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  It was, of course, his intention to be there again that evening: to spend the night there, if need be, rather than let anything escape him. He only hoped he should not find half the parish there also. His best hope of privacy lay in the inclemency of the weather; the day was growing colder, and there was a north-east wind, of which Frenchman’s Meadow would receive the fine edge.

  Mr Batchel spent the next three hours in dealing with some arrears of correspondence, and at nine o’clock put on his thickest coat and boots, and made his way to the meadow. It became evident, as he walked up the lane, that he was to have company. He heard many voices, and soon recognised the loudest amongst them. Jim Lallement was boasting of the accuracy of his aim: the others were not disputing it, but were asserting their own merits in discordant chorus. This was a nuisance, and to make matters worse, Mr Batchel heard steps behind him.

  A voice soon bade him “Good evening.” To Mr Batchel’s great relief it proved to be the policeman, who soon overtook him. The conversation began on his side.

  “Curious tricks, sir, these of Richpin’s.”

  “What tricks?” asked Mr Batchel, with an air of innocence.

  “Why, he’s been walking about Frenchman’s Meadow these three nights, frightening folk and what all.”

  “Richpin has been at home every night, and all night long,” said Mr Batchel.

  “I’m talking about where he was, not where he says he was,” said the policeman. “You can’t go behind the evidence.”

  “But Richpin has evidence too. I asked his wife.”

  “You know, sir, and none better, that wives have got to obey. Richpin wants to be took for a ghost, and we know that sort of ghost. Whenever we hear there’s a ghost, we always know there’s going to be turkeys missing.”

  “But there are real ghosts sometimes, surely?” said Mr Batchel.

  “No,” said the policeman, “me and my wife have both looked, and there’s no such thing.”

  “Looked where?” enquired Mr Batchel.

  “In the ‘Police Duty’ Catechism. There’s lunatics, and deserters, and dead bodies, but no ghosts.”

  Mr Batchel accepted this as final. He had devised a way of ridding himself of all his company, and proceeded at once to carry it into effect. The two had by this time reached the group of boys.

  “These are all stone-throwers,” said he, loudly.

  There was a clatter of stones as they dropped from the hands of the boys.

  “These boys ought all to be in the club instead of roaming about here damaging property. Will you take them there, and see them safely in? If Richpin comes here, I will bring him to the station.”

  The policeman seemed well pleased with the suggestion. No doubt he had overstated his confidence in the definition of the “Police Duty”. Mr Batchel, on his part, knew the boys well enough to be assured that they would keep the policeman occupied for the next half-hour, and as the party moved slowly away, felt proud of his diplomacy.

  There was no sign of any other person about the field gate, which he climbed readily enough, and he was soon standing in the highest part of the meadow and peering into the darkness on every side.

  It was possible to see a distance of about thirty yards; beyond that it was too dark to distinguish anything. Mr Batchel designed a zigzag course about the meadow, which would allow of his examining it systematically and as rapidly as possible, and along this course he began to walk briskly, looking straight before him as he went, and pausing to look well about him when he came to a turn. There were no beasts in the meadow – their owners had taken the precaution of removing them; their absence was, of course, of great advantage to Mr Batchel.

  In about ten minutes he had finished his zig-zag path and arrived at the other corner of the meadow; he had seen nothing resembling a man. He then retraced his steps, and examined the field again, but arrived at his starting point, knowing no more than when he had left it. He began to fear the return of the policeman as he faced the wind and set upon a third journey.

  The third journey, however, rewarded him. He had reached the end of his second traverse, and was looking about him at the angle between that and the next, when he distinctly saw what looked like Richpin crossing his circle of vision, and making straight for the sluice. There was no gate on that side of the field; the hedge, which seemed to present no obstacle to the other, delayed Mr Batchel considerably, and still retains some of his clothing, but he was not long through before he had again marked his man. It had every appearance of being Richpin. It went down the slope, crossed the plank that bridged the lock, and disappeared round the corner of the cottage, where the entrance lay.

  Mr Batchel had had no opportunity of confirming the gruesome observation of Selina Broughton, but had seen enough to prove that the others had not been romancing. He was not a half-minute behind the figure as it crossed the plank over the lock – it was slow going in the darkness – and he followed it immediately round the corner of the house. As he expected, it had then disappeared.

  Mr Batchel knocked at the door, and admitted himself, as his custom was. The sluice-keeper was in his kitchen, charring a gate post. He was surprised to see Mr Batchel at that hour, and his greeting took the form of a remark to that effect.

  “I have been taking an evening walk,” said Mr Batchel. “Have you seen Richpin lately?”

  “I see him last Saturday week,” replied the sluice-keeper, “not since.”

  “Do you feel lonely here at night?”

  “No,” replied the sluice-keeper, “people drop in at times. There was a man in on Monday, and another yesterday.”

  “Have you had no one today?” said Mr Batchel, coming to the point.

