The Dead of Night

by Oliver Onions

  So Andy and Mickie put their heads together about it.

  Eve, heavy-eyed and listless, did not know what kept Davy so busy in the stable next the garage. But money spent on a tennis-court would be money said goodbye to, whereas money spent on a horse would be recoverable later on. The horse arrived – a sleek sixteen-hands chestnut, with saddle and bridle and blanket complete, and Eve got out her russet jodhpurs and mounted.

  ‘But am I to ride all by myself?’ she asked as she patted the glossy neck.

  ‘Can’t afford a horse apiece. Off you go, and look out for the rabbit-holes,’ they replied.

  And off she went, and her first day’s stiffness was the beginning of her return to health.

  She did not ride alone for very many days. Within a week she returned shortly before lunch accompanied by a cavalier whom she introduced to her brothers as Mr Struddy Rimington. He was received with civility, and asked if he lived in the neighbourhood. He did not. He was putting up at the Royal Foresters, he said. He had the air of a man capable of looking after himself in most emerg­encies; he was admirably breeched and gaitered, and sat his black like a centaur; but the question was where Eve had picked him up? Eve answered that it was really the horses that had made themselves known to one another.

  ‘And I think he’s the kind of man it was possible to have asked to stay to lunch,’ she reproached them when he had gone.

  ‘Who is he? One never knows,’ said Andy.

  ‘How very English you’ve got. Nobody’d suppose you’d lived in India! Anyway it’s stupid to see a person morning after morning and treat them as if they had the plague!’

  ‘What’s he doing at the Foresters? What’s his job? Sorry to have to do the heavy father, but if we are going to have the fellow in to smoke a pipe –’

  ‘He smokes cigarettes. Balkans.’

  This at least had Davy’s approval. – ‘Balkans at sixteen bob a hundred, hacks every day and stops at the Foresters – fellow to know,’ he said.

  ‘And I’m not in the habit of picking up any stranger, even if he is on a horse,’ said Eve with dignity as she marched away.

  The whole incident, in short, went off smoothly and according to plan.

  A few days later Mr Struddy Rimington was asked to stay to lunch. On a close inspection he was perhaps not quite so young as he looked; he might have been twenty-eight or nine. The black was not his own; it belonged to the Foresters’ stables. Save during the week­ends the Foresters was practically empty, he said, and he admitted that there was an expensive sort of bleakness about it.

  ‘Pleasant little place you have here,’ he remarked. ‘I should like to ask you to show me round one time.’

  ‘Come and have a walk round now,’ said Mickie of the worn scarred face.

  And when it appeared that Mr Struddy Rimington too had stayed with the Trevelyans he was free to come in whenever he liked.

  Eve’s eyes grew bright again and her step springy once more. How should they not, with a horse under her, the sunny English heath to gallop over, and Mr Struddy Rimington for company? Her jodhpurs and little round hat became her daily attire. Rose and Laura began to lay the extra place without being told. They exchanged looks behind their mistress’s back. It was to be gathered that something or other had their entire approval.

  Then came a day when Mr Struddy Rimington said that fair was fair, and he’d really no false shame about such things, but the hospit­ality was getting a bit one-sided, and what about their dining at the Foresters with him? For that matter, why not that very evening? Pack the maids off to the cinema or somewhere – what about it?

  Nothing could be pleasanter. Laura and Rose were given their late passes. Eve and her brothers wedged themselves into the little Fiat. The Royal Foresters was a bare mile away. They set off, and for the first time during their occupation the house, as far as the tenants were concerned, was empty.

  How restful was the Foresters after that Victorian dwelling with the faded furniture and the shut-off wing! Its utter lack of atmo­sphere or association of any kind was a release. Only the gardens were older than the day before yesterday. Its entrance-hall was Waring and Gillow baronial, with an arched fireplace and massive iron dogs; its aperitif-lounge shone with leather and glass and parquet. The mantel­pieces of the dining-room were architectural elevations of red mahogany, and the ceiling from which depended the electric chandeliers was coffered and pargetted. When bells rang waiters had apparently to come from immense distances, and the wine-waiter from farthest away of all. Dogs haunted it not – Visitors were Respectfully Requested to arrange for the feeding of their dogs outside. Nothing whatever haunted it. It was magnificently modern and immune.

