The Demoniacs

by John Dickson Carr

  It came from above-stairs. It might have been mortal terror or agony, or even both. It went up in a kind of bubbling shriek: from a human throat, but hardly human in sound. It pierced into flesh and nerves; it was followed by heavy and gasping breaths, and a noise like a thump on a thick floor. If there were other sounds, they went unheard by these two people below.

  He could see Peg clearly, since a small light did in fact shine from up there. Her knees faltered; it was as though some of the colour went from her eyes. Ten seconds passed before anyone spoke.

  “Now attend to me,” Jeffrey said. “I am going in.”

  “Are you mad?”

  “Go back to the Grapes. You will be safe there. Run!”

  “You’d leave me? Or have me leave you? I’ll not do it! Please.”

  “Then follow behind me, but not too close. Don’t encumber my sword-arm.”

  “You would run from a parcel of Frenchmen, yet go to look in the eye at this? Are you not afeared?”

  “Yes. But little enough of ghosts or evil spirits. If some living person has come at the old woman and hurt her—”

  “Who would come at her and hurt her?”

  “I would have, for one. That is what shames me. And I am a thief-taker by trade. I must go in.”

  Taking Peg’s arm, he drew her across the threshold and shut the door. A wooden bar lay on the floor. He picked it up and fitted it into its wooden slots, barring them into the dank little space. A set of stone stops so primitive as to be like a pillar with high, shallow treads like ledges, where the least ill balance could be breakneck, went up through a trap-opening in the ceiling. Above were two little rooms, set side by side, making the depth of the house between its front on the street and its back up-river towards Westminster.

  “Remain here,” he said. “If any should come at you to hurt you, he must come past me by those steps.”

  Jeffrey took off his cloak, dropping it on the floor. Peg saw him start up those ledge-like stairs, left hand supporting his sword-scabbard and head outlined against the gleam of a candle in the room just above. She saw his head jerk and his right hand grip for balance at the trap-opening. Then he crawled over the edge and disappeared.

  “Jeffrey!”

  He made no answer from above. There was not even a noise of footsteps. There was only a pressure on her breathing from the smoke and grease of more than two centuries.

  “Jeffrey.”

  “Be silent!”

  She had crowded back against the barred door, her shoulders pressing it. He slipped and almost fell as he began to descend. Though she could see him only in silhouette—first the buckled shoes, then the legs in grey worsted stockings, then the knee-breeches and plum-coloured coat with silver thread round its buttonholes—yet Peg could sense his complexion must be much the same colour as his wig.

  “Be silent!” he said again. “There is none here but ourselves. The old woman is dead.”

  “Was she hurt? Was she harmed? Was she …?”

  “Yes. Yes, in some sense harmed. Though she has no wound of the body, I think, for all the look upon her face. She died of fright.”

  IV

  Swords by Moonlight

  “PEG, YOU NEED NOT fear. I have thrown a cloth across her face. Give me your hand and come up.”

  “Must I? Must I? Is there need for that?”

  “It is unlikely. The law does not call it violence when a life is snuffed out in that fashion. There will be no opening of the carcase, no coroner’s quest. There should be only a pauper’s burial by the parish, and no cause for you to testify. Unless …”

  “Unless what?”

  Jeffrey closed off the images in his brain. Taking up the cloak from the floor, he slung it round his shoulders. He lifted the door-bar out of wooden sockets, and propped it against the wall. Then he turned back.

  “Are you better now?” he asked, and touched her cheek gently. “I hope so. God knows I had not meant to frighten you.”

  “Oh, that is different! Oh, if you are kind to me I can do all you ask!”

  “Would you also give me aid if I were the one in need of it?”

  “Oh, don’t you know I would?”

  “What’s the Cornish litany, and the things they pray to be delivered from? ‘From ghoulies, and ghosties, and long-leggity beasties, and things that go bump in the night.’ Smile at that, Peg! There are none such in the house, upon my word. Up there,” he pointed, “we have two small rooms. On the right, a bedchamber with a straw pallet. On the left, directly over our heads, a larger room and the old woman dead on the floor. Can you accompany me?”

