Hangman's Holiday Read online

  Langley stepped backwards towards the door. He was positive that something was in the room with him that he did not care about meeting. An absurd impulse seized him to run away. He was prevented by the arrival of Martha, carrying a big, old-fashioned lamp, and behind her, Wetherall, who greeted him cheerfully.

  The familiar American accents dispelled the atmosphere of discomfort that had been gathering about Langley. He held out a cordial hand,

  ‘Fancy meeting you here,’ said he.

  ‘The world is very small,’ replied Wetherall.' ‘I am afraid that is a hardy bromide, but I certainly am pleased to see you,’ he added, with some emphasis.

  The old woman had put the lamp on the table, and now asked if she could bring in the dinner. Wetherall replied in the affirmative, using a mixture of Spanish and Basque which she seemed to understand well enough.

  ‘I didn’t know you were a Basque scholar,’ said Langley.

  ‘Oh, one picks it up. These people speak nothing else. But of course Basque is your speciality, isn’t it?’

  ‘Oh, yes.’

  ‘I daresay they have told you some queer things about us. But we’ll go into that later. I’ve managed to make the place reasonably comfortable, though I could do with a few more modern conveniences. However, it suits us.’

  Langley took the opportunity to mumble some sort of inquiry about Mrs Wetherall.

  ‘Alice? Ah, yes, I forgot – you have not seen her yet.’ Wetherall looked hard at him with a kind of half-smile. ‘I should have warned you. You were – rather an admirer of my wife in the old days.’

  ‘Like everyone else,’ said Langley.

  ‘No doubt. Nothing specially surprising about it, was there? Here comes dinner. Put it down, Martha, and we will ring when we are ready.’

  The old woman set down a dish upon the table, which was handsomely furnished with glass and silver, and went out. Wetherall moved over to the fireplace, stepping sideways and keeping his eyes oddly fixed on Langley. Then he addressed the armchair.

  ‘Alice! Get up, my dear, and welcome an old admirer of yours. Come along. You will both enjoy it. Get up.’

  Something shuffled and whimpered among the cushions. Wetherall stooped, with an air of almost exaggerated courtesy, and lifted it to its feet. A moment, and it faced Langley in the lamplight.

  It was dressed in a rich gown of gold satin and lace, that hung rucked and crumpled upon the thick and slouching body. The face was white and puffy, the eyes vacant, the mouth drooled open, with little trickles of saliva running from the loose corners. A dry fringe of rusty hair clung to the half-bald scalp, like the dead wisps on the head of a mummy.

  ‘Come, my love,’ said Wetherall. ‘Say how do you do to Mr Langley.’

  The creature blinked and mouthed out some inhuman sounds. Wetherall put his hand under its forearm, and it slowly extended a lifeless paw.

  ‘There, she recognises you all right. I thought she would. Shake hands with him, my dear.’

  With a sensation of nausea, Langley took the inert hand. It was clammy and coarse to the touch and made no attempt to return his pressure. He let it go; it pawed vaguely in the air for a moment and then dropped.

  ‘I was afraid you might be upset,’ said Wetherall, watching him. ‘I have grown used to it, of course, and it doesn’t affect me as it would an outsider. Not that you are an outsider – anything but that – eh? Premature senility is the lay name for it, I suppose. Shocking, of course, if you haven’t met it before. You needn’t mind, by the way, what you say. She understands nothing.’

  ‘How did it happen?’

  ‘I don’t quite know. Came on gradually. I took the best advice, naturally, but there was nothing to be done. So we came here. I didn’t care about facing things at home where everybody knew us. And I didn’t like the idea of a sanatorium. Alice is my wife, you know – sickness or health, for better, for worse, and all that. Come along; dinner’s getting cold.’

  He advanced to the table, leading his wife, whose dim eyes seemed to brighten a little at the sight of food.

  ‘Sit down, my dear, and eat your nice dinner. (She understands that, you see.) You’ll excuse her table-manners, won’t you? They’re not pretty, but you’ll get used to them.’

  He tied a napkin round the neck of the creature and placed food before her in a deep bowl. She snatched at it hungrily, slavering and gobbling as she scooped it up in her fingers and smeared face and hands with the gravy.

