Spotted Hemlock

chapter two

Phantom Horseman

‘We had worked for some time, when we were disturbed by the horrible noise made by our poultry.’

Ibid.

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Calladale House was a late Georgian mansion to which had been added, in mid-Victorian times, an excrescence of a long left wing. Lecture-rooms were in the original building and the wing had been converted into study-bedrooms for twenty students. The rest of the girls and most of the staff were accommodated in hostels erected, between 1920 and 1937, at various points on the estate. In addition, there were cottages for the college electrician and the head gardener, various sheds and greenhouses, piggeries, cattle sheds and poultry runs. There were also garages for staff cars and cart-sheds for the farm machinery, not to mention rubbish dumps, compost heaps and a silo.

On the day before the autumn term began, the Principal, Miss Katharine McKay, known to the students as Canny Katie, was explaining the college ritual to a new lecturer. Mr Carey Lestrange, the noted pig-fancier, had been called upon at short notice to take on the duties of the senior pig-man who wrote to say that he had broken his leg in a climbing accident during the summer vacation, and was still in hospital.

‘It won’t be for long,’ Miss McKay had pleaded, ‘and you’re just the person. I have to be rather careful in the choice of my men.’

‘Yes, of course,’ said Carey gravely.

‘Well, the way we work is this: first milking—won’t affect you in any way, but you may as well learn the routine—is at six, breakfast at seven-thirty—try not to be late; sets a bad example—then work begins at half-past eight. Break is at a quarter to eleven—they get shockingly hungry, so we feed ’em cocoa and bread and jam for fifteen minutes— midday meal at one. Two-fifteen, beginning of the next work period. Two hours. Tea after that, and supper at six-thirty. Then the girls take a compulsory study-period from seven until nine while we mark the written work or prepare for next day. Lock-up is at eleven. All visitors must be off the premises on Saturday and Sundays by eight o’clock. All right? Oh, second milking at five-thirty, but, again, that won’t be your pigeon. Here’s your time-table. Stick to it closely, if you don’t mind, otherwise there’s chaos in a place like this, where everything works on a rota, and everybody alternates theory and practice.’

‘Yes, I see. I’m accustomed to pretty accurate timekeeping at my own place, so I can promise not to let the side down.’

‘Good. What about sleeping quarters?’

‘I’ve got a fast car. I can sleep at home.’

‘Means you won’t need to be here for breakfast. All right, so long as you’re ready to begin work at the right time. Don’t let the girls slack. They’re apt to try it on with new men. You’re rather handsome. Don’t let them get any crushes. Awful idiots, most of them. I suppose we were the same at their age.’

‘Oh, I’m fast approaching my sere and yellow leaf. I should hardly cause twenty-year-olds to flutter.’

‘Don’t you believe it ! Some of ’em would vamp their great-grandfathers if they could. It’s no end of a nuisance having that Highpepper place so close. Twenty-five miles in twenty-five minutes is their average. Gentlemen-farmers, indeed !’

‘Oh, yes, the fellows who raise nothing but their hats ! I’ve been over there once or twice to talk pig. All the same, most of them are reasonably intelligent.’

‘Rakes, every one. Oh, well, see you in the morning. And, I repeat, stay of one mind with Shelley. “I fear thy kisses, gentle maiden; thou needest not fear mine.” ’

‘You terrify me,’ said Carey. ‘No wonder they say that the female of the species is deadlier than the male.’

‘And a truer word was never spoken. Haven’t you an aunt with three husbands?’

‘Well, not all of them at the same time, you know.’

‘Like to meet her.’

‘I will invite her to the College Open Day.’

On the whole, he enjoyed his job, although his students’ combination of intense concentration on work and equally intense concentration on the pursuit of young men amused, and, to some extent, repelled him. The girls, however, were easy to teach and Carey loved pigs. Then, the staff Common Room, although an extremely noisy place, proved to be a surprisingly comradely one. Its extroverted denizens he found sociable and amusing. There were three other men on the staff, and when the monstrous regiment of women became intolerable, as was inevitable at times, there was always the Tally-Ho in Garchester, where the feast of reason and the flow of soul could be enjoyed to the accompaniment of some of the best beer in England. This cathedral city and county town marked, indeed, the apex of a triangle whose twenty-five mile base was bounded on the west by High-pepper Hall and on the east by Calladale. It was almost equi-distant from both colleges.

Another inevitability was that, with half the time given over to practical work, there was a far more free and easy relationship between staff and students than would have been possible at a college offering a purely academic course. Carey became the recipient of girlish confidences, the repository of girlish secrets, the adviser in the nice conducting of love affairs. He heard of college squabbles and of difficulties at home; of plans and ambitions; of despairs and frustrations; of hopes and fears; of triumphs and disasters.

