Exhausted by this long explanation, Fitchett closed his eyes. Colby and I gazed down at him in wonder, hardly able to believe our ears.
Colby whispered, ‘By Jove, it’s like that old Greek tale, you know the one. Orpheus and his wife.’
‘Eurydice,’ I supplied the name.
‘Right, that one. She died and he went looking for her to bring her back from the Underworld. Ezra thinks he can do the same with Emily: bring her back. He’s as mad as a hatter.’
‘Mad but sharp,’ mumbled Fitchett. Though his eyes were closed, he had been listening. ‘He found her in London, you know…’
My heart leaped into my mouth, as they say. I bent close to the bed again.
‘Found her? Found whom?’
‘Young Miss Devray. He went to the house where she was living. Saw her there.’
‘How did he find her?’
‘Clever fellow, Ezra, even if he believes such nonsense,’ muttered Fitchett. ‘And he is still a rogue. I was teaching him the craft; he was a good apprentice. But still a scoundrel…’
His strength was exhausted now and his voice was fading. There was a rapid march of feet behind us and the rustle of starched linen.
‘You will have to go now!’ said the matron. Her voice did not brook argument. But we were ready to leave.
‘We have to get to those stones, that place, Stonehenge,’ I said to Colby. ‘If Jennings is there, we can take him.’
* * *
It was one thing to agree to the plan in principle and quite another to set it up and put it into action. The stones were in the midst of open ground, a flat deserted plain grazed only by sheep, so Colby told me. The land and the monument belonged to the Antrobus family; and he must send word to them that the police were about to invade their estate in some number.
‘The stones are of interest to those who like antiquities. They do attract a number of visitors in the better weather, some of them quite distinguished. There have been all manner of discussions about what to do about them over the years. Some people are for setting upright those that have fallen. Some believe they should be left alone. Others fear they will collapse further. There have been numerous committees, I understand, but you know what happens when things go before committees… The thing is this. Jennings, if he’s there, will be certain to see and hear us coming. We must take enough men with us to make a cordon around the spot, or we won’t have a hope of capturing him.’
By the time we had assembled a party of constables, and found transport to take them, the light was fading and a clammy mist was drifting over the open landscape. It contained a drizzling rain within it, and soaked the thick cloth of my greatcoat. I was soon both damp and very cold. Colby and I travelled in a dogcart. Two charabancs had been found and commandeered to carry the party of constables. Were it not for the seriousness of our purpose, we would have resembled a party of day-trippers. Our strength had been increased by reinforcements volunteered by Sir Edmund Antrobus.
The road itself, though muddy and rutted, was passable. We would have made good progress but for the mist. This was not like the London fog, for it carried no odour of sulphur and of workaday life. It was cleaner, but somehow unearthly. It had thickened and spread extensively, played tricks with objects, transforming them into what they were not and making it impossible to judge distance. Natural light had dwindled to a crepuscular gloom before we were halfway into our journey. This meant our conveyances were hung about with lanterns, though they did little to show the track ahead. If Jennings didn’t hear us coming, he’d certainly see our lights bouncing in the mist. Perhaps he would think us mythical creatures, will-o’-the-wisps. Around us the landscape was empty, offering no cover. But there were living creatures out there. Sheep would suddenly appear before us, and bound away, terrified. When this happened, my heart would leap into my mouth, for all my attempts to cling to reason. This was an ancient landscape, largely uninhabited apart from the sheep. Yet I felt, from time to time, that unseen beings marked our progress.
We rattled and bounced on for another couple of miles and then, to add to our troubles, there was a distant growl of thunder, followed a few moments later by a flicker of lightning.
‘About three miles away,’ muttered Colby. As the thunder rolled again he added, ‘And getting closer, confound it!’ To our driver he shouted, ‘How far away are we now?’
‘Almost there now, gents!’ shouted the man over his shoulder. He raised his whip and pointed at something. ‘There is a fire lit ahead, Mr Colby!’
Colby and I hung over the sides of the dogcart and peered through the gloom. Sure enough, flames danced and flickered at ground level.
