Eltonsbrody

by Edgar Mittelholzer

  15

  After we had had a long chat, Miss Linton decided finally to remain. I had advised her strongly to go, arguing that she had a very good excuse. I said I was sure that Doctor Dayton would understand. She agreed at first and was on the point of phoning the doctor when she suddenly changed her mind and said it was too ridiculous, that she would stick it out a little longer. I shrugged, and didn’t try to dissuade her—in fact, even persuaded myself that she was right. ‘Best thing,’ I said, ‘is just to ignore her. The more notice we take of her the more she’ll be encouraged to try out her practical jokes.’

  By afternoon we were congratulating ourselves, for there had been no more incidents. After lunch I accompanied her upstairs, and as we got to the top of the stairs we saw Mrs. Scaife coming out of the room with the patient. She smiled at me and said that she had been making a telephone call, then made her way along the corridor into her old room. Miss Linton had been certain that the old lady had gone in to engage in more mischief, but I remained in the room with her for over an hour and nothing happened. We searched everywhere for booby-traps or other possible devices of an annoying nature, but found nothing suspicious. By four o’clock Miss Linton’s nerves were much better, and when six came and darkness began to fall and still nothing odd had happened I had to remark to her that I was getting a little disappointed.

  ‘Just shows how contradictory human nature can be,’ I said. ‘When things are happening to bother you you grumble, and the moment everything grows quiet you yawn and feel bored.’

  ‘Not me,’ she smiled. ‘I’m not grumbling about being bored. It will suit me perfectly if things can remain quiet like this.’

  The sunset that day was magnificent. Long, flaming feathers of cirrus swept up towards the zenith above Hackleton’s Cliff, and in the south and east as well the clouds glowed with bright carmine. The whole landscape lay coated in a weird, wild glare, as though enchanted. The rocks that lined the coast stood out purple-black and with a detailed clarity so that almost every tiny mysterious niche and indentation could be seen. Every hump and tier in the whole jagged descent of the land to the pebbly beach seemed to loom up with a startling and unnatural significance. The canefields looked like soft fairy rugs which had assumed a tint between olive-green and pale violet, and the little cottages dotted here and there on grassy patches might have been umber knobs sprouted from the earth and perhaps soon to dissolve at the gesture of an unseen wand. The sea receded towards the horizon in a hazy purple-blue, broken here and there by the white foam of rollers. It seemed to be the only thing unaffected by the general brilliance, though its very aloofness inspired a sinister awe, and added to the weirdness of the scene.

  Tappin, who had just returned from Bridgetown where he had spent the whole day on his shopping visit, remarked to me that this sunset was a sure sign of rain. After we had chatted a bit he asked me how everything had been going in the house during the day, and when I told him about the events of the morning he said: ‘Some very bad trouble come on Miss Dahlia, sir. She not de same. Mr. Mitchell, too, very puzzled. Oi drop in to see him to sympathise on Master Gregory’s death, and he say he can’t understand what wrong wid de mistress.’

  ‘Oh, you dropped in to see him, did you? I’ve never met him.’

  ‘He’s a very noice man, Mr. Woodsley sir. A very noice, good gentleman. Master Gregory’s death upset him plenty. After Oi left him Oi went round to de cemetery to see de tomb. It’s a very noice tomb, sir—wid a cross and a lil’ angel. Mr. Mitchell tell me dat it was Borkum who made de tomb.’

  ‘Borkum, eh?’ Something occurred to me and I asked him: ‘Did you happen to pass down the street where Borkum has his tomb-making shop?’

  ‘No, sir. Oi seldom passes down dere. But talking about dat, sir, Oi have a joiner friend who keep his shop in de same street not far from where Borkum got his shop. Oi meet him dis morning, and he tell me dat Borkum’s shop was closed up all yesterday. He say dat was de first toime for years he ever know Borkum to close up his shop on a working day and take a holiday. It was a joke in de whole neighbourhood, Alfred tell me. Borkum got a ole car, and he and de car left town since Monday, and it was only dis morning Borkum turn up and open de shop again.’

  ‘He has a car, has he?’

