charlie say in an astonished, echoing voice, ‘Uncle! Where are you?’ As though the missing man had stepped playfully behind a window-curtain! And then the emptiness spoke to us both simultaneously, and we knew that the Colonel hadn’t ‘stepped’ anywhere . . . except perhaps out of life. Charlie took a pace towards me and the blood rushed up into his paled cheeks. The words broke out, ‘You . . . Mertoun . . . do you know anything about this?’ I was dumb with surprise. Then of course he found himself again, and said, ‘I’m sorry. A ridiculous question. It was only the shock . . .’

  ‘Miss Goff . . .’ I muttered, and with one accord we went charging down the stairs; that gaping door, so long closed, now wide behind us and the curtains whipping in the wet wind. The nurse was standing in the library doorway, with her hand on the portière. Charlie caught her by the shoulder and she shook off his hand. She always hated to be touched.

  ‘He’s gone!’ said Charlie. ‘By hell, where is he? I’m asking you!’

  She stared and stared at him as though she didn’t understand, her eyes like hard blue stones; but at last it got through, and she gave
a queer mutter and fell back, clutching the portière. Which of course came away under her weight, and, falling, she saved herself and groped for a chair.

  Charlie was almost raving at her. I pulled him by the arm.

  ‘Don’t you see?’ I said. ‘Her shock. She knows no more about it than you do!’

  ‘What!’ he shouted. ‘You mean, my uncle was ta . . . disappeared just now, while she was down here with us?’

  ‘Ask her,’ I said, ‘when she was last in his room.’

  She heard what I said, and gasped, ‘Perhaps . . . an hour ago.’

  ‘An hour ago!’

  The nurse hid her face in her hands then, and burst into tears.

  Charlie pulled her hands down. ‘Stop that! We’ve got to talk—do you hear? And we’ve got to find him. You can hunt as well as any other.’

  I had never seen Charlie so—shall I say, beside himself? He seemed frantic, and his face was full of unrecognizable lines.

  ‘It’s no good, Mr. Barr,’ said the nurse in a low, shaking voice; ‘it’s come. I knew it was coming.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Ever since Mr. Ian . . . and then poor young Blaik . . . I knew. He was the next. He was doomed.’

  ‘Don’t talk in riddles,’ demanded Charlie; ‘say what’s in your mind.’

  She said: ‘He’s taken the Colonel. The Roman soldier.’

  Charlie gave a sharp ‘Aaah!’ and his fist flew up and dug a pit between his eyebrows. His lower lip was gripped between his teeth. He looked as though lightning had struck him into that attitude; so did the nurse. It was left for me to speak. I said: ‘I’ll go out and scour the moor! I’ll rouse the village!’ I hardly knew what I was saying. I was talking for the sake of talking, to break the strain between those two. Neither of them answered me. I had the chilly experience of hearing my own words die slowly away in the trembling air of the darkening room.

  After long minutes Charlie stammered, as though after ponderous attention to my burning remark, now ashes: ‘We—we must do . . . something.’

  The nurse turned her head slowly, with a kind of pantherish scorn. ‘Yes . . . something!’ she said. ‘Against that Gracchus!’

  Charlie plunged down upon her words. ‘What do you mean—Gracchus? You and your Roman soldier! You glib, superstitious . . . Repeating village gossip. . . . My uncle . . . in broad daylight. . . . There’s something at the bottom of this.’

  She set back her shoulders with a small shiver. ‘You should know best, Mr. Barr,’ she said in that thin, cold voice of hers; ‘and as for whether the Roman soldier is village gossip or not, and as to whether he has a grudge against this house, well, didn’t he speak to you with his own voice just a week ago from this day, and didn’t Mr. Mertoun see the living form of him stalking at large about the moors? And didn’t you with your own hands, before my eyes, take the Roman sword from the moulding of this room? What became of it after I never did ask, but its owner must have come for it, or else I’m mistaken in guessing it was the very blade that stuck in the back of the shepherd. The night Mr. Ian died he was abroad, as you very well know and I don’t ask you to discuss; and I may be just a village gossip and a superstitious girl, but I know and you know that you may go out now and search the moor as you like, but you’ll not find either the Roman soldier or the Colonel’s body. And after all that’s happened, what can we do in this house but stand and wait? Wait for what’s coming.’

  ‘Are we all going mad!’ said Charlie, clenching his hands. ‘Mertoun, will you be so good as to go and ring up the police-station——’

  ‘—and tell them,’ said Miss Goff, massaging her cold fingers, ‘that Mr. Barr is anxious to know how long they’ll be before they catch the Roman ghost, for he’s harrying this house like a dog in a sheep-fold.’

  ‘Don’t go!’ said Charlie to me, abruptly. And then to the nurse: ‘Your services aren’t required any longer, Miss Goff. You can leave to-night. I don’t need your kind direction and oversight when I go out to find my uncle, and the less interest you take in the outcome of this business the better it will be for all of us. And, Mertoun,’—he turned to me—‘I hope you won’t misunderstand or take any offence when I tell you that I want this house clear. If you can find it convenient to pack your things now and ring up the station at Heaviburgh, they’ll send a car in the morning in time for you to catch the London train.’