  Wetherall drew out a chair for his guest opposite to where his wife sat. The sight of her held Langley with a kind of disgusted fascination.

  The food – a sort of salmis – was deliciously cooked, but Langley had no appetite. The whole thing was an outrage, to the pitiful woman and to himself. Her seat was directly beneath the Sargent portrait, and his eyes went helplessly from the one to the other.

  ‘Yes,’ said Wetherall, following his glance. ‘There is a difference, isn’t there?’ He himself was eating heartily and apparently enjoying his dinner. ‘Nature plays sad tricks upon us.’

  ‘Is it always like this?’

  ‘No; this is one of her bad days. At times she will be – almost human. Of course these people here don’t know what to think of it all. They have their own explanation of a very simple medical phenomenon.’

  ‘Is there any hope of recovery?’

  ‘I’m afraid not – not of a permanent cure. You are not eating anything.’

  ‘I – well, Wetherall, this has been a shock to me.’

  ‘Of course. Try a glass of burgundy. I ought not to have asked you to come, but the idea of talking to an educated fellow-creature once again tempted me, I must confess.’

  ‘It must be terrible for you.’

  ‘I have become resigned. Ah, naughty, naughty!’ The idiot had flung half the contents of her bowl upon the table. Wetherall patiently remedied the disaster, and went on:

  ‘I can bear it better here, in this wild place where everything seems possible and nothing unnatural. My people are all dead, so there was nothing to prevent me from doing as I liked about it.’

  ‘No. What about your property in the States?’

  ‘Oh, I run over from time to time to keep an eye on things. In fact, I am due to sail next month. I’m glad you caught me. Nobody over here knows how we’re fixed, of course. They just know we’re living in Europe.’

  ‘Did you consult no American doctor?’

  ‘No. We were in Paris when the first symptoms declared themselves. That was shortly after that visit you paid to us.’ A flash of some emotion to which Langley could not put a name made the doctor’s eyes for a moment sinister. ‘The best men on this side confirmed my own diagnosis. So we came here.’

  He rang for Martha, who removed the salmis and put on a kind of sweet pudding.

  ‘Martha is my right hand,’ observed Wetherall. ‘I don’t know what we shall do without her. When I am away, she looks after Alice like a mother. Not that there’s much one can do for her, except to keep her fed and warm and clean – and the last is something of a task.’

  There was a note in his voice which jarred on Langley. Wetherall noticed his recoil and said:

  ‘I won’t disguise from you that it gets on my nerves sometimes. But it can’t be helped. Tell me about yourself. What have you been doing lately?’

  Langley replied with as much vivacity as he could assume, and they talked of indifferent subjects till the deplorable being which had once been Alice Wetherall began to mumble and whine fretfully and scramble down from her chair.

  ‘She’s cold,’ said Wetherall. ‘Go back to the fire, my dear.’

  He propelled her briskly towards the hearth, and she sank back into the armchair, crouching and complaining and thrusting out her hands towards the blaze. Wetherall brought out brandy and a box of cigars.

  ‘I contrive just to keep in touch with the world, you see,’ he said. ‘They send me these from London. And I get the latest medical journals and reports. I’m writing a book, you know
, on my own subject; so I don’t vegetate. I can experiment, too – plenty of room for a laboratory, and no Vivisection Acts to bother one. It’s a good country to work in. Are you staying here long?’

  ‘I think not very.’

  ‘Oh! If you had thought of stopping on, I would have offered you the use of this house while I was away. You would find it more comfortable than the posada, and I should have no qualms, you know, about leaving you alone in the place with my wife – under the peculiar circumstances.’

  He stressed the last words and laughed. Langley hardly knew what to say.

  ‘Really, Wetherall—’

  ‘Though, in the old days, you might have liked the prospect more and I might have liked it less. There was a time, I think, Langley, when you would have jumped at the idea of living alone with – my wife.’

  Langley jumped up.

  ‘What the devil are you insinuating, Wetherall?’

