Devil May Care (A Jonathan Harker Mystery) (12 page)

Such
was the disturbing setting and it was accompanied by three suitably bizarre acolytes. They were dressed in identical black robes, complete with a monastic hood drawn forward and in front of the face, rendering their features indistinguishable. One stood at the head of the altar and the two others at each side, facing each other. They were intoning a soft, unintelligible chant and their hands were outstretched, held above the empty altar as if blessing an invisible presence upon it. Upon the little finger of one of the hands there gleamed a reflection of sparkling red – undoubtedly the ruby ring worn by Sir Owen Velland. He was standing at one side and thanks to Van Helsing I could guess the identity of the figure at the head of the altar. I realised that the chanting was familiar to me: it was the same unintelligible sound that I had heard in my dream.

Quickly
I withdrew my head and in a hushed whisper told Charles and Dr Goodwin what I had observed. They were at first insistent that we interrupt whatever was being done in the nave and demand that the baronet tell us the whereabouts of Mina, but I managed to persuade them otherwise.

‘Who
can say if they will cooperate?’ I said. ‘Or tell the truth? Let me make another suggestion. We should let the ceremony – if that is what it is – continue. Whatever takes place might lead us to Mina. It is even possible that Mina herself will be brought to the church by a fellow conspirator in this plot. Of course if she appears, we will act immediately.’

My
friends agreed, and by common consent I resumed my careful observation of the interior of the church. Mina was after all my wife, so it was only fair that the decision when to intervene should be mine.

I
looked once again into the nave. The chanting ceased, and the figure at the head of the altar stepped back and began to speak. His voice was low but penetrative and echoed unpleasantly around the empty stone building.

‘I
conjure thee, O Prince of Darkness! O Thou most powerful lord, my Master, in thee I place my hope. In all humility and with the invocation of thy dreadful name, I call upon thee! In the name of Moloch, Astaroth, Belial, Dagon, and Asmodius, I offer this soul, in return for the gift of life everlasting!’

As
the speaker finished his invocation, he lent forward and grasped a corner of the black altar cloth in his hand. With one fluid movement he pulled it from the table which lay beneath.

At
that moment I realised my mistake. I had naturally assumed that the cloth had covered a solid surface. In fact it had been stretched tightly over a shallow open box, formed by sides raised about a foot above the surface of the table beneath and lined with black velvet. Inside lay the still figure of a young woman wearing a white gown. Her face was turned away from me, but her slim figure, bare arms and shoulders, pale blond hair and slender neck immediately told me that this was Mina.

As
I stood paralysed with shock, the three robed figures pulled back the cowls which concealed their faces. At the head of the altar stood the Reverend Trewellard. Facing each other on each side were Sir Owen and Arnold Paxton. At a signal from Sir Owen, Paxton stepped forward and placed his hands around his victim’s neck.

‘Great
Satan, we deliver our sacrifice to thee!’ Trewellard intoned dramatically.

I
recovered my senses and flung open the door of the sacristy.

‘Mina!’
I shouted, and ran towards the centre of the nave. Charles and Dr Goodwin had not seen what I had, but they had heard Trewellard’s words and were close behind me.

It
took but a few seconds for me to reach the outer circle of the Seal of Lucifer which had been chalked on the stone floor of the nave. Until that moment I was far from convinced that any real supernatural powers were involved in the grotesque ceremony I had witnessed, given that similar charades are often performed by naive or perverted individuals whose attempts at harnessing the powers of darkness are a mere sham. However, as I reached the outer circle, my rationalism – never very strong since my adventures in Transylvania – received a severe setback.

The chalk line proved impossible to cross. It was not so much a physical barrier – there was no opposing force which positively resisted my attempts to move past it – but rather as if my brain found it impossible to command my limbs to cross that innocuous demarcation. Yet I was not paralysed, for it was easy enough to step
away
from the line. Dr Goodwin and Charles were similarly affected, the latter trying several times to rush at the altar only to stop frozen in mid stride.

