Mrs. Humphry Ward - "Marriage a la mode"

Charles Kingsley - "Out of the Deep"

Maurice Joblin - "Cleveland Past and Present"

Ivan Turgenev - "Dream Tales and Prose Poems"

Annual Bibliography of Commonwealth Literature 2007
This paper argues that discourses of love in Ghanaian market literature for youth offer a view into complex negotiations of agency and empowerment. Drawing on Deborah Durham's notion of youth as "social `shifters'" and Francis Nyamnjoh's conception of the "interconnectedness" of agency, I take Ghanaian market literature as one specific case of how African literature for youth foregrounds questions of continuity and change as African societies enter into increasingly complex global relations. In this literature for youth, received notions of love, often constructed out of impressions from American pop and hip hop music, carry new notions of agency that compete with existing "domesticated" forms. Authors like Ike Tandoh and Evelyn Tay employ discourses of love to offer youth alternative avenues for empowerment in a context of socio-economic disenfranchizement. In a creative process of "straddling", this writing both reveals and reproduces the contradictions that obtain in youth configurations of agency.

The Shrieking Pit

A >> Arthur J. Rees >> The Shrieking Pit




Looking up suddenly from his plate, Colwyn caught the waiter's black
eyes fixed on him in a keen penetrating gaze. Meeting the detective's
eyes, Charles instantly lowered his own. But for the latter action
Colwyn would have thought nothing of the incident, for he was aware that
Charles, on account of his deafness, had to watch the lips of people he
was serving in order to read their lips. But if Charles had been merely
watching for him to speak he would not have felt impelled to avert his
gaze when detected. The sudden lowering of his eyes was the swift
unconscious action of a man taken by surprise. The detective realised
that Charles did not accept the reason he had given to account for his
second visit to the inn. Charles evidently suspected that that reason
masked some ulterior motive.

Colwyn finished his dinner and produced his cigar-case. Selecting a
cigar, he lit it with a match from the box Peggy had given him that day.

"Have you ever seen this box before, Charles?" he said, placing the box
on the table.

The waiter picked up the little silver and enamel box and examined it
attentively.

"I have, sir," he said, handing it back. "It is Mr. Penreath's."

"How do you recognise it?"

"By the letters in enamel, sir. I noticed them that night at the dinner
table, when I was holding Mr. Penreath's candlestick while he lit it
with a match from that box."

"Did he put it back in his pocket after lighting the candle?"

"Yes, sir; into his vest pocket."

"It was picked up in Mr. Glenthorpe's room after the murder was
committed. A strong clue, Charles! Many a man has been hanged on less."

"No doubt, sir."

The waiter, balancing a tray on his deformed arm, proceeded to clear the
table. When he had completed his task he asked the detective if he
needed him any more, because if he did not it was time for him to go
into the bar. On Colwyn saying that he needed nothing further he
noiselessly withdrew, steadying the loaded tray with his sound hand.

Colwyn spent the evening sitting by the fire, smoking. It was fortunate
he had plenty to think about, for the inn did not offer any resources in
the way of reading to occupy the mind of the chance visitor to its roof.
There were a few books in the recess by the fireplace, but they
consisted of bound volumes of _The Norfolk Sporting Gazette_ from 1860
to 1870, with an odd volume on _Fishing on the Broads_ and an obsolete
_Farmers' Annual_. The past occupants of the inn had evidently been keen
sportsmen, for there were specimens of stuffed fowl and fish ranged in
glass cases around the walls, and two old rusty fowling pieces and a
fishing rod hung suspended near the ceiling.

Shortly after nine o'clock the innkeeper entered the room with a
candlestick, which he placed on the table. He explained that it was his
custom to go upstairs early, in order to sit with his mother for a
little while before he retired. The poor soul looked for it, he said,
and grew restless if he was late.

"Who is sitting with her at present?" inquired the detective.

"My daughter, sir. She always waits till I go up."

"You never leave her alone, then?"

"Only at night-time, sir. The doctor told me she could be safely left at
night. She sleeps fairly well, considering, though when there's wild
weather I always go in to her. The sound of the wind shrieking across
the marshes from the sea excites her, and we get a lot of that sort of
weather on the Norfolk coast, particularly in the winter months. I wish
I could afford to have her better looked after, but I cannot, and that's
the long and short of it."

"Things are pretty bad with you, Benson?"

"Very bad, indeed, sir. It keeps me awake at night, wondering where it's
all going to end. However, I don't want to burden you with my
troubles--I suppose we all have our own to bear. I merely came in to
bring your candlestick, and to ask you if there is anything you want
before I go to bed. Charles is gone to his room, but Ann is still up."

