The Curious Affair of the Witch at Wayside Cross: Read online

  I put the book about poisons away from me, on a table, and said, “Well, it doesn’t matter now, anyway. He is dead, and his mystery, whatever it was, will be buried with him.”

  Jesperson stared at me with a stunned expression. “You cannot mean that, Miss Lane.”

  “Certainly I do. You are disappointed, and I too, but as the police have decided there is no case—”

  “We are not working for the police. Come, come, Miss Lane.” He leaned forward, engaging me with his intense blue eyes. “The police surgeon’s verdict is unsatisfactory and incomplete. I cannot believe you do not feel, as I do, an obligation to our client.”

  “Our late client,” I reminded him, and yet even as my heart was sinking at the prospect of another case that no one would thank us or pay us for solving, I felt some of his excitement about solving a mystery beginning to take hold of me.

  “Our late client had a brother, his nearest living relation,” said Mr. Jesperson. “Mr. Alexander Manning lives in Gordon Square—only a short distance from here. Given the circumstances, it is not merely acceptable, but positively required of us to call upon him—and sooner rather than later.”

  “He has been informed of his brother’s death?”

  “Yes. He had to identify the body. I only missed meeting him at the morgue by an hour or so.”

  “When shall we go?” Thinking of his “sooner rather than later” remark, I added, “I can be ready in ten minutes.”

  His nostrils flared. “Mother is roasting a chicken. I think we may leave our visit until after dinner.”

  Twenty-Four Gordon Square was one of the tall, elegant houses that lined the quiet green square, and seemed to me excessively large for the home of one unmarried man, even if he had until recently shared it with his brother. The curtains were drawn against the early dark, but they were not so thick as to hide the fact that lights were on in the downstairs front room.

  Mr. Jesperson rang the bell. After waiting awhile, he rang it again. Another wait, and I began to think that, despite the lights behind drawn curtains, perhaps no one was home, but then at last the door was opened by a man I knew must be Alexander Manning.

  In my sole encounter with Charles Manning, his features had been distorted by strong emotion, but apart from that I saw how much the calm, grave man in the doorway resembled his brother. Brown-haired, brown-eyed, with a neatly trimmed mustache beneath a short, straight nose above a full mouth, he appeared pleasant and quietly handsome.

  “I do hope we are not intruding at this difficult time,” said Mr. Jesperson. “My name is Jasper Jesperson and this is my partner, Miss Lane. We should like to offer you our condolences and deepest sympathy on your loss.”

  Mr. Manning’s eyes widened slightly. “You have heard already? How? I was just writing the notice to send to the papers.”

  “We were with your brother when he died.”

  This brief statement struck Mr. Manning like a blow; he reeled back. “With him? Where?” Then he held up his hand to forestall any reply. “No, wait, please, won’t you come in? I am glad he was not alone when he died; I want to hear all about it. Please, come in and let us speak in comfort.”

  The drawing room into which he showed us was well proportioned but stuffed with huge, dark furniture, every couch and chair layered with cushions and rugs, every surface crowded with useless ornaments, vases filled with artificial flowers, bowls with stone fruits, and every other kind of tasteless, old-fashioned clutter. It seemed entirely out of keeping as the home of this dapper bachelor.

  He offered refreshments, which we declined, and we settled onto a pair of facing sofas to explain our business. Mr. Manning spoke first, leaning forward tensely.

  “The police told me my brother had collapsed in Gower Street in the early hours of this morning, dead of a heart attack. I had imagined him alone, and on his way to me here. But you say you were with him?”

  “It was around half past one in the morning; we were about to retire when there came a frantic pounding at the door. I opened it, and a stranger—whom I later learned to be your brother—all but fell into the house. He was clearly in distress, breathing heavily, covered in perspiration, his eyes dilated. He begged for our help, he inquired if he was safe—I assured him he was quite safe—but before we had a chance to learn what he feared, and how we could help him, he died.” Concluding his succinct description, Mr. Jesperson leaned back, as if at his ease, but beside him I could feel his nervous tension, and he never took his eyes from our host, who appeared at a loss.