‘In fact,’ he confided to his wife, soon after he had taken up his duties, ‘I might as well be their father-confessor and have done with it.’

It was also inevitable that, early in his new career, he should hear about his predecessor.

‘The other Piggy wasn’t a bit like you,’ remarked a damsel named Gay, one afternoon, after Carey had demonstrated the steps to be taken to relieve constipation in a pregnant sow.

‘In what sense?’ asked Carey. ‘Check the increased amount of bran you are using and go easy with that bland pig-oil. In fact, I should try the increased bran-content alone at first. It prevents clogging because it holds water in the lower bowel. Keep your gestation charts up to date, all of you. There will be a “snap” test tomorrow, in place of the lecture on types of bacon pig.’

‘That’s what I mean,’ explained Miss Gay. ‘The old Piggy never bothered like you do. As for snap tests—I can just see his groups standing for anything like that ! Yet, for you, we just sit up and beg.’

‘Naturally. I’m old enough to be your father. I am a father, at that. I’m accustomed to implicit obedience—or else !’

Miss Gay giggled.

‘It isn’t that,’ she said. ‘And it isn’t the Romeo in you, because there isn’t.’

‘Isn’t what? Look at that young boar we were so worried about last week. Putting him in with the little hog pig has bucked up his appetite no end. Nothing like rivalry to make a boar show what he’s made of.’

‘There you go again!’ said the amused and exasperated Miss Gay. ‘I believe you’d take a lot more interest in us if we were pigs.’

‘Well, of course I should. Pigs are infinitely more interesting than callow young women.’

‘It’s a good thing all men don’t think alike, then. When are you taking us to that bacon-curing place ? I hate to think of our pigs ending up as streaky and long back rashers.’

‘I know. It is sad, but life’s like that. I’m not sure that I myself wouldn’t rather end up that way, though, appreciated to the last, and of some use, even in death.’

Miss Gay giggled.

‘Even your jokes aren’t a bit like his,’ she said. ‘But when I heard he’d broken his leg I was simply terribly upset. He was quite a heart-throb, you know. He came here from Highpepper.’

‘Did he ? I suppose he considered his talents were wasted among the Philistines.—Miss Morris, lift that piglet by one hind leg and the shoulders. No, you won’t hurt him that way. Gentle but firm—that’s it.’

‘He couldn’t manage the men, so I heard,’ said Miss Gay, mucking out rapidly. ‘Why is it that, when we let these animals out for exercise, they make straight for the nearest mud and then come back and rock and roll on my nice clean straw?’

‘High body temperature, poor creatures.—Cod-liver oil for that sow, Miss Walters, and don’t forget her mineral salts. How long have you had her in the paddock?’

‘Best part of the day, Mr Lestrange.’ Miss Walters was the rhubarb-fancier, but Carey did not know that.

‘That’s the idea. Keep her toned up with exercise. She’ll have a rotten time if she gets too fat, poor old girl.’

‘Piggy,’ pursued the indefatigable Miss Gay, ‘would have added a personal touch to that advice, if you see what I mean, Mr Lestrange.’

‘Piggy by name but Wolf by nature, I presume?’

Miss Gay giggled.

‘He isn’t exactly U, like you,’ she explained.

‘He seems to have been good with pigs,’ said Carey, leaning over and slapping a lop-eared Cumberland, ‘and that’s the whole point, is it not?—What about that youngster of yours with oedema, Miss Platt?’

‘Like you said, Mr Lestrange—sloppy bran mash with an ounce and a half of Epsom salts, and small ordinary bran mashes three times a day.’

‘That’s the spirit.’ He took an apple out of his breeches pocket and gave it to a young pig which was scratching itself against his gaiters. ‘Well, knock off any time now, girls. I want to get home to my telly.’

‘It’s too bad you go home every evening,’ said Miss Gay, ‘and weekends, too. Think of the fun you could have.’

‘I do—and shudder,’ said Carey.

One morning, at his home in Oxfordshire, his wife Jenny had gone down to the piggeries with Ditch, Carey’s pigman, to look at a new boar, when Mrs Ditch, who acted, in their small, square, stone-built house, as housekeeper, cook and general factotum, came to the Scandinavian-type pig-house with the tidings that the master was on the telephone.

Answering it, Jenny learned that her lord was staying the night in College.

‘Sorry,’ he said, when she took the call, ‘but I shan’t be home tonight. We’ve run into a spot of trouble.’

