Valentine Williams - Dead Man Manor

‘His light’s out,’ said the doctor, and asked. ‘What kind of a mess?’

‘Adams didn’t say!’

‘So the old boy’s on the lam and hiding in the family mansion, eh?’

‘That’s about the size of it. The young woman hasn’t sent for you, has she?’

A brief head-shake. ‘Not yet!’

‘My advice to you is simple. If she does, go to your patient. Otherwise, stay away. You don’t want to get yourself mixed up more than you need with a fugitive from justice.’

Wood sighed. ‘I can’t help being sorry for the girl. She’s so plucky, so—kind of proud. I’d like to help her if I could. Why don’t we take your car and run over there now?’ He regarded his companion hopefully.

Mr. Treadgold started. ‘At this time of night? No, no, my boy, I’m much too old for such knight-errantry. Besides, I’m going to bed. Hullo, what’s that?’

They both heard the muffled thump of oars on the dark lake at their feet. ‘It’s a boat,’ said Wood. ‘Who can be out at this hour?’

‘I expect it’s Adams. He told me he likes rowing the last thing at night—it makes him sleep. . .’

The doctor pointed. ‘It isn’t Adams!’

A figure was visible under the pier light, a man in a shining rubber coat who stood peering about him, as though uncertain of his bearings. ‘It’s Jacques!’ cried Wood suddenly.

Springing from his chair, he went plunging along the duckboards, Mr. Treadgold at his heels. As they emerged from the darkness upon the lighted landing-stage, the man sprang forward. Under his straw hat his face glistened with perspiration.

‘Ah, Docteur, I am happy I find you,’ he faltered in broken English. ‘Mademoiselle say for you to come quickly. My master is unconscious and we cannot revive him!’

‘I’ll get the car!’

Mr. Treadgold spoke and was gone. His words galvanized the doctor into action. ‘Go with him!’ he bade the servant and rushed back to the cabin. There he gathered up his stethoscope, the black satchel containing his emergency kit, without which he never travelled, his flashlight and his raincoat, and was out in the dripping darkness again. As he raced for the garage the roar of a motor warming up came back to him. On the roadway behind the main hut the car was already throbbing, with Mr. Treadgold, swathed in his cape, at the wheel and Jacques in the rumble. Wood sprang in. The clock on the dash marked midnight.

Mr. Treadgold nudged his companion. ‘I asked him,’ he said in an undertone, jerking his head backward towards the rumble, ‘who these people at the Manor are. But he says his orders are to give no name. I guess it’s the Seigneur all right, though. He’s a Catholic, anyway—we have to stop by for the curé. And anyone can see that this fellow’s a gentleman’s servant. . .’ In a spatter of mud the car shot away.

As the rain had stopped, they had not waited to put up the hood. Leaning back, Wood began to question the servant behind. As Mademoiselle had sat up with Monsieur all the previous night, Jacques said, after supper that evening Monsieur sent her to lie down. When, around nine o’clock, Jacques looked in to give Monsieur his tablets, Monsieur told him he could go to bed. Monsieur had seemed so much better, he had complied—he slept in a small room off the kitchen. The next thing he knew he found Mademoiselle at his bedside—the old gentleman had had another attack, she said. He accompanied her to the room they used for meals—la lingerie, Jacques called it—and saw Monsieur, fully dressed, on the floor: he did not speak or move. Between them they got the old man to his room, but he did not come round. Then Mademoiselle had sent him to the camp for the doctor. He had run all the way through the woods, and if he had not happened to find a boat on the other side, he would have had to make the whole tour of the lake. He was to fetch the curé, too—Mademoiselle was very insistent about this. The other gentleman had agreed to stop at the presbytery—it was only a little bit out of the way. ‘A matter of two or three minutes,’ Mr. Treadgold put in. ‘I guess it won’t make any difference,’ the doctor agreed gravely.

The curé had not yet returned from Trois-Ponts, Mademoiselle Agathe cried to the waiting car from an open window of the presbytery. He should have the message the moment he got back. But who should be ill, in danger of death, at the Manor? ‘Drive on!’ Wood ground out between his teeth to Mr. Treadgold and, with a roar that awoke all the echoes of the silent square, they were on their way again.

It was twenty-five minutes past twelve when the coupé drew up at the Manor. The doctor, clutching his satchel, was out and over the gate before the car had ceased to move. Leaving his companions to follow as best they might, he sprinted up the avenue and round to the back porch.

The house was plunged in darkness—not even the linen-room showed a light. But the back door was unfastened and, with the aid of his torch, he groped his way through the black kitchen to the lobby beyond. A narrow band of radiance, falling athwart the gloom, denoted the old man’s room. All was still as death within.

Fully dressed in a dark suit, the old man lay stretched on his truckle-bed. His eyes were closed and in the uncertain ray of the single candle that flared on a chair, his finely moulded face was ashen. Putting his satchel down on the table, Wood went forward. For the moment he thought he was alone with the patient. But then something stirred in the shadows and the girl was before him.

‘Why was he allowed to get up?’ He spoke sternly, his eyes on the figure on the bed.

Her fingers tore at the little handkerchief she carried. ‘He insisted that I should go and rest. I must have fallen asleep. I awoke, thinking I heard a cry. I ran in here, but he was gone—his clothes, too. He must have dressed himself—I found him on the floor of the linen-room, unconscious as you see him now. I tried to give him brandy, coffee, but his teeth were clenched so firmly. . .’ She spoke in breathless, broken sentences, hands fluttering, eyes imploring.

Stepping past her, Wood went to the bed. She followed slowly after, watching his every movement with a sort of dreadful fascination.

Mr. Treadgold entering just then—Jacques had remained at the gate to await the priest—saw the doctor, his stethoscope in his ears, bending over the seemingly lifeless form stretched on the pallet. Laying the stethoscope aside, Wood took the candle and, opening one of the patient’s eyes with finger and thumb, passed the light before it. Then with an absorbed, purposeful air he went to the table and, unstrapping his satchel, found a hypodermic needle and a small bottle. He filled the needle, tried it, and returned to the bed.

Soft-voiced, soft-footed, the servant was at the door. He signed to the girl. ‘Pst, Mademoiselle! Monsieur le Curé is there!’

In dismay she glanced about the impoverished room. ‘But we must prepare an altar,’ she said in lowered tones. Removing a cup and a glass from the crate that stood beside the bed, she flew to a suitcase against the wall, and returning with a large, white handkerchief, spread it over the box. ‘Quickly, Jacques,’ she ordered, ‘bring another candle! You’ll find one in the linen-room!’

As the servant turned to obey her, he receded a pace, then reverentially dropped on one knee. A cloaked figure stood in the doorway. It was the Abbé Bazin. His rapt air, and the way he carried his hands beneath his cloak, told Mr. Treadgold that he bore the viaticum.

The girl had placed the solitary candle on the improvised altar. She was on her knees. Jacques had tiptoed away. Looking neither to right nor left, the priest advanced to the bed.