‘My sudden decision to leave the cellar to this occupant can, perhaps, be understood if not condoned. Upstairs in the parlour the storm seemed to be abating, and I could hear the snores of the landlord overhead.
‘I was woken by the arrival of the inn helpers (the landlord was a bachelor), and by his voice shouting to someone, or at someone, outside. A watery sun shone through the latticed bedroom window on to my face. I dressed and went downstairs.
‘After breakfast I took the landlord to one side and recounted my adventures of the night. He shook his head over my tale of the dog and grew frankly incredulous at my account of his role, saying I had dreamed it all. Suddenly though, he looked thoughtful. “Why, that would explain my damp sheets,” he exclaimed, “and my rheumatics, and I’ve been blaming the girl for not airing them properly.”
‘Together we descended to the cellar and splashed across to the opposite corner. He held both lamps while I examined the wall and struggled with the panelling. The rotting remains came away quite easily. Set into the wall, a couple of feet off the ground and above the water-line, was a small door, reminding me rather of the White Rabbit’s door in Alice in Wonderland. It was clearly of some age, and unknown to mine host, who was muttering surprised comments to himself. We had no suitable tools, other than my archaeologist’s mattock and a garden spade, but our rather barbarous assault was at last successful. The door flew open with a bang, revealing a deep hole or tunnel, about three feet high, and dislodging a heap of debris that was evidently propped against it. The debris fell into the water and I’m sure you will not be surprised to learn that it contained the rotted clothes and decayed bones of a man. I think we both realized at once that we were looking at the remains of Toby the Jack!
‘“A bolt-hole,” I said, orientating my sense of direction, “leading over to the church and Sanctuary. It looks as if your great-grandfather was a bit of a villain, eh? Did he shut him up to die, or did he get trapped somehow?”
‘We got an empty keg and recovered what we could of the fragments. I carefully raked out the tunnel entrance, gaining some rusty buckles, bits of mildewed leather, a knife and a flintlock pistol, while the local vicar was fetched.
‘We must have presented an incongruous scene; the vicar sitting on the cellar steps listening to our story, myself standing in the water like a Baptist about to officiate, and the landlord before me like an acolyte. He was a good enough chap though, the parson, and undertook to inter the remains and give proper burial.
‘Outside in the sunshine, we stood in the road and followed the line of the presumed tunnel.
‘“The Saltire vault, of course,” said the village parson excitedly. “That must have been the exit point, below the font. It’s all bricked up now though—the family line is extinct—so we cannot get down there to see.”
‘A number of depressions in the churchyard told their own story. Clearly the ground had subsided at points. Whether such an occurrence had blocked Toby’s escape to the church, and the old Hostelier had simply taken the opportunity to entomb him alive and keep the spoils, or whether he had—with malice aforethought—engineered a blockage, we were never likely to know. Our adventure seemed at an anticlimactic end, until I remembered the phantasm’s attention to the cellar steps.’ (Father O’Connor broke off tantalizingly here, to refill his old pipe. The inefficient combustion and suckings and sputterings seemed to take even longer than usual.)
‘Have you ever tried digging in a pool of water?’ he asked. ‘It is the most maddening process imaginable. We had no convenient means of pumping, and the more we dug beside the steps, the more water and the muddier we got! However our perseverance was rewarded at last—we stuck a spade into a much-rusted metal box, that literally fell to pieces as we deposited it in a pool of water on the stairs, spilling tarnished, greeny-black coins everywhere. There were some scraps of cloth, a now useless gold watch and some gold chains. Clearly we had found Old Toby’s hoard, but whether he—or another—put it there, we were none the wiser. Come to that, we didn’t even know that it was Old Toby . . . there were no dental records for checking teeth, or what have you, in those days.’
‘What became of the hoard, Father?’ I asked.
‘Part was restored to the landlord in due course. I believe he gave it to the church,’ replied the good Father.
‘And your landlord’s somnambulistics?’
‘Ah, well, so much of this can only be speculation,’ said the priest, ‘but let us suppose that on stormy nights maybe, some inherited conscience stirred him to try and find the concealed bolt-hole—I put that first as a charitable supposition—or, maybe, some inherited avarice directed a subconscious search for the buried hoard. Quite frankly the theological implications of an inherited conscience—or avarice, for that matter—are staggering and I decline to follow them.’
‘The sins of the fathers, indeed,’ I commented.
‘Quite so.’ He shuddered briefly. ‘A horrible death, shut up in that cramped, dark tunnel; even a murderer—for so he may have been—cannot deserve that terrible, lonely, slow dying. Although motivated purely by selfish thoughts of safety, he was heading for the church and Sanctuary. I hope he has—in a more true sense—found the peace he was seeking’.
‘Amen to that,’ I said. ‘But look here, Father, this is all very well. A horrifying tale and I agree the morality of your reflections; but what of the dog—of Black Shuck?’
‘Young sir, what of him?’
‘Well, agreed you saw something that might have been the phantom dog in the storm; but what did it signify? Except to run down the lane and to howl at the storm, the dog did nothing in the night! It has no relevance.’
Fr O’Connor stretched, banged out his pipe and smiled slightly as he caught my eye.
‘Has it not? My dear fellow Sherlockian,’ he said, ‘the dog did nothing in the night time . . . what?’
Speaking in unison we capped that most famous Holmesian quotation:
‘That was the curious incident.’
[Author’s note: The curious will find many reported instances of Black Shuck ‘knocking down’ walls that are always subsequently found to be standing. A number of sightings of this famous ghost, plus Mrs Carbonnel’s theories, are given in J. W. Day’s A Ghost Hunter’s Game Book, Muller 1958.]
CELUI-LÀ
Eleanor Scott
Eleanor Scott had a brief career as an author between the wars, writing four novels (including War Among Ladies, and Beggars Would Ride) and two bestsellers on Adventurous Women and Heroic Women. She is now chiefly remembered for one collection of uncanny Jamesian tales, Randalls Round (1929), from which the following story is taken. Miss Scott claimed that all the stories in her book had their origin in dreams. ‘I have seen more than Foster or M. Vétier saw on the beach at Kerouac’, she wrote. ‘It may be that simply because these things were so terrifying I have failed to convey the horror I felt. I do not know. But I hope that some readers at least will experience an agreeable shudder or two in the reading of them.’