‘What sort of trouble?’

‘Only a gang of louts, but everything’s in a mess. Fences broken, pigs let out, fowl-runs opened—all the works. Anyway, we’re slaving like mad to get things shipshape, and I’m going to do a spot of sentry-duty tonight. Haven’t told Miss McKay. She’d have a fit if she thought I wasn’t getting my beauty sleep. But my pigman and I are rather cross about things. I have a lovely gilt in-pig, and I’m afraid this may have upset her. Pigs are terribly temperamental, as you know. How’s Ernest settling in? Yes, quite. The importance of being Ernest is that if he mates nicely with Barbara we ought to get a beautiful litter of Gloucester Old Spots, which is a pig I’ve always wanted to try.’

‘If you’ve had a lot of destruction, why don’t you call in the police?’

‘Miss McKay thinks it may be a Highpepper rag. She’s had their bloke on the phone and he’s promised to brainwash his lads, but, personally, I don’t think it’s ragging. It’s nasty, which the boys, on the whole, are not. Anyway, don’t worry. I’ll see you tomorrow night, with any luck.’

Carey and his pigman stayed up until three in the morning and caught nobody. Carey had no lectures until after the mid-morning break, so he slept-in until half-past nine, made a leisurely breakfast in the Staff dining-room and then went for a short stroll in the grounds.

The pigs which had been released by the marauders had done a considerable amount of damage, most of which was still being tidied up by the students. Carey stopped beside a perspiring lass in breeches and leggings who was putting a flower-bed to rights, and pointed to a heap of rhubarb crowns and the extremely decayed carcass of a small mammal.

‘How come?’ he enquired. The girl straightened her back and leaned on the garden fork she was using.

‘Isn’t it horrible?’ she said. ‘We keep finding rhubarb and rats all over the place. This is the fifth lot that I know of. Those filthy louts! I’d like to get hold of one of them!’

‘I doubt whether this is the work of louts,’ said Carey, gazing at the remains of the dead rat. ‘It looks more like ancient history to me. I should incinerate that carcass, if I were you. Let’s hope the pigs didn’t investigate the corpses too closely. It can’t have done them much good if they did.’

By lunch-time seventeen more deposits of rats and rhubarb crowns had been discovered, and the Principal of Highpepper had been along to look at the damage. His view was that the gentlemen-farmers were innocent of the destructive raid on Calladale, but it turned out that, although Soames and Preddle had contrived to remain discreetly silent about the rats and the rhubarb, Old Benson, the local rat-catcher, had confessed to the sale of sundry corpses to ‘some of the gentlemen’ at the end of the previous term.

‘Not a nice rag,’ said Miss McKay, ‘but if Mr Sellaclough declares that his men did no damage, I have no option but to agree. I do wish they would leave this College alone.’

That in some respects this was unlikely was demonstrated very shortly afterwards. In spite of Preddle’s ungallant assertions, not all the Calladale students were uncouth in body and mind. Some, indeed, were both handsome and gifted, not the least pulchritudinous being one Rachel Good. From the point of view of Miss McKay, Rachel was inclined to belie her surname, but in the eyes of a certain Highpepper youth named Cleeves she was the rose of Sharon and the lily of the valley. In other words, at the end of the summer term they had plighted their troth, and, as Cleeves was a young man of substance, Rachel sported an engagement ring tricked out with rubies and was taken into Garchester to partake of ambrosia and the blushful Hippocrene far more often than some of her envious contemporaries thought was reasonable.

Miss McKay, canny though she might be, was no Mrs Grundy. She was prepared to grant her students a reasonable number of late passes each term without wishing to find out how they spent the hours between lunch and lock-out. She disapproved of engaged students because she believed that their entanglements interfered with their studies, but she was a just and reasonable woman and was prepared to admit that it took all kinds to make a world, and, that microcosm of it, a college.

On the morning of the second Thursday in October, Miss Good applied for a late leave. The college secretary looked up the records.

‘It’s your third this term, Miss Good, but I’ll ring Miss McKay.’

‘How dreary of you, Louise! Come on! Be a sport! Give me a pass. Who’s to know?’

‘Miss McKay, of course.’ The secretary connected herself with the Principal. ‘Miss Good, asking for a late pass… she’s had two… Very good, Miss McKay.’ She put down the intercommunication receiver. ‘She says you can go ahead, but you’ve got to be in by eleven.’

‘The old sourpuss! Still, it’s better than nothing, although Barry will create, I expect. She’s always made it half-past before. Oh, well, if you’ll just give me the card… Thanks a lot.’

