The Dead of Night

by Oliver Onions

  Sir Egbert’s semi-Substance was like reddish ground glass; it was the beginning of the agony. How near to the Mortal Precipitation he was he knew when suddenly he found himself thinking, almost with fright, of his own dear White Lady. She was a Ghost.

  Then the Mortal began to gabble words. It was the Exorcism.

  Oh, why – why – why had Sir Egbert not chosen a Layman?

  The gabbling continued. Colour – warmth – weight – these settled down on Sir Egbert the Dauntless. He half Was. And as he con­tinued steadily to Become, the words increased in speed. Sir Egbert’s feet felt the floor; he cried; a faint windy moan came. The Parson bounded a foot up on the bed and tossed his pillow into the air.

  Could nothing save Sir Egbert?

  Ah, yes. They that lead a meek and blameless Non-existence shall not be cast down; they shall not be given over at last to the terrors of the Solid and Known. From somewhere outside in the moonlight there came a shrill sound.

  It was the crowing of a Cock.

  The Parson had had the pillow over his face. It fell, and he looked again.

  Nothing was there.

  Sir Egbert, back in his comfortable Fourth Dimension, was of the loved indivisible texture of his dear White Lady again.

  The Master of the House

  1

  The draft agreement, as old Mr Wetherby explained it, contained one clause that nine people out of ten would have hesitated to accept. The owner of the property was to remain on undisturbed, he, his manservant and his Alsatian dog. Andy Peckover did in fact demur. He was the eldest of the three brothers, the Sikh, and whatever place they took would be in his name.

  ‘Why the dog?’ he asked. ‘Why not the cat and the canary? Do you often put dogs in your agreements?’

  ‘My dear Andy,’ Mr Wetherby replied, who had been their father’s solicitor before them, ‘in the Law we learn to be surprised at nothing. Up there’ – and he indicated the japanned boxes that resembled black marble slabs with white epitaphs – ‘there are much odder things than that.’

  ‘But we don’t want a lodger hanging about. Place wouldn’t be our own.’

  ‘He has his own quarters in a wing part. He undertakes that as far as possible you shall – let me see – yes, here it is – you shall be unaware of his presence.’ And he put the draft into Andy’s hand that he might see for himself.

  Andy’s thick brows were bent over the paper. – ‘Why is it in those words – I mean “unaware of his presence”?’

  ‘His way of putting it, I suppose.’

  ‘Who is he?’

  ‘Except that he is a Mr Laban, and that he lives a very retired life, I know nothing about him. He writes through his solicitors. If he has an establishment he can no longer afford to maintain – ’ Mr Wetherby spread his hands.

  Andy pushed the paper away and stretched himself. After weeks of hanging about London he wanted exercise. – ‘Better call it off, I think,’ he said.

  At that a girl’s voice gave a deep resigned sigh. She was Eve, the youngest of them all.

  ‘So now we start all over again! Oh, how sick I am of the words, “Please Admit Bearer to View” and “This Portion to be Left at the Residence”!’

  ‘We only want it for a year,’ said Davy. He came next in age to herself, and, like Andrew, was a soldier.

  ‘Ten months – two have gone. We shall never all have leave together again like this. And this lovely English spring – oh, that apple-orchard and the forget-me-nots!’ Eve sighed.

  ‘For goodness’ sake let’s settle something –’

  ‘Think of some of the places we’ve seen –’

  ‘If we’re going to wait for Andrew to make up his mind –’

  And after all they had come home to an England nettle-rashed with contractors’ bungalows on the one hand and melancholy with huge shuttered mansions on the other, to be had rent-free by any­body who would pay the wages of a minimum number of servants. Every place they had ‘viewed’ had been either too vast to be thought of or too small to be of use. But here was a modest property of eight or ten acres, standing high on heathy land, at a rental within their means, and the references all ready to take up. Andy got up with a mighty stretch of his spare frame.

  ‘Well, there seems rather a lot of Alsatian dog and invisibility about it,’ he capitulated, ‘but Eve’ll have the place to run, so if she’s satisfied – want me to sign anything?’