  ‘Nothing, nothing. I was just thinking of the afternoon when you and she wandered away at a picnic and got lost. You remember? Yes, I thought you would.’

  ‘This is monstrous,’ retorted Langley. ‘How dare you say such a thing – with that poor soul sitting there—?’

  ‘Yes, poor soul. You’re a poor thing to look at now, aren’t you, my kitten?’

  He turned suddenly to the woman. Something in his abrupt gesture seemed to frighten her, and she shrank away from him.

  ‘You devil!’ cried Langley. ‘She’s afraid of you. What have you been doing to her? How did she get in this state? I will know!’

  ‘Gently,’ said Wetherall. ‘I can allow for your natural agitation at finding her like this, but I can’t have you coming between me and my wife. What a faithful fellow you are, Langley. I believe you still want her – just as you did before when you thought I was dumb and blind. Come now, have you got designs on my wife, Langley? Would you like to kiss her, caress her, take her to bed with you – my beautiful wife?’

  A scarlet fury blinded Langley. He dashed an inexpert fist at the mocking face. Wetherall gripped his arm, but he broke away. Panic seized him. He fled stumbling against the furniture and rushed out. As he went he heard Wetherall very softly laughing.

  The train to Paris was crowded. Langley, scrambling in at the last moment, found himself condemned to the corridor. He sat down on a suitcase and tried to think. He had not been able to collect his thoughts on his wild flight. Even now, he was not quite sure what he had fled from. He buried his head in his hands.

  ‘Excuse me,’ said a polite voice.

  Langley looked up. A fair man in a grey suit was looking down at him through a monocle.

  ‘Fearfully sorry to disturb you,’ went on the fair man. ‘I’m just tryin’ to barge back to my jolly old kennel. Ghastly crowd, isn’t it? Don’t know when I’ve disliked my fellow-creatures more. I say, you don’t look frightfully fit. Wouldn’t you be better on something more comfortable?’

  Langley explained that he had not been able to get a seat. The fair man eyed his haggard and unshaven countenance for a moment and then said:

  ‘Well, look here, why not come and lay yourself down in my bin for a bit? Have you had any grub? No? That’s a mistake. Toddle along with me and we’ll get hold of a spot of soup and so on. You’ll excuse my mentioning it, but you look as if you’d been backing a system that’s come unstuck, or something. Not my business, of course, but do have something to eat.’

  Langley was too faint and sick to protest. He stumbled obediently along the corridor till he was pushed into a first-class sleeper, where a rigidly correct manservant was laying out a pair of mauve silk pyjamas and a set of silver-mounted brushes.

  ‘This gentleman’s feeling rotten, Bunter,’ said the man with the monocle, ‘so I’ve brought him in to rest his aching head upon thy breast. Get hold of the commissariat and tell ’em to buzz a plate of soup along and a bottle of something drinkable.’

  ‘Very good, my lord.’

  Langley dropped, exhausted, on the bed, but when the food appeared he ate and drank greedily. He could not remember when he had last made a meal.

  ‘I say,’ he said, ‘I wanted that. It’s awfully decent of you. I’m sorry to appear stupid. I’ve had a bit of a shock.’

  ‘Tell me all,’ said the stranger pleasantly.

  The man did not look particularly intelligent, but he seemed friendly, and above all, normal. Langley wondered how the story would sound.

  ‘I’m an absolute stranger to you,’ he began.

  ‘And I to you,’ said the fair man. ‘The chief use of strangers is to tell things to. Don’t you agree?’

  ‘I’d like –’ said Langley. ‘The fact is, I’ve run away from something. It’s queer – it’s – but what’s the use of bothering you with it?’

  The fair man sat down beside him and laid a slim hand on his arm.

  ‘Just a moment,’ he said. ‘Don’t tell me anything if you’d rather not. But my name is Wimsey – Lord Peter Wimsey – and I am interested in queer things.’