Thursday was the Calladale half-holiday. It had been arranged between the two principals that Highpepper should take Wednesdays, but this pious attempt at sabotage was frustrated weekly by the Highpepper students, who, if they had any desire to escort Calladales to the pictures and take them out to tea or supper, cut the Gordian knot by cutting the Thursday afternoon lectures and chores. This inspired cutting was accomplished by Mr Cleeves on the Thursday of Miss Good’s late pass, and an enjoyable time was had by both, Cleeves merely remarking, when his affianced referred to the cheese-paring dictum of Miss McKay, that, at any rate, eleven o’clock would be all right. There would be plenty of time for a four o’clock cinema followed by a dinner and drinks, and his Morris would get the girl back to Calladale before the expiration of her pass.

He was prepared to be as good as his word, but, as the car was within a mile of her college, Miss Good gave a sudden exclamation.

‘My ring! I must have left it in that cloakroom place! I took it off to wash my hands, and I must have forgotten to put it on again!’

‘Oh, damn!’ said Cleeves. ‘I’d better go back, I suppose. Good thing the place is an hotel and not just a pub. I’ll be able to get in all right. I’ll ask at the office. Look, I’ll put you down at your gates, if you don’t mind. That will save me a bit of time.’

‘Oh, yes. After all, you’ve still got another twenty-five miles to do. Oh, dear! I’m terribly sorry.’

‘Yes, you are a little chump. I’ll hang on to the ring when I get it, and let you have it back when I see you on Saturday.’

‘I only hope it’s still where I left it! Surely nobody would steal it, would they?—not in a nice hotel like that!’

Mr Cleeves was not prepared to bet on this, but he did not say so. He merely told his beloved not to fret, put her down at the gates of Calladale, turned the car and drove back at top speed to Garchester. Miss Good watched his rear lights until they disappeared round a bend, and then turned her steps towards the hostel, for she was not an in-college student.

The Calladale grounds, even apart from the acreage devoted to crops, pasture, hen-houses and piggeries, were extensive, forming, as they had done before the college took them over, the park and gardens of a very large mansion. There was no moon, and Miss Good, walking between tall rhododendrons on the half-mile trek to bed and board, began to realise that there was a vast difference between being driven in a smart, new Morris up to the students’ entrance and being compelled to walk the distance between the college gates and the hostel in eerie autumn darkness. She was not a nervous or a fanciful girl. Moreover, she had been born and brought up in a country vicarage and was accustomed to the absence of lights in country places. Nevertheless, she realised that she would not be sorry to leave the rhododendron walk behind her and emerge on to the neat gravel drive which ran between the open lawns that fronted the hostel. She tried not to remember that the college was said to be haunted.

Just as she was within sight of her goal, however, her blood froze and her ears pounded. She found herself sick with fright. Blocking the exit to the rhododendron walk was a dim figure tall enough to blot out the stars. It glimmered faintly white against the dark bushes. She stopped dead, gulping with terror. Then, with a sob, she turned in her tracks and tore for the gate. She did not look round until she was out in the road. Gasping and winded, she flung herself down in a ditch and lay there, shivering and terrified.

‘Don’t let it come! Don’t let it come!’ she thought wildly. But come it did, and by the light of the single lamp which illumined the entrance to the college grounds she saw that it was a horseman all in white, a shapeless, apparently headless, figure riding a big-boned grey. The horse was going at a walking pace, but when it was out on the road it began to trot.

The girl in the ditch got up and tore along the rhododendron avenue to the hostel. This time no sinister, ghostly horseman barred the way. Neither was the front door barred, but an apologetic maidservant informed her that the head of the hostel wished to speak to her in the morning.

In her study-bedroom a reproachful friend awaited her.

‘You are a fool! Why on earth didn’t you get back to time? Considine is rabid. You’ve probably ditched all our late passes until half-term.’

‘I’ve got an answer for her, but, of course, she won’t believe it.’

‘She might. She isn’t bad. Did you run out of juice on the way home? If so, I wouldn’t hand her that one. She won’t believe that, even if it’s true.’

‘She won’t be asked to believe it. I suppose you haven’t got an aspirin or something. I’ve had the most awful shock.’

‘Not…? I shouldn’t have thought…’

‘Of course not! He’s a lamb. No. The fact is—I think I’ve seen the college ghost.’

‘How many drinks did you have?’

‘No, really, I’m not joking. Get off my bed. I’ll tell you all about it in the morning. Oh, dear! I wish, just for once, we had dormitories instead of these little rooms. I’m scared to death. I know I shan’t sleep.’