  “You say he was a stranger to you. Yet he came to your house, at such an unsociable hour. Have you any idea why?”

  Extracting one of our business cards from his pocket, Mr. Jesperson handed it across. “He carried one of these. I can only assume, if he did not come across it entirely by chance, that someone recommended our services to him.”

  Mr. Manning stared at the card in a way that told me he had not encountered its like before, so presumably he had not yet inspected his brother’s personal possessions. “Private investigations? What sort of investigations?” He looked up from the card and frowned at us in puzzlement that slowly changed to a look of dawning horror. “You do not mean to say he came to hire you? To protect him? To uncover and foil some sort of fiendish plot?”

  “It is possible,” Mr. Jesperson agreed carefully. “Alas, he did not live long enough to explain. All I can tell you is that he arrived in a state of palpable fear—he begged for our help—and made a few exclamations expressing his fear of witches.”

  “Witches,” repeated Mr. Manning. His mouth twisted bitterly. “I might have known.”

  His reaction was so unexpected that I had to ask: “What do you mean? Did you know he had a fear of witches?”

  “It was not a fear, Miss Lane. That would have been bad enough, a grown man who never outgrew nursery frights. No, it was worse. He had a sort of obsession with what he called ‘the old religion.’ Witchcraft, pagan mumbo-jumbo, the supposed ancient mysteries of Britain. He was a poet, my brother; a dreamer whose soul yearned for mystery and adventure he could never find in the workaday world, and he was always drawn to mysticism and had a childish love of fairy tales. As long as it was a hobby, it was well enough—I twitted him about it, but if he turned up to his job at the bank he could write poetry in his own time.”

  “Then he threw up his job,” murmured Mr. Jesperson.

  “You have guessed it. He went to Norfolk one weekend—to walk on the beach and inhale poetic inspiration from the sea air—and when he came back, he was a changed man. He had made up his mind all of a sudden to quit the bank and devote himself to study and writing. And worse—he wanted me to sell the house and hand over half the proceeds to him.”

  Mr. Manning bowed his head. “This house was our only inheritance.” He looked up again. “In actual fact, it was left to me, as the elder son, but of course I always told Charles it belonged to him as well. By that I meant it would always be his home. He had no right to ask me to sell, and legally he could not compel me to do so. I told him he could continue to live here rent-free, as always, but I would not be answerable for his bills if he chose to leave his position. But to my great astonishment, he was giving up London along with the bank. Madness! If he truly wished to make a name for himself as a poet, or a scholar, London was where he ought to be—not the wilds of Norfolk.”

  “When did he move to Norfolk?”

  “June—near the end of June. I am sorry to say we parted on very chilly terms. I saw him only once after that, and when the police told me where he had died, naturally I thought he must have been on his way here, and I hoped it might have been for purposes of reconciliation, although from what you say—” He sighed. “—it seems unlikely.”

  I sensed the aching sadness in him, the remorse for words that could never be unsaid or atoned for, and with some vague urge to comfort I said, “If he had lived long enough to be married, his wife might have effected a reconciliation.”

  He gave
me an odd look. “You did not know my brother.”

  “True. I only meant that if love took him away from you, marriage might have brought him back—in a manner of speaking.” I almost squirmed under his astonished stare, and wished I had said nothing.

  “Love?”

  Mr. Jesperson jumped in. “Miss Lane and I had rather assumed it was an affair of the heart that drew your brother to Aylmerton. And that the most likely explanation for the silver cigarette case engraved with the date 15-6-93 and the words to dearest c from your loving a was that it was a present from a lover, possibly an engagement present. However, I see this is news to you.”

  “He cannot possibly have been thinking of marriage.” Mr. Manning rose to his feet and stalked to a table, where he picked up a plain cotton sack that had been resting between a stuffed ferret and a ceramic shepherdess, and plunged his hand into it, pulling out the silver cigarette case Jesperson had described.

