The Man Who Could Not Shudder (Dr. Gideon Fell series Book 12) Page 4

  “What happened to Miss Fraser?” asked Gwyneth Logan.

  Now Mrs. Logan was sitting between Tess and me, on a broad velvet-covered sofa. And it began to dawn on me that she was a very attractive and even troubling sort of woman. Perhaps it was the mere unintentional closeness of the contact. Gwyneth Logan was one of those women whose arms you cannot brush without intense awareness of their physical presence.

  “I tripped over a door mat,” said Tess flatly. Tess had removed her hat, and was turning it over on her lap. She also eyed Gwyneth Logan. “At least, that’s what they tell me. What really happened was that something with fingers—”

  “Whisky for you as usual, Bob?” interrupted Andy. “Right. And for me.” The syphon hissed. “What do you think of the decorations? Not bad, eh? All Mr. Clark’s work.” Then Andy’s voice grew loud, an unusual thing, so that it could have been heard in the next room. “Get him to show you the collection of guns.”

  IV

  “SOMETHING WITH FINGERS?” PROMPTED Gwyneth Logan. But Andy’s remark had completely diverted Tess’s attention. Tess flung her head round.

  “Guns?” she said.

  Clarke chuckled. “You needn’t be alarmed, Miss Fraser. To be exact, it is a collection of pistols. But the newest of them has not been fired since the Battle of Waterloo, and the whole lot together could not harm a fly.”

  He extended his glass toward the closed door, from behind which we could still hear the tapping of the typewriter.

  “Would you like to see them? They belonged to the last surviving member of the Longwood family, when he left her. I found them packed away in a chest in the attic, between many layers of newspaper. Presumably they go with the house: at least, the executors made no trouble about my keeping them. I put them back where the last Longwood left them. Come along. Logan has been there long enough at his infernal typing.”

  Gwyneth, clearly, would have liked to hear more about what happened to Tess. You could almost feel it burn from her. She must have had remarkable self-control under that shy and rather nervous manner. Yet her lips were emotional: intensely so, like her wide-spaced blue eyes.

  “Oh, well, then we’ll go and look at the pistols,” she said indulgently. “Only I claim the right to talk to Miss Fraser afterwards. Bentley! I say, Bent-ley!”

  None of us, perhaps, expected too hearty a welcome from Mr. Archibald Bentley Logan when his wife opened the door. But we got one nevertheless.

  “Coming, my dear,” said a brisk voice. Mr. Logan was engaged in licking the flap of an envelope. “Just finished. That’s the lot. Hah!” He put the envelope on the table, smoothed it, smote it with his fist, and drew a deep breath. “Seven letters in an hour. Not bad, eh? These our fellow guests. Good!”

  The room in which he sat was built on a pattern much the same as the drawing-room, though a trifle smaller, and formed the end of the west wing. It also had two broad windows facing the main driveway, with the fireplace between them.

  But you made out details with difficulty, since the only light burning was a darkish-shaded drop lamp over the typewriter table. This table stood against the nearer window, between the fireplace and the east wall. It was a heavy, long table, its narrow end against the window and projecting out into the room. The typewriter had been drawn close to the window; the rest of that smooth walnut table, with the glow of the drop lamp shining down on it, was cluttered with notepaper, envelopes, stamp sheets, pens, and two or three bottles of ink.

  “Morrison?” inquired Mr. Logan, rising magnificently to shake hands as introductions were performed. “Heard a lot about you, sir. Hunter? Heard a lot about you. And this must be the little lady,” he overwhelmed Tess, “who’s taken Clarke’s fancy so much. Come down to shiver in the haunted house, eh?”

  Logan had an enormous portentousness of manner. Though not an unduly tall man, he was very broad and bulky, and his mirth was Gargantuan: it snorted through his nostrils. He gave the impression of being as big as the room. Seen at close range, he appeared much less unpleasant than he had seemed before; he had a hard, shrewd face, sly rather than kindly, but with kindliness too; I rather liked the look of him. He was almost bald. A walrus mustache would have suited him, but instead he had a furry patch of grayish mustache which looked as though it had grown there by accident. He wore a hard white collar with a blue shirt, and was attempting without success to lick an inkstain from his finger.

