Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 9, No. 2, February 1964

Four and Twenty Blackbirds by Clark Howard

I believe that I have already made my point as to the disreputable characters found among our feathered “friends”. Some persons, however, simply refuse to accept my warnings.

Curson stood quietly next to the massive bed, looking down at the body of old man Haffer.

So it’s finally over, he thought. After thirty-one years, it’s finally over.

Thirty-one years, could that be possible? Half a lifetime spent here at Haffer Manor? Half a lifetime spent in servitude to this ill-mannered, vile-tempered old man who, at last, at the insufferable age of eighty-one, lay shriveled and wrinkled and dead before his eyes.

Curson turned his head slightly and looked in the large mirror over the old man’s bureau. He, James Curson, had been a boy only fifteen, when he came down out of the north of Ireland to serve this despicable old despot. Had he ever really been young Jamie Curson, rosy-cheeked, wide-eyed and eager? Looking at his face now, he saw no wide eyes, no eagerness, nothing at all of youth. He saw only a ruddy, weather-touched face with narrowed eyelids over a cold, flat gaze.

You did poorly by me, old man, he thought, looking back at the corpse. Poorly, indeed. I’m as cruel of face as you were, and as dark and brooding of mind too. I’m far from the man my grandfather wanted me to be when he sent me to you from his deathbed. Granddad only remembered you as the fine Major Haffer he had served during the war on the continent; luckily he never saw you — how you became — after the war, after your wife, after the whisky began to take hold. And luckily he’s not lived to see me either. Look at me: six years past forty, no woman, no children, no money, and now no place to go.

A wetness glistened in Curson’s eyes. Why did I stay? Am I not a man, free to go as I choose? Aye, that I am — but I wasn’t always. Once I was just Jamie, a boy. And as I grew older in age, thanks to his iron will I stayed a boy in spirit. Haffer Estate became my prison; the lord of the manor my keeper.

Curson wiped his eyes and stepped back to the open patio door through which he had entered only moments before. He had been walking past the patio on his way to feed the blackbirds when the old man called out to him.

“Cur—!” the phlegmy voice had gasped.

Cur — the only name the old man had ever called him since the day he arrived at Haffer Estate as Jamie, the boy.

“So you’re old Vincent Moriarty’s grandson, are you?” the robust, fifty-year-old, black mustached lord of the land had said, looming over him.

“Well, a raggedy, shaggy sight you are, too! And your name’s Curson, is it? All right, since you look like a mongrel pup, I’ll just shorten your name to Cur. Now, Cur, yonder beyond the house you’ll find where the horses are kept. You’ll begin as stable boy, and you’ll sleep there with the animals as befits your station. Now begone, Cur!”

So Cur it had begun that day, and Cur it stayed. Even in death, even as the old man was choking on his own thick blood from the ruptured artery in his chest, it was still Cur. He shook his head sadly and thought, ‘In the last seconds of his life, when he saw me walking past the patio and knew I was the last mortal he would ever look upon, you’d think he would have hailed me just once as Jamie. Or James. Or even Curson. Anything but Cur.’

Thirty-one years a mongrel dog, he thought bitterly as he stood in the patio doorway and looked at the rising sun reflecting off the layer of dew on the east turf. The vast grounds fell in a gentle slope down to the surrounding woods, and Curson was reminded by those woods that the blackbirds would be waiting for their breakfast. This thought brought a sly smile through his bitterness. At least that was one thing he had put over on the old man. For years he had been stealing from the pantry, taking poppy seed and wheat and rye to feed the blackbirds. He had three handsful stuffed in a paper sack in his pocket this very moment. Penance, he called it from a wicked old tyrant who killed birds for sport.

Sighing heavily, Curson turned back to the bed for a final look at the late Sir Malcolm Haffer. Aye, that sounded good! Never again to hear the name Cur — for no one else on the estate would dare call him that. The other servants were afraid of him, and they had nothing at all to do with him. They all worked in the manor, while he was the groundsman and rarely ever entered the big house nowadays except to steal from the pantry. So there was little need to have truck with the other help. Some of them who had been there for ten years he did not even know by name. As a matter of fact, now that he thought of it, he had not one single friend, not here or anywhere. At least, not a friend of the human variety. He had only the two dozen blackbirds.

