The Stately Home Murder

“I don’t like it down here, Mum,” complained Maureen. “It’s too dark.”

This was true: the only lighting came from two low-powered sconces on the wall.

(“Don’t overdo the electricity down there, Purvis.”

“Very well, my lord.”

“Got to get the right atmosphere.”)

As far as Mrs. Fisher was concerned they’d got it. She shivered and wished she was somewhere else. Just wait until she found Michael, that’s all, she wouldn’t half give him…

“This way for the dungeons.” That was Bert Hackle, one of the undergardeners at Ornum House. He was custodian of the dungeons and tackled the job with relish. “This way, please.”

His voice boomed back from the bare stone walls and his boots grated on the floor much as those of a gaoler would have done. Mrs. Fisher shivered again.

“This is the oldest part of the house,” he announced. “Left over from when it was a castle. All the rest was built on top of this bit and lots more that’s gone through the centuries.”

He waited for the echo to catch up with him.

“This bit here,” he put his hand on a stone wall that could only be called substantial, “is what used to be a bastion.”

“Well I never,” murmured someone obligingly.

“And inside it is the donjon, or dungeon,” said Bert Hackle, giving Mrs. Fisher her first and last lesson in philology. “Donjon—dungeon. See?”

He led the way round the wall, and stooping, went through an arch where a door had been. They crowded in after him. “This is where they kept the prisoners.”

His party was suitably impressed.

“Nasty, isn’t it?”

“Glad I wasn’t one.”

“Look at that damp. If they didn’t have anything else they’d soon have rheumatism.”

This last was an unfair reflection on the original builders, whose stonework had, in fact, been perfect. The dampness could be laid entirely at Bert Hackle’s door. The instinct of an undergardener is to sprinkle water everywhere and Bert Hackle had lent a touch of verisimiltude to the dungeon walls by the judicious application of a little water before visiting time.

His Lordship—who was not slow—had done nothing to stop him. Indeed, on the last occasion he had been down there, the Earl had gone so far as to congratulate Bert on the fern species which were growing from a crack in the wall.

(“Fine plant you have there, Hackle,” he had said.

“Thank you, my lord.”)

Which Bert had taken as tacit approval.

“There’ll be a well somewhere,” said someone in the party who knew about castles.

Bert Hackle pointed. “Over there.”

The castle well was deep enough to need no faking and had been firmly boarded over on the advice of his Lordship’s insurance company.

“Good water,” said the gardener. “Nice and sweet.”

“Better than the piped stuff,” said a woman who had heard of—but knew nothing about—typhoid fever.

Hackle moved beyond the well head and took up a fresh stance in front of a low grating cut in the side of the wall. He cleared his throat impressively. The echo didn’t quite know what to make of this and there was an appreciable pause before he began on what was obviously his piece de resistance.

“If you was bad,” he said, “you were thrown into the dungeons, but if you was really bad…”

Mrs. Fisher was sure Michael must be about somewhere.

“If you was really bad, they put you in here.” He bent his powerful arms down and pulled at the two iron bars of the grating. A great stone pivoted outwards, revealing a hole beyond. Three men might have stood in it.

“It’s a n’oobliette,” announced Hackle. “Where you put your prisoners and forgot them.”

“From the French,” translated the earnest woman.

Mrs. Fisher craned her neck to make sure that Michael wasn’t in it.

“They had it just here,” Hackle said in a macabre voice, “so that the prisoners could see the water being brought up from the well. Then they didn’t give them none.”

It took everyone except Mrs. Fisher a little time to sort out this double negative.

“They died of thirst,” she said at once, “while they was watching the water.”

Bert Hackle sucked his lips. “That’s right. Now, if you’ll all come along here with me I’ll show you the way to the armoury. It’s been reconstitooted from part of the old curtain wall…”

But the oubliette—or perhaps the stone staircase—had been enough for some, and the party that eventually entered the armoury was a very thin one. The earnest woman came—of course—and some three or four others.

“Michael Fisher!” Michael Fisher’s mother gave a shriek of mingled anger and recognition. “You naughty boy! You wait until I get you home.”

“It’s lovely down here, Mum.”

“What ever do you mean by running away like that?”

“It’s much more fun down here.” Michael remained undismayed by her anger.

Mrs. Fisher took a quick look round. There was one thing about this part of the house that reassured her. The old things, having stood the test of so very much time, were more likely to stand the test of Michael Fisher. His mother did not think he could have got up to much in the armoury.

Wherein she was sadly wrong.

It was a truly fearsome collection. Weapons sprouted from the walls, antique swords lay about in glass cases, chain-mail hung from hooks, and—as if this weren’t enough—several suits of armour stood about on the floor.

“Whoopee,” shouted Michael. “Look, Mum, this is what I’ve been doing.”

He darted off down the centre of the armoury, shadow-boxing with the coat of war of some long-forgotten knight of a bygone age.

“Got you,” he said to one of them, landing a blow on the breastplate. It resounded across the hall.

“Mum…” This was Maureen, who had been studying the contents of one of the glass cases without real interest.

“What?”

“Mum, what’s a belt of chastity?”

Mrs. Fisher’s answer to this was what the psychologists call a displacement activity. She shouted at her son.

“Michael, leave that suit of armour alone.”

“I just want to look inside.”

“Leave it alone, I tell you.”

The earnest woman looked up at the raised voice and politely looked away again.

Michael was struggling with the visor.

“Can’t you hear what I say?”

There was at least no doubt about that. Mrs. Fisher in full voice could be heard clearly from one end of Paradise Row to the other, so the armoury presented no problem in audibility.

“Yes, I just want to…” Michael heaved at the visor with both hands.

“Mum…” It was a whine from Maureen. “Mum, what’s a belt of chastity?”

“Michael Fisher, you’ll leave that suit of armour alone or else…”

What the alternative was no one ever knew. At that moment Michael Fisher managed to lift the visor.

He stared inside.

A face stared back at him.

It was human and it was dead.

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