MASQUES OF SATAN (4 page)

‘Is that console table William Kent?’ asked Jack.

‘Not a bad guess, sir,’ said the man, nodding slightly. ‘Not a bad guess. As a matter of fact both the console table and the pier glass are by Matthias Locke, circa 1745, typical of his rococo style.’

‘They’re very fine,’ said Jack, hoping to restore some of his lost prestige. ‘It’s a pity the glass in the mirror is not original.’

‘How very observant of you, sir. How very observant. It’s not many people as notice that. Those who come in to the Grey Bedroom are not always great observers as a rule. No, the glass, as you so rightly remark, is new, and thereby hangs a tale, as they say. Would you like me to tell the story? It might amuse the little ones too,’ he said, indicating, but not looking at, Peter and Andrew. They, for once, had lost their restlessness and appeared to be fascinated by the man with the pebble glasses.

‘Now one of the last owners of the hall, as you know, was Sir Everard Ormerod-Cheke, who was British Consul in Caracas, Venezuela during the Second World War years. Well, shortly after the war a book came out concerning the
Graf von Hindenburg
incident. Would you remember that, sir? I’m sure you boys do. The
Hindenburg
was a Nazi pocket battleship which was being chased by the Royal Navy in 1940 and entered the neutral port of Caracas for refuelling and repair. It caused a diplomatic incident. Now, our Navy had it trapped in there, but somehow the
Hindenburg
managed to escape under cover of darkness, and Sir Everard, who was the Consul, as I said, was blamed for allowing it to do so. Then this book claimed Sir Everard deliberately connived at the escape. Of course, the book was not published in England because of the libel laws, but the rumours got about, and Sir Everard, he couldn’t bear the disgrace. In fact it bothered him so much that he took his own life.’

‘How?’ asked Peter, the oldest, who by this time was thoroughly gripped. Maggie was unhappy with the turn that the conversation had taken, but she made no move to stop it yet, knowing how scornful her husband would be if she tried to censor proceedings.

‘Just what I was about to tell you, young sir,’ said the man. ‘He cut his throat in front of that very pier glass you are looking at.’ There were gasps from the boys. ‘And if you two lads look closely at the marble surface of the table underneath it, you can just see faint traces of his blood still there.’ He pointed at two shadowy ghosts of splashes on the greenish grey variegated surface of the marble.

‘Look, mum! Blood!’ said Andrew. Maggie closed her eyes.

‘It’s been washed many times, of course,’ said the man, ‘but it’s almost impossible to get bloodstains completely out of marble once it’s sunk in.’

‘You haven’t explained about the glass,’ said Jack, who felt that a call to order was needed.

‘Ah, yes, well I was coming to that. Now after Sir Everard died, his son Jocelyn becomes master of the hall. Well, Jocelyn was very fond, as you might say, of the bottle. He takes over  the Grey Bedroom here as his own, not minding that his father had died in it. In fact he takes something of a pride in doing so. He and Sir Everard never got on, you see. Well, late one night the servants hear a terrible crashing and a crying out from this very room. They come in here and there’s Mr Jocelyn lying on the floor, and the mirror all smashed, and it turns out he’s thrown a half empty gin bottle at it. Mr Jocelyn, he says he saw something in the mirror, he doesn’t say what, but he had been badly drink taken, and it was not long after that that they had to put him into an institution for his problem. And that’s how the Hall comes to be sold and with the National Trust.’ It would appear that to the man in pebble glasses this constituted a happy ending.

‘There you see, boys,’ said Jack rallying from the shock of the narrative. ‘That is how once successful families decline. The values of hard work and responsibility fall by the wayside as soon as bad habits set in. Remember that. Learn from it. Now then, this glass cabinet looks interesting. What’s in here?’

The glass case which stood against the wall to the right of the bed contained three items. There was an oval photograph of a heavy-lidded, languid young man with a drooping, well-groomed moustache, dressed in the aesthetic style of the 1890s. There were two sheets of paper on which some verse had been written in an elegant, flowing, but near illegible hand. The title was just decipherable: ‘A Vilanelle of Ladies Long Dead’. The third item was a book. It was a slim quarto, leather bound, and open at the title page, which had been designed by Beardsley. The wording read:

‘THE MASQUE OF SATAN

A Dramatic Phantasy

By Lord Deverell Cheke’

And at the foot of the page:

‘Leonard Smithers, Dial Arcade, 1897’

‘Ah!’ said Jack. ‘A Leonard Smithers with Beardsley designs, This must be a valuable book.’

‘Quite correct, sir. It is valuable and also extremely rare. Unknown to the British Library. This is in fact the only copy in existence. It was written by Lord Deverell himself, the last Earl that is, sir, and his family destroyed all but this one copy after his death.’

‘Why?’ asked Peter.

‘Shhh!’ said Maggie.

‘Lord Deverell was a younger son and not expected to inherit. He was the literary one of the family. Rather frowned on generally — and he did mix with some curious people. His writing output was quite small. A villanelle of his was published in
The Yellow Book
, I believe, and then he wrote
The Masque of Satan
. He was involved in various occult societies at the time, and the piece is supposed to contain a number of coded references to their practices, so
they
were outraged, as well as all the decent folk. Only Leonard Smithers had the courage to publish. Even the great Beardsley himself is said to have regretted his illustrations, and destroyed the original drawings shortly before his death in 1898.  I can only quote to you the Prologue.

