John Morley - "Critical Miscellanies, Volume I (of 3)"

P. G. Wodehouse - "The Man With Two Left Feet"

Henry A. Shute - "'Sequil'"

Pedro Sarmiento de Gamboa - "History of the Incas"

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




"I remembered the key in the morning when Ann told me Mr. Glenthorpe's
room was empty, but I dared not remove it then because I knew Ann must
have seen it. And later on, when you were questioning me about the key
in the door, I was afraid to tell you about the second key, because I
knew you would question me.

"When I learnt from Ann that Mr. Penreath had left early in the morning,
and wouldn't stay for breakfast, I felt sure it was he who had committed
the murder. It was a little later that Charles took me aside in the bar
and told me that he had walked up to the rise early that morning to see
if everything was all right, and that I had left traces of my footprints
across the clay to the mouth of the pit. I was very much upset when I
heard this, for I knew the body was sure to be found. But Charles said
that, as things turned out, it was a very lucky accident.

"Charles said there was no doubt Mr. Penreath was the murderer. He had
not only cleared out, but the knife he had used at dinner had
disappeared. Charles said he had not missed the knife the night before,
but he had discovered the loss when counting the cutlery that morning.
If the police found out that it was his boots which made the prints
leading to the pit it would only be another point against him, and as he
was sure to be hanged in any case the best thing I could do was to go
and inform Constable Queensmead of Mr. Glenthorpe's disappearance and
Mr. Penreath's departure, but to keep silence about my own share in
carrying the body to the pit. Even if the murderer denied removing the
body nobody would believe him. I thought the advice good, and I followed
it. I don't know whether I could have kept it up if I had been
cross-questioned, but from first to last nobody seemed to have the least
suspicion of me. The only time I was really afraid was when one of you
gentlemen asked me about the key in the outside of the door, but you
passed it over and went on to something else.

"And now you know the whole truth. But I should like to say that I kept
silence about carrying the body away because I didn't think I was
injuring anybody. I believed Mr. Penreath to be guilty. Now you tell me
he is innocent. If I had had any idea of that I would have told the
truth at once, even though you had hanged me for it."



CHAPTER XXVIII


"You're a nice scoundrel, Benson," said Superintendent Galloway, nodding
his head at the innkeeper with a kind of ferocious banter. "You're
really a first-class villain, upon my soul! But this precious story with
which you've tried to bamboozle us is not complete. Would it be putting
too much strain on your inventive faculties to ask you, while you are
about it, to give us your version of how the money which was stolen from
Mr. Glenthorpe came to be hidden in the pit in which you flung his
body?"

"But I didn't know the money was hidden in the pit," said the wretched
man, glancing uneasily at the pocket-book, which was still lying on the
table. "I never saw the money, though I've confessed to you that I would
have taken it if I had seen it. That's the truth, sir--every word I've
told you to-night is true! Charles will bear me out."

"I've no doubt he will. I'll have something to say to that scoundrel
later on. There's a pair of you. I've no doubt he caught you in the act
of carrying away the body of your victim, and that you bribed him to
keep silence. You planned together to let an innocent man go to the
gallows in order to save your own skin. Now, my man----"

"Wait a moment, Galloway."

It was Colwyn who spoke. The innkeeper's story had been to him like a
finger of light in a murky depth, revealing unseen and unimagined
abominations, but supplying him with those missing pieces of the puzzle
for which he had long and vainly searched. During the brief colloquy
between Galloway and the innkeeper his brain had been busy fitting
together the whole intricate design of knavery.

"I want to ask a question," he continued, in answer to the other's
glance of inquiry. "What time was it you went to Mr. Glenthorpe's
room--the first time I mean, Benson. Can you fix it definitely?"

"Yes, sir. I kept looking at my watch in my room, waiting for the time
to pass. It was twenty past eleven the last time I looked, and I left my
room about five minutes later."

"Was it raining then?"