  ‘Yes, sir. A ole car. So Alfred tell me. He got some money put aside, Oi hear. Alfred say Borkum come in to a big sum of money some years ago, and it was den he buy de car and open de shop in Tidesdale Street. He live alone over de shop. He not married.’

  ‘You say he came into a big sum of money some years ago? About how long ago would that have been?’

  Tappin made a doubtful sound. ‘Well, sir, Oi aint too sure, but it must be soon after de doctor dead, because Alfred say Borkum come to Bridgetown to set up shop very soon after Doctor Scaife dead.’ He scratched his neck and asked: ‘Sir, you suspect Borkum? You think it was he who frighten Malverne and knock her down de stairs?’

  ‘I’m inclined to believe what your mistress told me. He scared her when he appeared from the small room. He peeped in and saw her flaunting her bosom, and couldn’t resist trying to make a pass at her. Then she rushed out of the room with the rug, tripped up and fell down the stairs. But what puzzles me is what he was doing in that small room—and in the doctor’s old room.’

  ‘Yes, sir, dat very funny. Really very funny.’

  I looked past him at the poultry-runs and the goat-pens. McTurk was scolding Bayley for some misdemeanour involving a bucket of water and a fowl-coop, and Bayley kept uttering shushing sounds evidently addressed to the chickens. Scoldings never appeared to worry Bayley.

  The colours had by now faded from the sky. The cirrus feathers had melted into the void, and evening was spreading its leaven of sepia amid the foliage of the trees. The wind brought with it a rank, fishy smell—the fishermen must be unloading the day’s catch down at Martin’s Bay—and there was the bleakness of night in the wind, too—a refreshing sea-bleakness; so much so that more than once I caught myself taking deep breaths. Some insect made a ticking noise amidst a spiky clump of sisal grass which grew not far from the tool-shed, and the tall, slim, flowering stalk that rose out of the clump took on an air of idyllic mystery—a grey-green jumbie-spear pointed up at the darkening branches of the mahogany tree high overhead.

  ‘I think I’ll go for a walk,’ I said abruptly. ‘An evening like this demands that one should be out of doors.’

  Tappin smiled, but with an ominous gravity. ‘Yes, sir, dat’s roight. A very pleasant evening. But dat red in de sky lil’ whoile ago mean rain tomorrow—and we need plenty rain, sir. Every­body crying out.’

  ‘You’re going home now, I suppose?’

  ‘Yes, sir. Dese past few days Oi don’t linger too long in dese grounds. Too much funny matters happening of late, Mr. Woodsley sir. Eltonsbrody was always a house Oi loike very much, sir, but dis past two-three days—Oi! No, sir. Oi don’t let noight ketch me here.’

  I nodded and told him I could well appreciate how he felt.

  A little later, after going into the house to make sure that everything was well with Miss Linton, I set out along the road in a southerly direction. This was the road that would take me eventually to Horse Hill and Hackleton’s Cliff, but as I had no intention of going that way, I branched off, after a quarter of a mile or so, on to a track that meandered down into a gully. I skirted several canefields, and it was very pleasant listening to the wind sizzling among the long, slim leaves. One or two canes were in arrow, and the plumes, fluffy and grey-mauve in the twilight, hovered above the pale-green of the fields like petrified smoke. The sweet, earthy-rank scent of dry-weather grass swirled through my senses all the while, and once I came to a halt half-way up a hump of land and cocked my head, hearing only the hiss of the browned, ragged grass in the wind. Above me, at the top of the hump, loomed a gnarled black rock that seemed on the point of rolling down upon me with a deep, savage growl of anger.

  The gloom had a gun-metal tint, and glancing up
, I saw that stars had begun to appear in the sky which was cloudless and a deep violet overhead—a violet that merged gradually into pale blue as one’s gaze swept down towards the west.

  Soon I found myself emerging on to another well laid out highway. I saw a car parked on the grass border some distance off, and gave a groan, for I had been hoping that nothing indicative of civilisation would have obtruded itself upon the peaceful scene. Even the road seemed an intruder. However, I consoled myself, it would soon be too dark to see anything at all, and perhaps if I proceeded a little farther east the landscape might prove wilder and rocky and innocent of the smearing touch of man and his machines.