‘Someone is there!’ cried Colby excitedly. ‘He has lit a bonfire! How has he managed it in these damp conditions?’
At the same moment a great flash of lightning lit up the whole area. I felt the heat of it on my face as we beheld a fantastic scene. The great stones lay higgledy-piggledy before us. I had not realised the enormous size of them or their power, located here in a wilderness. It was as if giants had been playing a monster game of spillikins and many had collapsed in a ragged heap. Others still stood upright amid their fallen fellows. How had they been brought here? Who had brought them? When? Despite myself, I felt a shiver of awe run along my spine. This was indeed a place of ancient mysteries. I began to comprehend why Ezra Jennings had brought the wooden lasts here to carry out the ritual he believed would bring the dead girl back to life.
In a couple of places two of the stone monoliths remained upright, linked by a third across the top, making a stone lintel. The fire had been lit on the ground between the uprights of one such pair. In this rough approximation of a theatre’s proscenium arch, we clearly saw the figure of a man outlined against the writhing, orange-red flames. He was gesticulating so wildly he seemed to be a wooden marionette, manipulated into performing an outlandish wild dance by a supernatural puppeteer. Was this part of his ritual? Or had he realised we were near and, if it were Jennings, guessed who we were and our purpose? His arms were making thrusting gestures, as if he would push us back or at least make us stop where we were.
The lightning had gone, and the thunder rumbled more distantly. The threatened storm was moving away. But the fire had also disappeared quite suddenly with only one last feeble flicker. Either the fuel had been too damp, or it had been stamped out by the man we’d glimpsed, to extinguish the beacon leading us to the spot. If so, he was too late as far as that was concerned. We’d found him; we were however still no nearer apprehending him. If he was our man, he was now somewhere out there in the darkness and the swirling clammy clouds of mist.
‘Jennings, do you reckon?’ shouted Colby in my ear.
‘It could well be. Or it might be a tramp. Or a shepherd? We must stop here and deploy our cordon!’ I yelled back.
This could not be achieved without some confusion and delay. But eventually our men and the volunteers had formed a circle around the site, their positions marked by the specks of light that indicated the lanterns they held. It was far from satisfactory. The man we’d seen had also had time to relocate. He could have slipped away between the officers and now be out there somewhere, who knew where?
‘No,’ said Colby, to whom I communicated my concerns. ‘No, he’s come here for a purpose and he must carry it out, or everything he’s done to make it possible is wasted. What do you suggest we do now?’
‘We close in,’ I decided. ‘We move slowly forward and, if he is indeed still there where we last saw him, he must be trapped.’
I did not feel nearly as optimistic as I sounded. Colby shared my doubts. He mumbled something. I couldn’t catch his words, but didn’t need to and didn’t bother to ask him to repeat it. Colby blew a single blast on a police whistle and we began our move.
I was acutely aware that we were hunters and we hunted in the way primitive man would have done, seeking to trap our quarry. Moisture condensed on my skin and was channelled down the sleeve of the arm I held aloft with my lante
rn, to trickle down my neck. It also found its way inside my coat at a dozen points. I wondered how wet Jennings was, if indeed it was Jennings out there. He’d been here some while. But the elements would not worry him. They were his friends, inconveniencing us far more than him. He had but to shelter under one of the great stones and watch us blunder about.
At last we were close enough to form a circle through which he could not escape, if he were still here. But was he? There was neither sight nor sound of our quarry.
One of the searchers gave a shout. He was holding up his lantern and pointing downwards. Colby and I hastened forward. The man had stumbled on the spot where the fire had burned. I swung the lantern around in a circle and my eye caught something that seemed out of place. I moved the lantern back slowly until I came to the same spot. There were some objects on the ground. I walked towards them, held the lantern over them and beheld the wooden lasts for the boots made for Emily Devray.
‘He is here!’ I called to Colby in relief.
Then I stooped and picked up the wooden lasts.
As my fingers touched them, a wild screech sounded above our heads. ‘Put them back!’ screamed a voice. It seemed to have come from the heavens themselves. The wind caught it and tossed it out into the darkness. ‘Put them back! She is coming!’ it howled again with even more urgency.