That is your fault too, you old devil, he thought, looking down at the corpse. A sudden cold fury overcame him for a moment and he almost reached out to slap the dead man’s face. But old Haffer’s eyes were open and staring up at him, and the sight of them stopped his hand in mid-air. He felt a spark of the old familiar fear of Haffer that had lived inside him for so long. It was short-lived, this fear, and though it squelched the courage he needed actually to strike the body, it did allow Curson a hateful smirk and a curse.

As he turned to go, he noticed the ring. Gold and rectangular-faced, it was tooled in the coat-of-arms of Haffer’s former regiment. In its center, representing the globe upon which the British Empire’s sun never set, was a large blood ruby.

“Pretty, isn’t it boy?” Haffer had said to him one day twenty years earlier. “It’s a perfect thirty carat stone, good for a thousand pounds sterling for every carat. And it’s flawless too, worth twice its weight in diamonds. I took it off a maharajah’s turban just after I ran my sword through his gullet. That was in the days when the elephant worshipers were giving Her Majesty an itch in India. Ah, that was one glorious war! But you wouldn’t know about such things, would you, boy? Only the English respect glory, and you’re Irish, aren’t you, boy? Yes, you’re Irish, all right. Go on, get back to the stable — Cur!”

Curson’s eyes narrowed as he stared at the ring. Thirty carats. Perfect. Flawless. A thousand pounds per carat. Thirty thousand sterling!

A short time after Haffer had told him of the stone’s origin, he had been with his master in London on errands, waiting in the foyer of a custom jeweler’s establishment while Haffer spoke to the proprietor in a private office. The door had been ajar slightly and Curson had heard the conversation.

“I want an imitation duplicate made of this ring,” Haffer had ordered, “to wear when I’m riding and shooting. I’m afraid I might nick the ruby during some of my activities.”

“Certainly, sir,” the jewelsmith replied, “I can make up a body of gold plate with a stone of synthetic corundum for approximately one hundred pounds.”

“Done,” said Haffer.

Several times in the years that followed, Curson had seen the two rings side by side in a leather case in the top drawer of his master’s bureau. Once when he returned Haffer’s freshly polished riding boots, he had seen him prepare for the ride by removing the ring he was wearing and placing it in the right-hand section of the box. He took its duplicate from the left-hand section and placed it on the same finger. Curson remembered the conversation he had overheard about damaging the real ruby while riding, and he deduced that the imitation was kept in the left of the box, the genuine in the right. For some reason he never forgot that fact.

As far as he knew, no one but himself had any knowledge of the duplicate ring. Oh, the jewelsmith, of course, but he was probably dead by now. None of the other servants, certainly. They would not dare to prowl through Sir Malcolm’s bureau. Some of his friends, perhaps? Hardly. The old devil would never have admitted wearing a cheap imitation, even for caution’s sake.

In all probability then, Curson decided, no one else knew of the second ring. And no one knew yet that the master was dead, or that he, Curson, was at that moment in Haffer’s room. It was still early morning; the servants were busy in the kitchen house out back. No one had seen him take the feed for the blackbirds and walk along the east grounds on his way to the woods.

Yes, he thought quickly, eagerly. Yes! In payment for thirty-one years of being a cur dog! And not bad payment, either: nearly a carat of flawless ruby for every miserable, stinking year!

Sudden abounding courage surged through his veins, and he grabbed the body’s right hand and roughly forced the ring off an already stiffening finger. He held it close to his face and examined its cool beauty. Blood red it was, with a profuse interlacing of minute rutile needles forming a tiny star at their common peak. Lovely, Curson thought—

Then an idea struck him: suppose this was not the genuine stone? You fool, he cursed himself, you might very well be standing here like an idiot admiring a piece of glass!

He stepped quickly to Haffer’s bureau and removed the leather box. Lifting its lid, he smiled, seeing the other ring in the left-hand section where the imitation was kept. Of course, of course, he chided himself, this was only further proof that he had been correct in his original deduction. There would be no reason for the old man not to go to bed with the real ruby on; he could not hurt it in his sleep.

