The Terror

‘It rather reminds me,’ Mrs Elvery recited rapidly, but with evident relish, ‘of Pangleton Abbey, where John Roehampton cut the throats of his three nieces, aged respectively, nineteen, twenty-two and twenty-four, afterwards burying them in cement, for which crime he was executed at Exeter Gaol. He had to be supported to the scaffold, and left a full confession admitting his guilt!’

Mr Goodman rose hastily to fly from the gruesome recital. Happily, rescue came in the shape of the tall, soldierly person of Colonel Redmayne. He was a man of fifty-five, rather nervous and absent of manner and address. His attire was careless and somewhat slovenly. Goodman had seen this carelessness of appearance grow from day to day.

The colonel looked from one to the other.

‘Good-morning. Is everything all right?’

‘Comparatively, I think,’ said Goodman with a smile. He hoped that Mrs Elvery would find another topic of conversation, but she was not to be denied.

‘Colonel, did you hear anything in the night?’

‘Hear anything?’ he frowned. ‘What was there to hear?’

She ticked off the events of the night on her podgy fingers.

‘First of all the organ, and then a most awful, blood-curdling shriek. It came from the grounds—from the direction of the Monk’s Tomb.’

She waited, but he shook his head.

‘No, I heard nothing. I was asleep,’ he said in a low voice.

Veronica, an interested listener, broke in.

‘Oh, what a fib! I saw your light burning long after Mamma and I heard the noise. I can see your room by looking out of my window.’

He scowled at her.

‘Can you? I went to sleep with the light on. Has anyone seen Mary?’

Goodman pointed across the park.

‘I saw her half an hour ago,’ he said.

Colonel Redmayne stood hesitating, then, without a word, strode from the room, and they watched him crossing the park with long strides.

‘There’s a mystery here!’ Mrs Elvery drew a long breath. ‘He’s mad. Mr Goodman, do you know that awfully nice-looking man who came yesterday morning? He wanted a room, and when I asked the colonel why he didn’t let him stay he turned on me like a fiend! Said he was not the kind of man he wanted to have in the house; said he dared—“dared” was the word he used—to try to scrape acquaintance with his daughter, and that he didn’t want any good-for-nothing drunkards under the same roof.’

‘In fact,’ said Mr Goodman, ‘he was annoyed! You mustn’t take the colonel too seriously—he’s a little upset this morning.’

He took up the letters that had come to him by the morning post and began to open them.

‘The airs he gives himself!’ she went on. ‘And his daughter is no better. I must say it, Mr Goodman. It may sound awfully uncharitable, but she’s got just as much—’ She hesitated.

‘Swank?’ suggested Veronica, and her mother was shocked. ‘It’s a common expression,’ said Veronica.

‘But we aren’t common people,’ protested Mrs Elvery. ‘You may say that she gives herself airs. She certainly does. And her manners are deplorable. I was telling her the other day about the Grange Road murder. You remember, the man who poisoned his mother-in-law to get the insurance money—a most interesting case—when she simply turned her back on me and said she wasn’t interested in horrors.’

Cotton, the butler, came in at that moment with the mail. He was a gloomy man who seldom spoke. He was leaving the room when Mrs Elvery called him back.

‘Did you hear any noise last night, Cotton?’

He turned sourly.

‘No, ma’am. I don’t get a long time to sleep—you couldn’t wake me with a gun.’

‘Didn’t you hear the organ?’ she insisted.

‘I never hear anything.’

‘I think the man’s a fool,’ said the exasperated lady.

‘I think so too, ma’am,’ agreed Cotton, and went out.

CHAPTER VI (#ulink_083c07a6-2d79-5b57-888b-36d7727a72a3)

MARY went to the village that morning to buy a week’s supply of stamps. She barely noticed the young man in plus-fours who sat on a bench outside the Red Lion, though she was conscious of his presence; conscious, too, of the stories she had heard about him.

She had ceased being sorry for him. He was the type of man, she decided, who had gone over the margin of redemption; and, besides, she was annoyed with him because he had irritated her father, for Mr Ferdie Fane had had the temerity to apply for lodging at Monkshall.

Until that morning she had never spoken to him, nor had she any idea that such a misfortune would overtake her, until she came back through the village and turned into the little lane whence ran a footpath across Monkshall Park.

He was sitting on a stile, his long hands tightly clasped between his knees, a drooping cigarette in his mouth, gazing mournfully through his horn-rimmed spectacles into vacancy. She stood for a moment, thinking he had not seen her, and hesitating whether she should take a more round-about route in order to avoid him. At that moment he got down lazily, took off his cap with a flourish.

‘Pass, friend; all’s well,’ he said.

He had rather a delightful smile, she noticed, but at the moment she was far from being delighted.

‘If I accompany you to your ancestral home, does your revered father take a gun or loose a dog?’

She faced him squarely.

‘You’re Mr Fane, aren’t you?’

He bowed; the gesture was a little extravagant, and she went hot at his impertinence.

‘I think in the circumstances, Mr Fane, it is hardly the act of a gentleman to attempt to get into conversation with me.’

‘It may not be the act of a gentleman, but it is the act of an intelligent human being who loves all that is lovely,’ he smiled. ‘Have you ever noticed how few really pleasant-looking people there are in the world? I once stood at the corner of a street—’

‘At present you’re standing in my way,’ she interrupted him.

She was not feeling at her best that morning; her nerves were tense and on edge. She had spent a night of terror, listening to strange whispers, to sounds that made her go cold, to that booming note of a distant organ which made her head tingle. Otherwise, she might have handled the situation more commandingly. And she had seen something, too—something she had never seen before; a wild, mouthing shape that had darted across the lawn under her window and had vanished.

He was looking at her keenly, this man who swayed slightly on his feet.

‘Does your father love you?’ he asked, in a gentle, caressing tone.

She was too startled to answer.