The nearest man to me surreptitiously signed himself with the cross. I looked up for the source of the cry.
Jennings had managed to scale one of the great pillars that had fallen at an angle and balanced there precariously. It was as if some great bird had alighted on it, sent from another world, who could say where or of what kind. All the power of the ancient stone circle seemed to have focused on him, so that it was truly an unearthly figure towering over us, terrifying and grotesque. He began to wail, a primitive keening. His rage, agony and despair all flowed out of him like an electric current. I was aware that, around me, all the officers with the lanterns had instinctively stepped back. The desperate howls echoed off the surrounding stones, as if the ancient monoliths were alive and joined with him in his agony.
‘Come down, Ezra!’ I shouted. ‘You will fall, man! Just slide down the stone!’
He ignored my plea. ‘Put them back!’ he cried again with such power in his voice I must admit I, too, was taken aback and, for an instant, almost obeyed him. The officers had rallied and moved forward again. Jennings was caught in the orange beams of a dozen or more lanterns held aloft. His unbuttoned coat flapped wildly, indeed like great wings. He waved his arms above his head. The storm that had moved away made its lingering presence known by a distant rumble in the heavens, like a drumroll attending a circus acrobat.
As if on this cue, Ezra launched himself from his perch. He hurtled through the air like some great owl with outspread wings and wickedly sharp talons stretched out to grasp its prey. He crashed into me, knocking me sprawling to the ground. He clawed wildly at me, seeking the wooden blocks, but I was determined to hold on to them whatever the cost. I clasped them to my chest and rolled over to protect them. Jennings began to batter me with his fists, screaming.
Colby came to my aid, and then other officers. They all piled on to Jennings. But he was on top of me, so I found myself at the bottom of a heap of struggling bodies, bearing the full weight of the lot. I blacked out.
When I came to, I fancy it was only minutes later, I was still on the wet ground. Colby was bending over me, shouting in my ear: ‘Where are you hurt?’
I moved my arms and legs awkwardly but without pain. ‘Not… hurt…’ I gasped. ‘Only winded… Give me a hand!’
I was hauled to my feet by several pairs of helping hands.
‘Where is he?’ I managed to ask, swaying on my feet and clinging to Colby’s arm like a child to his nursemaid.
‘Oh, we’ve got him safe,’ Colby assured me in his sanguine way. ‘The fight’s gone out of him.’
It was then I became aware of a wild sobbing. I looked in that direction and saw, in the lantern’s glow, a huddled figure sitting on the ground with his head on his knees and his arms about his shins, crying his heart out in despair.
‘The wooden lasts!’ I exclaimed in a panic.
‘I have them here,’ Colby assured me. ‘We can go back now.’
As I stumbled past the crouched figure, he raised his head and I beheld Ezra Jennings’s pale face plastered with his long, rain-soaked hair, his eyes burning.
‘You have interfered. You have destroyed the link. You have sent her back!’ he croaked.
‘She was never coming!’ Colby told him unkindly.
Chapter Eighteen
‘Well, what’s your opinion, Ross?’ asked Colby.
We had made the return to Salisbury in drizzling rain and at a sedate pace. We ought all to be feeling the elation of success; but we did not. The race to reach Stonehenge and the target of taking our man had fired us all. Now that fire had gone out like the one Jennings had lit by the great stones. There was a general feeling of sadness, not helped by our prisoner sobbing quietly most of the way, but occasionally finding his voice to accuse us of robbing him of Emily. I realised how very tired I was and how hungry.
On our arrival Jennings was consigned to a cell and a constable ordered to keep a close eye on him while we decided what to do next. In cases like this, we were well aware, there was always a risk of a suicide attempt.
‘Is he as crazy as he makes out?’ Colby had produced a pipe and lit it, puffing furiously and creating a pungent smoke. It swirled around his head and gave me the illusion I was back in the London fog. ‘For my money, he’s not acting. He’s a lunatic. They come in all sorts of guises. But you may have a different opinion,’ Colby concluded politely.