  ‘Not now. I’ll have the agreement prepared and sent round to you in a few days,’ Mr Wetherby replied.

  And sent round it was, and Andy signed it, condition and all.

  During their weeks of house-hunting trains had served their turn, with an omnibus or a station taxi at the other end; but if they were going into the heart of the country, that is to say four miles from a village, they must have means of their own of getting about. The tall Sikh Major walked into a motor showroom one day and asked the price of a car in the window. They told him, and he produced his cheque-book and fountain-pen. He was then asked the very latest date at which he could accept delivery.

  ‘I want to take it away with me,’ said Andy.

  Wondering where this tall man in the loose grey clothes had been spending his time, the salesman smiled. – ‘I’m afraid we have to take our orders in rotation, sir. Of course we always do our utmost to expediate.’

  ‘I can give you till Friday.’

  The salesman said something about two months. – ‘And when you let us have the pleasure of giving you a trial run, sir –’

  But he found himself talking to the air. Andy had put his fountain-pen back into his pocket and had walked out of the shop.

  He thought he had seen in Great Portland Street the sort of place he wanted. It was a place where cars not strictly new were sold. He walked there, and, entering the shop, stood looking at a small blue-bodied 8 h.p. Fiat. A youth with a cigarette between his lips strolled up to him.

  ‘Is that car for sale?’ Andy asked.

  ‘I should say so.’

  ‘Do you want to sell it?’

  The youth looked up as if he was about to say No, he’d rather take it home to keep rabbits in, but apparently thought better of it. – ‘Of course I want to sell it,’ he said.

  ‘Then take that cigarette out of your mouth and show it to me.’

  Both these things were done. After a number of questions Andy asked the price.

  ‘That depends on how many payments, sir.’

  ‘One payment. Now.’

  At this unprecedented way of buying a car the youth had to consult a superior. The price was £160. Out came Andy’s fountain-pen again.

  ‘Fill it up with petrol, and have it running at the door at four o’clock. Facing south,’ he added.

  This was the car in which, on a sunny day in May, accompanied by Eve and a first instalment of personal belongings, Major Peckover drove to the house that had been rented for the remainder of the year.

  It stood within a screen of Surrey pines, through which glimpses could be had of the wide-spreading vale below. A quarter of a mile of sandy lane led to it, losing itself in a heathy common, and the drive wound in such a way that the house did not actually appear till one was upon it. Then one saw that it was really approached from the back. The place was being thoroughly aired. The door under the white-pillared Victorian porch stood wide open; so did the series of doors within; and the eye travelled as it were through a shining interior tunnel, along the staircased hall, through a far drawing-room, and out to the gardens beyond, which were the house’s real front. On the left a spacious flagged yard with stables was crossed by a high wall with a closed door in it. Where the path passed round to the right three ground-floor bow-windows resembled stucco crinolines, the wearers of which were apparently leaning in at the windows above.

  T
he Peckovers were not taking up residence for some days yet, but it looked as if somebody was already moving out. By the porch stood a wheel-barrow, with a corded tin trunk on it. Andy glanced at this, and then called to a figure that appeared from behind the stairs.

  ‘Are you Mr Laban’s man?’

  But the man called to somebody unseen, ‘They’re here, Jane,’ and came forward. He took the shafts of the barrow and trundled the load away. A moment later a woman appeared, with a black veil pushed up under her black bonnet and black kid gloves on her hands. She carried a bunch of iron keys.

  ‘I’ll show you which is which, miss, on account of some of the labels being a bit rubbed,’ she said. ‘Then it will be time for me to be getting along.’

  ‘But,’ Eve exclaimed, taken aback, ‘you were to stay till we came, and then to get me daily help till I could get proper maids from the Registry Office!’

  ‘And so I have, miss, the best I could, though Mrs Hodgson and her girl aren’t quite what I could have wished. And begging your pardon, miss, it was understood by me for today, and here you are –’

  ‘Yes, but not to stay –’

  The housekeeper considered. She was a person who would rather do a little more than her duty than fall short of it, and there was a later train.

