by Peter Rimmer
“Doesn’t complain Mr Robert. Don’t do no good complaining. Our Tina was down start of month. Five children poor Tina. Poor Harry. Trying another expedition to find him on horseback they are, much use that’ll be. Went back in a hurry did our Tina. In a Rolls-Royce. Tax problems. Death duties.”
“Hadn’t thought of that.”
“Blokes up town won’t let Tina sell nothing till Harry lost two years and officially declared dead. Say she don’t inherit till next September. Didn’t understand trouble. You know anything about taxes, Mr Robert?”
“Not a thing. Let my publishers handle that. Excuse me. There’s my man. Remember me to Mrs P. Always remember sandwiches and pickled onions Mrs P made for us kids on our way back to boarding school. Five kids you say? Didn’t know about the last one.”
Half an hour later at Purbeck Manor, Lord St Clair was surprised to meet a small man with a large head. The man had bat ears and round glasses that only just covered the eyes. Lord St Clair had been expecting a large man in a cowboy hat drawling English he was unable to understand. Instead, the man giving them all the trouble spoke like the well-educated Irishman Lord St Clair had met up at Oxford in his undergraduate days. On his way through the small door in the larger Gothic door, the man looked nervous as was intended.
“We’ve put you in a room on the ground floor, Mr Curley. Welcome to Purbeck Manor. You call the ground floor the first floor I believe in America. Well, our bedrooms are usually on the three floors above but for centuries, only the family had been able to sleep properly above the ground floor… Your room where we’re going now hasn’t had any trouble for years.”
“What kind of trouble, baron?”
“Just call me St Clair… Why ghosts, Mr Curley. The whole Purbeck peninsula is haunted by the ghosts of some of my more unfortunate ancestors. The priest is another problem. The priest is usually the big problem actually.”
“What priest, baron? I’m a religious man myself. If you introduce us I’m sure there won’t be a problem.”
“The priest was strangled on the orders of Queen Elizabeth herself so that won’t be possible I’m afraid. He was a papist you see, we all were in those days. The priest was trying to get down into the bolthole when the Queen’s men caught and strangled him. Poor chap has haunted the Isle of Purbeck as we call the peninsula ever since. Trying to escape. Trying to get back down the bolthole and shut the trapdoor over his head to stop the Queen’s men finding him. I’ve seen him a few times poor chap with his eyes bulging. You can hear him at night chanting in Latin. Not every night I’m pleased to say. When he wasn’t down the bolthole he lived in the attic at the top of the house. Why we bed down our honoured guests as far away as possible from the attic on the ground floor. I wonder what he will think of an American? We haven’t had one of those at Purbeck Manor before. No, not ever… Now, how does your room look? I’ll leave you to unpack. If you run into trouble ring that silver handbell that belonged to the seventh baron.”
“When was the seventh baron, St Clair?”
“Good chap. Now you’ve got my name right. He was Lord of the Manor during the latter part of Queen Elizabeth’s reign when the family were up at the castle. Did Robert point out the old ruins at the top of the hill? Oliver Cromwell knocked our castle down after they made him Lord Protector of England. After he cut off the King’s head. Another of my relatives was beheaded by Cromwell. Right up there on the hill. We usually see him three days before Christmas on the anniversary of the day Cromwell cut off his head for following the King.”
“How many ghosts are there?” asked Hank Curley in a small voice.
“Hundreds, I think. How many, Robert? You do the family research.”
“Currently haunting the Manor or known from the past?”
“All of them.”
“Three hundred and twenty-two reported sightings of different ghosts. Only twenty-four have been seen in the last five years, mark you. The older they got the less we see them… Look, Hank, when you finish unpacking, trace your way back to the hallway and look for the passage to the right. We’ll be down in my father’s study to welcome you with a glass of sherry.”
“You mean, on my own?”
