Stephen Gwynn - "The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke V1"

Elinor Glyn - "The Damsel and the Sage"

V. T. Sherman - "The Call of the Beaver Patrol"

Elbert Hubbard - "Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great Volume 14"

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




"This is my mother's room, sir. She is an invalid."

"We will not disturb your mother, we will merely glance into the room,"
said the kindly chief constable.

"It is not that, sir. She is----" He broke off abruptly, and knocked at
the door.

After a few moments' pause there was the sound of somebody within
turning a key in the lock, then the door was opened by a young girl,
who, at the sight of the visitors, walked hurriedly across to a bedstead
at the far end of the room, on which something grey was moving, and
stood in front of it as though she would guard the occupant of the bed
from the intruding eyes of strangers.

"It's all right, Peggy," said the innkeeper. "We shall not be here long.
My daughter is afraid you will disturb her grandmother," he said turning
to the gentlemen. "My mother is----" A motion of his finger towards his
forehead completed the sentence more significantly than words.

The figure on the bed in the corner was in the shadow, but they could
make it out to be that of an old and shrivelled woman in a grey flannel
nightdress, who was sitting up in bed, swinging backward and forward,
holding some object in her arms, clasped tightly to her breast, while
her small dark eyes, deepset under furrowed brows, gazed at the visitors
with the unmeaning stare of an animal.

But Colwyn's eyes were drawn to the girl at the bedside. She was
beautiful, of a type sufficiently rare to attract attention anywhere.
Her delicate profile and dainty grace shone in the shadow of the sordid
room like an exquisite picture. He was aware of a skin of transparent
whiteness, a wistful sensitive mouth, a pair of wonderful eyes with the
green-grey colour of the sea in their depths, and a crown of red-gold
hair. She was poorly, almost shabbily, dressed, but the crude cheap
garbing of a country dressmaker was unable to mar the graceful outlines
of her slim young figure. But it was the impassivity of the face and
detachment of attitude which chained Colwyn's attention and stimulated
his intellectual curiosity. The human face is usually an index to the
owner's character, but this girl's face was a mask which revealed
nothing. The features might have been marble for anything they
displayed, as she stood by the bedside regarding with grave inscrutable
eyes the group of men in the doorway. There was something pathetic in
the contrast between her grace and beauty and stillness and the uncouth
gestures and meaningless stare of the old woman in the bed behind her.

The old woman, moving from side to side with the unhappy restlessness
which characterises the insane, dropped over the side of the bed the
object she had been nursing in her arms, and looked at the girl with the
dumb entreaty of an animal. The girl stooped down by the side of the
bed, picked up the fallen article, and restored it to the mad woman. It
was a doll.

Mr. Cromering, who saw the action and the article, flushed like a man
who had seen something which should be kept secret, and turned to leave
the room. The others followed, and immediately afterwards they heard the
door closed after them, and the key turned in the lock.

Superintendent Galloway, who had more of the inquiring turn of mind of
the police official than the chief constable, asked the innkeeper
several questions about his mother and her condition. The innkeeper said
her insanity was the outcome of an accident which had happened two years
before. She was sitting dozing by the kitchen fire when a large boiler
of water overturned, scalding her terribly, and the shock and pain had
sent her mad. She had never left the bedroom since, and had gradually
become reduced to a condition of imbecility, alternated by occasional
outbursts of violence.

"Is she ever allowed out of the room?" asked Superintendent Galloway
quickly, as though a sudden thought had struck him.

"Never, sir; she never tries to get out of bed except when she's
violent. She will sit there for hours, playing with a doll, but when she
has her paroxysms she runs round and round the room, crying out as you
heard her just now, and throwing the things about. Did you notice, sir,
that there was no glassware in the room? She has tried to injure herself
with glass and crockery in her violent fits."

"How often does she have paroxysms of violent madness?" asked the chief
constable.

"Not often, sir; usually about the turn of the moon, or when there is a
gale at sea."

"There was a gale at sea last night," said Colwyn. "Did your mother have
an attack then?"

"Peggy said when she came downstairs last night she thought there were
signs of an attack coming on, but when I looked in on Mother as I was
going to bed, shortly before eleven, she seemed quiet enough, so I
locked her door and went to bed."

"Do you mean to say that you leave this poor mad woman in her bedroom
all night alone?" asked the chief constable.