By
that time we had attracted the attention of the three black-robed figures, and both Sir Owen and his cousin looked at us with some trepidation. Trewellard glared at his colleagues.

‘Ignore
them!’ he cried. ‘They can do nothing. The Seal of Lucifer protects us!’

As
he spoke the light radiated from the four large black candles dimmed dramatically, in the manner of our modern tungsten filament bulb when its electrical power supply is accidentally reduced. Such a phenomenon is of course impossible in an ordinary wax candle, which must either be lit or not, but nevertheless it occurred. More was to follow. As my two friends and I stood impotently on the outer edge of the chalk circle, Paxton’s hands began to tighten around Mina’s neck, his arms and indeed his whole body vibrating unnaturally as if in the throes of a fit. Above his victim a dark shape began to form, intangible and yet strangely malignant.

Trewellard
lifted his right hand and pointed towards the thickening mass above him, whilst his left hand pointed down towards the altar.

‘Ecce Diabolus!’ he called out. ‘Satan, we deliver her soul unto thee!’

Quite
what would have occurred next must remain a matter of speculation, for at that moment the evil ceremony was dramatically interrupted. The door of the vestry banged open behind us, and Charles, Dr Goodwin and I were joined by another. I was amazed to see that it was my wife Mina, somewhat dishevelled, and carrying a sporting gun. She raised it to her shoulder and pointed it directly at the quivering figure of Paxton, whose hands were still grasped around the young woman’s throat.

‘Release
her, or I fire!’ she cried.

In
response the vicar clenched both fists and thrust them towards Mina. She staggered backwards, evidently as the result of some unnatural force unleashed by him, then fired.

Off
balance, Mina’s aim was misdirected. The full force of the shot struck Trewellard in the chest. He fell backwards as if kicked in the ribs. As a number of unlucky sportsmen have found to their cost, birdshot at close range is as deadly as any musket ball. Paxton – her intended target – was uninjured by the discharge but cried out as if in pain and dropped to the floor. The amorphous mass that had been looming over the altar drew even darker, then it swirled round Paxton like an inky cloud, temporarily obscuring his upper body and face. A moment later the vaporous shape dissipated, leaving him pale and unconscious, and the black candles recovered their full brightness.

Mina
ran towards me and I flung my arms around her. Meanwhile, finding that the Seal of Lucifer no longer had the power to prevent them, Charles and Dr Goodwin had reached the still figure stretched out in the shallow box on top of the altar.

‘My
G-d!’ Charles cried. ‘It’s Lucy Wollas!’

I
realised that the close resemblance of the Ashbys’ young servant to my wife had been responsible for my error. Dr Goodwin held Lucy’s wrist.

‘She’s
still alive, thank heavens,’ he said.

As
he spoke I heard the sound of dashing footsteps and turned to see Sir Owen racing towards a small inner door at the north end of the nave, through which I guessed he was intending to escape. Incongruously he led up the folds of his robe with one hand, like a woman running in a long skirt. I rushed after him, and as he passed through the door he turned and stared back into the church with a look of horror on his face. His gaze seemed to be directed at something very close behind him.

To
my surprise the low doorway led not to the churchyard but to a narrow spiral staircase which wound its way to the top of the tower. Every few yards an unglazed window slit let in a gleam of moonlight, allowing me to find my footing on the uneven steps. As I followed the sound of Sir Owen’s footsteps ahead of me, I wondered why he had chosen to enter the tower where he was sure to be trapped. Perhaps he too had thought that the door at the base led to the outside.

A
few moments later I emerged onto the summit. Sir Owen was standing opposite me and as soon as he saw me he reached inside his black robe and pulled out a large revolver.

I
ducked back inside the doorway as he fired, hearing the bullet strike the stonework above my head. I was about to hurry back down the staircase – reasoning that it would be better to leave Sir Owen cornered where he was than to confront an armed man – when I heard a sudden cry from the battlements and risked another glance out onto the roof of the tower.