“Oh don’t be silly old chap. Ghost don’t go about during the day. Only at night. Usually just before dawn for some reason. Mostly you can only hear them. Bangs and groans. That sort of thing. They all died violent deaths… Quite usual in very old English houses, ghosts. Something you don’t get much in America which is why Freya and I are going back to live there after our son is born… Or would you like me to wait while you pack?”
“Please.”
Robert, hearing the squeak in the man’s voice, just managed to control the laughter building up inside of him… He had left Freya up in their new suite of rooms they were painting, quite certain his wife would never have been able to keep a straight face.
* * *
After his third glass of brown sherry in Lord St Clair’s study, Hank Curley began to regain his composure. He had come to expose the English, he told himself, not be frightened by them. He had never seen a ghost in his life and never would. In America or here in some old house in England. A house was a house, however old. Dead people were dead people. This Lord St Clair, Baron of Purbeck, in front of him was just a bumbling old fool and his son was a fraud. Making up stories to fool the American public who had the right to know the truth. Sir Henri was a figment of the son’s imagination. The parchments that obviously did not exist, a way of catching the publics’ eye so they would buy more copies of Holy Knight, thinking the story was based on truth. The American reading public was being made fools of buying something with good dollars that was not what they thought it was. Not what this Robert St Clair and his publisher Max Pearl had said it was on the radio and in numerous newspapers across America… His own book on the war of American independence was based on fact. All of it was true. It was well written. A good story. If Max Pearl published historical novels based on truth he had no right to reject All Men are Born Equal. A book that had taken him ten years to write. That should have made him rich. Famous, just like Robert St Clair.
“I think these are what you are after,” Lord St Clair was saying to him interrupting his train of thought. “The original as you can see is written in French. This is the English translation so you can read the facts upon which my son based his book. I, personally, can vouch for the truth as can these translations.”
Hank took the scrolls and pulled them open. The English version and the French.
“I’m sorry, baron. Pull the other leg. These are not fourteenth century.”
“No, but the original tablets are. From which my grandfather copied down what you have in your hand.”
“Then I want to see them, don’t I?”
“Maybe.”
“Why I came all the way from America… Where are these original parchments that have lasted so many centuries and not turned to dust? Where are they?”
“The originals of my son’s parchments that he talked about with his publisher are tablets. Carved into granite or Purbeck stone as we call it in these parts.”
“And no one else knows about it? Come on. How many? Tablets! Sounds more like Moses.”
“Thirty-two. If you see them you will be the only person to see them who was not a direct descendant of Sir Henri Saint Claire Debussy.”
“Of course I’ll see them if they exist. Why else did I come all this way? I’m a newspaperman. Either put up or admit your son is a cheat.”
“My son is not a cheat, Mr Curley.”
“Then where are these tablets you now spring on me after I tell this here means nothing? Might as well throw them on the fire. Your son made these parchments, Baron.”
“Please don’t throw them anywhere,” said Lord St Clair icily.
“Then take me to see the tablets and stop the horseshit.”
“Tomorrow night… My family have guarded these secrets for centuries.”
“Then why t
hese translations?”
“Not all the tablets were translated. Which is why they have never been shown to anyone outside our family.”
“Why?”
“Because there are some things in our history we are ashamed of. The parts that did not go into Holy Knight.”
“Where are they, baron? I’m getting bored with all the bullshit.”
“Down the priest’s bolthole. Deep in the granite under Corfe Castle. Under the ruins that you looked up at on the hill when you stepped off the train from London.”
“Which priest?”
“The one who haunts us to this day, Mr Curley. Why you are roomed on our ground floor. The papist priest who was strangled and still walks the lands of the St Clairs looking for his sanctuary dressed in a brown robe, his head half covered by a cowl, his eyes bulging from the strangulation that killed him back then in the reign of Queen Elizabeth. Long before we English had thought of colonising America. Tomorrow night, Mr Curley, I will take you blindfolded and let you climb down through the trapdoor, down the hundreds of ancient stone steps until you find our family secret at the bottom and read our shame.”
