John Carr - The Plague Court Murders

This was sheer theorizing, yet it seemed to me that, if Darworth were so panic-stricken by a threat having to do with this house, he would scarcely have acted in the way he did tonight. He alone was calm and sure. He alone enjoyed working his marionettes, and sitting by himself in dark places. Had the writing on that paper really concerned Plague Court, he would in all likelihood have shown it to the others. He mentioned Plague Court because it was a bogey to the others, but not to him.

In that supposition, you perceive, lay the conflict. All the nebulous terrors of Darworth's acolytes centered round this house. They believed that here existed a deadly earthbound which must be exorcised, lest it take possession of a human soul. Now there had been so much nonsense in what Lady Benning had told us, that spiritualism seemed to violate its own rules; and presumably Darworth had only confused them with vague, Delphic hints. He could make vagueness even more terrifying. Yet, though it did not at all alarm Darworth the mystic, it had struck with ill-controlled panic Halliday the hard-headed and practical man.

I watched the pipe-smoke slide round the candle flames, and the whole room whispered with unpleasant suggestions. After glancing sharply over my shoulder, I pulled the wrapping paper off the parcel. It was a heavy cardboard letter-file opening like a book, and it rattled with papers.

Inside were three things: a large folded sheet, flimsy and brownish-mottled with age; a short newspaper-cutting; and a bundle of foolscap letter pages, as old as the first. On the last, the writing was so faded as to be indecipherable under the yellow blotches, but there was a newer copy in longhand folded and wedged under the tape.

The large sheet-which I did not entirely open because I feared to tear it was a deed. At the commencement the spidery script was so large that I could make out the parties to the sale: Thomas Frederick Halliday, Gent., had bought this house from Lionel Richard Maulden, Lord Seagrave of Seagrave, as attested on March 23, 1711.

From the newspaper-cutting, the headline leapt up: "PROMINENT CITY MAN A SUICIDE," accompanied by a pale photograph showing a rather goggle-eyed man in a high collar, who seemed afraid of the camera. In the picture of James Halliday, Esq., there was a horrible resemblance to Doctor Crippen. There were the same double-lensed spectacles, the same drooping mustaches, the same rabbit-like stare. The cutting told briefly of his connections; that he had shot himself at the home of his aunt, Lady Anne Benning; that he had been worried and depressed for some weeks, "seeming' always to search for something about the house"; that it was all very mysterious, and that Lady Benning twice broke down at the inquest.

I pushed it away, untied the tape, and drew out the other documents. The copy of those creased, faded, decaying sheets was headed: "Letters. Lord Seagrave to George Playge, the Steward and Manager o f his Estates, Together ,with Reply. Transcribed. J. G. Halliday, Nov. 7, 1878."

I began to read, under the uncertain candles in that bleak room, now and then referring to the original. There was no noise but the stirrings that are always in an old house; but on two occasions it seemed to me that someone had come in, and was reading over my shoulder:

Villa della Trebbia, Roma,

13th October, 1710.

PLAYGE:

Your master (and friend). is too ill and distracted to write as befits him, yet I would pray you and charge you, as you love your God, to tell me the truth of this horrible thing. Yesterday comes a letter from Sir J. Tollfer, that my brother Charles is dead at home, and this by his own hand. He said no more, but hinted at some foul business, and when I brought to mind all the things that are said about our House, I was driven near mad; since also my Lady L. is in worse failing health, and troubleth my mind exceedingly, and I cannot travel home; though a learned doctor of physick says she may be cured. So I charge you to tell me everything, Playge, as one who hath been in our family since a boy, and your father before, and pray God Sir J. Tollfer was mistaken.

Believe me, Playge, now more your friend than your master,

SEAGRAVE.

London,

21st November, 1710.

MY LORD:

If it had pleased GOD to avert this misfortune which is upon your Lordship, and indeed on all of us, I should never have been constrained to speak. For indeed I thought it was but a passing calamity, but now I know it was not; and it is a sore task which is laid upon me now, since GOD knows I feel the weight of my guilt. I must tell your Lordship more than you have asked, and of events during my father's stewardship during the Great Plague; but of that I shall speak hereinafter.

Of my Master Charles's death I must tell you this: your Lordship knows him to have been a boy of quiet and studious habits, sweet of disposition and beloved by all. During the month preceding his death (which took place on Thursday, the 6th September) I had indeed noticed him pale and restless, but this I laid to overstudy. G. Beaton, his bodyservant, had told me that he would break into sweats at night; and on one occasion Beaton, waked and roused from the truckle-bed by a cry, found him clutching back the bed-curtains and grasping at his neck as though in dreadful pain. But of this Master Charles remembered nothing next morning.

Nor would he wear a sword, but seemed always restless and seeking for something else at the side of his longcoat, and yet more pale and weary. Moreover, he took to sitting at the window of his bedchamber-which, as well your Lordship knows, looks over the court or yard behind our House-and this he would do especially at twilight, or when the moon was up. Once, he suddenly cried out from this window, and, pointing to a dairymaid who was returning to the house, he cried to me for Christ's sake. to

lock this girl up, and that 'he could see great sores on her hands and body.

Now I must ask your Lordship to call to mind a certain stone house which stands in the yard, and is connected with it by a covered arbor.

This house has been vacant of use for above fifty years. 'The reason given by your Lordship's father, and his father, is this: viz., That the house was built by mischance above a cesspool, and that all things sicken there. To maintain this which is untrue, they had not perforce to pull it down, lest the cesspool should poison us all; and nothing of provisions could be stored there save straw, grain, oats, or the like.

We had then in our service a young man, Wilbert Hawks by name, an ill-faced fellow employed as porter, who got on so ill with the other servants that he would not sleep with them, and cast about him for another bed. (All this, you may be sure, I did not know then). He vowed he believed in no cesspool, since never was there an ill savor about the place; but that the ruling was of mine, to keep honest servants out of a good bed of clean straw. They told him it was forbidden. Says he, then- 'Why, I'll take the key of the padlock from Master Snoopnose Playge's ring, when he hangs it up at night, and be. up each morning and put it back before him.'

And this he did, this being the wet season and full of high winds. And when they asked him how he had slept,

and if the bed was good, `Aye,' says he, `good enough. But which of ye thinks to cozen me by trying the door at night, and knocking on it lightly, and pawing round the house, and peering in at the windows? For you'll not befool me to think 'tis Master Snoopnose, and open.'

Whereat they jeered at him., and said he lied, forasmuch as none in the house was by some feet tall enough to look in at the windows. They noticed that he seemed pale, and had no liking to go on errands after dark; but he kept his bed, lest they should taunt him.