‘Night’s canker stains the sky with yellow blood

And strikes out pallor from the leprous day;

Under a dome of shadows let me brood

And blindly stare upon my darkling way.

Lost in these mortal thoughts I stand before

The gilded portals of the House of Sin

Where once a harlot led me to the door, 

A stainless scarlet youth, and took me in.

Undrowned Narcissus that I was, unschooled

In all the labyrinthine ways of vice,

I drank the ancient ruby vintage, cooled

In three hard circles of Eternal Ice.

I wallowed in the pallid bowels of death,

Frail bodies broken on the lips of Lust,

The pain of innocents, their startled breath,

And white flesh riven by dark weals of rust.

Now in the cobweb chains of sickened age

I call upon the goat-foot God of old.

Give me the sinew once again to rage

Kindle my cravings ere my sins grow cold!

O spice with sorrow my dull soul of sense,

And brand me with Infernal recompense!’

‘Somewhat lurid, you will agree. The rest of the poem is even worse, and anyway too obscene to quote. What the family objected to, I understand, was not so much that he had written
The Masque of Satan
as that he had put his name to it. Shortly after publication he was packed off to France. His elder brother Edward, who by this time had become the ninth Earl, wanted nothing to do with him and conceded Lord Deverell a pitiful allowance provided that he remained abroad. Well, in 1906 the ninth Earl dies unexpectedly in a shooting accident, and, as he had no heirs, Lord Deverell inherits the title and the estate. So the executors must go over to France to find him. They have the devil of a job locating him, and when they do he is living in an attic in Montmartre with an elderly lady of very doubtful reputation, as you might say. He has ruined himself with drink and other noxious substances; and he is dying of what you might call a social disease caught in France. But, sick as he was, they take him home to Blakiston, and to this very bedroom. 

‘Lord Deverell’s mother was still living and devoted herself to his care. By this time he could hardly walk and his mind had gone, so they kept him in that wheelchair beside the bed. You boys have a good look at it.’ Peter and Andrew went over eagerly to inspect the chair while Maggie looked on. She hated herself for not doing something to stop this horrid little man, but she too was fascinated. ‘Now boys, you see those leather straps on the arms? And the belt round the middle? That’s how they used to hold him in his chair, because he tried to escape many times. He hated this room, and he wanted to move somewhere else, but his mother wouldn’t let him. No one knows why. I suppose she wanted to keep his wretched condition as secret as possible. By this time he was suffering from terrible dreams and delusions and most of them were centred round that door there.’ He pointed.

‘To the Black Room?’

‘To the Black Room, exactly, sir.’

‘Can we go into the Black Room?’ asked Andrew.

‘No. We don’t usually allow visitors into the Black Room. Well, Lord Deverell, as I may call him, though he was the Earl of course, had these delusions that people with strange dark heads came out of the Black Room at night when he was alone in his bed. He said they came with little pipes and straws which they put into his ears and into his feet, and with those straws they sucked out his blood and juices. Those were the words he used: “They’re sucking away my blood and juices.” Of course it was all madness, but they couldn’t persuade him out of it. He was too far gone. They had the door locked and bolted; they even had that chest of drawers put against it, but still the people with the straws and the heads “like a swarm of buzzing flies”, as he put it, came out at night to suck away his blood and juices.

‘Well, he didn’t last long. He was found dead one morning on that bed in this very room, which was only to be expected considering how sick he was. But one odd thing was noticed which nobody could explain. On the morning the servants came into the Grey Bedroom to find him dead they found that the door of the Black Room was open. As for the chest of drawers that had been set against the door, someone had put it back in its usual position against the wall. Over there.’ He pointed once again.

There was a silence while all four of the Protheroes stared as if hypnotised at the very unremarkable early nineteenth century commode which had failed to protect the tenth Earl from his demons. The last onslaught from the man with the pebble glasses had left them stunned. Eventually Jack, who felt on behalf of his family, that enough was enough, spoke.

‘Thank you, yes, very good, You have been very informative, unlike some others I could mention, but really we must be on our way. Thank you, Mr, er— I’m sorry, I didn’t catch your name.’

‘My name is Cheke, Stanley Cheke, sir. Yes, I am connected with the family. Distantly. Very distantly, you might say. But just before you go, if I might draw your attention to the fireplace and mantelpiece?’

‘Yes,’ said Jack. ‘Nice piece but nothing spectacular, if you don’t mind my saying so.’ It was of scintillating pure white marble and of a relatively plain neo-classical design, but impeccably executed.

‘Ah, there, you might be wrong, sir. Finest Carrara marble, that is. Acquired in Venice by the seventh Earl, Francis, Viscount Aylsham as he then was, that being his courtesy title as the eldest son, on his Grand Tour of Italy in 1773. Notice the Satyr masks at the capitals of the pilasters on either side. Said to have been executed by the young Antonio Canova himself.’