"It's the best thing to be done, sir," replied the innkeeper, with an
apologetic air. "We tried having somebody to sleep with her, but it only
made her worse, and the doctor who saw her last year said it wasn't
necessary. Peggy is with her a lot in the daytime, and often until she
goes to bed. So she's really not left alone very much, because Ann goes
into her room as soon as she gets up in the morning--about six o'clock."

"And is your mother always secured in her room--is the door always
locked?" asked Superintendent Galloway.

"Yes, sir: the door is always locked inside or outside, and when I go to
bed at night I take the key into my room and hang it on a nail. Ann
comes in and gets it in the morning."

"You did that last night, as usual?"

"Yes, sir. Mother was quiet--just as you saw her now. She is quiet most
of the time."

"God help her, poor soul!" exclaimed the chief constable. "Where does
this passage lead to, Benson?" he asked, as if to change the
conversation, pointing to a gloomy gallery running off the passage in
which they were standing.

"It leads to two rooms looking out over the end of the inn, sir,"
replied the innkeeper. "They are the only two rooms you haven't seen."

"Who occupies this room?" asked Superintendent Galloway, opening the
door of the first, and disclosing a small, plainly furnished bedroom.

"My daughter, sir."

"The next one is empty and unfurnished, like many of the others,"
observed the chief constable. "This place seems too big for you, Benson.
Were all these rooms destitute of furniture when you took over the inn?"

"Not all, sir, but the inn being too big for me I sold the furniture for
what it would fetch. It was no use to me."

"Why don't you take a smaller place?" asked Superintendent Galloway,
abruptly. "You'll never do any good on this part of the coast--it's
played out, and there's no population."

"I'm well aware of that, sir, but it's difficult for a man like me to
make a shift once he gets into a place. There's Mother for one thing."

"She ought to be placed in a lunatic asylum," said the superintendent,
looking sternly at the innkeeper.

"It's a hard thing, sir, to put your own mother away. Besides, begging
your pardon, she's hardly bad enough for a lunatic asylum."

"Let us go downstairs, Galloway, if we have seen the whole of the inn,"
said the chief constable, breaking into this colloquy. "Time is really
getting on."

They went downstairs again to the small room they had been shown into
when they first entered the inn, Mr. Cromering after despatching the
innkeeper for refreshments for the party glanced once more at his watch,
and remarked to Colwyn that he was afraid he would have to ask him to
drive him in his car back to Durrington without delay.

"Galloway will stay here for the inquest to-morrow," he added. "But I
must get back to Norwich to-night."

"It is not necessary to go back to Durrington, to get to Norwich," said
Colwyn; "there's a train passes through Heathfield on the branch line,
at 5.40." He consulted his own watch as he spoke. "It's now just four
o'clock. Heathfield cannot be more than six miles away across country. I
can run you over there in twenty minutes. That would give you an hour or
so more here. I am speaking for myself as well as you," he added, with a
smile. "I should like to know a little more about this case."

"But I shall be taking you out of your way, and delaying the return of
you and Sir Henry to Durrington."

"I should like to return here and stay until after the inquest. Perhaps
Sir Henry would not mind returning to Durrington from Heathfield. He
will be able to catch the Durrington train at Cottenden, and get back to
his hotel in time for dinner. Would you mind, Sir Henry?"

"Not in the least," replied Sir Henry politely.

"Then I think I might stay a little longer," said the chief constable.
"What's the road like to Heathfield, Galloway? You know something about
this part of the country."

"Very bad," replied the superintendent uncompromisingly, who had his own
reasons for wanting to get rid of his superior officer and the
detective.

"It will be all right in daylight, and I'll risk it coming back," said
the detective cheerfully.

He spoke with the resolute air of one used to making prompt decisions,
and Mr. Cromering yielded with the feeble smile of a man who was rather
glad to be released of the task of making up his own mind. The entrance
of the innkeeper with refreshments put an end to the discussion. He
thrust upon the police officials present the responsibility of breaking
the licensed hours in which liquor might be drunk in war time by serving
them with sherry, old brandy, and biscuits.

The chief constable made himself a party to this breach of the law by
helping himself to a glass of sherry. The wine was excellent and dry,
and he poured himself out another. The result of this stimulant was
directly apparent in the firm tones with which he announced his
intention of examining those inmates of the inn who could throw any
light on the murder of the previous night. He directed Superintendent
Galloway to sit beside him and take notes of the information thus
elicited for the use of the coroner the following day.