  The answer showed that Mr Batchel had been the first to enter the door that day, and after a little general conversation he brought his visit to an end.

  It was now ten o’clock. He looked in at Richpin’s cottage, where he saw a light burning, as he passed. Richpin had tired himself early, and had been in bed since half-past eight. His wife was visibly annoyed at the rumours which had upset him, and Mr Batchel said such soothing words as he could command, before he left for home.

  He congratulated himself, prematurely, as he sat before the fire in his study, that the day was at an end. It had been cold out of doors, and it was pleasant to think things over in the warmth of the cheerful fire his housekeeper never failed to leave for him. The reader will have no more difficulty than Mr Batchel had in accounting for the resemblance between Richpin and the man in the meadow. It was a mere question of family likeness. That the ancestor had been seen in the meadow at some former time might perhaps be inferred from its traditional name. The reason for his return, then and now, was a matter of mere conjecture, and Mr Batchel let it alone.

  The next incident has, to some, appeared incredible, which only means, after all, that it has made demands upon their powers of imagination and found them bankrupt.

  Critics of story-telling have used severe language about authors who avail themselves of the short-cut of coincidence. “That must be reserved, I suppose,” said Mr Batchel, when he came to tell of Richpin, “for what really happens; and that fiction is a game which must be played according to the rules.”

  “I know,” he went on to say, “that the chances were some millions to one against what happened that night, but if that makes it incredible, what is there left to believe?”

  It was thereupon remarked by someone in the company, that the credible material would not be exhausted.

  “I doubt whether anything happens,” replied Mr Batchel in his dogmatic way, “without the chances being a million to one against it. Why did they choose such a word? What does ‘happen’ mean?”

  There was no reply: it was clearly a rhetorical question.

  “Is it incredible,” he went on, “that I put into the plate last Sunday the very half-crown my uncle tipped me with in 1881, and that I spent next day?”

  “Was that the one you put in?” was asked by several.r />
  “How do I know?” replied Mr Batchel, “but if I knew the history of the half-crown I did put in, I know it would furnish still more remarkable coincidences.”

  All this talk arose out of the fact that at midnight on the eventful day, whilst Mr Batchel was still sitting by his study fire, he had news that the cottage at the sluice had been burnt down. The thatch had been dry; there was, as we know, a stiff east-wind, and an hour had sufficed to destroy all that was inflammable. The fire is still spoken of in Stoneground with great regret. There remains only one building in the place of sufficient merit to find its way on to a postcard.

  It was just at midnight that the sluicekeeper rung at Mr Batchel’s door. His errand required no apology. The man had found a night-fisherman to help him as soon as the fire began, and with two long sprits from a lighter they had made haste to tear down the thatch, and upon this had brought down, from under the ridge at the South end, the bones and some of the clothing of a man. Would Mr Batchel come down and see?

  Mr Batchel put on his coat and returned to the place. The people whom the fire had collected had been kept on the further side of the water, and the space about the cottage was vacant. Near to the smouldering heap of ruin were the remains found under the thatch. The fingers of the right hand still firmly clutched a sheep bone which had been gnawed as a dog would gnaw it.

  “Starved to death,” said the sluice-keeper, “I see a tramp like that ten years ago.”

  They laid the bones decently in an outhouse, and turned the key, Mr Batchel carried home in his hand a metal cross, threaded upon a cord. He found an engraved figure of Our Lord on the face of it, and the name of Pierre Richepin upon the back. He went next day to make the matter known to the nearest Priest of the Roman Faith, with whom he left the cross. The remains, after a brief inquest, were interred in the cemetery, which the rites of the Church to which the man had evidently belonged.

  Mr Batchel’s deductions from the whole circumstances were curious, and left a great deal to be explained. It seemed as if Pierre Richepin had been disturbed by some premonition of the fire, but had not foreseen that his mortal remains would escape; that he could not return to his own people without the aid of his map, but had no perception of the interval that had elapsed since he had lost it. This map Mr Batchel put into his pocket-book next day when he went to Thomas Richpin for certain other information about his surviving relatives.

  Richpin had a father, it appeared, living a few miles away in Jakesley Fen, and Mr Batchel concluded that he was worth a visit. He mounted his bicycle, therefore, and made his way to Jakesley that same afternoon.

  Mr Richpin was working not far from home, and was soon brought in. He and his wife shewed great courtesy to their visitor, whom they knew well by repute. They had a well-ordered house, and with a natural and dignified hospitality, asked him to take tea with them. It was evident to Mr Batchel that there was a great gulf between the elder Richpin and his son; the former was the last of an old race, and the latter the first of a new. In spite of the Board of Education, the latter was vastly the worse.

  The cottage contained some French kick-shaws which greatly facilitated the enquiries Mr Batchel had come to make. They proved to be family relics.

  “My grandfather,” said Mr Richpin, as they sat at tea, “was a prisoner – he and his brother.”

  “Your grandfather was Pierre Richepin?” asked Mr Batchel.