  I agreed. I knew then that this was the end; that I couldn’t delay my going any longer. My part on this wintry, northern stage was played, and I would pass out, perhaps never to know the close of the drama. Such a departure of the actors! The nurse; myself; soon Ingram and Joan. And I seemed to see, as though leaving it behind, a great, mist-encircled arena and two figures groping there . . . converging nearer and nearer . . . Charlie Barr and the Roman ghost. Already I was looking over my shoulder, reluctantly as I moved away. It was like—forgive the crudeness of the analogy—like leaving a theatre in the middle of the last act to catch a train. You’ve done that? You’ll understand.

  The nurse went ahead of me up the stairs. I knew that in a minute I should have to say a few appropriate words of farewell to her. It was difficult. I tried to plan it . . . ‘Well, good-bye, Miss Goff, and good luck.’ Then other sentences . . . ‘I’m sure you’ve done your best . . . You’ve had an ordeal . . . You mustn’t blame yourself . . . The circumstances have been exceptional . . .’ It was all too terribly banal; I’m ashamed to recall it. However I saved myself in time, and when it came to the point I said nothing but, ‘Well, good-bye, Miss Goff . . . and good luck.’ Hollow and unconvincing it sounded. She hardly looked at me; put out an almost reluctant hand and said a swift good-bye.

  I didn’t see her again; she was gone within the hour in a farmer’s trap.

  I sat down in my room and wrote a few lines to Joan.

  My dear Joan,—[I scrawled]

  I’m off to London in the morning and haven’t time to see you again before I go. My calamity! Try and get Ingram away as soon as you can, and write to me at the address I gave you. I shall be sitting on the mat, holding my hand under the letter-box, so be a little sport and save my life. To please me, don’t go dashing about the countryside now I’m gone. Call it dog-in-the-manger if you like, though it isn’t that. Put in the time making pink silk jumpers and red flannel hug-me-tights. I’ll make it up to you when you get to town. Salaams to Ingram and undying devotion to yourself,

  Ever yours,

  Billy.

  I went down to a lonely evening in the cold old house, an evening of which every minute dragged. At about eight o’clock the hall door clanged. I ran to the window, and saw Charlie’s back disappearing into the gloom, muffled in an overcoat, hands thrust deep in pockets, a loose ash-stick slung on his wrist by the crook. Where he went I don’t know; I never shall know, because I never saw him again. I don’t mean that anything sinister happened to him, for he was in the house when I left next morning, though he didn’t come down to speed my departure with the usual amiabilities. He let me go without a word, which I felt was understandable and a fitting close to an association which from beginning to end was beyond the ordinary range of conversational amenities.

  I suppose you are thinking that this ending to my adventure is an intolerable anticlimax. I ought to have warned you that I wasn’t giving you the plot of a novel with its neat parabola of sensation. Life suddenly dumped me at the doors of The Broch and as suddenly hurried me away. I carried off only what I’ve given you, a fragment of a history, an arc of the parabola. I never knew such patience as yours . . . the way you’ve listened. You see, ever since I got back to London I’ve been thinking; a wheel of thoughts going round and round without arriving anywhere, and sometimes the wheel gets red hot and I can’t bear it another minute. Telling you has . . . well, slowed down the wheel. But one thing keeps me rest
less; I haven’t heard from Joan. That needn’t mean anything, yet.

  Then this morning I had what I didn’t expect; the strangest letter, from Miss Goff, written on a sheet of flimsy, cheap paper like you’d find in a cottage, with a corroded and scratchy pen. It reads so glibly, and yet so stiffly—if that isn’t a contradiction in terms—that one suspects she made half a dozen rough attempts and laboriously copied out the final production. The heading is ‘Adam’s Cranny, Little Thruston, Bellock, Northumberland,’ and I imagine that is the address of the relatives she told me she had in the neighbourhood. Without comment from me, this is what she says:

  Dear Mr. Mertoun,—

  You will be surprised to get this from me because you will be expecting to get a cheque to pay you for the work you did at Colonel Barr’s house. This is to tell you that there won’t be any cheque. I expect you will think you have been defrauded, and so you have. If you go to the police about it you will be quite within your rights, but if you will be generous enough to wait I will pay you the twenty guineas a bit at a time. Because it was all my fault. Colonel Barr never sent for you to do any work at his house. It is true that you were recommended to him and he wrote that letter and left it in his library. It was just about the time before Mr. Ian was killed, so the letter was never sent and never would have been. Then I was frightened and desperate and wondered what I could do. So I found that letter one day a long time after and I knew who you were because my brother Douglas who was in your Company had always been talking about you all those years ago in the war-time. You were like a hero to him, and when I saw your name there on the letter I thought it was like an answer to all our difficulties, and I thought if you were in the house you would help me and there would be no more of this dreadful tragedy. So I addressed the letter to you, because Colonel Barr had written your address at the bottom, and I sent it and nobody knew it was done by me. The Colonel never knew you came. It was all a fraud by me because I was frightened. So when you came you were just like Douglas said, and we talked about Douglas, and I thought it was all going to be all right, and when you said you were only going to stop a day or two I didn’t know what to do, so I went away and thought what I could do. So I invented about the library catalogue because I knew that would keep you in the house a long time. And then in a day or two I knew it was all no good and you were going to fail me. And you did fail me. I knew the night the picture was cut. So I hope you will please forget all that part. But this is a kind of confession because I own that I defrauded you out of your money and I had no right to do so. But I promise to repay it if you will be so generous as to accept a pound or two at a time after I go back to the hospital at Edinburgh in a few weeks. I hope you will try to forgive me too and forget all that happened. I had no right to deceive you as I did or to expect anything from you.