"Tell Ann she need not sit up on my account. I need nothing further, and
I can find my way to my room. Is it ready yet?"

"Quite, sir. Ann has just been up there, putting on some fresh sheets.
Perhaps you wouldn't mind turning off the gas at the meter as you go
up--it is just underneath the stairs. If you would not mind the trouble
Ann could then go to bed. We keep early hours here, as a rule. There is
nothing to sit up for."

"I'll turn off the gas--I know where the meter is. How is it, Benson,
that the gas is laid on in only two of the rooms upstairs--the rooms Mr.
Glenthorpe used to occupy? It would have been an easy matter to lay it
on to the adjoining rooms, once the pipes had been taken upstairs."

"That's quite true, sir, but the gas was taken upstairs on Mr.
Glenthorpe's account, shortly after he came here. He thought he would
like it, and he paid the bill for having it fixed. But after it was laid
on he rarely used it. He said he found the gaslight trying for his eyes
when he wanted to read in bed, so he got a reading lamp."

"And yet the gas tap was partly turned on in his room the morning after
the murder," remarked Colwyn meditatively.

"Perhaps the murderer turned it on," suggested the innkeeper in a low
tone.

But there was a slight tremor in his voice that did not escape the keen
ears of the detective.

"That is possible, but the point was not cleared up at the trial; it
probably never will be now," he replied, eyeing the innkeeper
attentively. "And the incandescent burner was broken too. Have you had a
new burner attached, Benson?"

"No, sir. The room has never been used since."

"It's a queer thing about that broken burner. That's another point in
this case that was not cleared up at the trial. Who do you think broke
it?"

"How should I know, sir?" His bird's eyes, in their troubled shadow,
turned uneasily from the detective's glance.

"Nevertheless, you can hazard an opinion. Why not? The case is over and
done with now, and Penreath--or Ronald, as he called himself--is
condemned to death. So who do you think broke that burner, Benson?"

"Who else but the murderer, sir?"

"That's the police theory, I know, but I doubt whether Penreath was tall
enough to strike it with his head. It's more than six feet from the
ground." The detective threw a critical glance over the innkeeper's
figure as though he were measuring his height with his eye. "You are
well over six feet, Benson--you might have done it."

It was a chance shot, but the effect was remarkable. The innkeeper swung
his small head on the top of his long neck in the direction of the
detective, with a strange gesture, like a pinioned eagle twisting in a
trap.

"What makes you say that!" he cried, and his voice had a new and
strident note. "I had nothing whatever to do with it."

"What do you mean?" replied the detective sternly. "What do you suppose
I am suggesting?"

"I beg your pardon, sir," replied the other. "The fact is I have not
been myself for some time past."

His voice broke off in an odd tremor, and Colwyn noticed that the long
thin hand he stretched out, as though to deprecate his previous
violence, was shaking violently.

"What's the matter with you, man?" The detective eyed him keenly. "Your
nerve has gone."

"I know it has, sir. What happened in this house a fortnight ago upset
me terribly, and I haven't got over it yet. I have other troubles as
well--private troubles. I've had to sit up with mother a good deal
lately."

"You'd better take a few doses of bromide," said the detective
brusquely. "A man with your nerves should not live in a place like this.
You had better go to bed now. Good night."

"Good night, sir." The innkeeper hurried out of the room without another
word.

Colwyn sat by the fire for some time longer pondering over this
unexpected incident, until the kitchen clock chiming eleven warned him
to go to bed. He turned off the gas at the meter underneath the stairs
as Benson had requested. When he reached the room in which Mr.
Glenthorpe had been murdered, he paused outside the door, and turned the
handle. The door was locked.

As he was about to enter the adjoining bedroom which had been allotted
to him, a slender pencil of light pierced the darkness of the passage
leading off the one in which he stood. As he watched the gleam grew
brighter and broader; somebody was walking along the other passage. A
moment later the innkeeper's daughter came into view, carrying a candle.
She advanced quickly to where the detective was standing.

"I heard you coming upstairs," she explained, in a whisper. "I have been
waiting and listening at my door. I wanted to see you, but it is
difficult for me to do so without the others knowing. So I thought I
would wait. I wanted to let you know that if you wish to see me at any
time--if you need me to do anything--perhaps you would put a note under
my door, and I could meet you down by the breakwater at any time you
appoint. Nobody would see us there."

Colwyn nodded approvingly. Decidedly this girl was not lacking in
resource and intelligence.

