Valentine Williams - Dead Man Manor

They had a long day’s fishing, eating their lunch on a rock beside the limpid, shallow river, and bringing home twenty-two smallish trout, no less than five of which had fallen to Mr. Treadgold’s new rod. It was past eight when they got back to camp, hungry and chilled, for the air was damp with the promise of rain. The lighted windows of the mess hut, from which the strains of the radio came jangling, seemed to beckon cheerfully as they disembarked at the landing-stage. The evening meal had long since been cleared away. But their supper had been kept hot and Madeleine served them at the end of the long table. While they ate, the tranquil evening activities of the living-room went on about them. The bridge four was under way; the Tisserand family had sat down to pinochle; only Montgomery circulated, dividing his attention between plying Wood with questions about the day’s fishing and trying to tune the static out of the early-Sarnoff set, under the direction of the youngest Miss Tisserand.

They were broadcasting in French from one of the Canadian stations. A syrupy French tenor—an especial favourite, it transpired, of the Tisserand tribe—was flatting his way lugubriously through Gounod’s Berceuse. ‘Ah, comme il changte bieng!’ sighed Madame Tisserand in her nasal Canadian French.

‘And to think, George,’ Mr. Treadgold remarked sotto voce to the doctor, pushing back his plate and offering his cigar-case, ‘to think I once believed that an American crooner was the worst thing on the air!’

‘Except two crooners,’ retorted the young man blithely, helping himself from the case.

Mr. Treadgold carefully chose a cigar. ‘One lives and learns!’ he proffered mildly.

The tenor had launched forth upon his second number. ‘Parlez-moi d’amour!’ the sugary falsetto trilled. ‘Redites-moi des choses tendres!’

Resolutely Mr. Treadgold stood up. ‘George,’ he said, ‘do you recollect what Uncle Toby said when he opened the window and let the fly go?’

By this time Tristram Shandy’s Uncle Toby was, vicariously, quite a familiar of Mr. Treadgold’s roommate. So, assuming a knowing air, the doctor asked, ‘What?’

‘He said,’ replied the other with portentous solemnity, ‘“This world surely is wide enough to hold both thee and me!”’ His head made a very slight movement towards the door. ‘I believe there’s some whisky left!’ he added significantly.

Wood nodded and silently the two men slipped out.

They had been installed on their verandah for about an hour, slapping at the mosquitoes and watching the darkness deepen over the lake, when they observed the General approaching.

‘Has either of you seen anything of Shiner?’ he asked. ‘He went out after dinner and hasn’t come back. It’s getting on for ten o’clock and he ought to be in bed.’

On their both disclaiming all knowledge of the youngster, the General stumped away with a light in his eye that boded no good for the truant.

‘I hope nothing’s happened to the kid,’ said Mr. Treadgold when Rees had gone.

His companion yawned. ‘He’s probably taken a boat out and lost an oar or something!’

‘Suppose we go as far as the landing-stage and see if there’s any sign of him?’

The General and Adams were already on the little pier. As Mr. Treadgold and the doctor strolled up, Adams pointed silently to a canoe which was just emerging into the light of the lantern which burned all night at the end of the quay. In the bow, paddling vigorously, knelt the missing Shiner.

‘What the devil’s the meaning of this performance, sir?’ his father rasped as the canoe came alongside.

The boy hopped out. He was breathless with excitement. ‘I’ve been to the haunted house! I believe I saw the ghost, too!’

The General appeared about to choke. ‘I thought I expressly forbade you. . .’

‘You mean to say you really saw someone at the Manor, old man?’ Adams asked.

‘Well, I didn’t exactly see anybody,’ the lad admitted. ‘But there was a sort of dim light at the side—it seemed to be shining through a shutter—and I heard footsteps, too! I didn’t wait to see any more—I just ran!’

His father grabbed him by the arm. ‘You go straight to bed, my friend! I’ll deal with you in the morning!’

‘But, hang it, General,’ Adams expostulated, ‘let the boy tell us about the ghost! It sounds interesting!’

‘Obviously, that one-eyed poacher’s camping in the house,’ Mr. Treadgold remarked aside to the doctor.

But Wood, staring absently into the darkness, did not answer.

‘Off with you!’ the General barked at his son, disregarding Adams’s intervention. ‘At the double! Quick march! And let me hear no more of this childish nonsense!’

Thus admonished, the youngster departed precipitately in the direction of the Rees camp, followed at a distance by his still fuming parent, and Mr. Treadgold and the doctor returned to their verandah.

Wood lit his pipe and lay back in his chair, gazing aloft, his hands clasped behind his head. He seemed disinclined for speech. Mr. Treadgold was content. He had no particular wish to talk, either. After his long day in the air he felt healthily tired, but he was not ready for bed. His second cigar was going well, his deck chair was adjusted at the right angle, and he was enjoying the sombre stillness of the night, the fragrance of the woods. A little while and his cigar, which had gone out, fell from his lips to the floor, his head drooped. . .

A shout awakened him. It had begun to rain. Along the duckboards Montgomery, a raincoat draped over his head, was hailing them.

‘Hey, Doc, what’s the time? My watch has stopped!’

‘A quarter to eleven,’ Wood shouted back.

‘Gracious,’ exclaimed Mr. Treadgold, sitting up, ‘I must have dozed off. Well, here’s the rain all right!’

‘It’s only a shower,’ his companion replied, and relapsed into silence.

He was haunted by the vision of the girl and her grandfather cowering in that ghostly house. The light young Rees had seen must have come from their improvised sitting-room. Tonight the story was all over the camp—tomorrow the village would have it. What was he to do? Go off and warn the girl to find a fresh hiding-place? Pitilessly the rain descended, like a sheet of water. On a night like this, with the old man at death’s door, where could these two go? If only his car were not out of action!

The snap of Mr. Treadgold’s watch broke a long silence. The rain had stopped as abruptly as it had started. ‘Eleven o’clock,’ said Mr. Treadgold. ‘Bedtime, I think!’

‘Wait a bit!’ Wood answered.

He had just remembered that large and expensive coupé in the garage. Well, it would mean entrusting his roommate with the girl’s secret. After all, why not? The open countenance at his side, so sage and so serene, gave him confidence. On the instant, his mind was made up. He would tell H. B. the whole story and see what he suggested. . .

The mess hut was long since dark: one by one the lights in the cabins had disappeared: the night wind rustled in the birches, bringing down a spatter of raindrops. Still from the verandah of Camp Number 3 came the murmur of the doctor’s voice. At length it ceased.

‘So that’s the light young Rees saw,’ said Mr. Treadgold musingly. ‘Well, I believe I can tell you who your patient is.’

Wood looked at him sharply. ‘What do you mean?’

‘It’s the Seigneur.’

‘The which?’

‘A sort of local Lord of the Manor. . .’ Treadgold waxed a little learned on the seigneurial system as the curé had explained it to him. ‘It seems he got into a mess of some kind and had to skip. Adams was telling me about it at dinner.’ He craned his head in the direction of the adjoining cabin. ‘Is Adams still up?’