Читать книгу Dead Man Manor - Valentine Williams - Страница 4

They stopped outside a white house near the church, Ruffier explaining that he wanted a word with Maître Boucheron, the village notary, who lived there. Getting out of the car Mr. Treadgold strolled as far as the church and, noticing the date ‘1753’ on a stone over the porch, went inside. After the hot sunshine of the square, the interior, faintly permeated with the lingering fragrance of incense, was dim and cool. Before a statue of the Madonna, at an altar ablaze with candles, a woman knelt in prayer, her lips moving silently. She wore a blue-and-white dress, a hat with a bird on it—it was Madame Ruffier. Except for the solitary suppliant Mr. Treadgold had the church to himself.

It was admirably proportioned, with an elegant rococo pulpit and high altar sumptuously carved and gilded. A mural tablet was affixed to the wall of the sanctuary. It was dedicated in French to ‘Ignace Antoine Hector Charles Ferdinand de St. Rémy, Seigneur de Mort Homme,’ who, to judge by the somewhat flowery epitaph, had been a pattern of all the Christian virtues and had passed away at St. Florentin, fortified by the rites of Holy Church, on the 21st of March, 1858. As Mr. Treadgold was reading the inscription, a figure in a long black cassock came through the sanctuary. It was a priest, gray-haired and keen-eyed, the amply skirted soutane encircling a respectable girth—evidently the curé.

From his reading Mr. Treadgold was aware that the parish priest is the most important figure in a French Canadian village. He made up his mind to address him.

‘A fine old church, Monsieur le Curé,’ he said politely in French.

The priest bowed. ‘It dates from before the English conquest,’ he replied gravely. Then he pointed at the sanctuary lamp which glowed ruby red before the altar. ‘For a hundred and eighty years that lamp has never gone out. An ancient parish, Monsieur!’ He pointed at the wall. ‘That tablet commemorates the last of the seigneurs of St. Florentin under the old order. The seigneuries were abolished in 1855. The old Manoir de Mort Homme, the seigneurial mansion, rebuilt in 1799, is still standing on the outskirts of the village. . .’

Mr. Treadgold was instantly interested. ‘An old house with a stream running through the grounds? I saw it as I came along. It’s uninhabited at present, isn’t it?’

The curé nodded. ‘The present Seigneur lives abroad,’ he said rather coldly.

‘I thought you said that the seigneurs had been abolished?’

Only their rights, not the title, the cleric explained in his precise French, and the tenants still paid the Seigneur rent for their land, albeit a very nominal sum. The seigneuries were a relic of the feudal system. To encourage colonization the kings of France granted leading settlers, for the most part officers who had served with the army in Canada, large tracts of land coupled with specific rights over their tenants, such as the right of la corvée or forced labour, and contributions in kind. ‘One valuable prerogative,’ he added, ‘was the right to grind the tenants’ corn. Where the old manors survive, you will still sometimes find the seigneurial mill adjoining, the community mill, as it was called. The Mort Homme mill is still extant, although it no longer belongs to the St. Rémy family. You must have seen it if you passed the Manor.’

‘I did,’ said Mr. Treadgold. ‘But it doesn’t seem to be working.’

A shadow crossed the curé’s face. ‘The miller died,’ he explained shortly, ‘and in the present difficult times no one has found it worth while to take his place.’

‘And why do they call it the Manoir de Mort Homme?’ Mr. Treadgold wanted to know.

The priest shrugged his shoulders. ‘It’s said that a settler was killed by Indians at those crossroads. Who knows? The name also occurs in France, they tell me. . .’

Manoir de Mort Homme—Dead Man Manor! The name had a sinister ring in Mr. Treadgold’s ears.

‘I see,’ he observed. ‘I thought, perhaps, there was some legend attaching to the house, some ghost story, maybe. . .’

The curé gave Mr. Treadgold an odd look. He did not speak. Vaguely aware that he had said the wrong thing, the other put in hastily: ‘You see, the gardien at the fishing-camp where I’m staying was most insistent that I should not go to the village through the woods. He tried to tell me that the trail was impassable, which is sheer nonsense, so I can’t help wondering whether he wasn’t trying to keep me away from the Manor. It’s a pretty creepy place, isn’t it? and then, while I was in the grounds. . .’

The priest interrupted him very sharply. ‘Ange Tremblay would do better to attend to his trout,’ he declared acidly.

Mr. Treadgold subsided. He had been leading up to his adventure in the Manor gardens, intending to sound the curé about the face that had peered out at him through the foliage. But the uncompromising severity of the priest’s regard told him he had blundered again and he quickly proceeded to change the subject by questioning the curé about the early history of the parish. There was something disarming about Mr. Treadgold’s personality. Whether it was his frank and open countenance flushed with health, or his agreeably modulated voice, people were seldom brusque with him for long. So successfully did he practise his wiles upon the curé that before he left the church they had exchanged cards and he found himself invited to call upon the Abbé Bazin at the presbytery beside the church that same evening after dinner to inspect some of the old parish records.

But, back in the car with Ruffier, on their way to the camp, his thoughts kept returning to Dead Man Manor, silent and shuttered amid its neglected gardens. It occurred to him that the storekeeper, who was clearly a person of prominence in the village, should be able to explain the enigma of the gardien’s behaviour.

Ruffier had none of the curé’s reticence. With a short laugh he said, ‘Queer things have happened at the Manor since Seigneur Hector went away!’

‘What sort of things?’ his companion demanded bluntly.

The other shrugged. ‘Our people are superstitious, Monsieur. They believe that the spirit of old Seigneur Ignace, the one who has the tablet in the church, walks the empty rooms at night. No villager, it is certain, will go near the Manor after dark, or even in the daytime, if he can avoid it, especially since the miller’s death. . .’

‘What happened to the miller?’

‘They found him in the stream with his neck broken and a bruise on his head. The police came from Quebec to investigate and brought it in as an accident and so did the coroner’s jury—it’s thought he slipped from a boulder in the dark. But every man, woman, and child in St. Florentin believes that Télésphore Gagnon met his death at the hands of the evil spirit that haunts the Manor. I don’t ask Monsieur to credit these ghost stories, but if he’s wise he’ll do like the rest of us and give the Manor a wide berth. . .’

‘But why?’

‘Voilà! There’s a drunken poacher who has a shack on the river-bank near-by. He’s appointed himself a sort of guardian of the place, roaming about the grounds at all hours of the day and night. . .’

‘But I saw him there myself this afternoon,’ Mr. Treadgold cried in high excitement. And he proceeded to relate his adventure.

Ruffier looked grave. ‘You were in considerable danger. This fellow—One-Eye, they call him in the village’—he used the French expression ‘Le Borgne’—‘is obsessed by the belief that anybody who approaches the Manor comes to steal it away from the St. Rémys. It’s my conviction that it was he who surprised this poor Gagnon going to take a trout from the pool for supper, and killed him. Indeed, the coroner had him arrested on suspicion. But there was no proof and we had to let him go.’

‘And you mean to tell me that a homicidal maniac like this man is allowed to remain at large? I never heard of such a thing!’

The other hoisted his broad shoulders. ‘He does no harm where he is, since no one enters the Manor grounds any more, now that the miller is dead. But let it be a warning to you, Monsieur, and the other guests at the camp, to steer clear of the Manor in future!’

Mr. Treadgold shuddered. ‘I don’t have to be told twice!’ he affirmed with much emphasis.

The next moment a turn of the narrow forest road they were following showed the roofs of the camp among the trees.