Property of a Lady(76)

For me, the first signpost appeared when I found a book on my father’s shelves called The Ingoldsby Legends, collected by the Reverend Richard Barham, purportedly written by one Thomas Ingoldsby of Tappington Manor. I suppose my father acquired it because he thought anything written by a minister of the church was suitable and praiseworthy. But although I’m not a betting man (too cautious!) I’d lay any money that he never read it. In fact, Thomas Ingoldsby was Barham’s pen-name. The legends he’s plundered are parodies or pastiches, but they are based on genuine old myths and beliefs.

Living quietly in this small corner of the English countryside, making a modestly prosperous living, I have begun to trace some of those beliefs. It’s a curious experience – like picking up a black and bloodied string and feeling your way along until you reach its core. I’m not entirely sure I ought to be doing this, but that dark string, once picked up, is impossible to put down. I shall go just a little further along.

At times, emerging from reading of old tracts and ancient chronicles, I am uneasily aware of something seeping into my mind, like a thin trickle of brackish water. Is that how madness starts? No, I won’t believe that, I won’t . . .

I shall go on with my research – I want to find the genesis of those legends.

June 1885

My studies over these past months have been innocent enough, although – I shall be frank – they have not been studies I should want my neighbours to know about. That fine line between legend and something more dangerous, again. That trickle of brackish water . . . But it has stopped now, I know it has. I am entirely sane.

I have reread that last sentence and am shocked to see how deeply my pen scored into the page when I wrote that I was sane. I think I shall not write in this diary again. It sometimes frightens me.





TWENTY-FOUR



January 1886

I am coming to the conclusion that my books must be stored somewhere less visible. As the collection grows, they become more noticeable to visitors to the house, and some of the titles on the spine are – well, I’ll use the word dubious.

Over the last few years I’ve made a number of trips outside Marston Lacy to scour second-hand bookshops – that despised railway has proved its value after all, for travel is now very easy indeed! Sometimes private libraries are broken up and sold when the owner dies. I’ve attended several of those; in fact, I believe I’ve become known as a collector of curios. ‘Ah, Mr Crutchley,’ a book dealer said to me last month at a library sale near Chirk. ‘We wondered if you might be along. Now there’s a little volume here you might fine interesting.’ And twice I’ve been sent an invitation to such sales. That pleases me greatly.

It will be very inconvenient to move the books. But it might be worse to leave them where they are. People often come to my house – I am a church sidesman at St Paul’s and also on its John Howard Committee for prison reform and visiting. This last is a very worthy organization – I was flattered when they invited me to serve on it, and I like to think I have been of value. Prison reform is a worthwhile cause – no matter a man’s crime, depriving him of his freedom and liberty should be sufficient punishment without forcing on him the indignities and deprivations rife in so many gaols.

All this means there are frequent meetings to attend or arrange, and it has become the custom for many of these meetings to be held at my house. St Paul’s is an estimable old church, but the vestry is shockingly draughty and a man could catch his death there in cold weather, even swathed in wintergreen. (I am convinced my chilblains can be directly attributed to several overlong meetings in the place.) As well as church and prison reform meetings, salesmen call at my house, representing the manufacturing concerns that supply copper, brass and enamel for my clocks. I am a respected customer – I order liberally and settle my accounts promptly.

Then there are my own customers: often important people such as estate managers for the big houses hereabouts. Lord Somebody will decide he wants a long-case clock for his drawing room. Sir Someone-Else wishes to commission a carriage clock for his mantel. People want wedding presents, christening gifts. I like to invite them into my sitting room and offer refreshment. A glass of Madeira for the gentlemen, sherry for the ladies. It amuses me to see the surprise on their faces – they don’t expect such refinement from a common clockmaker.

It would not do for any of these people to see some of the books I possess. The Compendium Maleficarum, or the Petit Albert, which is subtitled ‘An eighteenth-century grimoire of natural and cabalistic magic’. Or the Sworn Book of Honorius. That’s an abridged version, of course, and printed about a hundred years ago, but much of the material is genuinely from its thirteenth-century source, and it’s as forceful and awesome as when Honorius of Thebes gathered together a conference of magicians who agreed to combine their knowledge into one volume. I also have a late eighteenth-century copy of the words of the legendary sorcerer St Cyprian, (before his conversion to Christianity, naturally), but the provenance of the original work is so dubious that I do not give this one especial value in my collection. Still, it would not do for people to see it.

The ground floor of my house is a showroom, displaying finished clocks available for sale. A public area. The workshop across the courtyard is also open to people who care to look round at clocks on which I am currently working.

But beneath the workshop is a surprisingly large stone cellar. It’s considerably older than the house itself – my father believed there had been a lodge on the land before our own house was built. He said it would have been the gatehouse to a long-vanished estate owned by some forgotten feudal baron, and that we trod in exalted paths.