The Recrudescence of Parson Lolly
I chanced upon an alternative road, with more variety in its
prospects, to take me back to the mouth of the Vale, omitting New
Aidenn entirely and saving a third of my journey. Even on this
short-cut southward, I found daylight part drawn into evening when I
reached the top of the vast hill called the Smatcher, shaped like a
loaf of bread, and began to descend through its larches to the
entrance of the Vale. Gleams of sun walked from peak to peak while
violet dusk deepened along the skirts of the hills. On the highway
below me I perceived a human figure trudging toward the branch road to
the House.
I straightway recognized that sawed-off, machine-like form, and the
peculiar drawing-up of the shoulder with each step. Doctor Aire was
preceding me through the twilight.
I hailed him and joined him. “I thought the others might pick you up.”
“Not returned yet, I dare say. Didn’t call for me, at any rate. So I’m
getting my fortnightly exercise.” He looked up at me quizzically. “You
found everything satisfactory?”
“Damnably the reverse. Why, there never was a right arm on that
effigy. Do you know, Doctor, I believe Maryvale has the mission in
life of plaguing me!”
“Not you alone, let me assure you. Other persons are agog over his
cryptic remarks. I, for instance.”
“You? Oh, no.”
“Yes. You didn’t hear what he told the Pendletons and me this morning
at breakfast? He said that Parson Lolly is dead.”
“Parson Lolly dead! That was fudge.”
“On the contrary, he assured us with perfect gravity that the Parson
died last night.”
“He was pulling your leg.”
“Not a bit of it. I know Maryvale that well, anyhow.”
“Give it your own name, then; I’d call it empty talk.”
Aire twitched around at me in a surprised way. “Never,” he declared.
“Sure, Bannerlee, you must realize by this time that there’s always
something behind what Maryvale says. He doesn’t merely vaporize.”
We were approaching the temporary bridge. “I wish you’d tell me
exactly what you think of Maryvale, Doctor. I confess that to me
there’s something uncanny about the man. If he’s mad, he ought not to
be loose among us, and if not—”
“If not?” Aire cocked his head to hear.
“—if not, he’s up to some subtle game.”
“Oho, you think so?”
“What else, for heaven’s sake?”
He waited to cross the bridge before he answered. “No, that’s not my
reading of Maryvale. I look on him as a man wrestling with an idea,
the idea of Parson Lolly.”
“And still I don’t get hold of your meaning.”
“It’s this way. Gilbert Maryvale has come to Aidenn Vale before. Each
time, certainly, a tradition of the countryside, a popular
half-belief, has been mentioned, more often discussed with some
fullness. It is, to say the minimum, a fable of much piquancy, a
legend above the average in interest, this tradition of the
goblin-parson—is it not?”
“Granted, granted.”
“Haven’t you often wished that fairy-tales were true? Maryvale has
almost convinced himself to believe in Parson Lolly. His mind hasn’t
conquered the idea, seems to be more or less at the mercy of it. But
sometimes he rebels. Now and then he can see the absurdity as well as
you or I; he can even laugh at the Parson. But again he will fall into
perplexity, confusion, shame, fear over the idea. And he is capable,
under suggestion or after shock, of getting into the throes, quite
possessed with the reality of the unreal, virtually a maniac if you
like that word. At these times he makes the supreme surrender one is
capable of making to ideas.”
“What is that?”
“Why, he _acts_ on them. Remember his carrying that revolver up the
Vale.”
“Thanks, I remember well enough.” We went on in silence a little way,
and then I said quickly, “But that doesn’t explain everything. Madmen
are consistent; that’s why they’re mad. But Maryvale tells me that
someone of the house of Kay did this murder, and sends me over to Old
Aidenn to find out about that missing arm, and—”
“Of course he is not consistent; that’s why he is _not_ mad, as you
persist in thinking. He is very much mixed, but his ideas don’t fit
into a complete system. I shall be sorry when they do, and I think the
sooner he leaves the Vale the better.”
“Why don’t you suggest it?”
“I have, to Salt. However, the Superintendent doesn’t want our group
to be dissolved for a few days yet. I’d have Maryvale out of here in a
jiffy, though, if I felt his mental condition were critical, not
simply fluctuating, for there’s not the remotest possibility of his
being implicated in Cosgrove’s death.”
“Let me see, where was he, just?”