  ‘Well, seeing Mrs Hodgson hasn’t come yet, and it’s a misunder­standing, perhaps I’d better tell him,’ she said, and hastened after the man with the barrow. Andy lifted packages from the Fiat. The house-keeper returned, and the two women entered the house together.

  Immediately Eve forgot the little domestic hitch. After parched India, this vernal freshness! There was hardly a window in the place that did not look out on some near or distant prospect of English beauty. The apple-blossom was more fully out, less ruddy than when she had last seen it, but the lovers’ colour of the forget-me-nots was the same, and beauty had marched on beauty as the bright regiments of the spring had succeeded one another. In front of the crinolined windows white broom broke into cloudlets, as if a child had exploded a paper bag of petals, and over it the laburnum showered its gold. The hawthorn was opening its clenched buds, the lilac was already tipped with purple-black. The sky was of baby-ribbon blue; and if the grass of the tennis-court was ankle-deep, had she not three able-bodied brothers to set to work with scythe and cutter? After the baked compounds with their marigolds and hibiscus, this!

  ‘And I understand that’s where the maids will sleep,’ the house­keeper said, pointing to outbuildings that were prolonged into the garden. ‘Mr Laban and his man has what I’m told used to be their quarters.’

  ‘You’re told?’ Eve asked. ‘Then you haven’t been here very long?’

  ‘Only since February, miss. I did all myself, a room at a time. A little a day makes a lot in the end when you aren’t interfered with.’

  ‘Then this is the first time Mr Laban’s let his house?’

  ‘There’s many that’s glad to have a smaller roof over their heads these days, though changes come hard when you’re on in years like him.’

  ‘What kind of a man is Mr Laban?’

  The housekeeper’s black-gloved fingers were at her lips.

  ‘Well,’ she deliberated, ‘it isn’t a deal I’ve seen of him. Nor his man. If it wasn’t for the dog you’d hardly know there was a soul in the place. The man does the buying, not that that’s a deal either. He never gave me a hand even with the carpets. But I’m not one that can’t bear their own company. I’m a bookish woman. Give me a good Mrs Henry Wood and the time flies . . . Now this is the room I should pick for myself if I was you, miss –’

  If she meant the view from the window she was to be con­grat­ulated on her taste. It was the most inspiring outlook of all. There was a gap in the pines. The stages by which the land fell away were hidden, and neither Crome nor Cox ever painted a horizon so bluely stretching away as that that was revealed. The few yards between the trees framed fifty miles of arable and pasture and villages that ended in ‘-shott’. A gatepost hid three-quarters of a distant wood, its fellow a couple of farms. And as far away as could be seen a train crept from the south, trailing its tiny cater­pillar of smoke.

  ‘You’d call that a picture, wouldn’t you, miss?’ the housekeeper was saying. ‘So why windows should be blocked up, with a bit of scenery like that to look at . . . hark, that’ll be Mrs Hodgson. Would you like to see her now, miss?’

  A glance at Mrs Hodgson and Eve’s mind was made up. She was quite unemployable, her fifteen-years-old daughter to all appear­ances a halfwit. Whenever the child was spoken to she went through a sort of callisthenic exercise, which was to dip her black-stockinged knees, at the same time raising her finger-tips to her shoulders. Eve sought her brother.

  ‘How long shall you be?’ she asked, ‘I’ve got to call in Willowmere – unless you wish to clean all those boots yourself, that is.’ And she explained the domestic situation.

  ‘Just ready.’

  ‘And do drive slowly through these lovely lanes –’

  Twenty minutes later Andy was slackening speed under the meet­ing boughs and pausing at the gates of buttercup fields. Willowmere, with its high pavement and white-penned market-place, delighted Eve hardly less, and it was quite unlike India that at the little Registry Office with its two rounded windows they also sold bacon and pepper­mint and cards of darning-wool.

  ‘How many servants will be required, miss?’ Mrs Hickman asked.

  ‘Three, and I want them immediately, please.’

  Mrs Hickman looked at this urgent young woman, who must have her maids three at a time and immediately. She saw a blunt-featured, capable young face, with eyes that were clear because they had nothing to conceal, and cropped boyish hair under the sort of flat hat that goes with a hunting-stock.

