Читать книгу The Haunting of Low Fennel - Sax Rohmer - Страница 6

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The following day I lunched alone with the Major, Mrs. Dale being absent on a visit. It had been impossible to keep the truth from her (or what we knew of it) and at present I could not quite foresee the issue of last night’s affair. Young Wales, who had been driven home in a car sent from his place at a late hour, had not since put in an appearance; and it was sufficiently evident that Mrs. Dale would not welcome him should he do so, the hysterical panic which he had exhibited on the previous night having disgusted her. She had not said so in as many words, but I did not doubt it.

“Well, Addison?” said the Major as I entered, “have you got the facts you were looking for?”

“Some of them,” I replied, and opening my notebook I turned to the pages containing notes made that morning.

The Major watched me with intense curiosity, and almost impatiently awaited my next words. The servant having left the room:

“In the first place,” I began, glancing at the notes, “I have been consulting certain local records in the town, and I find that in the year 1646 a certain Dame Pryce occupied a cabin which, according to one record, ‘stood close beside unto ye Lowe Fennel.’”

“That is, close beside this house?” interjected the Major excitedly.

“Exactly,” I said. “She attracted the attention of one of the many infamous wretches who disfigure the history of that period: Matthew Hopkins, the self-styled Witch-Finder General. This was a witch-ridden age, and the man Hopkins was one of those who fattened on the credulity of his fellows, receiving a fee of twenty shillings for every unhappy woman discovered and convicted of witchcraft. Poor Pryce was ‘swum’ in a local pond (a test whereby the villain Hopkins professed to discover if the woman were one of Satan’s band, or otherwise) and burnt alive in Reigate market-place on September 23, 1646.”

“By God!” said the Major, who had not attempted to commence his lunch, “that’s a horrible story!”

“It is one of the many to the credit of Matthew Hopkins,” I replied; “but, without boring you with the details of this woman’s examination and so forth, I may say that what interests me most in the case is the date—September 23.”

“Why? I don’t follow you.”

“Well,” I said, “there’s a hiatus in the history of the place after that, except that even in those early days it evidently suffered from the reputation of being haunted; but without troubling about the interval, consider the case of Seager, which you yourself related to me. Was it not in the month of August that he was done to death here?”

“By Gad!” cried the Major, his face growing redder than ever, “you’re right!—and hang it all, Addison! it was in September—last September—that the Ords cleared out!”

“I remember your mentioning,” I continued, smiling at his excitement, “that it was a very hot month?”

“It was.”

“From a mere word dropped by one of the witnesses at the trial of poor Pryce I have gathered that the month in which she was convicted of practising witchcraft in her cabin adjoining Low Fennel (as it stood in those days) was a tropically hot month also.”

Major Dale stared at me uncomprehendingly.

“I’m out of my depth, Addison—wading hopelessly. What the devil has the heat to do with the haunting?”

“To my mind everything. I may be wrong, but I think that if the glass were to fall to-night, there would be no repetition of the trouble.”

“You mean that it’s only in very hot weather—”

“In phenomenally hot weather, Major—the sort that we only get in England perhaps once in every ten years. For the glass to reach the altitude at which it stands at present, in two successive summers, is quite phenomenal, as you know.”

“It’s phenomenal for it to reach that point at all,” said the Major, mopping his perspiring forehead; “it’s simply Indian, simply Indian, sir, by the Lord Harry!”

“Another inquiry,” I continued, turning over a leaf of my book, “I have been unable to complete, since, in order to interview the people who built your new wing, I should have to run up to London.”

“What the blazes have they to do with it?”

“Nothing at all, but I should have liked to learn their reasons for raising the wing three feet above the level of the hall-way.”

Between the heat and his growing excitement, Major Dale found himself at a temporary loss for words. Then:

“They told me,” he shouted at the top of his voice, “they told me at the time that it was something about—that it was due to the plan—that it was——”

“I can imagine that they had some ready explanation,” I said, “but it may not have been the true one.”

“Then what the—what the—is the true one?”

“The true one is that the new wing covers a former mound.”

“Quite right; it does.”