  “The police gave me his personal effects, but I confess I scarcely gave them a glance.” He opened the case and read the inscription. “And I am none the wiser for it now. I have no idea who this person A might be . . . or the significance of the date. Perhaps we should leave my brother his secrets.” With a hand that shook slightly, he dropped the silver case back into the bag and replaced it on the table.

  As he turned to face us again, I had the feeling that he was steeling himself to send us away; that he was on the brink of choosing to remain in ignorance about whatever story lay behind his brother’s untimely death. But Mr. Jesperson spoke first.

  “If it was not meeting and falling head over heels with A, what did cause the sudden change in your brother? Do you know?”

  “I do know.” He spoke decisively. “One man is entirely to blame. His name is Felix Ott.”

  I recognized the name as one I had copied, with an address in Cromer.

  “Felix Ott,” repeated Mr. Jesperson thoughtfully. “Did he not give a talk—yes, I remember now; he was invited to speak by the Theosophical Society on the subject of ancient wisdom, but his particular stance was found objectionable by most Theosophists, for Mr. Ott called upon the British people to look to our own historical traditions, rather than accepting the teachings of foreign masters in Asia.”

  “Oh, he is worse than that,” said Mr. Manning. “As I understood from listening to Charles, the ‘ancient wisdom’ Ott promotes is a mishmash of superstition and sorcery; everything a civilized person should find abhorrent—black magic, devil-worship, human sacrifice.” He shuddered. “How my brother could have been attracted to such vile rubbish, I do not understand; but he fell under Ott’s spell upon their first meeting, and after that, he was a convert so absolute that, had I agreed to sell the house, his half of the money received would have gone to fill Ott’s coffers, to support his so-called School of British Wisdom.”

  “How peculiar,” Mr. Jesperson mused, putting his head back to stare at the ceiling. “Although it explains his preoccupation with witches, one must ask why, if he was such a staunch supporter of the School, he should have been so afraid of them at the end. For according to the tenets of Ott’s School, witches were wisewomen unfairly demonized by the Church as part of the Christian practice of stamping out all the old native religions and pagan rituals. Of course, witches were thought to possess powers they could use against their foes.” He sat up straight and fixed his bright-blue gaze upon the other man. “Did your brother fall out with Ott?”

  “If so, he did not confide in me. I have told you we were estranged.” He gave a heavy sigh. “It must be a source of eternal regret to me. So far as I know, Charles was still caught fast in Ott’s occult toils. But he was an intelligent man. All that ‘ancient religion’ was no more than his latest hobbyhorse—he would have outgrown it, and learned to see through his teacher if only he had lived long enough.” The bleakness of loss came over him again.

  “Were you aware that his heart was weak?”

  Mr. Manning shook his head, bewildered. “No, not at all. He was always active as a boy—and into manhood. We both are—were—fine, healthy specimens, rarely suffering even any minor illness.”

  “So you were surprised when the police surgeon said he had died of heart failure brought on by shock and overexertion?”

  “He might have been speaking of another man,” he burst out. “Indeed, until I saw my brother lying there on the slab I was all but certain there had been some mistake, a confusion of identity . . . I can still hardly believe he is dead.”

  Mr. Jesperson said nothing when the other man lapsed into silence. Painfully aware of Mr. Manning’s grief, I shifted uncomfortably and tried to catch my partner’s eye, wishing to signal to him that we should leave. But he gave me no opportunity, his attention fixed on the grieving man with such intensity, I wondered if he was trying to transmit a thought to him.

  At last, as the silence was becoming almost unbearable, Mr. Manning spoke. “Charles went to you because something had frightened him. And whatever that was, whether or not it caused his death, it must have been behind it. I would like to know why he died. And I think, by hiring you to investigate, I will be carrying out his last wishes.

  “Will you do it? Can you? Find out what he wanted you for—and the circumstances that led up to his death? I will pay your usual fee, and all reasonable expenses—naturally you will want to go to Norfolk. You may send your bills to me. And any questions you have. I will assist you in every way that I can.”