"Yes, sir, but not so hard as previously, and it stopped altogether
before I entered the room, though the wind was blowing."

"That is as I thought. Benson's story is true, Galloway."

"What!" The police officer's vociferous exclamation was in striking
contrast to the detective's quiet tones. "How do you make that out?"

"He couldn't have committed the murder. Mr. Glenthorpe was killed during
the storm, between eleven and half-past. Benson says he didn't enter the
room till nearly half-past eleven."

"If that's all you're going on----"

"It isn't." There was a trace of irritation in the detective's voice.
"But Benson's story fills in the gaps of my reconstruction in a
remarkable way--so completely, that he couldn't have invented it to save
his life, because he does not know all we know. In this extraordinarily
complicated case the times are everything. My original theory was right.
There were two persons in the room the night of the murder--three,
really, but Peggy doesn't affect the reconstruction one way or the
other. The murderer, who carried an umbrella to shield himself from the
rain, entered the room about twenty past eleven. He murdered Mr.
Glenthorpe, took the money, and escaped the same way he entered--by the
window. Benson entered by the door at half-past eleven, certainly not
later, and after standing at the bedside for two or three minutes,
rushed downstairs, as he related, leaving his candle burning at the
bedside. During his absence downstairs his daughter entered the room.
Benson returned for the candle and found it gone. Had he returned a
minute or two earlier he would have seen his daughter carrying it away,
because in her story to me she said she thought she heard somebody
creeping up the stairs as she left the room. I thought at the time that
she imagined this, but now I have very little doubt that it was her
father she heard, going upstairs again to get the candle. Finally,
Benson, after planning it with Charles, removed the body to the pit some
time after midnight."

"This is mere guess-work. Let us stick to facts. On Benson's own
confession he entered the room nefariously and removed the dead man's
body."

"Yes, but it was a dead body when he got there--just dead. Mr.
Glenthorpe was alive and well not ten minutes before."

"Oh, come, Mr. Colwyn, this is going too far," Galloway expostulated.
"Again, I say, let us have no guess-work."

"This is not guess-work. There can be no doubt that the murderer left
the room by the window just before Benson entered it by the door."

"How do you know that?" asked Galloway.

"_Because he was watching Benson from the window._"

Galloway looked startled.

"You go too deep for me," he said. "Was it Penreath who got out of the
window?"

"No, Penreath, like Benson, was the victim of a deep and subtle
villain."

"Then who was it?"

Before Colwyn could reply a shriek rang out--a single hoarse and
horrible cry, which went reverberating and echoing over the marshes,
rising to a piercing intensity at its highest note, and then ceasing
suddenly. In the hush that ensued the chief constable looked nervously
at Colwyn.

"It came from the rise," he said in a voice barely raised above a
whisper. "Do you think----"

Colwyn read the unspoken thought in his mind.

"I'll go and see what it was," he said briefly.

He opened the door and went out. In the passage he encountered Ann
shaking and trembling, with a face blanched with terror.

"It came from the pit, sir--the Shrieking Pit," she whispered. "It's the
White Lady. Don't leave me, I'm like to drop. God a' mercy, what's
that?" she cried, finding her voice in a fresh access of terror as a
heavy knock smote the door. "For God's sake, don't 'ee go, sir, don't
'ee go, as you value your life. It's the White Lady at the door, come to
take her toll again from this unhappy house. You be mad to face her,
sir--it's certain death."

But Colwyn loosened himself quickly from her detaining grasp, and strode
to the door. As he passed the bar he caught a glimpse of a ring of
cowering frightened faces within, huddled together like sheep, and
staring with saucer eyes. The mist spanned the doorway like a sheet.

"Who's there?" he cried.

