Tragedy at Sarsfield Manor

by S. T. Joshi

  And he did. It was a strange affair, written in an attemptedly satirical style that mingled ill with the legal and formulaic language in which it had to be couched. The gist of it was that we seven would venture to Sarsfield Manor—which, Parke assured us, would be cleaned and aired for our arrival—and there discover the solution to a jingle that my uncle had devised. The jingle was this, Parke reciting it in a pompous and pedantic manner that made the doggerel sound the more absurd:

  “Four lights in a forest

  Shine brighter than day;

  They laugh when it’s windy,

  They laugh tho’ they’re clay.”

  It was obvious that this ridiculous quatrain made no pretensions to literary merit but was only fashioned laboriously and contrivedly to fit some preconceived plan. Indeed, its wretchedness made me query the lawyer whether the text was correct.

  “That last couplet seems,” I said, “to bear no relation to the first save the concluding rhyme. How can a light laugh?”

  “That,” Parke muttered, “is what you are apparently to find out.”

  “But why,” Aunt Judith burst out shrilly, “must we go to Sarsfield Manor? What has it to do with this . . . this poem?” She uttered that last word as if it soiled her mouth.

  “The solution,” said Parke, “is somewhere on the estate, as the will states . . . .”

  “Parke, do you know the solution to the riddle?” Winthrop asked bluntly.

  “No, I do not. But it is written in this envelope.” He produced a small white envelope that bore a sheet of paper inside; the paper seemed to have remarkably little written on it. “Your uncle wrote the solution here and asked that it not be opened until all of you have conveyed to me your answer to the riddle.”

  There was a silence for a time; then old Uncle George burst out: “Parke, how could you have let such a thing happen? Surely there is some law preventing such nonsense. It’s the silliest thing I’ve ever heard of.”

  “My dear George,” Parke whined pleadingly, “what could I do? It was an irregular will, but there seemed no harm in it—why, he was leaving all his money to his proper heirs, not to strangers or to a pet cat or something of the kind; and I thought there would be nothing wrong with humoring the fellow. I was young, George, and your uncle was a very important client.” No one present had to gloss that adjective to its proper underlying meaning. “I didn’t have any idea he’d go mad,” Parke ended lamely.

  “But what,” Alice piped up, “if no one solves the riddle? What then?”

  “Well, I suppose that if after a month none of you finds the answer, we may as well divide up the estate equally. The will curiously says nothing on that point . . . .” His voice was trailing off until it was almost inaudible; but suddenly he brightened. “But you should really enter into the spirit of the thing! Where’s your sense of mystery? It might be a lot of fun . . . .”

  He trailed off again as he saw no one sharing his enthusiasm. His face bore a quizzical and pleading look something akin to a basset hound’s.

  But there was nothing we could do. For a moment I thought of abandoning the whole enterprise—there was no stipulation that any of us were obliged to attend; my late uncle had assumed (rightly) that the lure of three million dollars would be too much for most to resist—but at last decided that it might be a quaint diversion. I could always take a sufficient amount of work with me and do it there, I thought.

  We discussed briefly with each other the most convenient time for departure. Uncle George was retired, so that the matter boiled down to Winthrop, Uncle Edward, and myself. I had to begin teaching only at the end of September, Edward a little later; and Winthrop said he could afford to miss his bankers’ meeting and whatever other events of cosmic importance were on his agenda in the coming weeks. We decided that we would leave within the week. We would arrive at Sarsfield Manor on August 4.

  Chapter Three

  The house was huge—it could, I suppose, have qualified as a mansion. It was so flawlessly Georgian that for a moment I forgot the dubious circumstances that were bringing me here and gave it a heartwarming gaze, half expecting to find a Walpole or a Gray writing in one of the studies. It was shaped like a T, the horizontal bar being rather longer than the vertical; the latter was, in fact, nothing more than a monumental foyer leading to the house proper. Above the portico, supported by elegant Corinthian columns, was a balcony leading from the second story, from which one could gain a panoramic view not only of the forest of dark slim elms that guarded the whole front and sides of the house but—as it was built on a modest acclivity—the countryside that spread in a luxurious green to the south. Behind the house, facing north, was one vast open space—the trees having been cleared so long ago that no traces of trunks or roots remained—that ceased only after about an acre, where it met another forest that loomed to the end of the northern horizon. Sarsfield Manor looked not in the least eerie, for even the gardens surrounding it had been attended to with care after its abandonment; it was disturbing only to those who knew.