"I think it would be as well to begin with the story of the innkeeper,"
he added. "Please pull that bell-rope, Galloway."



CHAPTER VII


The innkeeper answered the bell in person, and was ordered by the chief
constable to take a seat and tell everything he knew about the previous
night's events, without equivocation or reserve. He took a chair at the
table, his bright bird's glance wandering from one to the other of the
faces opposite him as he smoothed with one claw-like hand the thatch of
iron-grey hair which hung down over his forehead almost to his eyes.

"Where shall I begin?" he asked.

"You had better start by telling us how this young man Ronald came to
your house yesterday afternoon, and then give us an account of the
subsequent events, so far as you know them," said the chief constable.

"I was down near the breakwater yesterday evening, setting some
eel-lines in the canal, when he arrived," commenced the innkeeper. "When
I came in, Charles--that's the waiter--told me there was a young
gentleman in the bar parlour waiting to see me. I went into the parlour,
and saw the young man sitting near the door. He looked very tired and
weary, and said he wished to stay at the inn for the night."

"How was he dressed?" asked Superintendent Galloway, looking up from his
note-book.

"In a grey Norfolk suit, with knickerbockers, and a soft felt hat."

"Had you ever seen him before?"

"No, sir. He was a complete stranger to me. I could see he was a
gentleman. I told him I could not take him in, as the inn was only a
poor rough place, with no accommodation for gentlefolk at the best of
times, let alone war-time. The young gentleman said he was very tired
and would sleep anywhere, and was not particular about food. He told me
he had lost his way on the marshes, and a fisherman had directed him to
the inn."

"Did he say where he had come from?" asked the chief constable.

"No, sir, and I didn't think to ask him. I might have done so, but Mr.
Glenthorpe walked into the parlour just then, carrying some partridges
in his hand. He didn't see the young gentleman at first--he was sitting
in the corner behind the door--but told me to have one of the partridges
cooked for his dinner. They had just been given to him, he said, by the
farmer whose land he was going to excavate next week. As he turned to go
out he saw the young gentleman sitting in the corner, and he said, in
his hearty way: 'Good evening, sir; it is not often that we have any
society in these parts.' The young gentleman told him what he had told
me--how he had wandered away from Durrington and got lost, and had come
to the inn in the hopes of getting a bed for the night. 'Glad to see a
civilised human being in these parts,' said Mr. Glenthorpe. 'I hope
you'll give me the pleasure of your company at dinner. Benson, tell Ann
to cook another partridge.' 'I don't know whether the innkeeper will
allow me that pleasure,' replied the young gentleman. 'He says he cannot
put me up for the night.' 'Of course he'll put you up,' said Mr.
Glenthorpe. 'Not even a Norfolk innkeeper would turn you out on to the
North Sea marshes at this time of year.' That settled the question,
because I couldn't afford to offend Mr. Glenthorpe, and besides, his
providing the dinner helped me out of a difficulty. So I went out to
give orders about the dinner, leaving Mr. Glenthorpe and him sitting
together talking."

"Did you get him to fill in a registration form?" asked Superintendent
Galloway.

"I forgot to ask him, sir," replied the innkeeper.

"That is gross and inexcusable carelessness on your part, Benson," said
Galloway sternly. "I shall have to report it."

"I do not understand much about these things, sir," replied the
innkeeper apologetically. "It is so rarely that we have a visitor to the
place."

"The authorities will hold you responsible. You are supposed to know the
law, and help to carry it out. What's the use of devising regulations
for the security of the country if they are not carried out? You
innkeepers and hotel-keepers are really very careless. Go on with your
story, Benson."

"He and Mr. Glenthorpe had dinner together in the little upstairs
sitting room which Mr. Glenthorpe kept for his own private use. He did
his writing in it, and the flints and fossils he discovered in his
excavations were stored in the cupboards. His meals were always taken up
there, and last night he ordered the dinner to be taken up there as
usual, and the table to be laid for two. Charles waited at table, but I
was up there twice--first time with some sherry, and the second time was
about an hour afterwards, when the gentlemen had finished dinner. I took
up a bottle of some old brandy that the inn used to be famous for--it's
the same that you gentlemen have been drinking. When I knocked at the
door with the brandy it was Mr. Glenthorpe who called 'Come in!' He was
standing in front of the fire, with a fossil in his hand, and he was
telling the young man about how he came to discover it. I put the
brandy on the table and left the room.