“Sitting with me on the steps of the summer-house the whole time
during which the murder could have happened. But if he is shielded
from any further mental concussion, I suppose there’s no harm in his
staying on here a while longer. Besides, you know, he will have it
that the Parson is dead.”
In the thickening gloom I could make out no expression on the face of
the man keeping step beside me. I spoke cautiously.
“I take it, then, Doctor, that you don’t think Maryvale may have a
hand in the manifestations of the Parson?”
He laughed. “Rather not! How could he?”
“I wish I could tell you. But in any case I suppose—I devoutly hope,
anyhow—that the manifestations are over, and the explanations will be
in order henceforth.”
“I second you willingly.”
We went on. I stumbled against a stone in the roadway. “Doctor, you’ve
heard about the man I encountered the night I came here; I mean the
one with the umbrella.”
“Yes, Salt asked my opinion about that chap.”
“What opinion could you have?”
“Question of sanity again.”
“What do you think?”
“Hopelessly sane, I should say. You didn’t take him for crazed, did
you?”
“No; I suppose his talk was fabricated.”
“From Salt’s account, I judged it was—most of it, anyhow.”
“Which part do you exempt?”
“Well, wasn’t there an urgent warning about calling off the dogs, and
a reference to golden-haired woman? Believe me, Bannerlee, this
Mac-whatever-his-name-was meant what he said just then.”
“Perhaps. But what I wanted to tell you, Doctor, was that I can’t help
connecting Maryvale with that man. The physical differences in their
appearance aren’t so great that they couldn’t be one and the same,
what with a false beard stuck on crooked, and the rest of it. It’s
unlikely, of course, but still—”
“Tut! it’s impossible.”
“You don’t know. You weren’t here that night.”
“Trust Salt. He has ascertained beyond a shade of doubt that Maryvale
and the rest of the party were in the House the whole evening. The
only possibility is that one of the servants _might_ have gone out
looking that way, and you know how likely that is.”
I gave a shrug to dismiss the whole question as insoluble. “I thank my
stars I wasn’t born a detective.”
“Curious how dark the House is,” said Aire. “So close to dinner, too.”
The building had been in sight for a time, but only as a black beast
crouching with closed eyes on the lawn. Now we were some hundred yards
or so distant, but had still to go through the gate-house archway if
we followed the westward trend of the drive.
I said, “I suppose our friends haven’t appeared. I’d make my outing as
long as possible, too, having to return at last to this devil’s
playground.”
We passed underneath the arch, crossed the lawn.
“Even the kitchens looked dark from down below. Can’t tell about them
from this side, though. I certainly expected the motorists to be back
by this time; didn’t you?”
“Yes, I did.”
“It looks like a tomb.”
I was aware that Aire had made a swift movement; then I saw him stock
still, with his hand part way to his lips in a gesture of surprise.
“No lights, no. But there’s someone in the conservatory.”
“What!”
“I saw the gleam of a face at the window of the tower. Just a white
blotch. See that?”
“Right-o.”
We made across the lawn at a run, entered the Hall of the Moth by the
unfastened french window, and encountered two figures emerging from
the conservatory.
“I’m so glad you’ve come!”
“Miss Lebetwood!”
“Yes, it’s Millicent and I. Don’t—don’t be afraid,” she added with a
little, unsteady laugh.
“Are you alone? Is there something the matter with the lights?”
“The lights are all right. Yes, we’re alone.”
Aire demanded, “Aren’t the servants here?”
“They’re all here, I guess. I meant our people, you know. They brought
us to the bridge, so we could come up and have an hour or two of rest
before dinner. They didn’t want to come in yet; so they drove on
again.”
“But why didn’t you switch on the lights?” Aire queried. “With all
deference to your courage, I should think you would have felt easier
in your minds—”
“We didn’t dare turn on the light,” said Miss Lebetwood.
Aire and I barked astonishment.
Miss Mertoun, who had been clinging to the American girl’s arm, said,
“Do go on, Paula. Tell them what we saw.”
“It’s very little after all,” said Miss Lebetwood. “We had driven down
to the Wye Valley, had tea, and come back again by five-thirty, and
someone suggested going north to Ludlow before returning to the House.
But Millicent and I said we’d rather be excused; so one car waited on
the main road while the other brought us up and dropped us at the
bridge. We walked very slowly, and it wasn’t until about half an hour
ago that we reached the House. It was pretty dark, you know, even
then, but light from one or two kitchen windows showed in the garden;
so we weren’t scared at all.”