Curson grinned nervously at the ring he was holding and put it carefully into his pocket He took the duplicate from its box and replaced the box in the bureau. Going back to the bed, he overcame the dread that crept up his spine at the thought of doing it and, quickly as possible, pushed the imitation ring onto Haffer’s finger.

There, he thought, rubbing his palms on his coatfront to wipe away the touch of the man. There, now we’re done, Sir Malcolm Haffer. After all these bloody years, we’re done — at last!

Shoving a hand into his pocket, he clutched his treasure in trembling fingers and hurried out the patio door.

Curson walked close to the house for as far as it went, then took a diagonal path across the turf to the edge of the grounds. He did not feel altogether good until he got into the woods ringing the manor lawns. Then his spirits began to lift and the tremor in his fingers subsided to a gentle caress of the wealth they held. It’s back to the north of Ireland for me, he thought merrily — after, of course, a short visit with some discreet jewelsmith in London. Aye, back then to the good country and for the rest of his life he’d be known as Squire Curson.

He laughed aloud, the sound of it giving an unnatural substance to the usual solitude of the thick-treed, mossy forest he had come to know so well over the years. It was here that he had escaped the harshness of Haffer Manor, here he had found the moments of physical peace so necessary to sustain him against the ever increasing weight of his own lack of manhood, his utter uselessness to all save the despicable Haffer. And it was here that he first came to know the blackbirds.

There had been only one of them in the beginning, a sleek, pink-billed one with eyes perfectly round and piercing, and feathers as black as the moonless, starless night sky. Curson had walked into the woods and sat down on a log to eat some biscuits and cold beef he had pilfered from the kitchen. The bird had lighted nearby and stood watching him. Curson ignored it and went on eating. Presently it hopped closer. Curson broke off some crumbs of biscuit and tossed them toward the bird, but, before they had struck the ground, the bird had taken wing and soared off. Curson grunted and went back to his dinner.

A few moments later he glanced over and saw that the bird had returned and was pecking at the crumbs. When it had eaten all that was there, Curson broke off some more and tossed them over. Again the bird took flight, startled by the sudden movement of Curson’s arm. But again it came back a few moments later to eat some more. Curson made no move to frighten it after that, but merely continued his own meal.

When he was done, he stood up and, seeing the bird fly quickly off, walked over to where it had been and dropped the rest of the crumbs on the ground. As he headed back toward the manor grounds, he glanced over his shoulder and saw — as he had expected — the bird return once more to eat.

Several times after that, whenever he would go into the woods to eat, Curson would be visited by the same blackbird. For awhile it still took to wing when he raised his arm to toss crumbs, but after a few times, when Curson learned not to make sudden moves, it would merely back off a way; then finally it did not move at all, nor show any other sign of being frightened of its benefactor.

The day came when Curson was in the manor’s pantry and hit upon the idea of taking grain to the bird. He scooped a handful of barley into his pocket and later when he went to the woods, cleared a space on the ground and sprinkled it out in a little mound. Before he was halfway to the log to sit down, the bird was there, feasting. And before Curson’s own meal was over, two other birds, both as black and pink-billed as the first, had joined it.

The following day a few more came, and still others after that. Soon there were twelve, fifteen, then twenty. Now, as near as Curson had been able to count, what with their incessant hopping about, there were twenty-four of them. And there was no longer any wariness between bird and man; they flocked around his feet, these wild blackbirds, just as tame pigeons might, and Curson fed them daily, always careful to move slowly, casually, never suddenly.

Nearing his log as he walked through the woods now, he stopped laughing lest the blackbirds become frightened at the strange sound. They had never heard him laugh. Neither, for that matter, had anyone, else, he thought, not in the many years since he came to Haffer Estate. But that’s in the past now, he told himself happily. When I’m Squire Curson there’ll be no black days for me. Just Irish whisky, Irish women and Irish song — thanks to this little pretty.

He took the ring out of his pocket and polished its ruby on his coat-front. Shine, beauty, he thought. Shine like thirty thousands sterling. Shine like a grand manor in the north of Ireland. Shine like the lone star that a boy named Jamie had once wished upon. Shine, shine, shine!

Reaching the log, Curson sat down. He held the ring up to different directions of light, watching it capture the illumination and spread it inside its magical curves. Ah, the wonder of a thing no larger than the tip of his thumb, yet worth enough to change a cur into a king.

