The Curious Quests of Brigadier Ffellowes (3 page)

             
"Lionel, however, reappeared at the house during breakfast the following day, making his brother and sister-in-law extremely nervous, since they had expected (and hoped) to see nothing further of him during his stay. But he was perfectly polite in his sardonic way, and he could be charming when he chose. What he wanted, it seemed, was something quite simple. He had a little time on his hands, and noting and remembering the old ruined pile of stone, the aforesaid 'castle,' he had come to ask his brother for permission to dig around and about it
.
His two 'assistants' would be all the help he needed. I'll have occasion to speak further of these two.

             
"James could see no reason why his brother should not pursue his excavations if he wished. The castle was even further from Avalon than the cottage, which may have played some part in his decision. And the place was not much visited. It had an ill-omened name throughout the countryside, and the children did not play near it, while adults mumbled about
'
pookahs
'
(the local 'good folk') if the site was mentioned. It crouched on a black fang of rock which thrust out into the ocean far below and was really nothing but a gigantic jumble of stones, some of them, including the foundation, of absolutely enormous size and
all laid without mortar. It had not been occupied, so far as anyone could tell, since early Plantagenet times, and some said it was far older. No roads led to it, and it had escaped the attention of any serious researchers up to that point.

             
"Lionel left with his brother's permission and did not reappear. He got his supplies sent in by truck, and one of the two assistants barrowed them over the hills on a cart to the cliff cottage. Lionel had a shooting brake, an early form of the American station wagon, but it was not much used, save for a rare trip to London once in a while.

             
"At this point, my friend stopped the car, or rather pulled it off of the road to one side. His hands were actually shaking and frankly, I was just as happy he had them off the wheel. The road,
as I have said, often ran very close to the cliff.

             
"One week after permission had been given to dig, the phenomena, for want of a better word, commenced. And they began, appropriately, at night"

             
Ffellowes put his cigar out and rang the bell for another brandy. He stared at the books opposite him, but no one spoke, and the crackle of dying coals in the fireplace was quite audible. Then he went on.

             
"Now what I am going to tell you next is not my own information, but second-hand. Nor was it as clear and sorted out as you chaps will hear it James was a fine fellow, but a good specimen of
Anglensus
inarticulatis
. I had to keep making him stop and go back over things, and also to keep him from interrupting himself or simply mumbling. The fact was, he was so terribly embarrassed about the whole thing, even with me, and also so frightened (and ashamed of that) that he simply couldn't tell a coherent story. But what I heard finally was roughly this:

             
"On the night I mentioned, everyone had gone to bed early, as country folk tend to. Around two in the morning, James was awakened by a sound, or rather, two sounds. The first was the sound of a horn, a brassy, echoing bawl, not the clear note of a hunting horn. As he sat up in bed, the horn
fell silent, and the night was broken by a hideous screaming, as if, as he put it, 'a thousand pigs were being killed all at once!' Then, there was silence, except that all the dogs on the place, a half dozen setters, retrievers, and such, all started to howl in unison. These in turn fell silent, but a great wind began to sweep in from the Atlantic, and all the house shutters and doors rattled while slates were dislodged from the roof. This sudden gale lasted about fifteen minutes and then died away as suddenly as it had started.

             
"That was the first incident
.
Of course the whole household was roused at this one, maids scurrying about and squawking, grooms rushing about, gardeners in an uproar, lights blazing and general confusion. James took over with a few Guards bellows and managed to restore something like order, but it wasn't easy. Those screams particularly, had been appalling. Isobel got the house staff in shape finally, while James led a force of the younger men out with lights and shotguns to see what they could find.

             
"They found nothing, I may say, either then or the next day, nothing at all. And when they got to the cliff cottage, Lionel appeared and, on being questioned, denied hearing a sound. James informed the police, and a local bobby came out, poked about and went away, managing to convey without words that the gentry should have better things to do than bother the police with utter nonsense.

             
"For three days nothing further occurred. That is, nothing tangible. Yet, there was a feeling of oppression in the atmosphere, very odd in March, to be sure. The servants were nervous, and one London maid gave notice and left at once. On the third night, James was roused from an uneasy sleep by more screams, but this time plainly human and emanating from his own house, from the servants' wing in fact. Rushing to investigate, he found the butler trying to control the cook and the maids, one of whom had fainted while the others were simply hysterical. When the unconscious one was revived and the others
quietened
, the girl told the following story:

             
"She had been sewing in her bedroom when she happened to look at her window, which
incidently
was shut. Pressed against the glass was a face, and she almost fainted again attempting to describe it
.
It was very pale, she said, and the eyes were black and burning. The hair was long and black also, and so were the beard and mustache. A great weal or scar ran across the forehead. She had screamed and her friends had run in from their adjoining rooms. The first in had seen movement at the window also, though no more than that, just as the room's occupant had fainted. Now even as they all stood in the girl's room, they were all suddenly aware that the wind had risen again from out of the west and was roaring at full blast about the house. And James felt a strange tingling of his skin, as if, he put it, he were somehow in the center of an electric discharge. He did then not ask if the others felt anything, not wishing to add to the panic, but he did ask the butler alone the following day, and the man, an old soldier, said that he at least had not noticed it
.