  ‘How many in family did you say, miss?’

  ‘My three brothers and myself. Mr Laban has his own man.’

  ‘Is that the house! – It’s a longish way out.’

  ‘There’s the motor-bus.’

  ‘They like to be handy for the pictures of an evening. Who might I ask have you been having?’

  ‘As we don’t come in till next Friday I’ve not had anybody. There was some misunderstanding about dates, and the regular house­keeper has left.’

  ‘Ah, that’d be that Portsmouth woman. She wasn’t engaged through me. And different people has different ideas, but I shouldn’t fancy moving house on a Friday myself –’

  With which words and a shrug, Mrs Hickman promised to do her best.

  2

  Not Andy, but Mickie, the brother in the Political, drove Eve down on the following Friday. Mickie, though three years younger than his elder brother, looked older, partly by reason of a scar that ran down the length of one cheek, but more because of responsibilities shared with few, and experiences it was best to be silent about. Mickie too had the quick light Peckover eyes, and as the car drew up at the front door that was at the back they shot a glance in the direction of an exceedingly tall man in black, who hurried across the yard with a large clay-coloured dog dragging by a thong behind him. The door in the high wall closed after them.

  ‘What are you doing, Mickie?’ Eve exclaimed; for Mickie had thrown a leg over the side of the car and had taken a light run across the yard. He was trying the door that had just closed.

  ‘Why did you do that?’ Eve asked again, when he returned.

  ‘What? Run after that fellow? Thought he might give me a hand with these things. Never mind.’

  And after all there was nothing that he and his sister couldn’t carry between them.

  The house was ready for occupation. In the little smoking-room the glasses of the Landseers were brightly polished, in the dining-room to the left of the porch the large duplex oil-lamp was filled, and stood on the mahogany table. Across the hall, in the men’s hat-a
nd-coat lobby, clean towels hung, and in the morning-room bluebells stood on a piano as yellow as a tortoise-shell cat. Mickie carried Eve’s dress-baskets up to the room the former housekeeper had so strongly recommended. It was a large two-windowed room, with a paper of faded vertical stripes that gave to the hand like a drum by reason of its many superimpositions. Two steel-engravings of Rome hung from nails with china heads. The mantelpiece was of white marble, and there were watch-pockets over the pillows of the large mahogany bed. Eve advanced to the window. Beautiful, beautiful view! She would have that to look at, throughout a whole changing summer! She opened the window wide, breathing in the air, while the sash-weights knocked in their cases and the lace curtains floated inwards. A jolly, great-grandfatherly sort of house, with its old bell-fittings and curly-backed sofas! Who minded oil-lamps for an hour of a summer’s evening, when the birds sang half the night and moths and beetles flew in at the open windows?

  It was as she turned away from the view that she noticed something she had not noticed before. It was as faint as the plate-marks on the steel-engravings of Rome, and for that matter was a little like them. It was to the right of the fireplace, and the shadow from the window and the vertical stripes of the paper combined to conceal it. The papering of the walls had been continued over the surface of a communicating door.

  Eve paused, and then put out her hand. At any rate the papering was not recent, for it was as parchmenty with old layers as the rest. It was in fact not the door at all that caused her suddenly to wonder. It was something she had heard – something the housekeeper had said –

  All at once she had it. ‘You’d call that a picture, wouldn’t you now? So why windows should be blocked up, with a bit of scenery like that to look at – ’ the housekeeper had said.

  What window had been blocked up? She had been repeatedly round the house, and had found no blocked window.

  She went downstairs and walked out into the garden. It was true, though anybody might have looked a score of times and never have noticed it. If the housekeeper had not had it to clean she might not have noticed it either. There were four windows overlooking the garden in which she stood, the two of her own room, another to the left, and a fourth, to the extreme right. It was on this that her eyes were fixed. At a glance it was precisely like the others. It had lace curtains, a little dingy perhaps, and a short roller-blind. But there was a difference. Eve found herself looking up into a lidded eye. It was bricked or boarded up behind.