  “Haunted or not,” he declared, desisting from his attacks on the ink, “it’s a good buy. A damned good buy. Eh, Clarke?”

  “I flatter myself so,” said our host.

  “A good buy,” repeated Logan portentously, reaching out and whacking the mantelpiece as though to assure us of its solidity. “And d’ye know what he paid for it? I’ll tell you. A thousand pounds freehold. Not a penny more. Eh?”

  “Well—” said Clarke.

  Logan wagged his head.

  “Eh, lad, but that’s business!” he declared, with a gleam of admiration in his eye. “Freehold, mind. And seven and a quarter acres to boot. Extra expenses? Say three, four hundred for repairs. Do it up right. And what do you get? This.” He whacked the mantelpiece again. “Clarke, you’re hot stuff. I’d never have thought it of you. As for any depreciation in value caused by ghosts …”

  He grinned at me, and I grinned back at him.

  “Meaning,” I said, “that you’re prepared to give the raspberry to any ghost you happen to see on the premises?”

  But to my surprise he grew very serious, and held up his hand in protest.

  “Not at all,” he said. “I’m a modern man.”

  “A modern man?”

  “Exactly. I don’t scoff. No, indeed. These things can’t be taken too seriously.” He gave a portentous nod of his head, rebuking us. “I had the right kind of bringing-up; my parents were honest, sensible, religious people; and what’s believing in an afterlife but believing in ghosts? Or, if it’s not ghosts, it’s something. Maybe a scientific force. How do we know? Maybe we’ll discover it. That’s progress. No, indeed,” said Logan, not without pride, “I don’t scoff. I’m a modern man: I can believe anything.”

  “Very succinctly put,” observed Clarke.

  “Though, mind you,” the other amended, giving us a broad wink, “as for scaring—well, that’s different. I’d like to see the johnny-on-the-ghost that could scare me.”

  “A dangerous remark, sir.”

  “Maybe, maybe.”

  “Your position, then, is that you believe in ghosts but defy them to scare you?”

  “Damme, I believe it is,” said Logan, snorting through his nostrils with surprise. He laughed aloud. Catching his wife’s eye, he went over and put his big arm round her shoulders.

  “Eh, Gwinnie?” he said. “I’ll tell you what I am. Lawk, I haven’t thought of this for years! D’you remember the tale they used to read to us, about the boy who couldn’t shudder? Well, I’m the man who can’t shudder, by cripes! And d’you remember what happened to the boy in the tale? He grew up and got married. And his wife threw a pail of water over him; and that made him shudder all right. Eh, Gwinnie?”

  Gwyneth laughed dutifully, and with evident delight. Of all the pairs in the world you would have said to be ill-matched, these two would appear to be it. Yet she appeared to regard him with genuine devotion: to hang on his every word.

  He gave her a quick glance.

  “Eh, Gwinnie?”

  “That is a woman’s practical mind,” observed Clarke, with a smile. “But if you are anxious to get the opportunity to shudder, you may have it here. This is one of the—er—alleged haunted rooms.”

  “This?” demanded Logan, surprised.

  “This,” smiled Clarke. “Let’s have some light.”

  He went over to the door and touched a main switch.

  Logan’s instinct seemed right. Illuminated now by a lamp hanging from the central beam across the ceiling, the study neither looked nor felt haunted. It was a comfortable room. There were br
ight rag rugs on the floor, and low bookshelves built along the west wall. In one corner stood a tall cabinet, with a sailing-ship model on top of it: not one of the atrocities you see in department stores, but a noble three-masted square-rigger beautifully fashioned to the very peak of her topgallant royals.

  In addition to the two south windows, there was a big north window with a radio-gramophone under it. Three or four cane-bottomed chairs supplemented a center table piled with magazines. The walls were of white plaster, set off by the black woodwork; they had no ornament except (incongruously) a gold-and-enamel triptych which presumably Clarke had brought from Italy. The chimney piece between the south windows was a massive affair, of red brick. It stretched almost to the ceiling. On its face, over the opening of the fireplace, the collection of pistols had been hung up one above the other, like rungs in a ladder.

  Clarke indicated the collection of pistols. They had been polished, so far as was possible; and their metalwork winked under the light against the dark red brick.