She did sleep, however, youth and a certain amount of that which biteth like an adder assisting—indeed, insisting upon—kind nature’s sweet restorer. She awoke to a thin, late October sunshine and the consciousness that she was called upon to report to Miss Considine. In the clear light of day the ghost-story would sound palpably absurd. Better to make the lost engagement ring the excuse for overstaying her late leave, Miss Good decided. She advanced this plea. Miss Considine, a weather-beaten lady of fifty who taught the science and practice of vegetable gardening, looked concerned.

‘That very expensive ring?’ she asked. ‘Have you got it back?’

‘Well, no.’

‘You’ve lost it entirely?’

‘I—I hope not.’

‘Look here, Miss Good, come clean. What was your reason for overstaying your pass?’

Miss Good looked unhappy.

‘It was really about the ring,’ she said.

‘Yes?’

‘My—my fiancé went back for it. We’d got nearly back to college when I remembered I’d left it at the place where we had dinner. He brought me back to the gates and, honestly, Miss Considine, I’d have had heaps of time to get in before lock-up if I—if I—this is going to sound silly…’

‘If you mean that you saw someone on horseback in the college grounds, it may interest you to know that he trampled down my brussels sprouts. So—now?’

‘Yes, I did see someone on a horse. It was at the end of the rhododendron avenue. I ran back to the gate and hid in the ditch, and that’s what made me late.’

‘Hid in the ditch? Why on earth didn’t you challenge him? It must be one of the people who broke down the fences and let out the pigs. We might have found a scapegoat and got hold of the names of the others.’

‘But, Miss Considine, he was perfectly enormous and all in white and he didn’t have a head! It was awful!’

‘You little goose!’

‘No, really! I—I thought it was a ghost!’

‘Now, really, Miss Good! What did you have to drink last night, you foolish child? Sit down, and tell me all about it. I can’t go to Miss McKay with a tale like that!’

‘But it’s true! Really, really it is. I could have made you any sort of excuse, but this is the truth. I was petrified! I didn’t think what I was doing! I just ran for my life and hid in the ditch until it went!’

‘How do you know that it went?’

‘It came out of the college gate. It passed quite close.’

‘What did it look like? Could you see through it? What had you had to drink?’

The student looked reproachful and then said sullenly, staring down at the carpet the while:

‘I’d had a Bronx and then we shared a bottle of Burgundy, but Barry drank more of it than I did, and we had coffee to finish up.’

‘That shouldn’t have been enough to make you tumble into the ditch. Now, look here, you saw this horseman twice, the second time closely. Forget this ghost nonsense and think hard. Couldn’t you possibly identify him? Horses sound like Highpepper Hall, now I come to think of it, and, in spite of what Mr Sellaclough had to say, I’m not at all convinced that the previous damage and mischief was not the work of the Highpeppers. For the sake of the college, Miss Good, you’ve got to think hard. Cast your mind back to the last Highpepper ball. Does nothing seem to ring a bell?’

‘No, it certainly doesn’t. As I told you, he didn’t seem to have a head.’

‘That only means that he must have been wearing a hood. Look here, my dear, we must get to the bottom of this. We can’t have people coming here and working destruction. And just remember that the quality of mercy may not be strained, but my patience will be if you overstay your late leave again, whatever excuse you may offer.’

She went to the Principal, who was not particularly impressed by her report.

‘Girls?’ said Miss McKay sceptically. ‘Well, of course, they can tell the truth. Some of them even do. Ring up her young man and let’s get the first part straight. His name’s Cleeves. That much I know. Get his story. Simply ask him where he left her last night. If he says he drove her up to the hostel door, she’s had it, and that’s her last late pass this term.’

Cleeves, with no clue to guide him, decided that the truth would be more likely to prevail than would a lie.

‘I decanted Miss Good at the college gates at a quarter to eleven,’ he said. ‘She had plenty of time to get in. I didn’t drive her up to the door of her hostel because she’d left a ring behind at the hotel where we dined. Oh, yes, thanks, I’ve got the ring. Somebody had turned it in to the office and I was able to describe it, so they handed it over. I say, I hope everything’s all right!’

‘If you are asking whether Miss Good is all right, the answer is in the affirmative. Next time you take her out you had better not give her quite so much to drink. She thought she saw a ghost in the college grounds.’

‘Oh, I say! It couldn’t have been the drinks. She didn’t have more than a thimbleful all the evening.’

‘Then it was one of the Highpepper students fooling about. As he frightened Miss Good almost into hysteria, you might care to find out who it was. His horse trampled down my brussels sprouts. I set a very high value on those sprouts, and I’m out for blood.’