“You will show me yourself?”
“No, sir, just the bolthole. You go down alone. Only if you don’t come up alive will I go down and fetch you even as old as I am.”
“What about Robert?”
“He only has one foot; the other was blown off in the recent war. He walks with a prosthetic foot strapped to the stump. He is unable to make it down those steps into the bowels of the earth. Tomorrow then. Enough of quarrelling. Next, we go to the dining hall, to eat supper, the old vaulted chamber of the house where my family and retainers ate together at the same table in years long gone past where tonight you will dine as my guest.”
* * *
After a good supper and red wine, Robert showed Hank Curley back to his room.
* * *
In the morning, there was no sign of the American. Only his luggage remained which Robert packed up nicely, ready to take to the railway station and put on the one o’clock train to London for Barnaby to collect at Waterloo station and give to Hank Curley in his hotel room if he was in England and had not gone straight back to America.
* * *
In the last dark of the night, the whole family had been woken to a blood-curdling yell that came from the ground floor followed by the frantic ringing of the silver bell. No one took any notice.
When Mrs Mason went down to make the tea, she saw the small man with the big head sneaking out of the small side door into the first light of dawn and heard his feet on the gravel, crunching away towards the path by the river that led to the village of Corfe Castle.
* * *
Over breakfast, Robert thought his father looked particularly smug.
“What happened?” asked Robert.
“Old Warren dressed up as the priest, tapped on the window. Why I put Curley on the ground floor. Old Warren had put just enough fluorescent paint on his teeth and round his eyes to make his face glow in the dark. His eyes have always bulged, as you know. You had better go and thank him after breakfast, Robert.”
“Would you have taken Curley up the path to the oak tree?”
“Of course. And put him down the hole with a torch. And put back the trapdoor for a couple of hours. After less than five minutes the battery would have given out. I don’t think our friend would have wanted to go down again with a new torch however much I told him the word of an English gentleman was at stake.”
“It might have killed him.”
“He was young. No one has really ever died of fright. Or at least I don’t think so… Can you pass me the marmalade?”
“He paid one taxi man in Corfe Castle to drive him all the way to London. I phoned Pringle at the station to find out if he had gone.”
“Good. I hope it was expensive. Teach him to doubt the word of an Englishman… There is no doubt, Robert, Mrs Mason makes the best marmalade in England.”
“I’ll go see old Warren.”
“Finish your breakfast. I don’t think old Warren’s stopped laughing. By the way, what was he all about? The American?”
“Max turned down his book on the American revolution.”
“Hell hath no fury as a woman scorned or another rejected.”
“Amen.”
Freya, looking from father to son and back again, had a broad grin on her face. She couldn’t wait to tell Glen Hamilton the story of the man from The Boston Globe but only after her baby was born. A boy she hoped. A boy who one day might have to climb down to the priest’s bolthole and look at a picture of his ancestor gloating over the bodies of Mohammedans. She hoped he too would learn his lesson. That God meant what he said, thou shalt not kill.
14
September/October/November 1929 – The Great Lakes of Africa
Keppel Howland and Ralph Madgwick sailed for Africa from London on the 4 September 1929 on board the SS Corfe Castle, their boat trip paid for by Colonial Shipping as their contribution to the expedition sponsored by The Denver Telegraph and partly paid for by Robert St Clair. No one saw them off, not even Rosie Prescott who had crossed the pond on the RMS Olympic all too late.