  “Here you are, Miss Fraser,” he said. “At the top,” he pointed, “a late sixteenth-century wheel lock. Notice the fine design: even weapons had beauty in those days. At the bottom, a Napoleonic cavalry pistol. Between them”—he brushed his hand up over the horizontal row—“three centuries of gun-making are represented.”

  Tess hesitated.

  “Do they,” she said, “do they shoot?”

  “Hardly. Feel the weight of one of these.” He lifted down the cavalry pistol from its three wooden pegs. Then his eye twinkled. “Why do you ask that, Miss Fraser.”

  “I was thinking of somebody getting killed,” said Tess.

  We turned to stare at her.

  It had slipped out. Knowing Tess, I knew that: she blurted it out before she could stop herself. But it had an effect none the less. There was a change in the atmosphere as palpable as a chilling or darkening of the room, all the worse because its source could not be identified. Tess tried to recover herself.

  “I mean,” she said desperately, “I—I was thinking of a story.”

  “Story?” echoed Gwyneth Logan.

  Tess must have been an admirable liar in her business affairs. In one second, as explanation, she had plucked out of the air something I had told her long ago.

  “Yes. In a story, don’t you see? There was an old-fashioned gun hung up on the wall. It was loaded, and had a percussion cap. The sun came through a window, shone through a water bottle on a table, and made a burning glass of it. The burning-glass ray exploded the cap of the gun; and it went off.”

  Again something alien and sinister touched our circle, though Clarke laughed.

  “We have no percussion caps, I’m afraid,” he said dryly. “Or much sun either.” But I did not like the look of his eye. “Now note this one!” He bustled again. “A lighter pistol, once the property of the Bow Street runners: note the crown and broad arrow. This next one—”

  “Wouldn’t give twopence for the lot,” stated Mr. Archibald Bentley Logan, with flat candor. “But that ship model, now!”

  “Ah, that?” said Clarke, turning round. “You like it?”

  “We-el … not bad, not bad. Wouldn’t like to sell it, would you?”

  “I’m afraid not.”

  “Come, now!” urged Logan, squaring himself and giving Clarke a peculiar leering look, which intimated that he was ready to be confidential. “What’ll you take for it? Fair offer? Not that it’d be much good to me, mind!” Here he eyed the ship with growing disparagement. “But I just happen to fancy it; and what I fancy, I fancy. Eh, Gwinnie? Come on, now! Whatsay? A quid? Two quid? Three, even? Fair offer!”

  “I am sorry. It is not for sale.”

  Logan snorted through his nostrils with amusement. He was genuinely interested now.

  “Nonsense,” he said. “Anything’s for sale. Including—” Logan stopped. His tone changed. “I’ll tell you what I’ll do,” he confided, disengaging his arm from his wife’s shoulder to take a notecase out of his pocket. “I’ll give you five pounds for it. Five pounds on the nail. Whatsay?”

  “Bentley, my dear—” said Gwyneth.

  Logan suddenly chuckled. But his expression was very shrewd.

  “Gwinnie wants to apologize for me again. She’s always apologizing. Old boor who should know better, eh?” His eye grew more shrewd. “My dear, I do know better. But, damme, can’t you take a joke? Can’t you enjoy a game? This is business. It’s the best game in the world.”

  “We’re already playing a game, my dear,” said Gwyneth, with surprising smoothness. “Anyway, if you must do this, why not pick up something really pretty? That gold-and-enamel thing hanging on the wall, for instance.” She pointed. “What is it, Martin?”

  Clarke looked. I caught the flash of a smile at the back of his eyes.

  “It’s a triptych, Gwyneth.”

  Her forehead clouded. “I’m afraid that doesn’t mean very much to me. Am I dreadfully ignorant?”

  “An altarpiece panel. It has two wings or leaves, which fold together in front when it is closed: it’s closed now. When you open it out, the three leaves show a religious picture, often very handsome.”

  “Oh? May we see it?”

  At the eagerness in her voice, Clarke’s face was convulsed; there is no other term for it. But he restrained her gently as she stepped forward.

  “Presently. I think it would interest you.” Here he looked her in the eyes. “But we mustn’t gobble all the good things at once; and, I suggest, it’s time we went up to dress for dinner. After all,” he beamed at us, “these good people will want to see their rooms.”

