Chapter I: Front Matter

Death in the Dusk

by Virgil Markham

Jacobsen Publishing Company, Inc. Copyright 1928 by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.

CONTENTS

Prefatory Words
Persons in this Chronicle
I. The Obtrusion of Parson Lolly
II. The Bull
III. The House
IV. The Bidding Feast
V. Kingmaker
VI. Strain
VII. Court of Inquiry
VIII. Wager of Battel
IX. The Bone
X. The Laugh
XI. Superintendent Salt
XII. Noah’s Flood
XIII. The Weapon
XIV. The Fiendish Cat of the Sisters Delambre
XV. The Rainbow
XVI. Parchment—and Paper
XVII. Lancelot’s Ultimatum
XVIII. Grisly Planting
XIX. The Deathless Arm
XX. The Recrudescence of Parson Lolly
XXI. The Midnight Expedition
XXII. The Beginning of the End: Parabola
XXIII. Miss Lebetwood and a Campstool
XXIV. Bannerlee’s Secret
XXV. The Flight of Parson Lolly
XXVI. Blood on the Portrait
XXVII. The Purr of the Cat!
XXVIII. The Crash
XXIX. Rescue
The Communication of April 17, 1926

PREFATORY WORDS

The journal of Alfred Bannerlee, of Balzing (Kent), is at last to be published practically in full, and without the alteration of any name. I say “at last,” but I suppose there are some who would leap with joy if the closely-written pages of the Oxford antiquarian and athlete were utilized, like Carlyle’s first “French Revolution,” for building a cheery fire. Lord Ludlow certainly is one.

It seems incredible, but Mr. Bannerlee has requested Ludlow to write an introduction to the book. Perhaps Mr. Bannerlee was pulling the baronial leg. Of all the party of poor half-maddened people who emerged from Aidenn Vale after the powerful doings recorded in this Journal, I can imagine none less likely to perform this service for the diarist who clung faithfully to the task of recording terrors in the midst of terror and didn’t hesitate to display the baronial character at its craftiest. Small wonder, I should think, that on the eve of publication of what he himself admits is “an unbelievable and utterly veracious narrative” Lord Ludlow sails for unknown seas, and makes no secret of the fact that England’s loss is permanent.

Now, since his Lordship promises never to come back, I don’t see any reason why I shouldn’t publish his recent letter to me, and thereby, perhaps, satisfy Mr. Bannerlee.

“Brillig, Ambleside, Westmorland,
December 27, 1927.

My dear Markham:

One can scarcely conjecture what maggot of audacity was in the brain
of Alfred Bannerlee, Esq., when he forwarded me his diary with the
request that I write a foreword to accompany it ‘to give the stamp
of reality.’ When you perceive the light in which I am placed in
this unbelievable and utterly veracious narrative, you will not need
to reflect in order to understand why I decline to have anything to
do with the document. In accordance with Mr. Bannerlee’s wish, I am
sending the diary to you, ‘an obscure but ambitious author,’ and I
do not suppose that you will object to having your name upon the
title-page. The whole arrangement impresses me as asinine, but,
after all, the manuscript is Mr. Bannerlee’s and he should be
allowed full scope to play the fool with it.

In fairness to the author, however, I must abate the indictment. I
do no more than allude to what seem to me distinct virtues in this
account. They will appeal to others likewise, if they are virtues.
In the first place, there is nothing of that grisly, putrid stuff
going nowadays under the name of modern psychology, although a
pedlar of this ‘science’ could have found no end of matter for his
hole and corner methods. Second point: I am not a devotee of the
enormous literature dealing with the hounding and capture of
wrongdoers. But I will venture a pronouncement in my egregious
innocence, to wit, that not in any half-dozen combined of these
would-be ‘shockers’ published in a lifetime will be found as many
trials and alarums and as much genuine mystification as make up this
compendium of the bedevilment of Parson Lolly, the mad behaviour of
the milkman, the invisible omnipresence of Sir Brooke Mortimer,
the enigma of the mystic bone, the Legend of Sir Pharamond’s
imperishable arm, and the machinations of the ultimate contriver, I
will not call him ‘fiend,’ working through and behind all.

And here it is my wish to express my wholehearted esteem for (then)
Miss Paula Lebetwood. I dislike the whole species of American girls,
but intelligence compels exceptions to every rule. Some of us judged
her harshly, no doubt, but she took the road leading to success, and
if she seemed cold-hearted, she chose wisely. Had she been a weaker
woman, snuffling and inept, the narrative would not now be on the
verge of publication. In spite of this, wherever she is, I wish her
well.

I myself shall not remain in England to witness the effervescence of
the multitude over this narrative. Democratic outbursts rather gall
me. On the eve of the publication of the Journal, my yacht, with me
on board, sails for waters unknown. I seek as far as I may a
shoreless cruise. I am old, and mankind is not my hobby. Perhaps I
shall linger in the beauty of the Mediterranean where there are two
skies, perhaps drift endlessly in the steady strength of the Trades,
perhaps dare the dark Antarctic seas—or find beyond the sunset. One
thing stands sure; it is unthinkable that I shall ever set foot in
Britain again. So here I take farewell of those who with me shared
the dread, wonder and aftermath of _Death in the Dusk_. (By the way,
I don’t like that title of Bannerlee’s.)