The
baronet had his back against the stonework, his face contorted with fear, and fired twice more. His shots were not aimed at me, but at some invisible target in front of him. He lent back further, as if flinching from an imaginary danger. Then his feet appeared to slip from under him and he fell backwards between the massive stone battlements. As he disappeared into the darkness a shadowy human form appeared momentarily where he had been standing and turned towards me. Although it faded from my sight in an instant, I had no difficulty in recognising the apparition. The tall figure, glossy hair and pale face were those of the late Lady Velland. However, the expression of sadness which I had hitherto observed in her features had been replaced by an unmistakable air of grim satisfaction.

Chapter Ten

Thanks largely to Charles Ashby’s uncle, Lord –––, the shocking events of that night were kept out of the public realm. Charles had telegraphed to his noble relative the next morning and the considerable influence of that gentleman had been brought to bear on the Chief Constable of Cornwall. Thus the local inhabitants were officially informed by Sergeant Penworthy that the Reverend Trewellard had been killed in a tragic shooting accident, and that the distress had been too much for his close friend the baronet, who had taken his own life. It seemed that Lucy Wollas had suffered no permanent harm from her experience, and fortunately remembered little of it: her parents were easily persuaded that it would be in their daughter’s interest to let the matter rest. Sir Owen’s butler, Jennings, had obliged us all by disappearing and it hardly seemed worthwhile to pursue him, as his part in the business could never now be proved.

As
for Arnold Paxton, by lunchtime on the following day he also was dead. His experiences in the old church had brought on a sudden and most serious heart failure. Indeed it appeared that the interruption of the ritual intended to reinvigorate him had produced the opposite effect, triggering a reversion to his natural state of ill health that Trewellard had contrived to avert through diabolic means. In the hours before his death Paxton had expressed an anxiety to speak to me alone and I had visited him in the small cottage hospital in St Ives where he had been taken by Dr Goodwin.

Paxton’s
story was a strange one and seemed to belong more to the realm of sensational fiction than to the realities of modern England. However, there was little motive for the dying man to lie and my own experiences of the uncanny and the inexplicable made me more open to his account than would otherwise have been the case.

Arnold
Paxton confirmed that the late baronet – plain Mr Owen Velland at that time – had lived with him in London from 1884 until he had inherited the title in 1890. Paxton described Velland as clever but lazy and misguided, a largely ineffectual dabbler in black magic who was arrogant enough to think that his researches into alchemy might be able to improve his cousin’s chronic ill health. His motives were not altruistic: he was both impecunious and extravagant, relying on Paxton’s income and wishing to gain more influence over him. Velland’s efforts were quite hopeless, and when his cousin moved to Carrick Manor in 1890 Paxton was clearly a dying man.

According
to Paxton, shortly after he and the baronet took up residence in Cornwall they fell under the malign influence of the Reverend Trewellard. It appeared that Trewellard was himself financially embarrassed – Paxton believed that the vicar had parted with a large sum to avoid a criminal prosecution during his last appointment in India – and he had promised to help Paxton recover his health in return for a large sum of money. Unlike Sir Owen, Trewellard’s occult powers were genuine. Two months after the baronet returned to Cornwall, Trewellard and Sir Owen abducted a young girl from Penzance and she was the first to be sacrificed in order to restore Paxton’s health, using the same demonic ritual that I had observed in the church. The girl died and her body was secretly buried. Although the crime was never detected, Sir Owen swore that he would never again run such a risk. Instead of kidnapping a stranger, Trewellard next used his powers to enable Sir Owen to entice Ruth Lethbridge to marry him. The ritual which was conducted six months later proved fatal for Lady Velland, turning her into an emaciated corpse, and her body had then been thrown over the cliffs to obscure the real reason for her death. In order to sustain Paxton’s artificial recovery a further sacrificial victim was needed and Lucy Wollas had been beguiled for that purpose. Had the ceremony that we had interrupted been successful, the intention was to stage another accident to explain poor Lucy’s death.