  “No! Jules,” was the reply. “Pierre got away.”

  “Shew Mr Batchel the book,” said his wife.

  The book was produced. It was a Book of Meditations, with the name of Jules Richepin upon the title-page. The fly-leaf was missing. Mr Batchel produced the map from his pocket-book. It fitted exactly. The slight indentures along the torn edge fell into their place, and Mr Batchel left the leaf in the book, to the great delight of the old couple, to whom he told no more of the story than he thought fit.

  The Everlasting Club

  Arthur Gray

  Location: Jesus College, Cambridge.

  Time: 2 November 1918.

  Eyewitness Description: “From ten o’clock to midnight a hideous uproar went on in the chamber of Bellasis. Who were his companions none knew. Blasphemous outcries and ribald songs, such as had not been heard for twenty years past, aroused from sleep or study the occupants of the court . . .”

  Author: Sir Arthur Gray (1852–1940) who wrote under the pseudonym “Ingulphus” for The Cambridge Review, Chanticlere and other literary periodicals of the early years of the 20th century, was the Master of Jesus College and another important figure in the “James Circle”. He, too, was an antiquary, though his interests focused very much on his own college with its long, lurid and occasionally bloody history. The stories which he wrote under his pen-name were often given intriguing titles like “To Two Cambridge Magicians”, “The Necromancer” and “The Burden of Dead Books”. However, Sir Arthur’s rich and mellifluous tones were apparently best heard at the Christmas gathering in 1918 when he presented the grisly story of “The Everlasting Club” – and, after reading it, one can only guess at the effect it might have had on the circle of men in James’ candle-lit room. This tale, like several of the best works by “Ingulphus”, was subsequently collected in a volume curiously entitled, Tedious Brief Tales of Granta and Gramarye (1919), now one of the rarest volumes of ghost stories from its period.

  There is a chamber in Jesus College the existence of which is probably known to few who are now resident, and fewer still have penetrated into it or even seen its interior. It is on the right hand of the landing on the top floor of the precipitous staircase in the angle of the cloister next the Hall – a staircase which for some forgotten story connected with it is traditionally called “Cow Lane”. The padlock which secures its massive oaken door is very rarely unfastened, for the room is bare and unfurnished. Once it served as a place of deposit for superfluous kitchen ware, but even that ignominious use has passed from it, and it is now left to undisturbed solitude and darkness. For I should say that it is entirely cut off from the light of the outer day by the walling up, some time in the eighteenth century, of its single window, and such light as ever reaches it comes from the door, when rare occasion causes it to be opened.

  Yet at no extraordinarily remote day this chamber has evidently been tenanted, and, before it was given up to darkness, was comfortably fitted, according to the standard of comfort which was known in college in the days of George II. There is still a roomy fireplace before which legs have been stretched and wine and gossip have circulated in the days of wigs and brocade. For the room is spacious and, when it was lighted by the window looking eastward over the fields and common, it must have been a cheerful place for a sociable don.

  Let me state in brief, prosaic outline the circumstances which account for the gloom and solitude in which this room has remained now for nearly a century and a half.

  In the second quarter of the eighteenth century the University possessed a great variety of clubs of a social kind. There were clubs in college parlours and clubs in private rooms, or in inns and coffee-houses: clubs flavoured with politics, clubs clerical, clubs purporting to be learned and literary. Whatever their professed particularity, the aim of each was convivial. Some of them, which included undergraduates as well as seniors, were dissipated enough, and in their limited provincial way aped the profligacy of such clubs as the Hell Fire Club of London notoriety.

  Among these last was one which was at once more select and of more evil fame than any of its fellows. By a singular accident, presently to be explained, the Minute Book of this Club, including the years from 1738 to 1766, came into the hands of a Master of Jesus College, and though, so far as I am aware, it is no longer extant, I have before me a transcript of it which, though it is in a recent handwriting, presents in a bald shape such a singular array of facts that I must ask you to accept them as veracious. The original book is described as a stout duodecimo volume bound in red leather and fastened with red silken strings. The
writing in it occupied some 40 pages, and ended with the date 2 November 1766.

  The Club in question was called the Everlasting Club – a name sufficiently explained by its rules, set forth in the pocket-book. Its number was limited to seven, and it would seem that its members were all young men, between 22 and 30. One of them was a Fellow-Commoner of Trinity: three of them were Fellows of Colleges, among whom I should specially mention a Fellow of Jesus, named Charles Bellasis: another was a landed proprietor in the county, and the sixth was a young Cambridge physician. The Founder and President of the Club was the Honourable Alan Dermot, who, as the son of an Irish peer, had obtained a nobleman’s degree in the University, and lived in idleness in the town. Very little is known of his life and character, but that little is highly in his disfavour. He was killed in a duel at Paris in the year 1743, under circumstances which I need not particularise, but which point to an exceptional degree of cruelty and wickedness in the slain man.