The Demoniacs

by John Dickson Carr

  But he must not seek Mr. Fielding yet; or, at least, so he imagined. There should be another attack first. Jeffrey set out at a walk nearer a trot.

  Less than twenty minutes later, less than a mile’s distance away, he entered another square which was the exact centre of all gentility: as different from Covent Garden as old Lady Mary Wortley Montagu differed from Big Nell or Flash Kate.

  Stately aloof houses faced out across cobblestones towards the octagonal fence of iron railings round an immense circular pond of water. His Grace of Norfolk dwelt here, and my Lord Bristol, and Sir George Lee. So did Admiral Boscawen. So did Mr. William Pitt, not yet created Earl of Chatham but already the genius of victory who would set British colours above half the earth.

  Jeffrey, emerging by way of Charles Street into St. James’s Square, was conscious of his own shabbiness when he ran up the steps of a house on the north side. It surprised him a little to see that the street-floor shutters had been opened at so early an hour for this district.

  He plied the knocker, as he had plied it late last night without response. There was still no answer. Jeffrey hammered again, and waited a full two minutes with his temper on the rise. Whereupon, as though someone inside had been counting, the door was suddenly opened by a major-domo with a supercilious eye.

  “Yes?” said the major-domo.

  Jeffrey was startled enough to draw back.

  “Where is Kitts?” he asked. “Who are you?”

  “Well,” said the major-domo, eyeing his clothes up and down, “who are you, then? What’s your business here?”

  “You are new-employed, are you not? Within the past few months, at all events? Is Kitts no longer employed?”

  “Now what’s that signify,” asked the major-domo, “to any but my master? Who are you? What’s your business?”

  “My name is Wynne. I desire to speak with Sir Mortimer Ralston.”

  “Well, so you may. It don’t mean you’ll speak with him, though. What’s your business?”

  “I said,” Jeffrey raised his voice a little, “that I desire to speak with Sir Mortimer.”

  “And I said: what’s your business?”

  Yet the major-domo began suddenly to back away, first with one long stride and then two, leaving the door wide open. Jeffrey had more than a stealthy sense that he was expected, and that the house had been waiting for him.

  He crossed the threshold into the foyer.

  You may buy the craft of builder or architect, as had been done here. You may have your foyer set out with a marble floor, with Ionic columns rising to scrolled and gilded capitals, with a wide noble staircase of dark wood against a white-panelled wall.

  But a dank, unpleasant wind stirred through the foyer. It was nearly dark because of curtains that shrouded the tall windows. In a matter of months this house’s whole atmosphere had altered as had its servant-in-chief.

  The major-domo, carrying a staff which was the badge of his office, retreated to the middle of the foyer. Jeffrey, glancing left and right into the room on either side of it, saw that much of the furniture was different too.

  Not long ago the world of fashion had been swept by a craze for the ‘Chinese,’ or so-called Chinese. The new furniture here— clocks in wooden cases wrought to spirals and curlicues, chairs patterned after dragons or lions’ heads, gaudy cabinets built like pagodas with little bells at the corners—stood up floridly against each white-panelled wall.

  Jeffrey looked round.

  “I should have taken thought,” he said. “How long has she governed matters, then?”

  “Who?”

  “Mrs. Cresswell. How long since she took up residence in this house?”

  The major-domo’s eyes narrowed.

  “I’ll tell you what,” he snapped, pointing with his left hand. “You won’t say your business, so you’ll not see Sir Mortimer. You’ll not see Sir Mortimer anyway. Sir Mortimer’s in care o’ the Scotch doctor from Jermyn Street; Sir Mortimer’s been took ill.”

  “That is most distressing. Now will you be good enough to conduct me to him? Otherwise, since I am acquainted with the way to his room, I will—”

  “Yes?” interrupted the other.

  Lifting the iron-shod staff, he brought it down sharply on the marble floor. He brought it down twice more for good measure. From the room on each side, from the rear of the foyer, from the staircase-landing high up, four liveried flunkeys emerged and stood motionless in the half-light.

  “Yes?” repeated the major-domo. “Yes, cully? You’ll do what?”