"It's me, sir." Constable Queensmead stepped out of the mist into the
passage, looking white and shaken. "Something's happened up at the pit.
While I was watching from the corner of the wood I saw somebody appear
out of the mist and come creeping up the rise towards the pit. I waited
till he got to the brink, and when he made to climb down, I knew he was
the man you were after, so I went over to the pit. He had disappeared
inside, but I could hear the creepers rustling as he went down. After a
bit, I heard him coming up again, tugging and straining at the creepers,
and gasping for breath. When he was fairly out, I turned my torch on him
and told him to stand still. It is difficult to say exactly how it
happened, sir, but when he saw he was trapped he made a kind of spring
backwards, slipped on the wet clay, lost his balance, and fell back into
the pit. I sprang forward and tried to save him, but it was too late. He
caught at the creepers as he fell, hung for a second, then fell back
with a loud cry."

"Who was it, Queensmead?"

"Charles, the waiter, sir."

"We must get him out at once," said Colwyn. "We shall need a rope and
some men. Can you get some ropes, Queensmead? There's some men in the
bar--we'll get them to help.

"I don't think they're likely to come, sir. They're all too frightened
of the Shrieking Pit, and the ghost."

"I'll go and talk to them. Meanwhile, you go and get ropes."

Colwyn returned to the bar parlour and, after explaining to Mr.
Cromering and Galloway what had happened, went into the bar.

"Men," said Colwyn, "Charles has fallen into the pit on the rise, and I
need the help of some of you to get him out. Queensmead has gone for
ropes. Who will come with me?"

There was no response. The villagers looked at each other in silence,
and moved uneasily. Then a man in jersey and sea-boots spoke:

"None of us dare go up to th' pit, ma'aster."

"Why not?"

"Life be sweet, ma'aster. It be a suddint and bloody end to meet th'
White Lady of th' pit. Luke what's happened to Charles, who went out of
this bar not ten minutes agone! Who knows who she may take next?"

"Very well, then stay where you are. You are a lot of cowards," said
Colwyn, turning away.

The faces of the men showed that the epithet rankled, as Colwyn intended
that it should. There was a brief pause, and then another fisherman
stepped forward and said:

"I'm a Norfolk man, and nobbut agoin' to say I'm afeered. I'll go wi'
yow, ma'aster."

"If yower game, Tom, I'll go too," said another.

By the time Queensmead returned with the ropes there was no lack of
willing helpers, and the party immediately set forth. When they arrived
at the pit Colwyn said that it would be best for two men to descend by
separate ropes, so as to be able to carry Charles to the surface in a
blanket if he were injured, and not killed. Colwyn had brought a blanket
from the inn for the purpose.

"I'll go down, for one," said the seaman who had acted as spokesman in
the bar. "I'm used to tying knots and slinging a hammock, so maybe I
can make it a bit easier for the poor chap if he's not killed outright."

"And I'll go with you," said Colwyn.

Mr. Cromering drew the detective aside.

"My good friend," he said, "do you think it is wise for you to descend?
This man Charles, if he is still alive, may be actuated by feelings of
revenge towards you, and seek to do you an injury."

"I am not afraid of that," returned Colwyn. "I laid the trap for him,
and it is my duty to go down and bring him up."

Colwyn left the chief constable and returned to the pit. The next moment
he and the seaman commenced the descent. They carried electric torches,
and took with them a blanket and a third rope. They were carefully
lowered until the torches they carried twinkled more faintly, and
finally vanished in the gloom. A little while afterwards the strain on
the ropes slackened. The rescuers had reached the bottom of the pit. A
period of waiting ensued for those on top, until a jerk of the ropes
indicated the signal for drawing up again. The men on the surface pulled
steadily. Soon the torches were once more visible down the pit, and then
the lanterns on the surface revealed Colwyn and the fisherman,
supporting between them a limp bundle wrapped in the blanket, and tied
to the third rope. As they reached the air they were helped out, and the
burden they carried was laid on the ground near the mouth of the pit.
The blanket fell away, exposing the face of Charles, waxen and still in
the rays of the light which fell upon it.

"Dead?" whispered Mr. Cromering.

