Shivers for Christmas (20 page)

We dined. There was an attempt at roast beef—it was more like baked leather. The event of the dinner was to be the bringing in and eating of the plum-pudding.

Surely all would be perfect. We could answer for the materials and the mixing. The English lady could guarantee the boiling. She had seen the plum-pudding ‘on the boil’, and had given strict injunctions as to the length of time during which it was to boil.

But, alas! the pudding was not right when brought on the table. It was not enveloped in lambent blue flame—it was not crackling in the burning brandy. It was sent in dry, and the brandy arrived separate in a white sauce-boat, hot indeed, and sugared, but not on fire.

There ensued outcries of disappointment. Attempts were made to redress the mistake by setting fire to the brandy in a spoon, but the spoon was cold. The flame would not catch, and finally, with a sigh, we had to take our plum-pudding as served.

‘I say, chaplain!’ exclaimed Jameson, ‘practice is better than precept, is it not?’

‘To be sure it is.’

‘You gave us a deuced good sermon. It was short, as it ought to be; but I’ll go better on it, I’ll practise where you preached, and have larks, too!’

Then Jameson started from table with a plate of plum-pudding in one hand and the sauce-boat in the other. ‘By Jove!’ he said, ‘I’ll teach these fellows to open their eyes. I’ll show them that we know how to feed. We can’t turn out scarabs and cartouches in England, that are no good to anyone, but we can produce the finest roast beef in the world, and do a thing or two in puddings.’

And he left the room.

We paid no heed to anything Jameson said or did. We were rather relieved that he was out of the room, and did not concern ourselves about the ‘larks’ he promised himself, and which we were quite certain would be as insipid as were the quails of the Israelites.

In ten minutes he was back, laughing and red in the face.

‘I’ve had splitting fun,’ he said, ‘You should have been there.’

‘Where, Jameson?’

‘Why, outside. There were a lot of old moolahs and other hoky-pokies sitting and contemplating the setting sun and all that sort of thing, and I gave Mustapha the pudding. I told him I wished him to try our great national English dish, on which her Majesty the Queen dines daily. Well, he ate and enjoyed it, by George. Then I said, “Old fellow, it’s uncommonly dry, so you must take the sauce to it.” He asked if it was only sauce—flour and water. “It’s sauce, by Jove,” said I, “a little sugar to it; no bar on the sugar, Musty.” So I put the boat to his lips and gave him a pull. By George, you should have seen his face! It was just thundering fun. “I’ve done you at last, old Musty,” I said. “It is best cognac.” He gave me such a look! He’d have eaten me, I believe—and he walked away. It was just splitting fun. I wish you had been there to see it.’

I went out after dinner, to take my usual stroll along the river-bank, and to watch the evening lights die away on the columns and obelisk. On my return I saw at once that something had happened which had produced commotion among the servants of the hotel. I had reached the salon before I inquired what was the matter.

The boy who was taking the coffee round said: ‘Mustapha is dead. He cut his throat at the door of the mosque. He could not help himself. He had broken his vow.’

I looked at Jameson without a word. Indeed, I could not speak; I was choking. The little American lady was trembling, the English lady crying. The gentlemen stood silent in the windows, not speaking a word.

Jameson’s colour changed. He was honestly distressed, uneasy, and tried to cover his confusion with bravado and a jest.

I could not sleep. My blood was in a boil. I felt that I could not speak to Jameson again. He would have to leave Luxor. That was tacitly understood among us. Coventry was the place to which he would be consigned.

I tried to finish in a little sketch I had made in my notebook when I was in my room, but my hand shook, and I was constrained to lay my pencil aside. Then I took up an Egyptian grammar, but could not fix my mind on study. The hotel was very still. Everyone had gone to bed at an early hour that night, disinclined for conversation. No one was moving. There was a lamp in the passage; it was partly turned down. Jameson’s room was next to mine. I heard him stir as he undressed, and talk to himself. Then he was quiet. I wound up my watch, and emptying my pocket, put my purse under the pillow. I was not in the least heavy with sleep. If I did go to bed I should not be able to close my eyes. But then—if I sat up I could do nothing.