  Jeffrey said nothing.

  “I’ll tell you, cully. If you was by any chance to call, madam said, you could have a word with madam herself if you’d a mind to. That’s all; that’s a favour. Do you want to speak with madam, cully? Or what else?”

  “I will speak with Mrs. Cresswell.”

  “You’d better.”

  Jeffrey did not comment. This, incredibly, was Peg Ralston’s home. This, now breathing slyness and full of servants like jailers at Bridewell, was the only home Peg had ever known. It had been a fool’s act for him to come here first, but something might be learned. Still silent, stifling fear as well as rage, he followed one flunkey upstairs towards a closed door at the front of the house.

  “You may enter,” came Mrs. Cresswell’s voice, a full voice for a small if sturdy woman. “Come, don’t be about it all day. You may enter.”

  Jeffrey entered and bowed.

  “Your servant, madam.”

  “My compliments, Mr. Wynne.” She spoke almost coquettishly. “And how may I serve you?”

  There was no Chinese furniture here. The large and lofty room, airless with windows still shuttered, might have been the dressing-room of any other fine lady.

  The mirror of the dressing-table was draped in blue silk, as the table itself was draped in folds to the floor. Against more white walls there were chairs with cabriole legs. Within the arch of the alcove, narrower side outwards, stood an immense tester-bed with elaborate cornices from which yellow-brocade curtains had been looped back. Lavinia Cresswell sat propped up in bed to receive him, as the fashion was.

  It was no longer fashionable to breakfast heavily off beefsteak with oyster-sauce, in addition to a pint of steaming chocolate and many rounds of toast But Mrs. Cresswell had just finished every crumb of such a meal from a table beside the head of the bed. She was replete, she was glutted; and something more.

  A candle, burning in a silver holder on the table, lighted her intimately. With great decorum the bedclothes were pulled up to her midriff. Otherwise she wore a fur-trimmed robe which had been permitted to fall open. Her hair was concealed by a lace cap: under this, under her waxy-looking forehead, the pale-blue eyes regarded him with a coquetry as unmistakable as it was startling.

  “La,” said Mrs. Cresswell, with a small laugh. “You are a most objectionable young man, Mr. Wynne. I have declared it often, above a year or more. Yet I am rejoiced to find you in better mood since last night, and resigned.”

  “Resigned, madam?”

  “That this loutish girl shall be dealt with as befits her. I take pains all my enemies shall be dealt with as they deserve. Afterwards, to be sure, there is time for other matters.”

  “If I may say so, madam, you yourself seem in different mood since last night.”

  “That is weak woman’s privilege, is it not? Besides, I had not then seen the letter you wrote—” Mrs. Cresswell stopped. “You are looking at me, I observe,” she added. “Do you find me pleasing?”

  “Madam, perhaps I do.”

  “La,” said Lavinia Cresswell.

  With more coquetry she extended her hand to be kissed. Jeffrey, wondering how much she knew and how much he might learn before he betrayed his longing to strangle her, was about to move sideways into the alcove between bed and wall. She looked past his shoulder, pale eyes widening, and uttered a small scream.

  “Kitty!” she said. “Kitty!”

  A tall and dark-haired young serva
nt-maid, all eyes, now stood hesitating by the dressing-table. This, Jeffrey remembered, had been Peg’s own maid.

  “I had thought you gone, Kitty. Don’t you heed my commands? Don’t you even hear them?”

  “Oh, pray, ma’am”

  “Be off, then. Be off at once, I say, or it will be the worse for you.”

  There was a scurry of skirts, the flutter of a mob-cap, followed by a soft slam of the closing door. And it was as though this exchange had intensified Mrs. Cresswell’s emotion rather than lessening it.

  “Come, Mr. Wynne, you need not start as guiltily as though Kitty had been your loutish Peg herself.”

  “I was not aware I had started.”

  “You are asking yourself, no doubt, whether I try a trick against you?”

  “In candour, some such thought had occurred to me.”

  “There is none, I swear it! I have altered my mind since learning more of your mind—”

  (‘Learning what? How?’)