“Ah,” remarked Aire. “You didn’t come by the drive, then?”
“Oh, no, it was too dull for us. We came round through the grove under
Whimble and across the lawn south of the House to the cat-head door.
The door wasn’t latched, and we simply walked into the vestibule, and
we would have gone straight upstairs, but Millicent remembered a book
she had left in the Hall of the Moth. So she went in there to get it,
and I waited by the steps, but a moment later I heard her give a small
scream. I ran in—”
“What had you seen, Miss Mertoun?” asked Aire, turning to the English
girl.
“Something looked in the window. Paula saw it, too.”
“‘Something’ is a trifle vague, isn’t it?”
“But we don’t know what it was.”
“Well, what was its shape, and how was it dressed?”
“It was as tall as a man, maybe taller,” said Miss Lebetwood, “and it
was wrapped in a long black robe from the top of its—head to the
ground.”
“That’s the creature Oxford and I saw on the lawn that first night,” I
exclaimed.
Aire asked, “What was its face like?”
Miss Lebetwood spoke in a matter-of-fact tone. “It didn’t have any
face.”
Aire actually staggered back a step, and I reached out for something
to support me, but encountering nothing, concluded to stand upright.
I found my voice. “You mean you couldn’t see any.”
“On the contrary, I was quite near the window—that one by the armoury
door. Millicent had left her book on the cabinet there, and had
reached the place before she saw the shape, and I naturally went to
her side. We had all the light there was, and would have seen a face
if there had been any there.”
Stricken by a memory, I put my hand on Aire’s arm. “Remember, Doctor,
how Maryvale put no face in his portrait?”
He ignored me, and said, “What then?”
“We were petrified, of course. It seemed to peer in, if you can
understand, even without a face. The whole attitude of the thing was
inquiring, curious. And then perhaps it saw us, for suddenly it
twisted and hurried away.”
“Why didn’t you get the servants?” I put in.
“Things were bad enough without that.”
“What shall we do, Bannerlee?”
“Go after it, don’t you think?”
“Right. You have a torch, haven’t you?”
“Yes; I’ll fetch it. You stay here to guard the womenfolk.”
I made dizzy haste up the spiral stairs and down again, and found the
three outside the french window where the intruder had stood. Aire was
lighting matches in search of footprints, but as had been predicted,
vainly. We agreed that it would be best for the two girls to return to
the conservatory and keep watch through the windows, having care to
remain invisible. If anything untoward happened, they were to signal
us by switching on the light, at the same time ringing for the
servants if danger was evident.
Aire and I went side by side over the lawn toward the small solitary
copse. First one of us flashed the light along the sward while the
other tried to penetrate the darkness ahead; then we reversed duties.
As for footprints, if there were any they were exceedingly light and
vague, and singularly small, but we could not even agree there was a
definite trail.
The distance from the House to the cypresses was over two hundred
feet, and before we had covered the distance the Vale was filled with
a soft illumination, as if twilight had re-begun. On our right, the
moon was rising over Whimble, a crescent moon glowing like white-hot
metal. Then Aire, who had been looking ahead, drew up.
“Something’s among the trees for sure.”
While he spoke I saw movement underneath the horizontal branches, and
that queer, black-robed, conic figure—unmistakably the same I had seen
on the evening of my arrival—swiftened from the shelter of the
cypresses toward the expansive darkness of the park where the
summer-house stood. The long loose-flying sleeves flapped curiously as
if there were no arms within them. The wide garment spread along the
ground, but we had no sight of legs or feet, and I admit I felt uneasy
at the thought that if we caught this unknown, it might prove to have
no face.
We ran in pursuit, but I was careful not to outstrip Aire, lest the
thing should turn and fell us separately. In consequence, we barely
maintained our distance, and had the mortification of seeing the black
robe merge with the night among the sycamores of the park.
“Hear that?”
“It’s jumped into the stream.”
“Or fallen in.”
A little way within the park we found the steep-sided channel of the
brook which flowed across the farm of the sisters Delambre, later on
passed beneath the elaborated bridge, and eventually joined Aidenn
Water. The bank at this point was five or six feet high.
“What next?”
Aire slid and floundered down to the edge of the rivulet which
whispered along the channel.
“Can’t tell for certain, but I believe it went toward the bridge.”
