Death by the Mistletoe (8 page)

“As a matter of fact, I did!” replied Eileen, with a mischievous twinkle. “I thought it was an aeroplane which had broken down and was landing in our park!”

“Poor old ‘Kate’!” sighed James, and they laughed together.

Straight-backed and with supple stride, Eileen led the way into a lofty hall, where James hung up his waterproof and hat. She saw that he wore dinner-clothes, and that his broad shoulders and lean strong body were shown to some advantage; and the thought came to her that he looked rather distinguished.

James was shown into a high-ceilinged, cool drawing-room, fragrant with the scent of flowers. And here Eileen made him sit down in a deep armchair, the kindliness of which filled him with instant delight.

“If ever I have a house of my own,” he told her. “I’ll insist on a chair like this.”

“Smoke, Mr. MacPherson?” she asked. “We’ll probably have to wait for a while before the others come in from the garden. What a mass of men! But I’m expecting a girl friend at any moment to support me.”

As James lit cigarettes for Eileen and himself he wondered vaguely who exactly comprised this ‘‘mass of men”; but he was too comfortable at the moment to worry overmuch about the question.

‘‘You’re an artist, Miss Campbell?” he ventured diffidently.

‘‘Thank you so much!” returned Eileen. ‘‘But if the bitter truth must be told, I merely do fashion sketches for the
London
Echo
. Coats and frocks and … well, you know.”

James started, and then said:

‘‘Ah!”

He spoke in his most man-of-the-world tone, a tone which, through constant practice, was not for him too difficult of accomplishment.

‘‘Jolly fine job, I’ll bet!” he added.

“Splendid, as far as pay goes. But apt to be monotonous at times. Daddy says I ought to come home and take care of him in Blaan, and lately I’ve been wondering … Since my mother died two years ago he has been lonely.”

A little shadow dulled the brightness in her eyes. “Thinking of coming to stay with us?”

“Well … rather.”

“Great!” exclaimed James with some emphasis, and then, creeping back into the shell of his shyness as he remembered the Rev. Duncan Nicholson’s friendship with Eileen, he added weakly: “Blaan — what a glorious countryside!”

“And yet so filled with evil things!”

James’s enthusiasm for the scheme was in a moment forgotten in surprise at her tone.

“I say!” He impulsively stretched out a big lean hand to grasp her small one. “Can I help you, Miss Campbell? There’s something pretty far wrong, I can see.”

“There is, but … ”

Eileen stopped, and the slightest suggestion of annoyance appeared in her eyes. A girl’s deep voice had sounded in the doorway.

“Good evening! … I walked down from the hotel. I left my car there for a small repair.”

Eileen rose to greet her guest. Presently, turning to James, she said:

“This is Mr. MacPherson — Miss Dwyer.”

James bowed awkwardly. He saw that the girl possessed characteristics different in many respects from Miss Campbell’s. She was tall, fair-skinned and fair-headed. She wore a green frock, which hid no line of her perfectly moulded figure. Her face was broader than Eileen’s, but clean-cut and in a manner imperious. And yet her first smile to James was soft and entirely feminine.

“Millicent and I are both exiles in London for most of the year,” explained Eileen. “This summer we happened to fix our vacations for the same month. Miss Dwyer — perhaps you know already, Mr. MacPherson — is a niece of Mr. Anderson Ellis.”

“My uncle was telling me of Mr. MacPherson only last night,” said Miss Dwyer, in her slow, husky voice, “in connection with this terrible murder.”

Her grey eyes suddenly regarded James intently.

“You are very clever,” she added.

Eileen seemed to notice nothing unusual in her friend’s remark; but as the latter continued to gaze into his face James felt a cold chill at his heart. She was beautiful and young, but she had said to him, “You are very clever.” … Just like that.

There was a sudden stir in the hallway. Professor Campbell entered the room, his ruddy face smiling. Behind him came the Rev. Duncan Nicholson, Mr. Archibald MacLean, Major David Dallas, Dr. Black, Inspector McMillan and Detective-Inspector McKay. James was surprised, but endeavoured to show it as little as possible.