  But a White Lady might have haunted the old garden on which their table looked out. Its hedges were solid walls of clipped box, on which sentinel-shapes like chessmen were posted at intervals. Their black-green seemed to clarify the sky to a crystal translucency, in which a thin moon was already sinking. Not as much as a daisy spotted the shaven lawn. And to complete the English peace, some­where a quiet bell was calling folk to week-night Service.

  ‘This do, Miss Peckover?’ said Struddy, showing the table by the wide-open window. ‘And by the way, what do I call you all?’

  ‘Heaven knows why we were all named after Saints,’ Andy re­marked. ‘Parents hoped for the best, I suppose.’

  ‘Mine’s the worst,’ said Eve; ‘Eve Mary Agatha Monica is my calamity. So you’ve plenty to choose from.’ And dinner began.

  Not only did the Victorian house seem a world away; Eve’s whole precious life might have been the life of another Eve. Always she had done things for her brothers; the thought that she might one day do something for herself had only newly come to her. Something of her history was folded up and laid away, something else unpacked, shining out of its wrappings like a new treasure. Dear boys! How fond she would always remain of them, how close their business would always be to her! Those were the things that could never be taken away. Andy and Davy would go back to their soldiering, Mickie to his peculiar trade; but she would remain here. It was all settled in her heart. She could have laughed for the sureness of it. There was something of ‘their sort’ about him, the family valuation of what were the essentials, what the asides. She saw Andy looking at him. When Andy disapproved of a thing people were aware of it. She did not think Andy disapproved.

  A waiter approached the host. He was wanted at the telephone. He excused himself, and until his return the party ceased to be a party, and became a family sitting once more.

  After dinner they walked in the box-walled garden. The church bell had long since ceased, the young moon had disappeared. Over­head the rooks were assembling, and the inky chessmen stood rigid against an infinity of fading gold. Eve had taken Davy’s arm. The other three men were across the lawn. She had nothing to say to Davy; she just wanted to take his arm. It was a strong and jolly arm to take.

  They continued to walk and to talk, now grouped together, now split up again. Eve neither found herself alone with Struddy nor sought to be. It grew late, and she said something about home.

  ‘Heaps of time yet,’ Struddy answered. ‘Come inside and have a whisky-and-soda.’

  It was eleven o’clock, and a second whisky-and-soda had gone the way of the first, before Davy fetched the car. The headlights swung round the orderly gravel of the hotel sweep. Eve was packed in, and Davy took the wheel.

  ‘Tomorrow – ’ said Eve with a wave of her hand, and the Royal Foresters Hotel was lost behind them in the night.

  A few moments brought them home. Eve, first ascertaining that Rose and Laura had returned, went straight to her room. She lighted her lamp and began to prepare for bed. She had no fear of the room now. Only because her heart had been empty had the devils of fear crept in. Now, whatever lurked behind that closed door –

  Instinctively
her eyes went to the door.

  Something had been done to it. High up in one corner a tiny shadow showed where she could have sworn no shadow had been before. Lamp in hand, she advanced. A small triangular flap pro­jected slightly forward. She held the lamp closer to the vertical stripes. A sharp knife had been run all round the plate-mark, cutting cleanly through the super-impositions of papering. Pull that flap forward a little more, loosen the top edge, and use a little strength, and the surface could be stripped away and the door exposed. Some­body, with or without an Order to View, had been in her room, and this was the Portion that had been left on the Premises.

  8

  When man makes to himself a machine so powerful that to set it in motion may well be not to know how to stop it again, he must have at hand a second machine, more controllable for ordinary purposes. Armies are not mobilised when a punitive expedition is all that is required. Which is probably the reason why all at once letters began to arrive addressed to Ambrose Laban, Esquire.

  The first of these was delivered with the Peckover letters. On the postman’s next visit Andy handed the letter back to him.