"I am so glad you are here," she went on earnestly. "I was afraid, after
I left you to-day, that you might change your mind. I waited at one of
the upstairs windows all the afternoon till I saw you coming. You will
save him, won't you?"

She looked up at him with a faint smile, which, slight as it was, gave
her face a new rare beauty.

"I will try," responded Colwyn, gravely. "Can you tell where the key of
Mr. Glenthorpe's room is kept?"

"It hangs in the kitchen. Do you want it? I will get it for you. If Ann
or Charles see me, they, will not think it as strange as if they saw
you."

She was so eager to be of use to him that she did not wait for his
reply, but ran quickly and noiselessly along the passage, and down the
stairs. In a very brief space she returned with the key, which she
placed in his hand. "Is there anything else I can do?" she asked.

"Nothing, except to tell me where you got the key. I want to put it back
again without anybody knowing it has been used."

"It hangs on the kitchen dresser--the second hook. You cannot mistake
it, because there is a padlock key and one of my father's fishing lines
hanging on the same hook."

"Then that is all you can do. I will let you know if I want to see you
at any time."

"Thank you. Good night!" She was gone without another word.

Colwyn stood at his door watching her until she disappeared into the
passage which led to her own room. Then he turned into his bedroom and
shut the door behind him.

He walked to the window and threw it open. The sea mist, driving over
the silent marshes like a cloud, touched his face coldly as he stood
there, meditating on the strange turn of events which had brought him
back to the inn to pursue his investigations into the murder at the
point where he had left them more than a fortnight before. In that brief
period how much had happened! Penreath had been tried and sentenced to
death for a crime which Colwyn now believed he had not committed.
Chance--no, Destiny--by placing in his hand a significant clue, had
directed his footsteps thither, and left it for his intelligence to
atone for his past blunder before it was too late.

It was with a feeling that the hand of Destiny was upon him that Colwyn
turned from the window and regarded the little room with keen
curiosity. Its drab interior held a secret which was a challenge to his
intelligence to discover. What had happened in that room the night
Ronald slept there? He noted the articles of furniture one by one.
Nothing seemed changed since he had last been in the room, the day after
the murder was committed. There was a washstand near the window, a chest
of drawers, a dressing table and a large wardrobe at the side of the
bed. Colwyn looked at this last piece of furniture with the same
interest he had felt when he saw it the first time. It was far too big
and cumbrous a wardrobe for so small a room, about eight feet high and
five feet in width, and it was placed in the most inconvenient part of
the room, by the side of the bed, not far from the wall which abutted on
the passage. He opened its double doors and looked within. The wardrobe
was empty.

Colwyn made a methodical search of the room in the hope of discovering
something which would throw light on the events of the night of the
murder. Doubtless the room had not been occupied since Penreath had
slept there, and he might have left something behind him--perhaps some
forgotten scrap of paper which might help to throw light on this strange
and sinister mystery. In the detection of crime seeming trifles often
lead to important discoveries, as nobody was better aware than Colwyn.
But though he searched the room with painstaking care, he found nothing.

It was while he was thus engaged that a faint rustle aroused his
attention, and looking towards the corner of the room whence it
proceeded, he saw a large rat crouching by the skirting-board watching
him with malevolent eyes. Colwyn looked round for a weapon with which to
hit it. The creature seemed to divine his intentions, for it scuttled
squeaking across the room, and disappeared behind the wardrobe.

Colwyn approached the wardrobe and pushed it back. As he did so, he had
a curious sensation which he could hardly define. It was as though an
unseen presence had entered the room, and was silently watching him. His
actions seemed not of his own volition; it was as though some force
stronger than himself was urging him on. And, withal, he had the uncanny
feeling that the whole incident of the rat and the wardrobe, and his
share in it, was merely a repetition of something which had happened in
the room before.

The wardrobe moved much more easily than he had expected, considering
its weight and size. There was no rat behind it, but a hole under the
skirting showed where the animal had made its escape. But it was the
space where the wardrobe had stood that claimed Colwyn's attention. The
reason why it had been placed in its previous position was made plain.
The damp had penetrated the wall on that side, and had so rotted the
wall paper that a large portion of it had fallen away.

In the bare portion of the wall thus revealed, about two feet square,
was a wooden trap door, fastened by a button. Colwyn unfastened the
button, and opened the door. A black hole gaped at him.