I was about leisurely to undress, when I heard a sharp cry, or exclamation of mingled pain and alarm, from the adjoining room. In another moment there was a rap at my door. I opened, and Jameson came in. He was in his nightshirt, and looking agitated and frightened.

‘Look here, old fellow,’ said he in a shaking voice, ‘there is Musty in my room. He has been hiding there, and just as I dropped asleep he ran that knife of yours into my throat.’

‘My knife?’

‘Yes—that pruning-knife you gave him, you know. Look here—I must have the place sewn up. Do go for a doctor, there’s a good chap.’

‘Where is the place?’

‘Here on my right gill.’

Jameson turned his head to the left, and I raised the lamp. There was no wound of any sort there.

I told him so.

‘Oh, yes! I tell you I felt his knife go in.’

‘Nonsense, you were dreaming.’

‘Dreaming! Not I. I saw Musty as distinctly as I now see you.’

‘This is a delusion, Jameson,’ I replied. ‘The poor fellow is dead.’

‘Oh, that’s very fine,’ said Jameson. ‘It is not the first of April, and I don’t believe the yarns that you’ve been spinning. You tried to make believe he was dead, but I know he is not. He has got into my room, and he made a dig at my throat with your pruning-knife.’

‘I’ll go into your room with you.’

‘Do so. But he’s gone by this time. Trust him to cut and run.’

I followed Jameson, and looked about. There was no trace of anyone beside himself having been in the room. Moreover, there was no place but the nut-wood wardrobe in the bedroom in which anyone could have secreted himself. I opened this and showed that it was empty.

After a while I pacified Jameson, and induced him to go to bed again, and then I left his room. I did not now attempt to court sleep. I wrote letters with a hand not the steadiest, and did my accounts.

As the hour approached midnight I was again startled by a cry from the adjoining room, and in another moment Jameson was at my door.

‘That blooming fellow Musty is in my room still,’ said he. ‘He has been at my throat again.’

‘Nonsense,’ I said. ‘You are labouring under hallucinations. You locked your door.’

‘Oh, by Jove, yes—of course I did; but, hang it, in this hole, neither doors nor windows fit, and the locks are no good, and the bolts nowhere. He got in again somehow, and if I had not started up the moment I felt the knife, he’d have done for me. He would, by George. I wish I had a revolver.’

I went into Jameson’s room. Again he insisted on my looking at his throat.

‘It’s very good of you to say there is no wound,’ said he. ‘But you won’t gull me with words. I felt his knife in my windpipe, and if I had not jumped out of bed—’

‘You locked your door. No one could enter. Look in the glass, there is not even a scratch. This is pure imagination.’

‘I’ll tell you what, old fellow, I won’t sleep in that room again. Change with me, there’s a charitable buffer. If you don’t believe in Musty, Musty won’t hurt you, maybe—anyhow you can try if he’s solid or a phantom. Blow me if the knife felt like a phantom.’

‘I do not quite see my way to changing rooms,’ I replied; ‘but this I will do for you. If you like to go to bed again in your own apartment, I will sit up with you till morning.’

‘All right,’ answered Jameson. ‘And if Musty comes in again, let out at him and do not spare him. Swear that.’

I accompanied Jameson once more to his bedroom. Little as I liked the man, I could not deny him my presence and assistance at this time. It was obvious that his nerves were shaken by what had occurred, and he felt his relation to Mustapha much more than he cared to show. The thought that he had been the cause of the poor fellow’s death preyed on his mind, never strong, and now it was upset with imaginary terrors.

I gave up letter writing, and brought my Baedeker’s
Upper Egypt
into Jameson’s room, one of the best of all guide-books, and one crammed with information. I seated myself near the light, and with my back to the bed, on which the young man had once more flung himself.

‘I say,’ said Jameson, raising his head, ‘is it too late for a brandy-and-soda?’

‘Everyone is in bed.’

‘What lazy dogs they are. One never can get anything one wants here.’

‘Well, try to go to sleep.’

He tossed from side to side for some time, but after a while, either he was quiet, or I was engrossed in my Baedeker, and I heard nothing till a clock struck twelve. At the last stroke I heard a snort and then a gasp and a cry from the bed. I started up, and looked round. Jameson was slipping out with his feet on to the floor.