"That was the last time I saw him alive. Charles came down with the
dinner things about half-past nine, and said he was not wanted upstairs
any more. Charles went to bed shortly afterwards--he sleeps in one of
the two rooms off the kitchen. I went to my own bedroom before ten,
after first telling Ann, the servant, who was doing some ironing in the
kitchen, to turn off the gas at the meter if the gentlemen retired
before she finished, but not to bother if they were still sitting up. It
had been decided that the young gentleman should occupy the bedroom next
to Mr. Glenthorpe, and Ann was a bit late with her ordinary work because
it had taken her some time to get his room ready. The room had not been
occupied for some time, and she'd had to air the bed-clothes and make
the bed afresh.

"The next morning I was a bit late getting down--there's nothing to open
the inn for in the mornings--and Ann told me as soon as I got down that
the young gentleman had left nearly an hour before. She had taken him up
an early cup of tea at seven o'clock, and he opened the door to her
knock, and took it from her. He was fully dressed, except for his boots,
which he had in his hand, and he asked her to clean them, as he wanted
to leave at once. She was walking away with the boots, when he called
her back and took them from her, saying that it didn't matter about
cleaning them, as he was in a hurry. When she gave him the boots he put
a note into her hand, and said that was to pay for his bill.

"It was the key in the outside of Mr. Glenthorpe's room which led to us
finding out that he was not in the room. As I told you upstairs, sir, he
used to always lock his door when he went to bed and put the key under
the pillow. Ann noticed the key in the outside of the door when she
went up with his breakfast tray--he never took early morning tea but he
always breakfasted in his room. That would be about eight o'clock. She
thought it strange to see the key in the door, and as she could get no
answer to her knock she tried the door, found it unlocked and the room
empty. She came downstairs and told me. I thought at first that Mr.
Glenthorpe might have got up early to go and look at his excavations,
but I went up to his room and saw the signs of a struggle and
blood-stains on the bed-clothes, and I knew that something must have
happened to him. I went into the village and told Constable Queensmead.
He came to the inn, and made a search inside and outside and found the
footprints leading to the pit on the rise. One of Mr. Glenthorpe's men
who had been down the pit for flints was lowered by a rope, and brought
up the body."

The innkeeper took a leather wallet from his pocket and produced from it
a Treasury L1 note. "This is the note the young gentleman left behind
with Ann to pay his bill," he explained, pushing it across the table to
the chief constable.

"I would draw your attention, sir, to the fact that this Treasury note
is one of the first issue--printed in black on white paper," remarked
Superintendent Galloway to his superior officer. "Constable Queensmead
has ascertained that the L300 which Mr. Glenthorpe drew out of the bank
yesterday was all in L1 notes of the first issue. That money is missing
from the dead man's effects."

The chief constable looked thoughtfully at the note through his glasses,
and then passed it to Colwyn, who examined it closely, and took a note
of the number, and held it up to the light to see the watermark.

"Did you or the servant find any weapon in Mr. Glenthorpe's room?" asked
the chief constable.

"No, sir."

"You have missed a knife though, have you not?" asked Superintendent
Galloway.

"Yes, sir."

"What sort of a knife?"

"A table-knife."

"Was it one of the knives sent up to the sitting-room last night?"

"Yes, sir. At least Charles says so. He has charge of the cutlery."

"Then Charles had better tell us about it," interposed the chief
constable. "You say you went to bed before ten o'clock, Benson. Did you
hear anything in the night?"

"No, sir, I fell asleep almost immediately. My room is a good distance
from Mr. Glenthorpe's room."

"I do not think we have any more questions to ask you, Benson."

"Pardon the curiosity of a medical man, Mr. Cromering," remarked Sir
Henry, "but would it be possible to ask the innkeeper whether he noticed
anything peculiar about Mr. Ronald's demeanour, when he arrived at the
inn, or when he saw him at dinner subsequently?"

"You hear that question, Benson?" said the chief constable. "Did you
notice anything strange about Mr. Ronald's conduct when first he came to
the inn or at any time?"

"I cannot say I did, sir. I thought he looked very tired when he first
came into the inn, and his eyes were heavy as though with want of
sleep."

"He seemed quite sane and rational?"

"Quite, sir."

"Did you notice any symptoms of mental disturbance or irritability about
him at any time?" struck in Sir Henry Durwood.

"No, sir. He was a little bit angry at first when I said I couldn't take
him in, but he struck me as quite cool and collected."