The light of the candle showed that the wall was hollow, and the trap
opened into the hollow space. There was nothing unusual in such a door
in an old house; Colwyn had seen similar doors in other houses built
with the old-fashioned thick walls. It was the primitive ventilation of
a past generation; the doors, when opened, permitted a free current of
air to percolate through the building, and get to the foundations. But a
further examination of the hole revealed something which Colwyn had
never seen before--a corresponding door on the other side of the wall.
The other door opened into the bedroom which had been occupied by Mr.
Glenthorpe. Colwyn pushed it with his hand, but it did not yield. It was
doubtless fastened with a button on the outside, like the other.

Colwyn, scrutinising the second door closely, noticed that the wood was
worm-eaten and shrunken. For that reason it fitted but loosely into the
aperture of the wall, and on the one side there was a wide crack which
arrested Colwyn's attention. It ran the whole length of the door, along
the top--that is, horizontally--and was, perhaps, a quarter of an inch
wide.

With the tightened nerves which presage an important discovery, Colwyn
felt for his pocket knife, opened the largest blade, and thrust it into
the crack. It penetrated up to the handle. He ran the knife along the
whole length of the crack without difficulty. There was no doubt it
opened into the next room.

Colwyn closed the trap-door carefully, and started to push the wardrobe
back into its previous position. As he did so, his eye fell upon several
tiny scraps of paper lying in the vacant space. He stooped, and picked
them up. They were the torn fragments of a pocket-book leaf, which had
been written upon. Colwyn endeavoured to place the fragments together
and read the writing. But some of the pieces were missing, and he could
only decipher two disjointed words--"Constance" and "forgive."

Slowly, almost mechanically, the detective felt for his pipe, lit it,
and stood for a long time at the open window, gazing with set eyes into
the brooding darkness, wrapped in profound thought, thinking of his
discoveries and what they portended.



CHAPTER XX


Colwyn was astir with the first glimmering of a grey dawn. He wanted to
test the police theory that the murder was committed by climbing from
one bedroom to the other, but he did not desire to be discovered in the
experiment by any of the inmates of the inn.

The window of his bedroom was so small that it was difficult to get
through, and there was a drop of more than eight feet from the ledge to
the hillside. After one or two attempts Colwyn got out feet foremost,
and when half way through wriggled his body round until he was able to
grasp the window-ledge and drop to the ground. The fall caused his heels
to sink deeply into the clay of the hillside, which was moist and sticky
after the rain.

Colwyn closely examined the impression his heels had made, and then
walked along until he stood underneath the window of the next room. It
was an easy matter to climb through this window, which was larger, and
closer to the ground--five feet from the hillside, at the most. Colwyn
sprang on to the ledge, and tried the window with his hand. It was
unlocked. He pushed up the lower pane, and entered the room.

From the window he walked straight to the bedside, noting, as he walked,
that his footsteps left on the carpet crumbs of the red earth from
outside, similar to those which had been found in the room the morning
after the murder. He next examined the broken incandescent burner in the
chandelier in the middle of the room, and took careful measurements of
the distances between the gas jet, the bedside and the door, observing,
as he did so, that the gaslight was almost in a line with the foot of
the bed. That was a point he had marked previously when Superintendent
Galloway had suggested that the incandescent burner was broken by the
murderer striking it with the corpse he was carrying. Colwyn had found
it difficult to accept that point of view at the time, but now, in the
light of recent discoveries, and the new theory of the crime which was
gradually taking shape in his mind, it seemed almost incredible that the
murderer, staggering under the weight of his ghastly burden, should have
taken anything but the shortest track to the door.

After examining the bed with an attentive eye, Colwyn next looked for
the small door in the wall. It was not apparent: the wall-paper appeared
to cover the whole of the wall on that side of the room in unbroken
continuity. But a closer inspection revealed a slight fissure or crack,
barely noticeable in the dark green wall-paper, extending an inch or so
beyond a small picture suspended near the door of the room. When the
picture was taken down the crack was more apparent, for it ran nearly
the whole length of the space. The door had been papered over when the
room was last papered, which was a long time ago, judging by the dingy
condition of the wall-paper, and the crack had been caused by the
shrinking of the woodwork of the door, as Colwyn had noticed the
previous night.

Colwyn let himself out of the room with the key Peggy had given him,
locked the door behind him, and took the key down to the kitchen. It was
still very early, and nobody was stirring. Having hung the key on the
hook of the dresser, he returned to his room.

At breakfast time that morning Charles informed him, in his husky
whisper, that he had to go over to Heathfield that day, to ascertain why
the brewer had not sent a consignment of beer, which was several days
overdue. Charles' chief regret was that for some hours his guest would
be left to the tender mercies of Ann, and he let it be understood that
he had the poorest opinion of women as waitresses. But he promised to
return in time to minister to Colwyn's comforts at dinner. Somewhat
amused, Colwyn told the fat man not to hurry back on his account, as Ann
could look after him very well.