  He shook hands on it with Mr. Jesperson; then I stood up, and he shook hands with me, clasping my hand warmly as he murmured, “Please find out what happened to my brother.”

  Chapter 3

  The Shrieking Pits of Aylmerton

  Before we left Mr. Manning, Mr. Jesperson gave him instructions: He was to ask his brother’s former associates if he had been in touch with them, and likewise ask at his old haunts in the city to discover if he had been seen there on the last day of his life.

  “For we know he traveled down from Norwich on the one fifteen, arriving at Liverpool Street Station at approximately four forty-five; more than eight hours elapsed before he knocked on our door, which makes it most unlikely that his purpose of traveling to London was to bring a problem to Jesperson and Lane. No, he came to London for some other reason, but during the evening something happened that worried him and inspired him to seek out the services of a detective agency. Where did he get our card? Who recommended us to him? If his problem was connected with some concerns relating to Felix Ott, it is unlikely he would have turned to any of his associates for help, and since he did not come to you, he may have looked up some old friend. You probably have ideas as to whom.

  “We also know, from the contents of his stomach, that your brother dined on steak and oysters; also potatoes and cake. He consumed a great deal of alcohol, in the form of beer, wine, brandy, and champagne—probably not all at the same time, so he may have visited several different licensed premises. Well, you will have your work cut out for you, tracing your late brother’s movements.” Jesperson clapped Mr. Manning on the shoulder in a display of manly support.

  “Write to me at Cromer, poste restante. We will keep in touch, and if you learn anything important, or wish to speak to one of us urgently, send a wire. Good evening, and good hunting to you, Mr. Manning.”

  Our own immediate task, once we had returned to Gower Street, was to learn what we could in regard to the last known address of Charles Manning.

  Aylmerton was not on a railway line, but it was only three miles south of Cromer, which was. After consulting a map and the latest issue of Bradshaw’s, Mr. Jesperson worked out our itinerary, and we set off bright and early the following morning with our bags and a picnic lunch prepared by Edith Jesperson.

  We arrived at Liverpool Street Station with plenty of time to spare, and I was able to purchase a copy of a pocket-sized volume titled Tourists’ Guide to Norfolk. Once aboard the train, with a carriage to ourselves, we took it in turns to read aloud from it. The autho
r, Mr. Walter Rye, took a particular interest in the “superstitions and peculiarities” of the inhabitants of Norfolk, which was very much to Mr. Jesperson’s taste.

  Of Aylmerton the author had nothing to say except that a visitor might find it “interesting from the open pits or earth dwellings, something like those at Weybourne, which are locally called ‘shrieking pits,’ from the local belief that the wraith of a woman is always wandering about looking into them at night-time, wringing her hands and shrieking. There are the ruins of a beacon on the high ground. The church is small and poor.”

  Intrigued by the curious-sounding pits, I turned to the entry on Weybourne and read the following:

  “Behind the village, on the heath, are the curious hollows somewhat resembling the Aylmerton shrieking pits, supposed by some to be the remains of British hut dwellings.”

  The journey passed pleasantly through miles of interesting scenery, and with plenty of time for conversation as well as reading. Edith had prepared a substantial repast, which I thought would have served a multitude, but her son, whose slender frame gave no hint of the size of his appetite, polished off every scrap. “No sense letting it go to waste,” he said, more than once. “If you are quite certain you have had enough?”

  We had only a short wait in Thorpe Station at Norwich before catching the train to Cromer. That journey took barely an hour, and thus it was still daylight when our cab deposited us in front of the Vicarage in Aylmerton.

  I say “cab,” but the vehicle we hired outside Cromer Station was really more a cart. It was a big open carriage, the sort of thing hired by groups of holiday-makers wishing to see the local sights on a summer’s day, and although it was comfortable enough, it was hardly suitable to the weather, which had turned very cold. I could be pleased that it was neither raining nor snowing, but the buffeting wind had an icy edge to it that made me shiver and pull my woolen scarf up over my face.