Sir Henry looked a little disappointed at this reply. He asked no more
questions, but entered a note in a small note-book which he took from
his waistcoat pocket. Mr. Cromering intimated to the innkeeper that he
had finished questioning him, and would like to examine the waiter,
Charles.

"If you wouldn't mind pulling the bell-rope behind you, sir," hinted the
innkeeper.

In response to a pull at the old-fashioned bell-rope, the stout country
servant, who had been washing greens in the kitchen, entered the room.

"Where is Charles, Ann?" asked the innkeeper.

"He's in the kitchen," replied the woman nervously.

"Then tell him he is wanted here immediately."

"You run your inn in a queer sort of way, Benson," remarked
Superintendent Galloway, in his loud voice, as the woman went away on
her errand. "Why couldn't Charles have answered the bell himself, if he
is in the kitchen? What does he wait on, if not the bar parlour?"

"Charles is stone deaf, sir," replied the innkeeper.



CHAPTER VIII


The man who entered the room was of sufficiently remarkable appearance
to have attracted attention anywhere. He was short, but so fat that he
looked less than his actual height, which was barely five feet. His
ponderous head, which was covered with short stiff black hair, like a
brush, seemed to merge into his body without any neck, and two black
eyes glittered like diamond points in the white expanse of his hairless
face. As he advanced towards the table these eyes roved quickly from one
to the other of the faces on the other side of the table. He was in
every way a remarkable contrast to his employer, and a painter in search
of a subject might have been tempted to take the pair as models for a
picture of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza.

"Take that chair and answer my questions," said Mr. Cromering,
addressing the waiter in a very loud voice. "Oh, I forgot," he added, to
the innkeeper. "How do you manage to communicate with him if he is stone
deaf?"

"Quite easily, sir. Charles understands the lip language--he reads your
lips while you speak. It is not even necessary to raise your voice, so
long as you pronounce each word distinctly."

"Sit down, Charles--do you understand me?" said the chief constable
doubtfully. By way of helping the waiter to comprehend he pointed to the
chair the innkeeper had vacated.

The waiter crossed the room and took the chair. Like so many fat men,
his movements were quick, agile, and noiseless, but as he came forward
it was noticeable that his right arm was deformed, and much shorter than
the other.

The chief constable eyed the strange figure before him in some
perplexity, and the fat white-faced deaf man confronted him stolidly,
with his black twinkling eyes fixed on his face. His gaze, which was
directed to the mouth and did not reach the eyes, was so disconcerting
to Mr. Cromering that he cleared his throat with several nervous "hems"
before commencing his examination:

"Your name is----?"

"Charles Lynn, sir."

The reply was delivered in a whispered voice, the not infrequent result
of prolonged deafness, complete isolation from the rest of humanity
causing the gradual loss of sound values in the afflicted person; but
the whisper, coming from such a mountain of flesh, conveyed the
impression that the speaker's voice was half-strangled in layers of fat,
and with difficulty gasped a way to the air. Mr. Cromering looked hard
at the waiter as though suspecting him of some trick, but Charles' eyes
were fixed on the mouth of his interrogator, awaiting his next question.

"I understand that you waited on the two gentlemen in the upstairs
sitting-room last night"--Mr. Cromering still spoke in such an
unnecessarily loud voice that he grew red in the face with the
exertion--"the gentleman who was murdered, and the young man Ronald, who
came to the inn last night. Do you understand me?"

"Yes, sir. I waited on the gentlemen, sir."

"Very well. I want you to tell us all that took place between these
gentlemen while you were in the room. You were there all through the
dinner, I suppose?"

"Yes, sir, but I didn't follow all of the conversation because of my
infirmity." He touched his ears as he spoke. "I gathered some remarks of
Mr. Glenthorpe's, because he told me to stand opposite him and watch his
lips for orders, but I didn't get much of what the young gentleman said,
because I was standing behind his chair most of the time so as to see
Mr. Glenthorpe's lips better."

"Well, tell us all you did gather of the conversation, and everything
you saw."

"I beg your pardon, sir"--the interruption came from Superintendent
Galloway--"but would it not be advisable to get from the waiter first
something of what passed between him and Ronald when Ronald came to the
inn last night? The waiter was the first to see him, Benson says."

"Quite right. I had forgotten. Tell us, Charles, what passed when Ronald
first came to the inn in the afternoon."

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