             
"The wind dropped again and they all got back to bed, all the servants now sleeping two to a room." Ffellowes smiled at us as he continued.

             
"What I have omitted from my account is that the servant in question, the maid, lived on the third floor. When James examined the room both from the inside and from the lawn on the following morning, he grew very upset indeed. The house, you see, was covered with an immense and hoary canopy of ivy, and it was clear that this had been disturbed in more than one place. Some of the stems of this plant were over two inches thick, you know. Whatever the girl had seen, and she was a local lass of an unimaginative nature, it was clearly material.

             
"My friend and his wife decided to face the matter in
the open. They called in all the staff, from outside as well as the house people, and told them they could leave, that they were not expected to face whatever was going on
,
and that the Penruddocks would think none
the
less of them if they did
,
though they themselves would stay. It was their home and their responsibility. And here, I may say, James interjected something that interested me greatly. 'I felt somehow. Donald, that whatever happened. I had to stay, was compelled to stay, what?' he told me.

             
"Well, he and his wife had a surprise coming, and a very pleasant one. The staff had had its own conference earlier, and they were not leaving, not even the girl who had fainted. They were all Cornish men and women, and the Penruddocks were their responsi
bility, as well as the other way,
you
see? Remember the
loyalty
of Cornwall to Charles the First when all else was lo
st—
' Under the sometimes stolid Saxon exterior, there burns often the ancient
stubborness
of the Celt
.
'

             
"This display of loyalty heartened Isobel and James immensely, and Isobel even wept
.
Then they all got down to business. No one, when asked, thought that calling the police again would serve any purpose save to embarrass all concerned. On this they were all agreed. James issued all the shotguns and sporting rifles that he owned, and most of the men were veterans of the Great War. They arranged watches and made sure all doors and windows were locked after dark. Then they waited.

             
"James did one further thing. He went to call on Lord Lionel. He found him in the yard of the cliff cottage, issuing some instructions to one of his assistants, a short dark man with a most unpleasant face. As it happened, he approached without either of them seeing him at first and heard
Lionel addressing the other in a foreign language, or rather, he thought, a very local one. Few in those days spoke Cornish, the original tongue of the land, which like Gaelic and Erse, was even then dying out, leaving only Welsh as the surviving British Celtic. But my friend had once had an old nanny who spoke it, and he thought he recognized it, though, as he put it to me, 'It didn't sound quite right, but foreign somehow.'

             
"When Lionel saw his brother, he seemed irritated and waved his helper away. 'What now, noble Earl?' he said in an unpleasant manner, 'more of your
bogles
frightening the
tweenies
?'

             
"James kept his temper and simply told his brother what had happened and asked him to keep his eyes open. The response was a jeering laugh. 'Good God, James, I think you've all gone round the bend up there. Faces at the window! I should think you would keep this to yourself. Well, I'll say nothing. I don't want to be known as the brother of a lunatic, infected by the hysterics of a still-room slut
.
But don't expect me to join your witch hunts. I have better things to do.' And with that he had stalked into the cottage. This was the help he offered his only brother, who had never done him anything but kindness.

             
"James had expected little else. Lionel had been as hateful and unfriendly as a child as he was as a man. So this display was nothing new. But, as he told me about it, a thought began to stir in my own mind. All of this peculiar business had started when Lord Lionel appeared. Was there a direct connection?

             
"My friend went on with his tale, less disjointed now and easier to follow as he became somewhat more relaxed. It appeared that he and his household were living under siege, in a way, and a strange siege it was. The apparition of the face had not reappeared, but other things had. For one there was the smell.

             
"It had first been noticed in the cellars, by the butler, who was looking through the wine bins. It was a rank stench, which seemed to seep through the floor; and although they had bolted the cellar doors and stuffed rags around the cracks, it still got into the house, though far more faintly or
the place would have been unlivable entirely. I smelled it myself later on, and I can assure you it was awful, a reek of graveyard mold, mixed with other, less describable things. Further, it seemed to ebb and flow, being weak at times and billowing up at others.

             
"The house had always kept a few sheep in a paddock, and also a small herd of dairy cows. One night, two sheep and a cow were found slaughtered, and not simply slaughtered but frightfully mangled, as if by a pack of wolves. No one had heard a sound, but the wind had been going through one of its sudden western gales, and it would have taken an artillery discharge to penetrate that
.
Indeed, this strange new wind, which always blew from the west when it came, was another mystery. It came at the same time or sometimes a bit beyond one of the other outrageous happenings, as if they summoned it; and though it did not direct harm, the Avalon folk were learning to dread its coming, for it always seemed to presage some appalling happening, or at least the imminent discovery of one.

             
"James had pulled the car back onto the road and we again resumed our slow way over the hills and
gulleys
. As he drove, he continued the sequence of events at what had once been the
happiest of homes.