  “—and of your country bumpkin too. I have gained so little in my life, so very little. You are impoverished, as once I was. We are much the same, you and I.”

  “As touches last night, madam …”

  “Mr. Wynne, Mr. Wynne, can’t we forget last night?”

  “I hope so, if you are sure you know what passed then. Have you spoken with your brother, for example?”

  “No, I have not. This I do know: Hamnet suffered a fall on some stairs, it appears, and badly bruised his right wrist But this was only after he had followed your sweet miss. She had not gone to your lodgings in Covent Garden. She had gone to the house of an old astrologer-woman, a fortune-teller on London Bridge. The superstitious, such as this girl is, would give much credence to such kind of cattle. You are well aware of all this, since you followed her first. But at least it was not what I thought.”

  “It is seldom what we think. Yes, madam?”

  “Oh, need I continue?”

  “It is necessary; you know it. Yes, madam?”

  “Well, bruised wrist or no, Hamnet persuaded a tapster at a nearby tavern to write a note for him, and sent it by street-porter to the Golden Cross. Thus apprised of her whereabouts, poor Mortimer could drive in person to Bow Street and lay information against her before Mr. Fielding. A later note apprised us she had been taken by the watch and will come up for sentence at ten o’clock this morning. There! Are you content?”

  “Almost content. Is her uncle truly ill?”

  “Unhappily, yes. Oh, most unhappily. I have never seen the poor man so disordered in his mind; he is quite confined to his room by Dr. Hunter. Now, you were saying?”

  “We were suggesting, madam, that you and I might combine our forces.”

  “‘Combine our forces’?” repeated Mrs. Cresswell, looking up from under her eyelids. “La, Mr. Wynne. Now, what can you mean?”

  “I meant—”

  “Yes,” interrupted the woman, looking him fully in the eyes, “that is what I meant too.”

  “We run a grave risk, madam.”

  “Risk!”

  “Yet we run a grave risk notwithstanding; you know this too. For prudence’ sake on both our parts, I would ask a question.”

  “Do you esteem me so little that you would put questions now?”

  “I think you will see its necessity.”

  “Ask, then.”

  There was a pause.

  Lavinia Cresswell’s breathing fluttered the flame of the candle as abruptly she turned her head away from him. She turned her body away too: left hand supporting her weight on the bed, the white silk and dark fur of her robe outlined against the looped-back yellow-brocade curtains.

  Though no clock ticked in the room, Jeffrey had never been so conscious of time pressing on. A coach-and-four rumbled past outside, the only noise in this all but rural square. Just as abruptly Mrs. Cresswell flung back round to look at him again. She was not at all ill-shaped under the open robe. But to Jeffrey, who ordinarily might have felt as Dr. Abel felt at Covent Garden, this seemed only to heighten and intensify dislike.

  He spoke with the same abruptness as her own movement.

  “We have no scruples, you and I. We can afford to be frank. You allow this?”

  “Why not?”

  “Are you wise in your conduct towards Sir Mortimer Ralston?”

  “I have been wise for so very long. I begin to grow weary of it.”

  “Even so, is this a time for folly? You have been poor, as you say. Your own cosseted life and mine too (if you do me the honour of sharing it) depend entirely on your influence over Sir Mortimer. He was not happy, as you also say, when you persuaded or forced him to jail his own niece. Don’t you endanger all things for too little? Why must you pursue this girl with such hatred?”

  “I have a position to keep up in the world, I thank you. It is fools of her sort who would undermine us all. They must be made to suffer.”

  “Their loose morals impugn your virtue. Is that it?”

  “That’s the world: rightly so. And do you ask this, considering what we have both just learned concerning her? Would you yourself wed her now?”

  Danger seemed suddenly to show the edge of a dagger.

  “There is no mystery regarding Peg, or so I think?”

  “Hardly a mystery. She makes her own lewd desires quite plain.”

  “Madam, you seem over-fanatical in this matter of lewdness. I referred to her birth and blood-line.”

  “Did you, indeed? What then?”