  ‘Nothing to do with anybody here,’ he said.

  ‘I’ve knocked, sir, but I can’t get any answer,’ the man replied.

  ‘How have you delivered Mr Laban’s letters before?’

  ‘Here, sir. Those he had. The housekeeper took them in. There hasn’t been many since then.’

  ‘What’s done with letters that aren’t delivered?’

  ‘They’re opened and sent back to the sender, sir.’

  ‘Then that’s what you’d better do with this one,’ said Andy.

  Let the Post Office work for its living. If Mr Laban remained obdurate in his non-existence it would then be time to bring heavier pressure to bear.

  For nobody wanted uniformed policeman fussing about the place. Reporters and photographers were even less desired. All that was sought was the fixation of Ambrose Laban, Esquire, in his proper personal shape, and the seizure of a dog in the presence of respons­ible witnesses.

  ‘Have you many like Struddy at the I.O.?’ Andy asked of Mickie.

  ‘No, Struddy’s our bright particular star in that line,’ Mickie replied.

  ‘Eve, any notion of why we were all pushed out to the Foresters that night?’

  ‘Don’t think so,’ and there was a pause.

  ‘But how do we know he didn’t hear them?’ Andy asked presently. ‘They went through the whole house. Moving about her room, for instance?’

  ‘We don’t know. We aren’t dealing with the knowable. He may anticipate everything we do.’

  ‘Well, Davy’s room’s ready for Struddy, and I’ve changed with Eve. Struddy got his chit?’

  ‘Got it this morning.’

  ‘Then all we can do’s to wait.’

  The ‘chit’ that Struddy Rimington, of His Majesty’s India Office, London, had got, was signed by a Secretary of State, and counter­signed by the Head of another Department. Precisely how it stood with regard to Habeas Corpus was not yet ascertainable – for who knew what form the corpus would take? The words ‘alive or dead’ did not occur in it – for is a man alive or dead during the two-and-a-half hours he sleeps in the bed of an Indian river? Nevertheless, on information received from Michael George Peckover, of the same Service, wide discretionary powers were vested in the holder of the document.

  And copies of Enclosure (B) had been sent to Ambrose Laban, Esquire, and a certain Stephen Binian, at their last-known addresses, and from the circumstances of their sending would be deemed to have been duly delivered.

  ‘So he’d better tread on the gas,’ said Struddy; and Davy, who had moved his bed over to the loft, reported that a light had shown behind the decalcomanied window from sunset till daybreak. Andy, from Eve’s room, corroborated, that all night the sounds of moving about had not ceased. ‘Packing up for his master like a good servant, and exit Mr Laban and his dog together,’ he added.

  He appeared to be right. The next morning, without any attempt at concealment, Binian and the dog crossed the yard and went out. He was away several hours. That afternoon a horse and cart approached along the drive. It drew up at the door that Davy had broken. Binian and the driver put a number of boxes on it, and the cart started back for Willowmere.

  Within half an hour Struddy Rimington was informed that the labels of the boxes bore the name of Ambrose Laban, and that their destination was Waterloo.

  ‘Pass the Time Table, Mickie,’ he said.

  The afternoon trains were slow ones, the evening trains good: but before he could take a train a feeble old man, leading a powerful dog, would have to get to Willowmere. Struddy chuckled. If a taxi came to the house all they would have to do would be to stop Mr Laban, to regret deeply and politely that they had a warrant for the arrest of his manservant, and to request that he be produced. But that was not very likely to happen. Binian was too wide awake for that. The last train left Willowmere at 10.26. Mr Laban could not walk the four miles to the station. But he would be able to reach the end of the lane on foot. A hundred to one a vehicle would be found waiting there towards ten o’clock.