“If my theory is correct, it was upon this mound that the cabin of Dame Pryce formerly stood.”

“It’s quite possible; they used to allow dirty hovels to be erected alongside one’s very walls in those days—quite possible.”

“Moreover, from what I’ve learnt from Ord—whom I interviewed at the Hall—and from such accounts as are obtainable of the death of Seager, this mound, and not the interior of Low Fennel as it then stood, was the scene of the apparitions.”

“You’ve got me out of my depth again, Addison. What d’you mean?”

“Seager was strangled outside the house, not inside.”

“I believe that’s true,” agreed the Major, still shouting at the top of his voice, but gradually growing hoarser; “I remember they found him lying on the step, or something.”

“Then again, the apparition with the contorted face which peered in at Mrs. Ord——”

“Lies, all lies!”

“I don’t agree with you, Major. She was trying to shield her husband, but I think she saw the contorted face right enough. At any rate it’s interesting to note that the visitant came from outside the house again.”

“But,” cried the Major, banging his fist upon the table, “it wanders about inside the house, and—and—damn it all!—it goes outside as well!”

“Where it goes,” I interrupted quietly, “is not the point. The point is, where it comes from.”

“Then where do you believe it comes from?”

“I believe the trouble arises, in the strictest sense of the word, from the same spot whence it arose in the days of Matthew Hopkins, and from which it had probably arisen ages before Low Fennel was built.”

“What the—”

“I believe it to arise from the ancient barrow, or tumulus, above which you have had your new wing erected.”

Major Dale fell back in his chair, temporarily speechless, but breathing noisily; then:

“Tumulus!” he said hoarsely; “d’you mean to tell me the house is built on a dam’ burial ground?”

“Not the whole house,” I corrected him; “only the new wing.”

“Then is the place haunted by the spirit of some uneasy Ancient Briton or something of that sort, Addison? Hang it all! you can’t tell me a fairy tale like that! A ghost going back to pre-Roman days is a bit too ancient for me, my boy—too hoary, by the Lord Harry!”

“I have said nothing about an Ancient British ghost—you’re flying off at a tangent!”

“Hang it all, Addison! I don’t know what you’re talking about at all, but nevertheless your hints are sufficiently unpleasant. A tumulus! No man likes to know he’s sleeping in a graveyard, not even if it is two or three thousand years old. D’you think the chap who surveyed the ground for me knew of it?”

“By the fact that he planned the new wing so as to avoid excavation, I think probably he did. He was wise enough to surmise that the order might be cancelled altogether and the job lost if you learnt the history of the mound adjoining your walls.”

“A barrow under the study floor!” groaned the Major—“damn it all! I’ll have the place pulled down—I won’t live in it. Gad! if Marjorie knew, she would never close her eyes under the roof of Low Fennel again—I’m sure she wouldn’t, I know she wouldn’t. But what’s more, Addison, the thing, whatever it is, is dangerous—infernally dangerous. It nearly killed young Wales!” he added, with a complacency which was significant.

“It was the fright that nearly killed him,” I said shortly.

Major Dale stared across the table at me.

“For God’s sake, Addison,” he said, “what does it mean? What unholy thing haunts Low Fennel? You’ve studied these beastly subjects, and I rely upon you to make the place clean and good to live in again.”

“Major,” I replied, “I doubt if Low Fennel will ever be fit to live in. At any time an abnormal rise of temperature might produce the most dreadful results.”

“You don’t mean to tell me——”

“If you care to have the new wing pulled down and the wall bricked up again, if you care to keep all your doors and windows fastened securely whenever the thermometer begins to exhibit signs of rising, if you avoid going out on hot nights after dusk, as you would avoid the plague—yes, it may be possible to live in Low Fennel.”

Again the Major became speechless, but finally:

“What d’you mean, Addison?” he whispered; “for God’s sake, tell me. What is it?—what is it?”

“It is what some students have labelled an ‘elemental’ and some a ‘control,’” I replied; “it is something older than the house, older, perhaps, than the very hills, something which may never be classified, something as old as the root of all evil, and it dwells in the Ancient British tumulus.”