  We had decided to come each by ourselves, and I welcomed the chance to witness, even while driving, a breathtaking Maryland countryside that, in my scholarly sequestration, I was dangerously close to forgetting; but the hills and valleys and glens and streams and copses along the way revived me, and I was glad that I could still be moved by them.

  As might have been expected, I was the last to arrive at Sarsfield Manor, for I saw three autos already parked on the gravel driveway at the side of the house. I removed my bags (one of them solely of books and papers) from the trunk and made my way slowly in. There was still a musty odor in the house that bespoke either an incomplete or a too perfunctory cleaning, but it was counteracted by the mellow wood that quietly proclaimed its incorruptible dignity. I heard a bustle on the second floor, hence made my way there; finding all the others in an unusual excitement—unpacking their things, exploring crannies, and acting in sum like children who had found a new toy to play with. Even archaic Uncle George and staid Winthrop had become enmeshed in the hubbub, and rushed about from room to room with a glow on their faces that was somehow ineffably pathetic. The entire second story seemed to consist of bedrooms—though later I discovered a gallery and a display room—and I entered an unoccupied chamber and dumped my bags unceremoniously on the floor. I was fatigued more by their bustle than by the trip, and did little but rest my eyes as I sat upright on the bed.

  It was silence, curiously, that disturbed me. Of a sudden I heard my relatives’ cries muffled and knew that someone had closed the door of my room. Opening my eyes, I saw Aunt Judith standing in my room, her back to the door and her hand still on the knob. Her smile—no, smirk—seemed to me a little too condescending.

  “I hope,” she said, “that I’m not disturbing you?”

  “No, not at all.” I had learned that the shortest way to deal with potentially annoying people is not to contradict them—especially in trifles.

  “It’s obvious, Charles, that you don’t remember me very well; but you know, you did see me once. You were six, I believe, and I had come to celebrate your father’s thirtieth birthday. You were such a sweet lad, I could tell. Now you’ve become a very serious scholar, and you don’t smile much anymore.”

  I was going to say something nasty about the superficiality of humor, but replied instead: “You commemorated my father’s birth but not his death.” She and Edward had not attended my parents’ funeral.

  Her countenance suddenly froze in an expression of affronted disgust, as if I were a beetle that had just entered her bedroom. Only her blazing eyes told of her anger. “Did no one tell you, Charles? You should have known that Edward was on the point of death from pneumonia, and I could hardly leave him. Really, Charles, your callousness offends me.”

  “The fault of youth,” I said dolefully, trying not to smile at her nonplussed expression. She changed the subject.

  “You don’t seem to have gotten into the thrill of the chase, dear. Doesn’t the tho
ught of three million dollars mean anything to you?”

  “Finding the sixteenth satire of Juvenal means more.”

  “Charles, don’t be a pedant.”

  “Aunt Judith, don’t be mercenary.”

  There was a silence.

  We did not exchange many words more: when she found that I neither respected her nor was bothered by her transparent sarcasm—that poor relation to satire—she soon left. I unpacked my things slowly and with purposeful deliberation, trying to engross myself in the task so that the shadows of pessimism—always hovering close to my spirit—might be banished.

  A bit later I came down to the main floor, asking one of the two servants—a young couple—to make me a cup of tea before dinner. Taking it upstairs, I was inclined merely to retreat back to my bedroom when I saw a door down the hall ajar, although it was dark within. On a sudden impulse I entered the room and switched on the light.