  ‘And with Davy over the way and Andy in the kitchen,’ said Struddy, who had now taken command. ‘ – well, I mean, better call it another dinner with me –’

  So Rose and Laura were once more given leave of absence and in the kitchen Andy cut beef sandwiches. Mickie was given a roving commission, and went frequently into the room with the paper door. As for Eve, the director of operations was giving her an entirely unrequired lesson in night-driving. Driving a car by night, he said, was a very different thing from driving a car by day, and driving between lights was most difficult of all. Except to say ‘Really?’ Eve kept her mouth shut, and took the wheel of the Fiat. With the twilight deepening about her and the startled moths vivid in the beam of the headlights, she drove up and down the Willowmere road, with other lights, white and red, meeting or passing them from time to time.

  Suddenly she gave a soft laugh. – ‘You are so ridiculously simple, Struddy!’ she said. ‘As if I hadn’t guessed long ago what all this was about!’

  ‘All what?’

  ‘Oh, everything! At the moment this getting me out of the way, while you cruise up and down looking for a taxi you expect.’

  ‘Don’t talk. You’re driving.’

  ‘And your staying at the Foresters, and “What am I to call you fellows?” as if you’d never set eyes on them before!’

  ‘Mind the ditch – better turn at that gate –’

  ‘Suppose I hadn’t looked at you that morning?’

  He dropped his voice suddenly. – ‘Let that fellow get past – I think I’ll take the wheel –’

  Quickly they changed places, keeping behind the taillight that had just passed. The ruby glowed on the number-plate of one of the station taxis. At the lane’s end it slowed down. Struddy sounded no horn. Eve felt the Fiat’s swift picking up. A quarter of a mile of double hedge rushed past like the wind. They swung in at the gate, did an outside-edge along the drive. Struddy stopped short of the porch, and the car came to a standstill in the middle of the fairway, headlights whitely blazing.

  ‘Don’t move her – stay here and keep the lights on,’ Struddy ordered, and was off.

  In Eve’s old room he spoke to Mickie in a whisper.

  ‘All right. Taxi’s waiting for him. Anything happened?’

  Something happened even as he spoke. From behind the papered door, shattering the silence of so many days, the voice of the dog was again raised in a howl of uttermost anguish. Another howl followed it, and another, and another. Again there were the sounds of a violent struggle, the crash of objects falling. The Devil had broken loose.

  Bertie had dashed for a chair and mounted it. His hands were at the upper edge of the cu
t. Rrrrrp! There was a hollow rending, drowned by the clamour of the dog. Rrrrrp! The upper panels of a brown and yellow grained door were revealed. In Mickie’s hand was a revolver.

  ‘Both together –’

  And as the two men hurled themselves on the door the faint sound of Davy’s whistle reached them from the direction of the loft.

  In the room in which they stood Eve’s bedroom lamp burned, but it showed little through the gap where the door had been. Other lights burned there, dim smoking yellow wicks, and already there was a smell that should have warned them. But the two men had fallen back, their eyes fixed on the swollen clay-yellow mass that rolled and writhed and tore itself. God in Heaven, the size of it! Its head seemed small and toylike – and yet it was the head of a large Alsatian dog, with jaws that foamed and clashed. On its back it bucked, its tail straight as a rod [footnote: ‘But to come to these three symptoms then whereof I spake; I account the one of them to be the incredible strength of the possessed creature which will farre exceed the strength of sixe of the wightest and wodest of any other men that are not so troubled. The next is the boldning up so far of the patient’s brest and bellie with such an unnatural sturring and vehement agitation within them; and such an ironie hardness of his sinewes so stiffly bended out, that it were not possible to pricke out, as it were, the skinne of any other person so farre . . . The last is the speaking of sundrie languages, which the patient is known by them that were acquaint with him neuer to have learned, and that with an uncouth and hollow voice; and all the time of his speaking, a greater motion being in his breast than in his mouth.’ – (Demonologie, James I)]. And mingled with the rest of the uproar were mouthings that resembled words.

  And the room in which the horror leapt and bounded and fought? Mickie knew it, with its painted obscenities on the walls, its side-shrines on which the lamps fumed with an evil smell, and the hideous four-armed image at the farther end that threatened to strike them down. It was the temple at Dakhta Lal. He had set up the abominable apparatus of his worship here – if it was his worship, and not another blasphemy added to the rest.