  “Yes.” Peg stopped, a hand at her breast “You—you said you were a thief-taker. ‘I am a thief-taker by trade’: that is what you said. What did you mean by it?”

  “Your uncle knows.”

  “I don’t know.”

  “True; and you must hear. There are no ghosts, but this death of Grace Delight is more unaccountable even than it looks. Peg—”

  She ran at the staircase and scrambled up with tomboyish movements for one so maidenly in appearance. Nor did she flinch much at what they found in the room above. Mere dirt was not troublesome, unless so noxious as to become offensive. Death at its ugliest aspect, common in street and in fine houses of gilt and mirrors as well, was a fact to be accepted once it had occurred. Yet he found Peg standing rigid, skirts drawn round her, when he followed through the trap-opening.

  Again Jeffrey looked round the room.

  Its floor was of oak, solid despite the humps of age. They could not see the window in the front wall; a piece of thick sacking hung across it. But in the rear wall, just above a high and broad wooden chest crudely carved, a second window overlooked the moonlit river. This window had two leaves like little doors, formed of round panes in wavy bottle-glass; one leaf had been propped hard open, admitting what all conceded to be the unhealthfulness of night air.

  The old woman, dropsy-bloated, lay on her back beside the wooden chest. She wore a draggled mob-cap and a smock of brown linsey-woolsey. Across her face had been draped a filthy silk kerchief once coloured bright green. At the north-west corner of the room, shielded from draughts, the candle burned upright in its own grease from a blackened metal dish on a joint-stool, and shed steady light on the covered face.

  Peg and Jeffrey both spoke at once.

  “You said—” the girl blurted out.

  “These thief-takers—” he began.

  The blood beat in their ears and in their hearts; both stopped speaking. A gust of wind swooped at the open casement, rattling it, above a noise of tumbling rapids.

  “These thief-takers,” Jeffrey went on, “have an evil name and are much hated. Folk think us all like Jonathan Wild, who was hanged long before you were born. It’s no trade to boast of, I grant. Mr. Fielding’s People work in secret; they wear no distinctive dress; their names may not be known, else their usefulness is ended. Yet at times, when a man’s wits are needed to sound the depths of a mystery that informers alone can’t pierce, this thief-taker may be none so base a fellow as your uncle thinks.”

  “Jeffrey, Jeffrey, why must you so torment yourself?”

  “I don’t. There are worse ways of earning one’s keep than by taking blood-money.”

  “You do,” cried Peg, ignoring the last sentence. “You have asked me why I came here to seek this woman. Why did you come here? You said you had made a resolve. You said it would lead to law-breaking and might lead to murder.”

  “Yes. There has been a murder.”

  Peg put her hands to her cheeks, from which the colour had again receded.

  “Oh, not by me,” he told her. “Nor by bludgeon nor by pistol nor by poison. Yet there was something took her life by fear. What was it?”

  “Could I have done it, do you think? I cast open the door, you’ll recall. I cast it open, quite suddenly, so that it struck with great noise against the wall. Could the noise …?”

  Jeffrey began to laugh. Then he checked himself an
d spoke soberly.

  “Not with that one,” he said, indicating the motionless figure. “Not with Mrs. … not with Grace Delight She was addle-witted, to be sure, but most hard of grain. She would have turned no hair to meet the devil himself. Peg, what frightened her?”

  “Do you ask me? I can’t tell.”

  “Let us try if we can to determine.”

  Turning round, he strode towards the joint-stool with such intentness that he all but walked straight into the trap-opening. Peg cried a warning in time. He took up the blackened dish with the candle. Holding the light high, its shadows hollowing his cheek-bones and throwing into prominence the intent greenish eyes, he ducked first through the doorway of the cubby-hole bedchamber. After a hundred heart-beats he returned and moved slowly round this room, studying each object.

  “Jeffrey, what are you doing?”

  “Peg, look round. Mark what you see; you must bear witness if necessary.”

  Again he held the light high.