  It was in the middle of November when the strange man came to the village. Thin, pale and silent, with his great black hood flapping about his face, he was surrounded with an atmosphere of mystery from the start. He settled down, not at the inn, but in a dilapidated cottage high up in the mountains, and he brought with him five mule-loads of mysterious baggage and a servant. The servant was almost as uncanny as the master; he was a Spaniard and spoke Basque well enough to act as an interpreter for his employer when necessary; but his words were few, his aspect gloomy and stern, and such brief information as he vouchsafed, disquieting in the extreme. His master, he said, was a wise man; he spent all his time reading books; he ate no flesh; he was of no known country; he spoke the language of the Apostles and had talked with blessed Lazarus after his return from the grave; and when he sat alone in his chamber by night, the angels of God came and conversed with him in celestial harmonies.

  This was terrifying news. The few dozen villagers avoided the little cottage, especially at night-time; and when the pale stranger was seen coming down the mountain path, folded in his black robe and bearing one of his magic tomes beneath his arm, the women pushed their children within doors, and made the sign of the cross.

  Nevertheless, it was a child that first made the personal acquaintance of the magician. The small son of the Widow Etcheverry, a child of bold and inquisitive disposition, went one evening adventuring into the unhallowed neighbourhood. He was missing for two hours, during which his mother, in a frenzy of anxiety, had called the neighbours about her and summoned the priest, who had unhappily been called away on business to the town. Suddenly, however, the child reappeared, well and cheerful, with a strange story to tell.

  He had crept up close to the magician’s house (the bold, wicked child, did ever you hear the like?) and climbed into a tree to spy upon the stranger (Jesu-Maria!) and he saw a light in the window, and strange shapes moving about and shadows going to and fro within the room. And then there came a strain of music so ravishing it drew the very heart out of his body, as though all the stars were singing together. (Oh, my precious treasure! The wizard has stolen the heart out of him, alas! alas!) Then the cottage door opened and the wizard came out and with him a great company of familiar spirits. One of them had wings like a seraph and talked in an unknown tongue, and another was like a wee man, no higher than your knee, with a black face and a white beard, and he sat on the wizard’s shoulder and whispered in his ear. And the heavenly music played louder and louder. And the wizard had a pale flame all about his head, like the pictures of the saints. (Blessed St James of Compostella, be merciful to us all! And what then?) Why then he, the boy, had been very much frightened and wished he had not come, but the little dwarf spirit had seen him and jumped into the tree after him, climbing – oh! so fast! And he had tried to climb higher and had slipped and fallen to the ground. (Oh, the poor, wicked, brave, bad boy!)

  Then the wizard had come and picked him up and spoken strange words to him
and all the pain had gone away from the places where he had bumped himself (Marvellous! marvellous!), and he had carried him into the house. And inside, it was like the streets of Heaven, all gold and glittering. And the familiar spirits had sat beside the fire, nine in number, and the music had stopped playing. But the wizard’s servant had brought him marvellous fruits in a silver dish, like fruits of Paradise, very sweet and delicious, and he had eaten them, and drunk a strange, rich drink from a goblet covered with red and blue jewels. Oh, yes – and there had been a tall crucifix on the wall, big, big, with a lamp burning before it and a strange sweet perfume like the smell in church on Easter Day.

  (A crucifix? That was strange. Perhaps the magician was not so wicked after all. And what next?)

  Next, the wizard’s servant had told him not to be afraid, and had asked his name and his age and whether he could repeat his Paternoster. So he had said the prayer and the Ave Maria and part of the Credo, but the Credo was long and he had forgotten what came after ‘ascendit in caelum.’ So the wizard had prompted him and they had finished saying it together. And the wizard had pronounced the sacred names and words without flinching and in the right order, so far as he could tell. And then the servant had asked further about himself and his family, and he had told about the death of the black goat and about his sister’s lover, who had left her because she had not so much money as the merchant’s daughter. Then the wizard and his servant had spoken together and laughed, and the servant had said: ‘My master gives this message to your sister: that where there is no love there is no wealth, but he that is bold shall have gold for the asking.’ And with that, the wizard had put forth his hand into the air and taken from it – out of the empty air, yes, truly – one, two, three, four, five pieces of money and given them to him. And he was afraid to take them till he had made the sign of the cross upon them, and then, as they did not vanish or turn into fiery serpents, he had taken them, and here they were!