  It was the portrait gallery, which I had passed by several times without particular notice. I could not but smile at the harmless affectation: the room bore even a portrait—laboriously painted to match the Georgian style of the others—of my late uncle, John Kenneth Sarsfield. It was done, I noticed, in 1924, when he was sixty—the very year of his confinement. He was an ordinary-looking fellow, rather larger in frame than the normal and tending toward portliness.

  I must restrain a tendency to declare that any of the other portraits in the room—even the four brothers Sarsfield of ill rumor who had built this place—exuded an aura of strangeness. I will make the attempt—difficult though it now is—to envision my very first sensations on gazing at those visages; and if I felt any apprehension or perturbation, it may only have stemmed from the peculiarity of my present circumstances and the unpleasant encounter with Aunt Judith that had tainted my day. Actually, I was somewhat relieved when I saw those four thoroughly sane-looking, dignified colonial gentlemen; for they seemed to symbolize the propriety and elegance that was a natural and unaffected inheritance of their time and their culture. The latter scions were just as healthy: American Victorians gazing at me with a stuffiness that few of that time seem to have escaped; most of them men, but a few of them women with the luxurious gowns and the pristine and innocent faces—touched sweetly with red at the cheeks and one with a golden curl hanging almost seductively at her temple—that had become almost too representative of their era. I wondered how odd whisperings could have developed about any of these figures, undistinguished save for an elegance and dignity that, regrettably, has not carried over into our own age. But I admit that this very anomaly sent a shiver through my frame.

  I had forgotten much of the history of the Sarsfield clan and suspected that Uncle George—who, since his retirement from schoolteaching, had become the family historian—would fill in the lacunae both for me and for the others. For a long time I stood there looking at the portraits, holding my long-finished teacup uselessly in my hand. My reverie lasted only when, seeing that it was nearly 5:30, I felt that I had to prepare for a dinner whose company I frankly did not welcome. I walked back to my room—only a short distance down the corridor and to my right—and shut the door. For some reason that I do not even now know, I turned and quietly bolted it.

  Chapter Four

  My desired history of Sarsfield Manor came rather sooner than I had expected; for Winthrop was as curious about the matter as I, and in the course of a not entirely unsatisfying dinner he asked Uncle George to tell what he knew of the house and its inhabitants. George agreed to do so after the completion of the meal; so that when it was over all seven of us moved to the spacious living room—with huge windows overlooking the dark forest that shrouded the whole front of the house—and sat down, oddly separated from one another, awaiting the tale.

  George sat in an enormous armchair, quietly smiling to himself and thiking how to begin. He was remarkably swarthy, as if having spent long years in the tropics; and his large, lined face beamed with a quiet geniality such as might have been worn by Father Christmas. I was more fond of him than of any of my living relatives, for all that I had not seen him since a teenager: his mild friendliness, wholly lacking in condescension, was a fond memory that a mere twenty years could hardly efface. I remembered him as a born storyteller and always felt that he could have been a fine author had he given himself the practice. He was far more intelligent than his humble former occupation as an elementary schoolteacher—a job chosen through his wholly genuine love of children and the desire to see them gain that modicum of civilization which was becoming so rare in today’s youth—betrayed; for he could, with some further specialization, have sat nobly on a professor’s chair in almost any department of the humanities. A lifelong love of history—the archaic ideal of history as artful narrative and incident, not the modern conception of complicated social and economic factors that stand inhumanly behind external affairs—had led him to take up genealogy upon his retirement five years previously. He had amassed a great deal of family papers—including much that related to the Sarsfields—and codified them with an assiduity that spoke well for the retention of his faculties. With his researches had come a family pride by which he scorned the bizarre rumors surrounding much of the Sarsfield line, doing so with the confident dogmatism of one who can defy traditional interpretation through the private possession of secret and revolutionary knowledge.

  As he began his tale—his mellow voice, laced with charming archaisms, subtly but surely filling the room and making any sort of interruption unthinkable—I sat back in my chair, closing my eyes so that I could envision in my mind the eighteenth-century narrative that was being unfolded. Thackeray could have made a tremendous saga out of it, while its hints of the outré might have led a Hawthorne to produce a worthy companion to his own supernatural historical romances.

