Hand in the Dark

J. Rees Arthur

Description

Australian mystery writer Arthur J. Rees hits a home run with the ingenious whodunit The Hand in the Dark. The Heredith family plans a housewarming party to celebrate their move to a stately manor house in the English countryside -- but when a member of the family winds up dead, the affair takes a decidedly somber turn.

Informations

• Publié par: The Floating Press
• Date de parution: 01 octobre 2015
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781776591817
• Langue: English

Extrait

THE HAND IN THE DARK
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ARTHUR J. REES
 
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The Hand in the Dark First published in 1920 Epub ISBN 978-1-77659-181-7 Also available: PDF ISBN 978-1-77659-182-4 © 2013 The Floating Press and its licensors. All rights reserved. While every effort has been used to ensure the accuracy and reliability of the information contained in The Floating Press edition of this book, The Floating Press does not assume liability or responsibility for any errors or omissions in this book. The Floating Press does not accept responsibility for loss suffered as a result of reliance upon the accuracy or currency of information contained in this book. Do not use while operating a motor vehicle or heavy equipment. Many suitcases look alike. Visit www.thefloatingpress.com
Contents
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Chapter I Chapter II Chapter III Chapter IV Chapter V Chapter VI Chapter VII Chapter VIII Chapter IX Chapter X Chapter XI Chapter XII Chapter XIII Chapter XIV Chapter XV Chapter XVI Chapter XVII Chapter XVIII Chapter XIX Chapter XX Chapter XXI Chapter XXII Chapter XXIII Chapter XXIV Chapter XXV Chapter XXVI Chapter XXVII Chapter XXVIII
Chapter I
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Seen in the sad glamour of an English twilight, the old moat-house,emerging from the thin mists which veiled the green flats in which itstood, conveyed the impression of a habitation falling into senility,tired with centuries of existence. Houses grow old like the race of men;the process is not less inevitable, though slower; in both, decay ishastened by events as well as by the passage of Time.
The moat-house was not so old as English country-houses go, but it hadaged quickly because of its past. There was a weird and bloody historyattached to the place: an historical record of murders and stabbings andquarrels dating back to Saxon days, when a castle had stood on the spot,and every inch of the flat land had been drenched in the blood of serfsfighting under a Saxon tyrant against a Norman tyrant for the sacredcatchword of Liberty.
The victorious Norman tyrant had killed the Saxon, taken his castle, andtyrannized over the serfs during his little day, until the greatertyrant, Death, had taught him his first—and last—lesson of humility.After his death some fresh usurper had pulled down his stolen castle,and built a moat-house on the site. During the next few hundred yearsthere had been more fighting for restless ambition, invariably connectedwith the making and unmaking of tyrants, until an English king lost hishead in the cause of Liberty, and the moat-house was destroyed by firefor the same glorious principle.
It was rebuilt by the freebooter who had burnt it down; one PhilipHeredith, a descendant of Philip Here-Deith, whose name is inscribed inthe Domesday Book as one of the knights of the army of Duke Williamwhich had assembled at Dives for the conquest of England. PhilipHeredith, who was as great a fighter as his Norman ancestor, establishedhis claim to his new estate, and avoided litigation concerning it, byconfining the Royalist owner and his family within the walls of themoat-house before setting it on fire. He afterwards married and settleddown in the new house with his young wife. But the honeymoon wasdisturbed by the ghost of the cavalier he had incinerated, who warnedhim that as he had founded his line in horror it would end in horror,and the house he had built would fall to the ground.
Philip Heredith, like many other great fighters, was an exceedinglypious man, with a profound belief in the efficacy of prayer. Heendeavoured to thwart the ghost's curse by building a church in themoat-house grounds, where he spent his Sundays praying for the eternalwelfare of the gentleman he had cut off in the flower of his manhood.Perhaps the prayers were heard, for, when Philip Heredith in the courseof time became the first occupant of the brand-new vault he had builtfor himself and his successors, he left behind him much wealth, and acatalogue of his virtues in his own handwriting. The wealth he left tohis heirs, but he expressly stipulated that the record of his virtueswas to be carved in stone and placed as an enduring tablet, for theedification of future generations, inside the church he had built.
It was a wise precaution on his part. The dead are dumb as to their ownmerits, and the living think only of themselves. Time sped away, untilthe first of the Herediths was forgotten as completely as though he hadnever existed; even his dust had been crowded off the shelf of his ownvault to make room for the numerous descendants of the prolific andprosperous line he had founded. But the tablet remained, and the oldmoat-house he had built still stood.