I got down beside him, and we sped between the banks, which gradually
lifted above us. Dry land was scarce, and we did a deal of splashing
in the brook, but by the aid of my torch I seemed to see ahead muddy
traces of other splashing before ours. A wild rose growing on the edge
of the water had been trampled down.
A couple of short turns in the course of the brook brought us to the
stone bridge, a structure magnificently heavy in the body, but leaving
a semicircular arch only about eighteen inches high for the passage of
water.
“It’s a blind alley. No man—or woman—could have gone through there.
There isn’t room for a good-sized dog.”
I bent down and shot the light underneath; there was nothing but water
there.
“Well—”
“Up the bank, did it go?”
I flashed the torch up and down both sides of us. On the one hand was
a miniature precipice more than ten feet high, on the other was a wall
of earth nearly vertical, thickly grown with ivy-leaved toad-flax
showing no sign that anything larger than a mite had travelled over
it.
“I never—” Aire began.
I could not repress a tremor when he suddenly looked skyward, showing
that the spell of magic could exist in his bones. I turned my gaze up,
too, as if I really expected to see a black-robed figure floating over
the ruined summer-house or receding into the depths of the night sky.
But it was eastward that Aire was looking, and while we stared, some
solitary winged form flapped across the narrow surface of the moon.
“We’re beaten,” said Aire.
“Let’s get out of here. I need a tonic.”
“Shall we go back?”
“No; I’ll give you a leg up, and you reach down a hand to me.”
In this wise we crawled up the toad-flax, and a minute later our wet
feet were taking us back toward the cypress grove again. I kept my
light running along the ground, though my hope was feeble of
discovering any traces of the unknown. But when we had reached the
grove itself, Aire darted forward with a chortling cry.
No need to tell me what the white thing was that he picked up and held
in a trembling hand. He tried to decipher it in the moonlight before
my torch made the letters clear:
L o O k O U T F o R m E T o N I G h T P A R S O N L O L L Y
There was singularly little reaction on the part of anyone; I think
most of the minds in the House are drugged with dangers and alarums.
“But, I say,” protested Charlton Oxford. “The beastly placard says
to-night, y’know.”
“Can you use a pistol?” asked Crofts.
“Yes, but—”
“You can have mine, then. As for me, I’m going to sleep with one ear
and one eye open, and shan’t be surprised at anything, including being
murdered.”
Alberta rang for someone to remove the coffee-cups. “And nobody must
whisper a word of it to the servants, must they, Crofts?”
“Of course not.”
Blenkinson himself entered, slipped about the room with deferential
soft-footedness, collected the débris, and carried it out on two
trays. I noticed his eyes once or twice sliding into their corners
while he stole an inscrutable look at Miss Lebetwood.
“Extraordinary staff of servants you have,” remarked Aire, as soon as
the butler had departed.
“I’m paying double wages,” said Crofts shortly.
“I agree with Stephen,” declared Belvoir. “And I don’t think wages
alone cut much figure.”
“Tell them, Crofts,” said Alberta.
Her husband looked a bit abashed, but having encountered the steady
beam of her eye, growled, “Blenkinson.”
“Elucidate,” I said.
“Blest if I know,” confessed Crofts. “But there’s the fact. The
fellow’s a perfect lord among the community, and somehow he’s induced
the lot to believe that he’s able to protect ’em. I don’t know his
method. He just assured me I could depend on him.”
Silence fell, in which the clock was audible, and I noticed that it
was a quarter to ten.
Alberta yawned and made a gesture of weariness. “What do you say to
ten o’clock bed, people?”
Assent was unanimous.
Those gate-house towers that nod to me across the lawn—may they
harbour the Parson? Those locked cellars that no one has seen for
years. Who or what may not be down there? There are persons
unaccounted for in the Vale. And where now is the drowning-pit? In
olden days this castle must have had one. Discovering it, would I know
more about the Parson, or about the perfidious tree, or about the
cat’s claw?
Some of these questions I may be able to answer, if—
Yes, just now, at eleven minutes to twelve, I tossed a sixpence to
decide. It fell spinning on the table, wobbled provokingly, and said,
“Go forth.”
Let the Parson beware! If I catch him—or her—to-night!
Five minutes to twelve.
Great God, through my open window—
Some woman’s voice, very faint. . . . I am not sure whose. It is not
Paula Lebetwood’s.
It called “Sean, poor Sean!” many times, and died away.