"Dying," returned Colwyn. "His back is broken."

The dying man unclosed his eyelids, and his dark eyes, keen and
brilliant as ever, roved restlessly over the group who were standing
around him. They rested on Colwyn, and he lifted a feeble hand and
beckoned to him. The detective knelt beside him, and rested his head on
his arm. The white lips formed one word:

"Closer."

Colwyn bent his head nearer, and those standing by could see the dying
man whispering into the detective's ear. He spoke with an effort for
some minutes, and hurriedly, like one who knew that his time was short.
Then he stopped suddenly, and his head fell back grotesquely, like a
broken doll's. Colwyn felt his heart, and rose to his feet.

"He is dead," he said.



CHAPTER XXIX


"There are several things that I do not understand," said Superintendent
Galloway to Colwyn a little later. "How were you able to decide so
quickly that Benson had told the truth when he declared that he had not
committed the murder, after he had made the damning admission that he
had removed the body?"

"Partly because it was extremely unlikely that Benson could have
invented a story which fitted so nicely with the facts. The slightest
mistake in his times would have proved him to be a liar. But I had more
than that to go upon. I said this afternoon that my reconstruction was
not wholly satisfactory, because there were several loose ends in it. At
that time I believed he was the murderer, and I was anxious to frighten
the truth out of him in order to see where my reconstruction was at
fault. His story proved that my original conception of the crime was the
correct one, and my mistake was in departing from it, and ignoring some
of my original clues in order to square the new facts with a fresh
theory. I should never have lost sight of my first conviction that there
were two persons in Mr. Glenthorpe's room the night he was murdered.

"When Benson told his story I asked myself, Could Charles' conduct be
dictated by the desire to have a hold over Benson--with a view to
blackmail later on? But he was not likely to risk his own neck by
becoming an accomplice in the concealment of the murdered man's body!
Charles, if he were innocent himself, must have thought that Benson was
the murderer. It was impossible that he could have come to any other
conclusion. He discovers a man washing blood off his hands at midnight,
and this man admits to him that he has just come from a room which he
had no right to enter, and found a dead man there. Why had Charles
believed--or pretended to believe--Benson's story?

"It came to me suddenly, with the recollection of the line under the
murdered man's window--one of the clues which I had discarded--and the
whole of this baffling sinister mystery became clear in my mind. The
murder was committed by Charles, who got out of the window by which he
had entered just before Benson came into the room. Charles saw a light
in the room he had left, and returned to the window to investigate.
Crouching outside the window, he saw Benson in the room, examining the
body, and it came into his mind as he watched that his employer had
conceived the same idea as himself--had seized on the presence of a
stranger staying at the inn in order to rob Mr. Glenthorpe, hoping that
the crime would be attributed to the man who slept in the next room.
Charles was quick to see how Benson's presence in the room might be
turned to his own advantage. Charles had taken precautions, in
committing the murder, to leave clues in the room which should direct
suspicion to Penreath, but the innkeeper's visit to the room suggested
to him an even better plan for securing his own safety. When Benson left
the room Charles got through the window again, and followed him
downstairs.

"Charles' story, told to me when he was dying, filled in the gaps which
I have omitted. He said that he watched the whole of Benson's movements
from the window. He saw him searching for the money, saw him feel the
body, and saw the blood on his hands. When Benson turned to leave the
room he forgot the candle, and it was then that the idea of following
him leapt into Charles' mind. He divined that Benson would go downstairs
and wash the blood off his hands. Charles' idea was to go after him and
surprise him in the act. He followed him swiftly, and was never more
than a few feet behind. While Benson was striking a match and lighting
the kitchen candle Charles slipped into his own room, lit his own
candle, and then emerged from his door as though he had been disturbed
in his sleep. The rest of his plan was easily carried out through the
fears of Benson, who agreed, in his own interests, to conceal the body
of the man whom the other had murdered.