It was a wonderful old place and a delight to the eye, this mediævalmoat-house of mellow brick, stone facings, high-pitched roof, withterraced gardens and encircling moat. It had defied Time better than itsbuilder, albeit a little shakily, with signs of decrepitude here andthere apparent in the crow's-feet cracks of the brickwork, and decayonly too plainly visible in the crazy angles of the tiled roof. But theivy which covered portions of the brickwork hid some of the ravages ofage, and helped the moat-house to show a brave front to the world, awell-preserved survivor of an ornamental period in a commonplace andugly generation.
The place looked as though it belonged to the past and the ghosts of thepast. To cross the moat bridge was to step backward from the twentiethcentury into the seventeenth. The moss-grown moat walls enclosed anold-world garden, most jealously guarded by high yew hedges trimmed intofantastic shapes of birds and animals; a garden of parterres and lawns,where tritons blew stone horns, and naked nymphs bathed in marblefountains; with an ancient sundial on which the gay scapegrace Sucklinghad once scribbled a sonnet to a pair of blue eyes—a garden full ofsequestered walks and hidden nooks where courtly cavaliers andbewitching dames in brocades and silks, patches and powder, had playedat the great game of love in their day. That day was long since dead.The tritons and nymphs remained, to remind humanity that stone andmarble are more durable than flesh and blood, but the lords and ladieshad gone, never to return, unless, indeed, their spirits walked thegarden in the white stillness of moonlit nights. They may well have doneso. It was easy to imagine such light-hearted beauties visiting againthe old garden to revive dead memories of love and laughter: shadowyforms stealing forth to assignations on the blanched, dew-laden lawn,their roguish faces and bright eyes—if ghosts have eyes—peeping out ofghostly hoods at gay ghostly cavaliers; coquetting and languishingbehind ghostly fans; perhaps even feeding, with ghostly little hands,the peacocks which still kept the terrace walk above the moat.
The spectacle of a group of modern ladies laughing and chatting at teain the cloistered recesses of the terrace garden struck a note assharply incongruous as a flock of parrots chattering in a cathedral.
It was the autumn of 1918, and with one exception the ladies seated atthe tea-tables on the lawn represented the new and independent type ofwomanhood called into existence by the national exigencies of war. Theelder of them looked useful rather than beautiful, as befitted patrioticEnglishwomen in war-time; the younger ones were pretty and charming, butthey were all workers, or pretended workers, in the task of helpingEngland win the war, and several of them wore the khaki or blue ofactive service abroad. They were all very much at ease, laughing andtalking as they drank their tea and threw cake to the peacocks perchedon the high terrace walk above their heads.
The ladies were the guests of Sir Philip Heredith. Some months before,his only son Philip, then holding a post in the War Office, had fallenin love with the pretty face of a girl employed in one of thedepartments of Whitehall. He married her soon afterwards, and broughther home to the moat-house. It was the young husband who had suggestedthat they should liven up the old moat-house by inviting some of theirformer London friends down to stay with them. Violet Heredith, who foundherself bored with country life after the excitement of London war work,caught eagerly at the idea, and the majority of the ladies at tea werethe former Whitehall acquaintances of the young wife, with whom she hadshared matinée tickets and afternoon teas in London during the lastwinter of the war.
The hostess of the party, Miss Alethea Heredith, sister of the presentbaronet, Sir Philip Heredith, and mistress of the moat-house since thedeath of Lady Heredith, belonged to a bygone and almost extinct type ofEnglishwoman, the provincial great lady, local society leader, villagepatroness, sportswoman, and church-woman in one, a type exclusivelyEnglish, taking several centuries to produce in its finished form. MissHeredith was an excellent, if somewhat terrific, specimen of the class.She was tall and massive, with a large-boned face, tanned red withcountry air, shrewd grey eyes looking out beneath thick eyebrows whichmet across her forehead in a straight line (the Heredith eyebrows) and astrong, hooked nose (the Heredith falcon nose). But in spite of hermassive frame, red face, hooked nose, and countrified attire, she lookedmore in place with the surroundings than the frailer and paler specimensof womanhood to whom she was dispensing tea. There was a stiff andstately grace in her movements, a slow ceremoniousness, in herpoliteness to her guests, which seemed to harmonize with theseventeenth-century setting of the moat-house garden.
At the moment the ladies were discussing an event which had beenarranged for that night: a country drive, to be followed by a musicalevening and dance. The invitations had been issued by the Weynes, ayoung couple who had recently made their home in the county. The husbandwas a popular novelist, who had left the distractions of London in orderto win fame in peace and quietness in the country. Mrs. Wey