Curson sensed some movement near him and looked around sharply. On the ground a few feet away were three blackbirds, watching him. He grinned and put the ring down on the log beside him. He took from his coat the paper bag half filled with mixed poppy seed and rye and wheat. Pouring some of it in his palm, he held out his hand and the blackbirds hopped up and began eating. Their beaks made little tingles of sharpness run up through his wrist.

“Ah, hungry, are you?” Curson whispered softly. Several other birds lighted nearby and hopped over with their bouncy, joggy little movements. Curson reached into the bag with his other hand and sprinkled more feed on the ground for the new arrivals. Others glided, in and soon there was a small horde of them around his feet, hopping over one another to get at the grains of food. Curson sprinkled another handful over them and instinctively fell into his old game of trying to count them.

“—thirteen — fourteen — fifteen — no, I counted that one — let’s see, fifteen — sixteen — four there makes twenty — twenty-one — two more is twenty-three — hmmm?”

He was certain there had been an even two dozen of late, but now there seemed to be one missing. He started to look around for the absentee, then glanced slightly to his right and down at the log — and there was the missing blackbird. Hopping away toward the end of the log. All black and pink-billed. Cute as could be. With the ruby ring in its beak.

Curson’s eyes widened and his mouth dropped open. For the briefest instant his knees trembled. Then, purely on instinct and completely lacking in intelligent thought, he made a fatal move. He leaped like a madman at the retreating bird and landed in a sprawled fashion right on his face as the little black thief and its twenty-three peers all took to the air in a burst of startled wing-flapping.

“Oh, no!” Curson said weakly.

He rolled over and got to his knees. Careful, he warned himself. Easy now. They’ll come back. Just move slowly. There’s more feed in the bag; you can lure them back.

Curson straightened slowly and looked up and around. On a limb twenty feet above his head he saw them standing in a line watching him. He smiled, as if they could interpret such an expression, and retrieved the bag of grain. Slowly he began sprinkling it liberally around on the ground, all the while his eyes darting from bird to bird, counting, searching—

And then he saw the ring. The very last bird in the line had it. Gold and shiny — and flashing blood red — the little beast was holding it firmly clenched in its beak. And all two dozen of them were staring at him in a quiet, almost ominous manner.

“Here, birdies,” Curson whined softly, spreading the seed around at random. “Nice birdies — here, birdies — nice food for birdies—”

The first blackbird in line broke into flight. The second followed suit. And the third. Curson watched them climb toward the treetops, toward the sky...

“No... oh, no—” Curson pleaded.

The fourth, fifth; sixth — up and away.

“No, please — nice birdies — here, birdies—”

Seven, eight, nine, ten — one by one, in near precise formation, they left the limb and sought the free open air. One by one — until there were only a scant few left.

“No!” Curson screamed in rage, “You dirty, dirty little...!”

He grabbed a large stick from the ground and hurled it at the limb just as the next to the last blackbird soared off. The stick sailed past the last bird, missing it by three feet. The bird did not move, did not flutter or flinch, merely stayed perfectly still exactly where it was. A spark of hope came alive in Curson’s heart.

“No... no — I’m sorry, little bird — please — here, birdie.”

The last of the blackbirds stared coldly at Curson for a brief moment. Then, with the ring still in its beak, it flew gracefully away, following the others.

Curson stood mute, his face turning ashen grey, staring at the airborne birds as they slowly grew smaller far above him. He was still staring at the sky a long time after they disappeared.

A few days later, all the servants gathered in the great study of Haffer. Hall for the reading of the old master’s will.

“—to my faithful servant and groundskeeper, James Curson,” the barrister read, “for his unflinching loyalty to me over many years in the face of my consistently worsening ill temper and abuse, I leave my most cherished single earthly possession in the form of my military signet ring bearing a red ruby in a gold setting—”

Curson approached the desk where the barrister and trustee sat, and took legal title to and possession of the old man’s leather box containing the other ring.

When it was over, he went to his quarters and packed his belongings. There was an early bus for London and he wanted to be sure and catch it. He only hoped the imitation ring would still be worth a hundred pounds.