‘Confound you!’ said he angrily, ‘you are a fine watch, you are, to let Mustapha steal in on tiptoe whilst you are cartouching and all that sort of rubbish. He was at me again, and if I had not been sharp he’d have cut my throat. I won’t go to bed any more!’

‘Well, sit up. But I assure you no one has been here.’

‘That’s fine. How can you tell? You had your back to me, and these devils of fellows steal about like cats. You can’t hear them till they are at you.’

It was of no use arguing with Jameson, so I let him have his way.

‘I can feel all the three places in my throat where he ran the knife in,’ said he. ‘And—don’t you notice?—I speak with difficulty.’

So we sat up together the rest of the night. He became more reasonable as dawn came on, and inclined to admit that he had been a prey to fancies.

The day passed very much as did others—Jameson was dull and sulky. After déjeuner he sat on at table when the ladies had risen and retired, and the gentlemen had formed in knots at the window, discussing what was to be done in the afternoon.

Suddenly Jameson, whose head had begun to nod, started up with an oath and threw down his chair.

‘You fellows!’ he said, ‘you are all in league against me. You let that Mustapha come in without a word, and try to stick his knife into me.’

‘He has not been here.’

‘It’s a plant. You are combined to bully me and drive me away. You don’t like me. You have engaged Mustapha to murder me. This is the fourth time he has tried to cut my throat, and in the
salle à manger
, too, with you all standing round. You ought to be ashamed to call yourselves Englishmen. I’ll go to Cairo. I’ll complain.’

It really seemed that the feeble brain of Jameson was affected. The Oxford don undertook to sit up in the room the following night.

The young man was fagged and sleep-weary, but no sooner did his eyes close, and clouds form about his head, than he was brought to wakefulness again by the same fancy or dream. The Oxford don had more trouble with him on the second night than I had on the first, for his lapses into sleep were more frequent, and each such lapse was succeeded by a start and a panic.

The next day he was worse, and we felt that he could no longer be left alone. The third night the attaché sat up to watch him.

Jameson had now sunk into a sullen mood. He would not speak, except to himself, and then only to grumble.

During the night, without being aware of it, the young attaché, who had taken a couple of magazines with him to read, fell asleep. When he went off he did not know. He woke just before dawn, and in a spasm of terror and self-reproach saw that Jameson’s chair was empty.

Jameson was not on his bed. He could not be found in the hotel.

At dawn he was found—dead at the door of the mosque, with his throat cut.

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Sir Hugh Walpole (1884–1941), best known for his popular ‘Herries’ saga, often introduced elements of horror and the macabre in his short stories, and novels like
The Old Ladies
and
Portrait of a Man with Red Hair
. ‘Tarnhelm’, set in Walpole’s beloved Lakeland, is taken from his collection
All Souls’ Night
(1933).

I
was, I suppose, at that time a peculiar child, peculiar a little by nature, but also because I had spent so much of my young life in the company of people very much older than myself.

After the events that I am now going to relate, some quite indelible mark was set on me. I became then, and have always been since, one of those persons, otherwise insignificant, who have decided, without possibility of change, about certain questions.

Some things, doubted by most of the world, are for these people true and beyond argument; this certainty of theirs gives them a kind of stamp, as though they lived so much in their imagination as to have very little assurance as to what is fact and what fiction. This ‘oddness’ of theirs puts them apart. If now, at the age of fifty, I am a man with very few friends, very much alone, it is because, if you like, my Uncle Robert died in a strange manner forty years ago and I was a witness of his death.

I have never until now given any account of the strange proceedings that occurred at Faildyke Hall on the evening of Christmas Eve in the year 1890. The incidents of that evening are still remembered very clearly by one or two people, and a kind of legend of my Uncle Robert’s death has been carried on into the younger generation. But no one still alive was a witness of them as I was, and I feel it is time that I set them down upon paper.

I write them down without comment. I extenuate nothing; I disguise nothing. I am not, I hope, in any way a vindictive man, but my brief meeting with my Uncle Robert and the circumstances of his death gave my life, even at that early age, a twist difficult for me very readily to forgive.