  So I crossed the road, and presently was descending into a grassy depression. After circling two huge squatting boulders, I came upon what looked like a goat-track. It led steeply up towards more boulders. I followed it, and on getting to the top of the rise, discovered, to my surprise, that some way to my left in a westerly direction lay the private cemetery where Doctor Scaife was buried. Beyond it, to the north, stretched an extensive area of cultivated land featuring canes mostly, and in the far distance I could make out vaguely above the trees the roof of Eltonsbrody. A short distance behind me the land rose again in a sudden sheer wall of earth and boulders, jagged and bare. A precarious looking cliff jutted not thirty feet above me. It hung like the shoulder of a giant about to press down and blot me out.

  I had just decided to trudge on along a track that led round this prominence when something made me hesitate.

  I had been glancing idly over the cemetery when, in the vicinity of one of the tombs in the north-eastern section, I thought I glimpsed a slight movement. It did not alarm me, because the first conclusion I came to was that it must be a dog or some other animal. Just the same I hesitated, for in my present mood everything made me suspicious. My fancy bestowed the most innocent object with sinister qualities. Every rock, shadow or clump of shrubs seemed to conceal some sombre presence of evil—some unknown menace.

  It had become very dark now, and the white tombs nestled in ghostly array amidst the ragged grass that covered the ground down in the depression. Beyond them, in the west, rose the steepish embankment immediately above which ran the highway—the same road along which Mrs. Scaife and I had come on Monday morning when she brought me to visit the cemetery.

  I stood quite still. In the grass the wind kept up its soft, busy sibilance, and far away to the south a dog was barking —a lonely, detached sound. But these were the only disruptive elements in a silence that seemed to beat around me with the whirring persistence of an invisible bat.

  Presently the barking of the dog died away, leaving only the sizzle of the wind in the grass.

  About three minutes must have elapsed, and I began to tell myself that it was nothing to trouble about. It must have been a cat slinking past one of the tombs. Or it might be a goat grazing amid the grass down there. Wasn’t it a goat-track up which I had plodded a few minutes before? Even where I stood now I could make out one or two pellets of goat dung. A goat must have strayed down into the depression. Soon the owner would be along to look for it.

  Despite this line of reasoning, I still stood silent, my senses on the alert. Somehow, I didn’t want to believe in my deductions. Some other sense warned me of unusual goings-on not far from where I stood.

  The warning was not a false one. Suddenly through the hissing of the wind in the grass a new sound came to my ears. A sharp, light tapping. As though someone were chipping at masonry with a chisel and hammer. It seemed to come from the north-eastern edge of the cemetery.

  I cocked my head listening.

  It stopped—then it began again.

  Deciding that this called for investigation, I crept very cautiously down into the depression. I had to take my time about it because the grass kept lisping under my feet and I certainly didn’t want the unseen mason to become aware that I was on his trail.

  At length, lying flat on my stomach, I managed to wriggle and crawl my way to the south-eastern edge of the cemetery. I crouched behind a tomb with a black marble cross and ornamental railings. The grass was at least a foot high at this spot, and though it afforded me excellent shelter it created the disadvantage that I couldn’t move about freely without making my presence known. It was half-withered grass and the rustle it made was sharp and loud. I had to content myself with lying there and listening.

  The tapping was distinct now, and more than once I heard the grass rustle animatedly as the fellow seemed to alter his position in the course of his work.

  Suddenly I was sure I could detect a murmur of voices.

  I craned my head above the tomb railings, staring hard in the direction from which the voices came.

  The tapping had ceased within the past minute or so. But it began again. It lasted a minute or two longer, then stopped, and I heard the murmur of voices again. Then I saw a light glow—but almost in the same instant it was snuffed out, and I heard an impatient exclamation. A voice snapped: ‘You imbecile! What do you want to show a light for!’

  It was the voice of Mrs. Scaife.