"The clue by which Penreath was virtually convicted--the track of
bootmarks to the pit--was an accidental one so far as Charles was
concerned. It is strange to think that Chance, which removed the clues
Charles deliberately placed in the room, should have achieved Charles'
aim by directing suspicion to Penreath in a different, yet more
convincing manner.

"The murderer's revelation clears up those points which I was unable to
settle this afternoon. He entered Mr. Glenthorpe's room during the
heaviest part of the storm. He carried a box, under his arm, because he
was too short to get into the window without something to stand on, he
shielded himself from the rain with an umbrella, which got caught on the
nail by the window, and he lit a tallow candle which he had brought from
the bar.

"Another clue, which I originally discovered and laid aside, is also
explained. The wound in Mr. Glenthorpe's body struck me as an unusual
one. You heard Sir Henry Durwood say, in answer to my questions, that
the blow was a slanting one, struck from the left side, entering almost
parallel with the ribs, yet piercing the heart on the right side. The
manner in which Mr. Glenthorpe's arms were thrown out, his legs drawn
up, proved that he was lying on his back when murdered. For that reason,
the direction of the blow suggested Charles as the murderer."

"I am afraid I do not follow you there," said Mr. Cromering.

"Charles had a malformed right hand; his left hand was his only
serviceable one. The blow that killed Mr. Glenthorpe struck me at the
time as a left-handed blow. The natural direction of a right-handed
blow, with the body in such a position, would be from right to left--not
from left to right. But, after considering this point carefully, I came
to the conclusion that the blow might have been struck by a right-handed
man. I was wrong."

"I do not think you have much cause to blame yourself," said the chief
constable. "You were right in your original conception of the crime, and
right in your later reconstruction in every particular except----"

"Except that I picked the wrong man," said Colwyn, with a slightly
bitter laugh. "My consolation is that Benson's confession brought the
truth to light, as I expected it would."

"It took you to see the truth," said Galloway. "I should never have
picked it. I suppose there has never been a case like it."

"There is nothing new--not even in the annals of crime," returned
Colwyn. "But this was certainly a baffling and unusual case. The
murderer was such a deep and subtle scoundrel that I feel a respect for
his intelligence, perverted though it was. His master stroke was the
disposal of the body. That shielded him from suspicion as completely as
an alibi. I put aside my first suspicion of him largely because I
realised that it was impossible for a man with a deformed arm to carry
away the body. Such a sardonic situation as a murderer persuading
another man that he was likely to be suspected of the murder unless he
removed the body was one that never occurred to me. That, at all events,
is something new in my experience."

"It is a wonder that Charles, with his deformed arm, was able to go down
the pit and conceal the money," said the chief constable.

"He did not go down very far. It is not a difficult matter to climb down
the creepers inside with the support of one hand, and he was able to use
the other sufficiently to thrust the small peg into the soft earth. He
first hid the money in the breakwater wall, being too careful and clever
to hide it in the pit until after the inquest. When he had concealed it
in the pit he revived the story of the White Lady of the Shrieking Pit
so as to keep the credulous villagers away from the spot. He need not
have taken that precaution, because the hiding place was an excellent
one, and it was only by chance that I discovered the money when I
descended the pit. But he left nothing to chance. The use of the
umbrella on the night of the murder proves that. Murderers do not
usually carry umbrellas, but he did, because he feared that if his
clothes got wet they might be seen in his room the following day, and
direct suspicion to him. He chose to commit the crime when the storm was
at its height because he thought he was safest from the likelihood of
discovery then.

"The callous scoundrel told me with his last breath that he was waiting
until Penreath was safely hanged before disappearing with the money.
When he opened the door to us to-night, he knew that he was at the end
of his tether, and he decided to try to bolt. He realised that Benson
would tell the truth when he was questioned and, although the
innkeeper's story did not implicate him directly, he did our common
intelligence the justice to believe that, through his dupe's confession,
we should arrive at the truth."


THE END

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