Introductions were exchanged until the dinner-gong sounded and the strangely assorted company filed through to the dining-room. James, with a foresight as great as he had ever shown in the ring, manoeuvred himself into such a position that at table Eileen placed him quite naturally on her right-hand side. The Rev. Duncan Nicholson, however, sat on her left.

*

Dusk was beginning to fall when Eileen and Miss Dwyer left the dining-room and Professor Campbell asked his guests to smoke. Two shaded incandescent oil-lamps were lit, which spread a flood of light on the white napery and gleaming coffee-cups, leaving the faces of the eight men grouped around the table in soft shadow. James suddenly sensed tension and expectancy in the atmosphere of the room. Everyone seemed to realise that the purpose of his invitation would now be made clear.

Professor Niven Campbell cleared his throat. Though small and stout, the strength of his personality was immediately apparent.

“Gentlemen,” he said, and the mask of good-humour and jollity fell quickly from his face, leaving it worried and sombre, “I have asked you here tonight to discuss with me a matter of the gravest import to the wellbeing of the nation. I have asked you here to aid me in a task which may bring to each of you horror and pain and even death. And before I go farther — before I communicate to you certain information which to know is to be in constant danger — I would give such of you as may desire it a chance to leave my house in safety, while yet there is the opportunity.”

The Professor looked at his guests with a keen and level glance. A restless air ran round the table like a flutter of wind through a grove of trees. Then Dr. Black, his fighting jaw thrust forward, spoke.

‘‘Damn it, Professor!” he exclaimed in his rather high-pitched voice, “get it over! We’ve all a fair idea it concerns these ‘Mistletoe Murders’ that young MacPherson has been so excited about. I for one am not afraid of knowing the truth. And I’m sure none of the others are. Be damned to anyone who would try to electrocute me!”

Professor Campbell smiled crookedly.

“Thank you, Doctor,” he said shortly. “I take it then, that there are no cowards here … The matter of which I am about to speak has to do, as Doctor Black says, with these awful tragedies which occurred on Tuesday evening, and I have chosen you seven gentlemen to hear of it — five of you because of a close connection with the investigations into the death of the Reverend Archibald Allan, and Mr. Nicholson and Mr. MacPherson for a special reason which I shall later explain.”

James noticed the instinctive manner in which the right hand of Detective-Inspector McKay had dropped to the pocket of his jacket, and he marvelled at the calm of Inspector McMillan, who was usually so distressed and uncertain of himself. Like Nicholson, MacLean and Major Dallas, he himself had drilled his features into a semblance of impassivity, though he was burning with excitement and expectation. He allowed himself to wonder, for a fleeting moment, what Eileen was doing and saying in the drawing room. He wished — for what reason he could not tell — that she was not on such friendly terms with Miss Millicent Dwyer.

“To make the matter clear to you,” continued Professor Campbell, leaning forward in his high-backed chair, “I must go back many centuries into a period of twilight knowledge of which few of us realise the full significance. It is a period in the history of the Celtic race which pre-dates even the cult of Druidism; a period of unimaginable terror and sadness, which, nevertheless, was not without a certain beauty …

“In the mist of the years there arose in Britain a religious order of which we have few records, and which by the majority of modem scholars has been completely and erroneously confused with Druidism. I can only hint at certain of its characteristics. We do not know even the name by which it was called; but we do know that its power and influence were greater than the power and influence of ten kings. One might call it a cult of cults — the very essence of later European religions. Of its teaching we know little, for it was a habit of the arch-priests never to allow their doctrines to be put into writing. But one of their leading dogmas was that souls could not be annihilated, but passed after death from one body to another.

“It was a cult having rites and customs of a nature much more terrible than that of Druidism — which did not, it is now believed, require human sacrifices — and its followers were imbued with a fanaticism for evil which is difficult for us to understand in these days of fresh and free Christianity. But those of us who for years have studied the science of this ritual know that in its ceremonies there was a natural loveliness beyond compare. It was a ritual which fused the beauty and sweetness of Nature with those other aspects of living reality which we call evil and awful, but which, in those crude centuries, may have seemed not only appropriate, but also adorable.”