  “There is no fire-place, not even a hearthstone with a vent to carry away smoke; it must be freezing cold in winter. The floor is solid. The lid of this chest”—he lifted it up—“carries dust along the under-edge, having no mark of fingers used to raise it within weeks or even months. There’s nothing inside, take note, save some old parchments drawn with her astrological designs, a dried inkhorn, some clotted pens. Stop! Here is a fresher ink and newer parchment; but undisturbed, I think This old woman has not been robbed.”

  “Robbed? Who would rob a near-pauper on London Bridge?”

  He did not answer, but closed the lid and dropped his cloak on it.

  Moving to the front of the room, he pulled aside the piece of sacking that concealed the window above the street.

  “This window,” he said, “is in design like the other. It has two leaves and a catch between to fasten them. It is shut but not fastened.”

  “Foh! Now, what window above a street is often kept fastened? There must be too much servant-maids’ throwing out of refuse, of slops or offal or the like, to be got rid of and washed away in the kennel.”

  “Not on London Bridge. Theirs is a wooden street; it has no kennel. All rubbish to be got rid of”—and Jeffrey strode back again—“must be thrown from here, from the rear window, into the natural kennel of the Thames. It may cause some inconvenience to passers-by on the footway, though not if it be thrown wide. Observe also—Peg, come here.”

  “I’ll not! You said you had no intent to frighten me, and now you bend your brows like a hangman!”

  “Observe also, outside and below the window, how the timbers are set into the wall. A determined man might climb up from the footway. Now, Grace Delight did not fear housebreakers. Both windows are unfastened; this one is open, and one side propped so with stuffed rags which could not have been put there by a retreating thief. Yet this window has no screen or curtain, whereas the front one is thick-covered by sacking on a rope.”

  “So that none might observe her from the windows opposite? Well, to be sure! Any person of modesty …”

  “Was it modesty, Peg?”

  The candle-flame thrummed and fluttered. Jeffrey set its dish on the lid of the wooden chest, pushing it aside out of the wind, and went down on one knee beside Grace Delight’s body. He looked at the coarse loose-woven fabric of the smock, and then up at the green kerchief across her face.

  “This kerchief, though old and foul, is of French silk. The taper is no tallow dip, but a wax-light. This platter here,” he tapped the edge of the dish, “is much encrusted and seems of base stuff. It is pure silver.”

  “Do you tell me she was no pauper-woman at all? And had great store of gold hid away? And that this tempted someone to set on her?”

  “I tell you only what in honesty I must tell Justice Fielding tomorrow. Your conclusions, like his, must be your own. You are accustomed to reading my mind; read it now.”

  “Oh, damn you and damn you!”

  “Peg …”

  “At times I know you, and am happy. At times you are the person I know; I am utterly happy. And then you would jeer or go away into cloud. What’s your concern with this woman, truly? Is it—is it to keep scandal from the memory of your late grandsire?”

  “Come! That’s still worse a romantical notion. My respected grandsire may toast bread in hell for all of me. And I could wish the old woman at perdition too, save that I almost pity her.” Here he looked up. “We live in a brutal and cursed and misbegotten world, for all the fine talk of so many! Doctor Swift knew this, and died mad in Dublin because he knew it. There are others who know it, and would keep a leaven of decency. Tonight, I think, I met a physician who is one. But there are not many. For the most part—”

  Peg’s tone changed.

  “Jeffrey, don’t! Pray don’t! You look for too much of the world. Can’t you be content with those who are fond of you and would love you?—Heaven have mercy, but what’s amiss now?”

  Abruptly, after bending close to the covered face, he had thrust his left arm under the inert woman’s shoulders, his right under the crook of her knees, and lifted the body from the floor. The green kerchief fell away. Over his arm rolled a face with eyes all but protruded from their sockets and mouth fixed wide in a grimace that showed the ulcers of snuff-taking between nostril and lip.

  The face in its mob-cap twisted from Peg’s sight. With a great heave Jeffrey lifted the body head down across his left shoulder.

  “There was a breath!” he said, swaying to keep his balance. “The lightest breath, but I swear the silk moved. There’s life in her still, or some measure of it. With luck, and with the aid of that doctor, we may even bring her back.”