  “She is niece to Mortimer Ralston, baronet, of Headingley Hall in Essex, who controls her money until her twenty-first birthday three months from now. Her father was his younger brother, Gerald Ralston; he married a lady of wealth and unimpeachable family. No mystery there, surely?”

  “No mystery there,” the woman said in a curious tone, “that I am aware of. Why do you ask?”

  “Because all your behaviour has been so very odd. You hate Peg, granted. But she is an heiress, and you a shrewd woman without scruple. You must desire to provide for your brother, as impoverished as yourself, who would be a likely suitor for the hand of an heiress in marriage. He could wed her without open scandal, without any scandal at all, if you had not screamed she must be flung into Bridewell. You went further; you wished her to be stripped and thrashed by that same brother. Surely this is all a trifle odd?”

  “Odd? I have given my reasons. Shall Hamnet wed with a girl like that?”

  “Then your own course, as regards marriage, is still more odd. Mortimer Ralston is a rich man and of excellent repute. Already you hold some threat above his head to keep him obedient. You could make the future secure, you could gain all things you desire, if only you were to wed him. Why don’t you?”

  Jeffrey stood motionless, staring at the candle-flame.

  “Mr. Wynne, attend to me.”

  “I think not. You have had your own way long enough. Last night there seemed no conceivable reason for this reluctance. This morning I find you, so tender of the world opinion, openly installed in his house. Yet you are not Lady Ralston in secret; you could not have forgone the pleasure of showing that authority. Is it possible you are no widow at all, but still with a husband who must not be acknowledged? That you don’t wed Sir Mortimer because you dare not? Is it even possible—”

  He broke off short, hiding a different kind of thought, and looked at Lavinia Cresswell’s face.

  The woman of a while before might never have existed. She sat up straight, as poised and aloof as she had been last night What breathed from the alcove was only a cool, deadly hatred.

  Some lighter vehicle, perhaps a hackney-coach, rattled past over the cobbles outside. The candle-flame drew steadily, shining through dustmotes on a breakfast-service of heavy painted tableware. Then Mrs. Cresswell lifted the tip of her finger and touched one eyebrow.

  “Indeed,” she observed. “Now, do you truly imagine, young sir, you were leading me where and how you pleased?”

  “I make no reference, mad
am, to the question of who was leading whom.”

  “Are you proud of yourself, Mr. Wynne?”

  “At least I am content. Madam, are you content?”

  “Then it is as well,” said the woman, with a little shiver, “that your unprovoked advances did not succeed. I am surrounded by those who would delight to avenge me. It would go very ill for you, very ill indeed, if I were to cry out for help.”

  “That must be as you choose. And yet, even as an enemy, can’t I persuade you to be generous towards Peg? You will not rise in the “world’s esteem by harming this girl. A word from you could set her free even now.”

  “So it could. Let her rot where she is!”

  “Madam—”

  “And did you also imagine, young sir, I should let you go even so far without holding a card in reserve? Are you so sure Mortimer and I are not wed?”

  “No, I am not sure. There is a means to be sure. Pray cry out for help and let’s test it.”

  “This is not the time, young man,” and she smiled skeptically, “to display all the cards I hold. You will look upon them soon enough. But I must dispose of at least one vile insinuation against my character. My presence in this house is, and has been, quite proper. My brother has been here to make it proper.”

  “Yes, your brother,” Jeffrey said. “Your brother. That may be the key to the whole riddle.”

  For a moment she sat looking at him as though from well behind the pale-blue eyes instead of with them, her forehead appearing more shiny. Then she flung her body sideways in a movement of catlike swiftness. He did not see the bellrope at the head of the bed until the thrust of her arm swept back brocade curtains. Those curtains upset candle and candle-holder, extinguishing the light But there was time to see the savage tug she gave at the rope.

  In the dark, at first without haste, Jeffrey groped for the door. No sound was uttered from that alcove; it seemed an age before he could find the knob. He opened the door and closed it behind him. That was where he began to hurry, left hand supporting his sword-scabbard, along a hall with an arched roof and a marble floor now softly lighted by a few candles in wall-sconces. He was only a dozen feet from the head of the staircase when a door opened at his left.