The row with Uncle Wallace had ended with Ralph’s resignation from Madgwick and Madgwick. Sir Jacob Rosenzweig as the local partner had appointed an American to manage Madgwick and Madgwick, New York. Having lost his temper, Ralph had returned to Uncle Wallace the furniture and the lease on the flat in South Kensington that had been a bribe to make Ralph train to take over the family business. Uncle Wallace had been anything but the friendly uncle. A staunch member of the British establishment and the Church of England he had also lost his temper. When Ralph walked out of the senior partner’s office, that was up till then going to be his if he had stayed the course, as his uncle put it, he was virtually penniless. Keppel was staying with him in the flat while his friend licked his proverbial wounds. Keppel also had been on the RMS Olympic along with Hank Curley who was then on his way to England to expose Robert St Clair. Keppel had been travelling third class with Rosie Prescott while The Boston Globe reporter had been travelling first on his expense account so neither of them met. Ralph was still in the flat that he was due to vacate at the end of September when Keppel arrived in London to start his expedition to Africa to find the crash site of Harry Brigandshaw’s aircraft.
* * *
“Come with me, Ralph, I asked you before. Things have changed. Get away from it all and find a perspective. Everything looks different from a distance. Even love. As your Uncle Wallace said all love affairs end sooner or later in disappointment.”
“Shut up.”
“Let’s go out on the town. The best way to forget a girl is to find another one.”
“You want me to throttle you? Then shut up. You’ve never been in love. Rebecca is the only woman I want in my life. And don’t throw back at me what my uncle said. I told you the whole sordid drama in confidence.”
“You’ll still inherit your share of the family company one day. Your mother and uncle won’t be able to stop the inheritance of you and Christopher once they are dead. Everyone dies.”
“Now you are macabre. How dare you talk about my uncle or my mother dying.”
“Calm down, Ralph. I’m your friend. Come on the expedition and together we’ll find Harry. Planes can’t just disappear. Even in Africa. The event would have been so big it would have filtered into African folklore by now. The drums. The drums would have sent the message of the plane crash out of the sky far and wide. We’ll pick up something and trace it back. If Harry and Ignatius Bowes-Lyon are still alive the black people may not have wanted them to go.”
“What are you talking about?”
“African superstition. Just imagine you’re a black man and four men in a flying machine, they could not even imagine, dropped out of the sky into your backyard or whatever they have outside mud huts. Moreover, the men are different. Look nothing like you. Your skin is black and thei
r skin is pinky-white. You’d probably think Harry, Ignatius, Fred Dwyer, the civil engineer, and De Wet Cronje, the flight engineer, were something sent from heaven. By the ancestors. What if they had dropped into Spain during the Spanish Inquisition? The Pope would have said it was a true act of God’s miracles and made all four of them saints. Saint Harry, Saint Ignatius, Saint Fred and Saint De Wet. Why do the Afrikaners give their children first names of their ancestors’ surnames…? But I’m digressing… That’s better. Smile. We’ve known each other a long time. Come with me, Ralph. It’ll be like old times. The two of us again on safari. Let the mess you’ve got yourself into sort itself out on its own. Let’s go out for a drink: let’s go to Clara’s. Is your brother still playing the piano now he’s married to the famous Brett Kentrich? I must say I envy Christopher Marlowe. She’s gorgeous.”
“He’s still playing the piano.”
“Still wearing the black beret? Good. Let’s get drunk. If we stay long enough, Miss Kentrich, the new Mrs Christopher Marlowe may appear. Or does she call herself Mrs Barrie Madgwick which must surely be her legal name? Poor old Uncle Wallace. He’ll never get to retire into the country and ride his horses. The one plays the piano in a nightclub and the other has just thrown his toys out of the cot.”
“All right. Just a couple of drinks.”
“I’m paying. Or rather Robert’s paying. Says he won’t come up from Dorset with Freya to see me off. Into another book. Wish I could write a best seller one day like Holy Knight. It’s still in every bookshop in the country. What’s Rosie Prescott going to do? She was on the boat with me. You do know the girl’s in love with you. All she talked about was you, Ralph. All the way across the Atlantic. Very boring.”
“Uncle Wallace has given her back her old job. She’s his private secretary again. He never did find a good enough replacement. And she’s not in love with me, you idiot. We’re friends. Business colleagues… Have you any idea how much I miss Rebecca?”