  Andy Hunter spoke suddenly. “I say: what did happen here?”

  He snapped out the words with vehemence, opening and shutting his hands. As nobody replied, Andy continued with the same doggedness:

  “We’ve heard a lot. Spooks and curses and whatnot. But what actually happened? Who were this Longwood family, and what did they do? That’s what I’d like to know.”

  “Second the motion,” murmured Tess.

  “To give a whole history of the Longwood family,” answered Clarke, again consulting his watch, “would take all evening. Their chief characteristic seems to have been inquisitiveness. We first hear of them in the year 1605, when one of them was concerned in the Gunpowder Plot. They then had an uneventful history—squires, parsons, lawyers—until 1745, when another got mixed up in the ’45 Rebellion. But it was not until 1820 that any real devilry seems to have attached to them or to this house. The head of the house in that year was one Norbert Longwood. This was his study.”

  “Who was he?” demanded Andy.

  “A doctor. A savant, a member of the Royal Society, a friend of certain medical bigwigs whose names escape me.”

  “Their names,” I said, as Clarke turned round sharply, “were Arago, Boisgiraud, and Sir Humphrey Davy.”

  “So? And how did you happen to know that?”

  “Looked it up,” I explained. “They all seem to have been writing pamphlets at each other about that time. What medical discovery they were about I don’t know. But what happened? Have you anything else to add?”

  “No,” admitted Clarke. “Dr. Norbert Longwood is as elusive nowadays as he seems to have been then. All we do know is that he died horribly in this room in the autumn of 1820. The servants were so afraid of witchcraft that his body lay for two days in this room without being touched. That is why he is said to pluck at the ankles of people who pass, and try to get his fingers round them.”

  I reached out and put my arm round Tess.

  “The room has been altered since then,” Clarke went on hastily. “At that time it was dark oak and bookshelves and doctor’s drugs. Now it’s as cheerful a place, I submit, as you would well want to see. The later Longwoods wanted to cleanse it. Finally, there is that story of the chandelier falling on the butler in the dining-room seventeen years ago.”

  Clarke seemed possessed with an odd excitement. He struck his clenched fist in
to the palm of his other hand.

  “It’s all too muddled. Fact has somehow got mixed up with legend, and I’m wondering whether it is not too late to separate them. That always happens. If you know anything about such stories, you can predict it. There is always some common-or-garden variety of incident, unreliable because you find it in a hundred ghost stories, which invariably gets tangled up with the original facts; and people go on repeating it. For instance! When you came into the house, did you notice a big grandfather clock out in the hall?”

  We nodded.

  Clarke shrugged his shoulders.

  “Enter legend,” he said. “The clock is supposed to have stopped at the time of Norbert Longwood’s death, and have refused to function since. That’s nonsense. First, because the clockmaker at Prittleton tells me there’s nothing wrong he couldn’t put right in a few days. Second, and more important, because that same tedious story recurs over and over again in similar accounts. You understand what I mean?”

  Tess persisted. “Yes,” she said, “but has anything ever been seen?”

  “It has.”

  “What?”

  “Norbert Longwood,” replied Clarke. “After his death.”

  He paused for a moment.

  “It’s a brief story, if not a pleasant one. Try to forget it, if you can. But I want to tell it to you because to me it seems to carry absolute conviction. Its details ring true, as opposed to the obviously bogus story of the stopped clock.

  “About six months after Norbert’s death, he was seen in this room by a cousin of the family. This cousin, by the way, had not been here at the time of Norbert’s death. The account comes from his diary. It occurred on the night of the 16th March, 1821.

  “He came into this room at about a quarter past eleven, thinking the place empty. To his surprise he saw a man in a black broadcloth coat sitting by the fire, back turned to the door. The cousin was about to speak when this man got up and turned round. The cousin recognized Norbert Longwood. Norbert was solid, and, but for his pallor, looked alive; he wore a frilled linen shirt front and black D’Orsay side whiskers. But what struck the cousin as worst of all—something he did not understand—was that on Norbert’s face there was a long red scratch, as though made by the point of a pin, extending from the outer corner of the eye down almost to the jaw.