The Professor’s guests were motionless, their faces pale in the yellow lamplight. James’s wide, white forehead was furrowed in an effort of concentration, and he was aware of the puzzled glances of the policemen. The Rev. Duncan Nicholson, however, gave no sign either of strain or amazement. Mr. Archibald MacLean’s rather protruding eyes were staring strangely at the Professor. Dr. Black snipped off the end of a cigar with fierce intentness.

“In the ritual of which I speak,” went on the Professor slowly, “the fire festival took a leading part, and the myth of the Norse god, Balder, stood to the magic of its rites in a manner closely after the relation of theory to practice. It is my belief, however, that the cult was of an even more ancient origin than the myth itself, and those with whom I have laboured always agreed with me that the myth was merely a story which people told to explain this cult and others like it …

Balder, as you know, was so protected that neither fire nor water, metals nor stones, earth nor trees, sickness nor poisons, nor beasts and birds and creeping things would hurt him. All these had sworn to the gods to guard his life and spare him. Only the mistletoe, on account of its insignificance, was omitted in the general request for protection. And an enemy of Balder made a spear of a twig of mistletoe and threw it at the god and pierced him to the heart. And a huge fire was made on Balder’s ship and his dead body was burned amid the lamentations of the gods … That, in brief, is the tale that is told in the younger or prose
Edda
.

“Balder, it is believed by most scholars, represented the oak tree, which had to be cut down and burned at certain seasons to ensure benefits to men. But before the oak could be killed, the mistletoe which grew upon it, and which was the symbol of its life, had to be cut. That was a Druidical belief, common to other European religions. But in the rites of the cult to which I refer other factors were present, factors which differentiate it with certainty from the religion of the Druids. Not only had the oak to be burned, but a living representation of Balder had to be killed also. Not only had the oak to be sacrificed by the symbolic means of the mistletoe, but the human sacrifice had also to be killed by the same instrument.”

James shifted uneasily in his chair, and he passed a hand swiftly through his great mop of red hair. Slowly understanding was beginning to creep into his brain — an understanding of something incredibly evil which he could not before have believed possible.

Professor Campbell took a sip of his coffee before continuing.

‘‘The difficulty which I — and others of whom I shall speak later — encountered at this stage in the unravelling of the rites of the ancient cult was to discover the manner in which the victims were slain by a sprig of mistletoe. It was fairly evident that the mistletoe must stand for something which could actually cause the death of a man or woman. True understanding, however, did not come for months — until I remembered the Aryan reverence for the oak and the association of the tree with the great god of the thunder and of the sky — an association probably merely an inference based on the frequency with which the oak was struck by lightning. And as this idea struck me I recalled also the passage in Pliny which states that the Druids worshipped the mistletoe because they believed it to have fallen from heaven. Could the believers in this other, more ancient, cult have thought that the mistletoe had dropped on the oak as a flash of lightning?

“While I worked at my old manuscripts my notion gradually grew to a certainty. In theory, if not always in practice, the victims of the cult died by lightning — by a thunderbolt from the sky.

“Gentlemen,” said the Professor, “I could give you more intimate details concerning the cult, details which would scarify your very souls … I could tell you of the rites of the burning hand; of the orgies which succeeded their festivals; of the fate of consecrated women, who were always chosen from without the circle of believers. But I have no desire to do more to-night than to provide you with a faint background for what I intend you later to hear … It will be sufficient to say that, like the devotees of Druidism, the followers of the cult met in lonely places — in green glades and tree-covered hillsides — when the moon was high, and held ghastly festival at certain periods of the year. These periods correspond in the most part to the more modern Beltane and Samhain, our own May Day and Hallow’een. But their greatest festival was on Midsummer’s Eve. It was then that the groves shone fair in the moon. It was then that there glistened the green robes of the High Priests. It was then that there sparkled the golden sickles with which they cut down the mistletoe to lay on the naked breasts of the sacrifices. And, gentlemen, this is of the highest importance: a further lesser festival was always held upon the seventh day after Midsummer … ”