  I was not really amazed. I had got quite beyond the stage where anything about that old lady would have surprised me. All at once it came upon me who her companion must be. I remembered the car I had seen parked on the grass border by the roadway, and I remembered, too, what she had mentioned at lunch-time when Miss Linton and I had surprised her coming out of the room with the patient. She had said that she had gone in to put through a telephone call. It must have been Borkum she had spoken to. She must have been arranging with him to come here this evening.

  All sorts of questions raced through my mind. Why had she come with Borkum to the cemetery at this time of evening? What did that tapping sound mean? Were they breaking into one of the tombs? What ghoulish business could they be up to?

  The idea came to me to throw prudence to the devil and rise up suddenly, rush round and surprise them at what they were doing. I began to consider this in earnest—but the idea had come too late. Even as I was poising myself to spring up I saw dim shapes moving among the tombs. They made for the embankment.

  I watched them ascend the embankment to the road, and a moment later the drone of a car’s engine sounded. Headlights stabbed whitely through the gloom beyond the embankment, and I could make out the car as it moved along the road. It swept round the bend and disappeared beyond the canefields to the north of the depression.

  Rising, I moved quickly round to the north-eastern side of the cemetery, peering about to see if I could find the tomb they had been tampering with. But in the darkness and with all this thick grass I knew that my chances of success were poor. Doctor Scaife’s tomb seemed to be the only one that was well cared for. It was on the western side of the cemetery, at the base of the embankment beneath that dangerous bend in the road, and there was no grass around it. Tappin had told me that he had to weed the spot at least once every month.

  Thinking of the doctor’s tomb, I had unconsciously turned my gaze in a westerly direction.

  I saw Mrs. Scaife. She was moving along the road. I made her out distinctly, silhouetted against the pearl-grey after-glow in the western sky.

  Suddenly I remembered Miss Linton alone in Eltonsbrody. And Borkum might be on his way there now in the car.

  Giving up the search for the tomb I suspected of being tampered with, I clambered up the embankment and began to walk back towards Eltonsbrody, cutting directly across country so as to avoid meeting the old lady—and also in the hope of getting to the house before she did. Some voice of intuition told me that to-night would not be as restful for Miss Linton and me as last night.

  When I was nearing the grounds of Eltonsbrody I saw a car parked by the side of the road under the low-hanging branches of a sandbox tree. In passing, I stopped, struck a match and peered inside. There was nothing of particular interest to see, but I noted it was an old car. The paint had lost its sheen, the leather upholstery was cracked and torn, the wind-screen looked
water-stained and cloudy, the bonnet had a dented, battered appearance.

  I hurried on, and a few minutes later as I was turning into the gateway of Eltonsbrody, I was certain it was not my imagination when I had a quick glimpse of a dark shape. It seemed to edge away from a clump of crotons that stood just beyond the low hedge that bordered the driveway.

  I came to a halt, and kept on looking. And I saw it slink off and vanish among the deep shadows under the mahogany trees.

  16

  ‘I’d just begun to think you must have lost your way.’ Miss Linton smiled at me when I went upstairs. ‘How far did you go?’

  ‘Not very far,’ I said, trying to make my voice as casual as I could, for I didn’t want her to suspect that anything unusual had occurred. It would only have frightened her and set her nerves on edge again.

  ‘I was trying,’ I said, ‘to see how far east I could get, but this countryside is much too rugged to wander around in when it’s dark. No practical jokes in my absence, I hope?’

  ‘No, nothing, thank goodness.’

  We both glanced towards the door as the light footsteps of Mrs. Scaife sounded in the corridor.

  ‘It seems as if she went for a walk, too,’ said Miss Linton.

  I nodded. ‘Quite likely. How’s the patient doing now?’

  ‘Still not very good. She’s been moaning and talking to herself, and her temperature is a bit higher.’

  I took a few paces about the room, feeling aimless—the room seemed rather close, somehow—and then I paused at a window and looked down into the darkness of the kitchen garden. The bark of a dog came, low and gruff. It sounded like Walter.

  ‘The dogs haven’t been released,’ said Miss Linton, joining me at the window. ‘Isn’t Tappin or McTurk supposed to set them free every evening before they go home? I think you told me so—’