Pray accept my congratulations on your recent appointment, and
believe me your sincere friend, and

Faithfully yours,
Ludlow.”

It is well, I believe, to point out that the minds of all those present at Highglen House among the sorcerous hills of Wales during the early autumn of 1925, the mind which directed the writing of this Journal was, save perhaps one, the best fitted for presenting the closest account possible to the truth. The one other mind which could possibly equal this record in truthfulness would be that which actually contrived the series of demoniacal events in the Vale of Aidenn Water. The queer, tense, potentially tragic, and ultimately fatal situation discovered by Mr. Bannerlee after his serio-comic descent from the Forest through the fog contained so many cross-currents and tangled nets of misunderstanding, prejudice and enmity that no other could have pretended to the shadow of fairness in his (or her) statement of the case. For the sake of truth, then (though God knows what disadvantages offset that!), it was well that Mr. Bannerlee was plunged into the seething midst of the Bidding Feast.

I shall not dilate upon the morbid eagerness with which the public will seize upon this Journal. This is no hackneyed chronicle of raw head and bloody bones. The consternation caused by the events in Aidenn Vale, constituting, upon their emergence after the flood, a problem of what may genuinely be called universal interest, will never be forgotten by those old enough to realize their dreadfulness. The nine days’ terror became a nine days’ wonder, and without hyperbole it may be said that the fate of one nation hung upon the Radnorshire riddles. The public has never been informed of all there was to be told, nor, as sporadic (and totally erroneous) statements and versions in the press signify, has the public lost its interest. Here, for the first time, is offered for general perusal this unbelievable and utterly veracious document. Need I comment further?

This is not, of course, the original form of Mr. Bannerlee’s diary. What he wrote until the turmoil of events forced him to stay his hand on the evening of the 9th of October was necessarily briefer, more compact, and—to a reader not in touch with the circumstances—unintelligible. His recasting of the manuscript, which involved its enlargement to thrice its original length is, it seems to me, one of the most notable of his feats. Hard it must have been for him to alter this account from the sketch-book manner of an ordinary diary, to give the convincing gloss of rumination and reflection, to reveal precise details of fact, the links of cogitation, and the phases of feeling which poured in upon him. I think, too, that he has well preserved the sense of imminence, the uncertainty as to the morrow, which was, I am told, present in the original version. If portions of the work seem lacking in spontaneity, let me remind the reader that it was impossible for Mr. Bannerlee to limit himself to a mere polychronicon of episodes, frilled with running comment on persons, and edged with a neat pattern of emotions. Clearness demanded he should sometimes _elucidate_ and the white heat of events must have time to cool before they can be handled analytically.

Only last month I myself visited New Aidenn again. A word of self-introduction to Superintendent Salt made that rather wonderful policeman my good friend at once, and he personally conducted me through the Vale where death and terror had danced. It is all as Bannerlee describes it; even the atmosphere of mystery has not departed, and while Salt and I came down by Aidenn Water through the dusk, I was glad to have him there, glad and nevertheless uneasy. The villagers and the folk of the countryside know well that Parson Lolly is not dead yet, though his age is nearer five hundred than four hundred years, and often they see his black cloak whisk through some twilight copse, or see him far off above the hills, poised against the sunset.

Some day I shall write my own book about Salt: that other mystery of East Wales, the frightful affair of the Straight Road. But enough.

Virgil Markham

St. John’s Wood, London, February 26, 1928.

DEATH IN THE DUSK

Being Alfred Bannerlee’s own revision
and enlargement of his journal notes
from the evening of October 2, 1925,
to the breaking off, October 9. Together
with the conclusion of the narrative
later supplied by him, and the
communication of April 17, 1926.

To
Paula Andrews
in loving memory of
Paula Lebetwood
and to
Mrs. Robert Cullen
in grateful memory of Lib

PERSONS IN THIS CHRONICLE

The Narrator
Alfred Bannerlee of Balzing in Kent,
athlete and antiquarian

Host and Hostess of the Bidding Feast
The Honourable Crofts Pendleton
Mrs. (Alberta) Pendleton

The Betrothed
Sean Cosgrove
Paula Lebetwood

Guests
Herbert Pinckney, Baron Ludlow and Ditherington
Ted Belvoir
Mrs. (Marvel) Belvoir
Gilbert Maryvale, Esq.
Mr. Charlton Oxford
Mrs. Eve Bartholomew
Miss Millicent Mertoun
Dr. Stephen Aire
Lib Dale
Bob Cullen

Servants
Blenkinson, patriarch
Soames, footman
Hughes, gamekeeper
Finlay, head gardener
Wheeler, chauffeur and handy man
Morgan, handy man
Tenney, handy man
Toby, boy
Rosa Clay, cook
Ruth Clay, housekeeper
Ardelia Lacy, lady’s maid
Jael, parlourmaid
Harmony, housemaid
Em, kitchenmaid

Nebulous or Mysterious Persons
The gorilla man
The menagerie keeper
Sir Brooke Mortimer
The sisters Delambre
The red-bearded runner
The youth in the library
The man in the tower

Officials
Superintendent Salt
Dr. Niblett, Coroner
“Scotland Yard”

Super-Sleuth
Harry Heatheringham

Arch-Lord of Disorder
PARSON LOLLY