The Three Mariners Inn,
a timber frame building on Seathorpe’s ancient seafront, had been
built in the year 1131, according to the signboard. The old tavern,
now an antique emporium, must surely, mused Dr Who, as he stood on
the sun-baked pavement before it in the summer of 1963, be one of
England’s oldest buildings. Above the doorway stood a rather
formidable-looking ship’s figurehead, her flowing brown tresses and
bright blue drapery curiously at odds with the gimlet stare of her
hard black eyes.
Glancing
idly at a seagull perched on a litter bin, Dr Who pushed open the
ancient, creaking door and found himself in the subdued light of a
musty-smelling room, originally the bar, still
fitted with its oak settles but now stuffed
to bursting with a diverse hoard of memorabilia. There were brass
bedsteads, papier-mâché cabinets, gutta percha chairs, trays of
delicate crockery, paintings, postcards, a Victorian dress of black
bombazine beaded with jet, porcelain-faced dolls in clothes of
finely-worked lace, elaborately-wrought clocks, each one frozen at a
different point in time. On a rough wooden shelf stood a long row of
variously-sized Toby jugs – and what extremely hideous objects they
were, thought Dr Who.
The place was soaked
in atmosphere.
A little old man with
wispy, snow-white hair was hunched over a large, leather-bound,
ancient-looking tome, open before him on a desk that had pennies
stuck all over its surface. Was he, Dr Who wondered ridiculously,
consulting his book of spells?
The shriveled little
gnome registered his presence and peered across at him with large,
startled eyes, like a squirrel disturbed in the act of laying down
the winter’s supply of nuts.
‘A very old volume,’
the Doctor commented, nodding towards it and fixing his monocle in
place. ‘Centuries old, in fact, hmm?’
The crinkled parchment
face of the superannuated old fellow brightened in a trice. ‘Oh
yes, indeed. An eleventh century spell book.’
Dr Who, remembering
his first thought on seeing the little proprietor, was taken aback.
‘Ah…indeed?’
‘My last look at it,
sadly. It’s going to a wealthy collector in Cambridge.’ The old
man sighed. ‘Ah, well, I did get a good price, I suppose…’
‘It’ll keep the
wolf from the door,’ a new voice croaked. ‘Can’t eat books, can
you?’
An old woman seated on
a rickety chair by the counter, whom Dr Who hadn’t even noticed
until she spoke, was sipping tea from a delicate china cup decorated
with a ringleted lady in a lemon-coloured crinoline.
The old man looked
miserably at the hefty volume. ‘There’s something in that, of
course,’ he conceded, reluctantly.
‘Granny Crumble,
they call me round here.’
Dr Who summoned up a
polite smile. ‘Delighted, Madam.’
Granny Crumble stared
at him wonderingly, as if fascinated by his words. She was a
worn-looking old thing, he noted absently. The long black coat she
was buttoned tightly into was in a similar condition. Her slightly
untidy grey hair, gathered into a very loose bun at the back, was
topped with a battered black hat, on the brim of which a few
artificial flowers struggled against the odds to keep up appearances.
‘Chitty.’ The
proprietor offered Dr Who his hand. ‘Edwin Chitty.’
‘Funny, really,’
said Granny Crumble.
Both men stared at her
blankly.
‘Funny that
everybody calls me Granny. I’ve never had no children, you know,
even though my poor Harry and me was married for more than a few
years before he copped it.’
‘In the last war,’
Mr Chitty explained to Dr Who, making an effort.
‘A V1 on “The
Spread Eagle”. I lived in London then. Houndsditch. I’d stayed at
home with my old trouble, you see.’ She paused, remembering. ‘I
saw my Harry just before they screwed him down. Looked real put out,
he did. Mind you, there’d still been half an hour to go till
closing time when it happened.’
Dr Who and Edwin
Chitty nodded gravely.
‘I’ve been on my
own these twenty odd years.’ Granny drained her teacup. ‘A hard
life, it’s been, but I never grumble, though I can only afford to
have one bar of the gas fire on when it’s the really cold weather.
I can’t even scrape up enough for a nice port and lemon now and
then to ward off the palps.’
Mr Chitty sighed.
‘There’s tea left in my flask, Granny, if you’d care for
another,’ he offered, reluctantly.
‘Oh, no. I don’t
want to impose,’ Granny Crumble insisted unconvincingly, already
proffering her cup and saucer for the refill.
‘Have you heard from
your old friend in Houndsditch lately?’ the old man enquired,
making a determined attempt to display polite interest as he sadly
watched his beverage supply diminish further. ‘A charwoman, isn’t
she?’