  The four brothers Sarsfield had been born in the early years of the eighteenth century—Joseph in 1711, Richard in 1712, Jonathan in 1714, and Samuel in 1715—and had grown up in those buoyant years before the French and Indian Wars and the troubles with England would mar the later decades of the century. Being themselves antiquarians (to the point of not giving up, even after the emergence of Johnson’s dictionary, some seventeenth-century forms that made their correspondence read like the screeds of Cotton Mather), they frowned upon the increasing commercialism of a society that was even then losing its ties to the rural landscape. Some of their letters burn with a withering contempt for tradesmen which Swift might have claimed for his own.

  And yet they had, all four of them, jumped with both feet into the West Indies trade—surely the most commercial (and at times outrightly dishonest) occupation that could be imagined. But—said Uncle George with a crafty expression that was the closest he ever came to cynicism—it was only their way of mocking the nation of shopkeepers that the colonies, following the English model, had already become. Establishing ties with their northern counterparts—the four Brown brothers of Providence—they made immense profits in the trading of tobacco, sugar, and slaves. By about 1760—when increasing tensions between the colonies and the mother country were causing disruptions in trade—they decided that it was time to retire and settle down to the squirarchy that they felt was the aim and end of existence, and for which they had toiled for twenty-five years among mercenary plebeians.

  And while their antiquarianism had given them a taste for the Middle Ages that—well before the emergence of Radcliffe and Scott as symbols of the wretched death of Dr. Johnson’s century—so rare in their time, they appreciated the classic soundness of Georgian architecture enough to cause the noble edifice called Sarsfield Manor to be erected. Here in the fifteen years given them before their lives would end so abruptly and mysteriously on June 16, 1780, they allowed their fancies to roam at will. Some wrote strange tales that, if they had survived, might have been a curious chapter in the history of Gothic fiction; others amassed hoary tomes from antiquity to their own day—even the shockingly modern Castle of Otranto by the Horace Walpole whose archit
ectural tastes they had so wisely eschewed—which ultimately led to their being branded as lunatics and devils who performed nameless rites in their unhealthy solitude.

  Whether it was conventional occultism or some new compendium of mystic lore that the brothers found of such consuming interest was not entirely clear, as documents from this late period were curiously absent or at best fragmentary. All that could be known was taken from the rumors and legends handed down by the country folk and ultimately gathered and codified by John Kenneth Sarsfield; and this body of data was hardly reliable, as the whisperings ran the gamut from standard demonology to sexual perversity and sadism to an almost breathtaking foreshadowing of the cosmic myth-making of Lord Dunsany. Their curious collecting habits—from occult bibliophily to Hellenistic weaponry to West Indian cult objects—did not help to establish their sanity or normalcy; and in the decade and a half of their residence here every mysterious death or disapperance was laid to their door.

  As George was nearing the end of this portion of his narrative, his voice was gaining a bitterness that disturbed because it was so foreign to his character. And at the last he burst forth with a valiant defense of his unusual ancestors to which I did not quite know how to react. He had studied, he declared, all the existing documents—notably the correspondence exchange with an equally odd gentleman in Carroll County that had been collected by John Kenneth Sarsfield and given to him—and felt that there was more here than met the eye. Under the superficial occultism—which, as a German writer has recently written, is nothing more than the “religion of the stupid”—he sensed that there lurked dimly a fumbling attempt to probe the foundations of human knowledge that might in time have been as significant as Newton’s. The four brothers Sarsfield were no fools, and knew Latin and Greek—along with several modern tongues and even the rudiments of some Oriental languages—with a thoroughness that was noteworthy even in their day. They were not eccentrics, George held; they were only deemed so by rustic buffoons who could not understand their unconventional brilliance. But when George uttered that all genius is misunderstood, I wondered whether he had ever reflected that what is misunderstood is not always genius.