Saturday 12 May 2012

Part I
From The Journal Of Armitage Shanks

"The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the deadly light into the peace and safety of a new dark age."
    H.P. Lovecraft, The Call of Cthulhu

"A catchy tune followed by fifteen minutes of ambient noises and sighing".
    Sandi Toksvig, The News Quiz

There are, without a doubt, things both within and without this world of which man was never meant to know. Since that fateful night, I have seen little else when I close my eyes for fitful and disturbed sleep, even with the medications and ministrations lavished upon me by the staff here at the Borchester Clinic, formerly (and more accurately, to my fragmented mind) known as The Borchester Clinic For The Insane. It was here I was brought after being found on the banks of the River Am, naked as the day I was born, and clutching that unearthly and damned carving to my chest. It took two nurses to remove it from me, so I'm told, and its whereabouts now are unknown to me; a shame, because I feel its presence would at least offer me some comfort through my tormented nights. I was raving, they say; harsh glossolalia from lost tongues, references to the dread Necronomicon and something that was "bigger than a squirrel". For my own part, I remember nothing after the events I am about to relate. And for this, at least, I thank all that's holy, though I am beginning to doubt the existence of anything that could reasonably be described as such.

It was in the summer of 2011 that I was first contacted by one Elizabeth Pargeter, a resident of the village of Ambridge, nestled deep in the Borsetshire countryside. I was a private investigator, operating out of a tiny rented office above a dive bar in one of the seedier, and of course cheaper, districts of Borchester. Despite what you may read in novels or see in films, the life of a private investigator was, to me, far from glamorous. Most of my work, on those increasingly rare occasions when I actually had word, revolved around messy divorce cases, or fraudulent insurance claims. Many is the time I've crouched in a hedge trying to photograph an allegedly injured man engaged in manual labour, or a quick game of swingball with his family.

She had called ahead; this was fortunate, as I had been about to embark on my first whiskey of the day, and the advance warning gave me a chance to moderate my behaviour such that, by the time she arrived at my office some three hours later, I had just poured my third. When business was this slow, it was not unknown for me to have finished work for the day by this time of the afternoon, and to be half-heartedly browsing the job section of the local newspaper, having some half-formed thought about a well-deserved change in career.

She looked around my office with what I couldn't help suspecting was something of an air of judgment, but gladly took the chair I offered, though refused the whiskey, opting instead for a glass of water. She was very well-spoken, having that kind of received pronunciation accent one would expect to hear on one of those interminable BBC radio dramas, able to switch from concern to condescension and then to petulance in a mere few syllables; transitions which occurred frequently during her, albeit relatively brief, testimonial.

She was a widow; her husband of some fifteen years, Nigel Pargetter, the public school-educated scion of the wealthy Pargetter family, from whom he had inherited Lower Loxley Hall, had fallen from its roof and plunged several stories to his death on New Year's Day, a scant few months previously. The official report had been that he had slipped while removing a banner from the roof in a high wind under the influence of alcohol, and at first, Mrs Pargeter told me, she had believed this account. The only other soul present at the time had been her brother, David Archer, who ran the nearby Brookfield Farm. Mrs Pargeter suspected, she told me, that her brother knew more about the accident than he was admitting to.

"Far be it from me, Mrs Archer, to turn down paid work, but in this case isn't it the most likely explanation that an intoxicated man in a high wind on a slippery roof just, well, fell?" Of course, I had no intention of turning down the job, especially in such a parlous financial climate, but I thought such a question might bring her out of herself, and her reaction may give away something she would rather keep hidden, but which may eventually prove germane to the investigation.

She reacted badly to the question, saying I was just like all the others, and she became quite distraught, weeping and repeatedly asking why nobody believed her. Her voice in this state was becoming, I must (to my shame) confess, rather grating, and it was more to bring this caterwauling to a conclusion than out of genuine sympathy that I passed her a tissue and repeated the offer of a whiskey. This time she accepted, and after gulping it down (completely neglecting its quality and vintage, as the wine-swigging rural middle classes round here are so wont to do, despite all their pretensions to sophistication) she began to open up on the subject of her brother David.

I learned, from my gentle, probing questions, that he had a history of violence towards animals- above and beyond, obviously, that which is all part and parcel of a farmer's daily lot. He had, some years ago, been prosecuted for killing a badger, which he insisted had been necessary to protect his cattle from TB. To my eternal regret, I initially discounted this piece of evidence, distracted as I was by the seemingly more relevant discovery that he had been present at the death of one Jethro Larkin, killed by a falling branch while the pair were cutting down a tree many years previously. This time, too, he was found to have had no responsibility, and it was recorded as a tragic accident. He had eventually taken Jethro's replacement, a sturdy though fretful young woman named Ruth, for his wife, and it was with her that he now ran Brookfield Farm.

Immediately following the accident, she told me, he had been utterly distraught about the death of Mr Pargetter, the two of them having been very close friends. He had initially provided welcome support for his newly-widowed sister, indeed, at times she had suspected their increasing closeness may be pushing the bounds of propriety, even for a region such as Borsetshire. However, he had eventually confided in her that it had been his idea for the late Mr Pargetter to be up on the roof in such bad conditions, and since that confession they had barely spoken. In the time following this, hurt and bereavement had clearly given way to mistrust, and, combined with the earlier death of Mr Larkin, not to mention the incident with the badger, dark seeds of misgiving had bloomed into the flowers of suspicion. In short, she had nigh-on convinced herself that her brother was fully responsible for the death of her husband; indeed, in her darker imaginings, that it may have even been premeditated murder.

I remained skeptical, but agreed to take on the case, with the usual disclaimers ensuring that even if she were, as I suspected she would be, proved wrong in her fraternal imaginings, I would still be renumerated handsomely. At least, I told myself, even if I could prove that her brother was in no way responsible for the tragedy, it could help provide her with some much-needed closure, and perhaps go some way towards mending those shattered family ties.

I bid her farewell, setting a date the following week on which I would commence my investigation in Ambridge itself, settled my affairs in Borchester, and spent a few days relaxing, safe in the knowledge that my financial situation had at last turned a corner, and from now on things would look a little less bleak, for the foreseeable future at least.

Had I known then what I know now, I would have laughed at such ignorant complacency; in fact, I would have turned down the case, thrown Mrs Archer from my office, and have lived the rest of my life never thinking about, let alone visiting, that accursed village of Ambridge.

Would that I had.