As Colwyn was smoking a cigar in front of the inn after breakfast, he
saw Charles setting out on his journey, and watched his short fat form
toil up the rise and disappear on the other side. Immediately
afterwards, the gaunt figure of the innkeeper emerged from the inn,
prepared for a fishing excursion. He hesitated a moment on seeing
Colwyn, then walked towards him and informed him that he was going to
have a morning's fishing in a river stream a couple of miles away,
having heard good accounts in the bar overnight of the fish there since
the recent rain.

"Who will look after the inn, with both you and Charles away?" asked
Colwyn, with a smile.

The innkeeper, carefully bestowing a fishing-line in the capacious side
pocket of his faded tweed coat, replied that as the inn was out of beer,
and not likely to have any that day, there was not much lost by leaving
it. That seemed to exhaust the possibilities of the conversation, but
the innkeeper lingered, looking at his guest as though he had something
on his mind.

"I do not know if you care for fishing, sir," he remarked, after a
rather lengthy pause. "If you do, I should be happy at any time to show
you a little sport. The fishing is very good about this district--as
good as anywhere in Norfolk."

Colwyn was quick to divine what was passing in the innkeeper's mind. He
had been brooding over the incident in the bar parlour of the previous
night, and hoped by this awkward courtesy to remove the impression of
his overnight rudeness from his visitor's mind. As Colwyn was equally
desirous of allaying his fears, he thanked him for his offer, and stood
chatting with him for some moments. His pleasant and natural manner had
the effect of putting the innkeeper at his ease, and there was an
obvious air of relief in his bearing as he wished the detective good
morning and departed on his fishing expedition.

Colwyn spent the morning in a solitary walk along the marshes, thinking
over the events of the night and morning. He returned to the inn for an
early lunch, which was served by Ann, who gossiped to him freely of the
small events which had constituted the daily life of the village since
his previous visit. The principal of these, it seemed, had been the
reappearance, after a long period of inaction, of the White Lady of the
Shrieking Pit--an apparition which haunted the hut circles on the rise.
Colwyn, recalling that Duney and Backlos imagined they had encountered a
spectre the night they saw Penreath on the edge of the wood, asked Ann
who the "White Lady" was supposed to be. Ann was reticent at first. She
admitted that she was a firm believer in the local tradition, which she
had imbibed with her mother's milk, but it was held to be unlucky to
talk about the White Lady. However, her feminine desire to impart
information soon overcame her fears, and she launched forth into full
particulars of the legend. It appeared that for generations past the
deep pit on the rise in which Mr. Glenthorpe's body had been thrown had
been the haunt of a spirit known as the White Lady, who, from time to
time, issued from the depths of the pit, clad in a white trailing
garment, to wander along the hut circles on the rise, shrieking and
sobbing piteously. Whose ghost she was, and why she shrieked, Ann was
unable to say. Her appearances were infrequent, with sometimes as long
as a year between them, and the timely warning she gave of her coming by
shrieking from the depths of the pit before making her appearance,
enabled folk to keep indoors and avoid her when she was walking. As long
as she wasn't seen by anybody, not much harm was done, but the sight of
her was fatal to the beholder, who was sure to come to a swift and
violent end.

Ann related divers accredited instances of calamity which had followed
swiftly upon an encounter with the White Lady, including that of her own
sister's husband, who had seen her one night going home, and the very
next day had been kicked by a horse and killed on the spot. Ann's
grandmother, when a young girl, had heard her shrieking one night when
she was going home, but had had the presence of mind to fall flat on her
face until the shrieking had ceased, by which means she avoided seeing
her, and had died comfortably in her bed at eighty-one in consequence.

Colwyn gathered from the countrywoman's story that the prevailing
impression in the village was that Mr. Glenthorpe's murder was due to
the interposition of the White Lady of the Shrieking Pit. The White
Lady, after a long silence, had been heard to shriek once two nights
before the murder, but the warning had not deterred Mr. Glenthorpe from
taking his nightly walk on the rise, although Ann, out of her liking and
respect for the old gentleman, had even ventured to forget her place
and beg and implore him not to go. But he had laughed at her, and said
if he met the White Lady he would stop and have a chat with her about
her ancestors. Those were his very words, and they made her blood run
cold at the time, though she little thought how soon he would be
repenting of his foolhardiness in his coffin. If he had only listened to
her he might have been alive that blessed day, for she hadn't the
slightest doubt he met the White Lady that night in his walk, and his
doom was brought about in consequence.

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