Rustication

also by
C
HARLES
P
ALLISER

The Unburied

Betrayals

The Sensationist

The Quincunx

For Marcus

Contents

Foreword

The Journal of Richard Shenstone: 12
^th
of December 1863 to 13
^th
of January 1864

Afterword

Acknowledgments

About the Author

Foreword

W
hat follows is my transcription of a document which has lain unnoticed for many years in the County Records Office in Thurchester. It is a Journal which casts light on a murder that attracted national interest at the time but which, since nobody was ever charged with the crime, was subsequently forgotten.

The book in which it is written is a leatherbound quarto volume of three hundred pages of unlined paper of which the Journal takes up two hundred and eighty. At an unknown date in the past someone had pasted into it a number of the anonymous letters relating to the case. I have reproduced them exactly as and where I found them. One of them, however, was not stuck into the Journal but came from another source and it is the last and the most revealing.

This is part of that letter:

That threat was executed in full.

Near the end of the Journal a police-officer reads out a section of that letter but admits that he has not been allowed to see the whole. I was intrigued by that and, wondering if something crucial had been suppressed, I decided to try to find the original. I will return to that topic in my Afterword.

CP.

The Journal of Richard Shenstone:
12
^th
of December 1863 to 13
^th
of January 1864

Saturday 12
^th
of December, 10 o’clock at night.

I
’m baffled by Mother’s reception of me. I’m sure she blurted out either
William
or
Willy
when I caught her by surprise. But I can’t think of anyone of that name she could have taken me for and I don’t see how she could have been expecting a visitor at such a late hour in this out-of-the-way place. What is even stranger is that she wasn’t pleased to see me.

As for Effie! She was obviously horrified at the sight of her brother.

I wonder how long I will be able to endure this benighted backwater. When I lifted a corner of the curtain and looked out a moment ago I saw nothing but the moon shining palely across the silvery expanse of mud and waves—both so smooth that it’s hard to see where the marsh ends and the sea begins. Nothing. Not a house. Not a light.

I’m astonished that the house is in this state. Almost nothing seems to have been done to make it habitable. Yet they’ve been here for weeks.

And I have lost my trunk! Because that wretched carter who brought me from Thurchester station was afraid of getting stuck in the mud, he forced me to deposit it at a grimy beer-shop along the way. And the brute of a landlord charged me a shilling but would not give me three minutes to unlock it and remove its precious contents. From now on I must keep an account of my expenses and not fall into the old ways. That should not be hard: there is nothing here to spend my money on.

· · ·

Memorandum:
OPENING
BALANCE
:
13s. 4½d
.
EXPENDITURE
: Carriage to Whitminster (
2s. 3d
.) and storage of trunk at 4d. per diem for three days (
1s
.)
TOTAL
EXP
:
3s. 3d
.
FINAL
BALANCE
:
10s. 1½d
.

· · ·

Then 2 hours on foot along a winding muddy way until at last I rounded a threadbare hedgerow and before me lay an inland bay filled by a salt-marsh that spread towards the distant sea like a great black stain of ink on a blotter. In the fading twilight I could just see an ancient house with a muddle of high chimneys like an age-bent hand raised against the grey sky. This truly is the last place in England.

I opened the iron-studded door and found myself in a large hallway with an ancient oak staircase. It had black panelled walls and narrow casement windows. No fire burned in the hearth. The place was so dark and musty that I believed I must have mistaken the house.

I passed through one comfortless chamber after another, ducking my head beneath the low cornices of the doorways. Then in a cramped scullery lit by a flickering oil-lamp, I came suddenly upon a little old woman bent over a sideboard with her back to me. She turned. It was the mater! For a moment she recognised me no better than I had recognised her.

That’s when she said:
Willy? I wasn’t expecting you so early
.

I said:
Who is “Willy”?

Richard? Is that you?
Now she sounded frightened.

Who did you think it was, Mother?

She came towards me and I thought she was going to kiss me but she only stretched out her hand and touched my coat as if she thought I were a phantasm.

Who is the “Willy” you expected?

I did not call you “Willy”. You misheard me. I cried out in astonishment because I didn’t think you were coming until after Christmas
.