‘I don’t know,’ I admitted frankly. ‘Perhaps we should call in a doctor to examine him. It would require one who knew something about lunacy.’
‘There’s one who attends the inmates at a private asylum nearby,’ suggested Colby. ‘I could send a message to him. His name is Lefebre.’
‘Lefebre!’ I exclaimed. ‘It’s possible I’ve met him before. Is he a well-dressed fellow with moustaches and a small beard, the sort of chap one hears described as “dashing”?’
‘Well, yes,’ admitted Colby, taken aback. ‘That sounds like him. Where did you meet him?’
‘Oh, it was a few years back, a case in the New Forest. I was sent down from the Yard to assist. Dr Lefebre was already on the scene as the family of the suspect had called him in. He is considered a distinguished expert. We could not have the opinion of anyone better.’
‘I’ll send him a note,’ said Colby. Then, brightening, ‘But he already knows you! Perhaps you could make a personal appeal to him to help us out?’
Everything about this case was odd; so one more odd thing did not seem to me to be a cause for objection. I wrote a letter to Dr Lefebre, reminding him of our previous acquaintance and apologising for troubling him. It was sent off by hand.
‘It will be a while before he gets here,’ said Colby. ‘We could attempt to question Jennings in the meantime. At least we’d have more information for the doctor when he does arrive. I suggest I question him about the attack on Fitchett.’
I considered this. ‘This is your manor, as they say in London, and he is your prisoner. If you think that’s in order, yes, it might add to our knowledge. Then, if Lefebre thinks he’s sane, and if you can get a statement from the prisoner as to what made him batter poor old Fitchett so ferociously, perhaps I might question him about Emily. It is vital, for me, to find out if Fitchett was right in saying Jennings tracked the girl down in London, because it now seems possible we’ve found her murderer.’
‘Stroke of luck, that, for you,’ said Colby, perhaps not tactfully, but accurately.
Jennings had been ineffectually dried out and sat sullenly listening as the charge against him was read out.
‘Do you deny you attacked your employer, Tobias Fitchett?’ asked Colby.
‘He was going
to burn them,’ mumbled Jennings.
‘To burn what?’
Jennings shuffled his feet and glowered at us. ‘Her feet. You know it. You’ve got them now. What have you done with them?’
‘We have them safe, if it’s the wooden lasts you talk of. They are evidence,’ Colby told him.
‘I want them back.’
‘You shall not have them,’ said Colby. ‘They are the property of Tobias Fitchett.’
‘He doesn’t want them. I told you. He was going to burn them.’
‘You are still not allowed to have them back. They are evidence. I just told you that.’
But Jennings clearly didn’t care about evidence or anything else but the wooden lasts.
‘When you’ve finished with them, can I have them then?’
‘What’s the matter with you?’ demanded Colby, irritated. ‘Don’t you listen? They are evidence and if they are to be returned to anyone, it will be Fitchett.’
‘But he doesn’t want them! He’ll destroy them! Can’t you understand?’ Tears sprang to the prisoner’s eyes.
Colby gave me a look and turned back to the prisoner. ‘Ezra Jennings, you are charged with an assault on Tobias Fitchett, with intent to cause grievous bodily harm, and the theft of, let us call it property, belonging to said Fitchett. Do you confess to these charges?’
Ezra leaned forward, his pale features suddenly flushed scarlet in passion. ‘Of course I assaulted him! He wouldn’t give me the lasts of her feet. I told him, I must have them! He said to me, “Over my dead body,” so, if that was the only way I could succeed, I had to kill him. It was his suggestion, not mine! Anyway, I didn’t kill him, did I? The old misery is still alive and now you say he’s going to get the lasts back, eventually. And then he’ll burn them!’
Jennings let out a wail like a banshee and fell to sobbing hysterically again.
‘I suppose,’ said Colby gloomily, when Jennings had been led away, still weeping, ‘I suppose he’ll end up in an asylum for the insane. I still believe he’s mad, as far as I’m any judge, whatever Lefebre says when he gets here.’
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