  “Jeffrey, you are deluded. She is gone. I—have seen death before.”

  “So have I. There was a man in my regiment condemned to the before a firing-party, and denied a bandage for his eyes. He screamed and fell like a dead man as the muskets were levelled, before any command to fire. His limbs and face were limp, not rigid, but otherwise it is the same case. If they had not believed that man dead, and made the business sure with a pistol-ball through the ear, they might have revived him to de again.”

  “Well, what’s your wish? There is a straw pallet in the other room, you said. Shall I take the candle and light your way there?”

  About to reply, head turned over his right shoulder, he stopped with a different expression suddenly widening his eyes.

  “No, let be! I had forgot Let be; I can manage well enough!”

  “Come, this is absurdity! Surely you would desire …?”

  “I desire you shall not touch the light. And on no account go near that bedchamber.”

  “Why?”

  “Because that is my wish. Peg, Peg, can you deign to obey me in this?”

  Emotion boiled in that room above the boiling river. Peg shivered, breathing hard, but she did not move from where she stood.

  Also breathing hard, he carried his burden to the little low doorway beyond the open stair. In the bedroom he looked only at the little low wooden frame, with pallet and blanket, under another curtained window at the front. At no time did he glance round at what else was there. Even with eyes accustomed to reading small print by the light of one taper, as must be anyone who could read at all, he could have made out little except an outline.

  He dropped Grace Delight face upwards on the pallet. Indecision struck him and shook him; he hesitated, beating his hands together, and then stalked back to where Peg waited.

  “I talk bravely,” he said, “but I am a dolt; I don’t in the least know what to do for her; I can only hope a physician knows. Which of us shall go to fetch him?”

  “Neither of you will go, fellow,” said someone else’s voice.

  A human head was rising slowly through the trap-opening, and looking at them.

  Both Peg and Jeffrey spun round. Both backed away beside the wooden chest. A lean figure, in mustard-coloured clothes with unwrinkled stockings, gave a great bound through the openin
g like a rope-tumbler or a character in one of Mr. Rich’s pantomimes at Covent Garden Playhouse. But it advanced slowly, long left hand tapping a sword-hilt.

  “Has the cat got your tongue, fellow? Are you so much in amaze? Did you truly fancy I would not follow?”

  “No, Mr. Tawnish,” Jeffrey said, “I never doubted you would follow. That is not to the point now. I must go at once—”

  “You will go nowhere, fellow,” said Hamnet Tawnish.

  “Sir, a woman lies within one gasp of death in the room behind you. A few minutes, even a matter of seconds, may mean her life if we can fetch a physician who is not far away. For God’s sake, sir, allow me to pass!”

  “You beg this?”

  “If need be, I do.”

  “When your manners deserve a cane for your incivility to my sister? You won’t fight, it’s true. But the sword can be a mighty effective cane for a whipping. Stand aside? Come, that’s good!”

  “I can’t urge other considerations upon you? I can’t persuade you to forgo this?”

  “Do you truly think you can?”

  “Why, then,” said Jeffrey, with left hand pushing back the two embroidered slings which held the sword-scabbard to his belt, “let it be as you wish. —Draw!”

  “What that you say?”

  “You have been very free with your threats, Mr. Tawnish. Now try if you can to make them good. Draw!”

  Both blades were out of the scabbards, soundless from leather sheaths lined with wool. Jeffrey had moved still farther back beside the chest; they were too far apart for a lunge. But Hamnet Tawnish made no move to lunge. Instead, unexpectedly, he took a savage backhand cut at the candle.

  The light leaped and vanished, metal dish clattering against wood. Peg was crying out, “Stop, you’ll be killed; stop, you’ll be killed,” on a high frantic note that ended in a scream. Jeffrey, body turned sideways, heard the other man bound forward in the dark.

  Then moonlight lifted outside a half-open window, flooding through round panes of blurred and wavy glass. Hamnet Tawnish stood with wrist carried high and a little downwards. As the moon entered he flung out at full-length lunge, right knee far bent and point driving for the right side of Jeffrey’s chest.