‘Ada Drewcock? She
wrote in April. Or was it May? Rambled on about some strange
goings-on during that big freeze, she did. I couldn’t make head nor
tail of it.’
There was a momentary
flicker in Dr Who’s eyes. He changed the subject with, ‘The
ship’s figurehead above the door outside looks rather formidable,
does she not, hmm?’
Old Chitty’s eyes
swivelled towards Dr Who. ‘Eva? Yes, I suppose she does look rather
unnerving. I suppose I’m so used to her that I don’t even notice
anymore.’
The
irrepressible Granny Crumble piped up again. ‘They say she comes
down from there and wanders the streets. Knocks on fishermen’s
doors to warn them of approaching storms, she does.’ Granny
stared into her cup, already empty again. She placed it on the
counter and rose unsteadily to her feet. ‘I suppose I’d better
take myself off. I’m not one to wear out my welcome. Never have
been.’
‘She
comes every day now,’ Edwin Chitty told Dr Who, when the door had
closed behind her. He sighed. ‘I suppose I should be grateful for
the company, but Granny can drink an ocean of tea. She lives in the
old people’s flats on Sycamore Crescent. Came to Seathorpe just
after the war, as I remember…’
Dr
Who interposed. ‘I’ll browse, if I may?’
‘Oh,
yes, indeed. By all means do,’ urged the old ancient, rising above
the curtailment of his reminiscence and slipping back into shopkeeper
mode.
Dr
Who noticed a stack of old comics and magazines and examined the top
ones. A copy of the Radio
Times had
a wide-eyed blonde on the cover with a caption announcing the return,
on Monday, of Lucille Ball in The
Lucy Show.
An issue of TV
Comic held
his attention briefly as he read through an instalment of Fireball
XL5 on
pages two and three.
It
must be quite a task, he mused, to have to continually invent new
plots. Eventually, he supposed, the editor would be obliged to
replace Steve Zodiac’s adventures with something else…
He
ran his fingers along the spines of a row of Rider Haggard
volumes, bound in brown leather with embossed titles in white. King
Solomon’s Mines.The
Witch’s Head.Mr
Meeson’s Will...
'Are
these volumes from a collected edition of Rider Haggard?’ he asked
old Chitty.
The
proprietor shook his head. ‘Alas, no. As far as I’m aware, there
is no complete set of Rider Haggard’s works. A great shame, is it
not?’
Dr
Who turned the leaves of She.‘L
Horace Holly,’
he muttered. ‘I visited him once. He was a poor, broken old fellow
by then, I’m afraid. Still mourning that adopted nephew of his…’
Edwin
Chitty was entranced by Dr Who’s words. ‘Leo?’
‘Holly
showed me two thick notebooks, tightly bound in parchment. The pages
were of an extremely thin, tough paper, and each book contained quite
a number of sheets.’ The Doctor paused. Then, ‘They were the
original manuscript of Wisdom’s
Daughter.’
By now Edwin was
convinced that, if he served behind his counter until he was a
centenarian, a customer as intriguing as this one would never cross
the sill of his door again. ‘It was in Rider Haggard’s own hand,
then?’ he enquired breathlessly.
Dr
Who darted a sharp look at him, then smiled enigmatically. ‘Rider
Haggard’s? Oh no. Oh, dear me, no…’
Old
Chitty stared, opened his mouth to speak, then closed it again.
‘You
have some most interesting Victorian coins here.’ The Doctor
studied a double florin with Queen Victoria’s jubilee head, dated
1889; several ‘bun’ pennies, including one from 1860 in extremely
fine condition, with every detail of the Eddystone lighthouse
discernible; and a ‘Godless’ florin of 1849. ‘I don’t suppose
you have an 1839 ‘Una and the Lion’ five pounds, hmm?’
Chitty
shook his head regretfully. ‘That was proof only, wasn’t it? I’m
afraid an example has yet to pass through my modest little
establishment.’
Dr
Who waved a hand expansively. ‘An atmospheric little building, if I
may say so. No doubt, in common with many an ancient edifice, it
possesses some intriguing features?’
Edwin
leaned forward eagerly. ‘Indeed it does. It’s riddled with secret
passages, and hidden cupboards too, where contraband was once hidden
in the days when smuggling was rife. My little storeroom upstairs is
supposedly haunted by the spirit of Lady Elizabeth Gurney, though
I’ve never seen anything myself.’ A shadow crossed his lined old
face momentarily. ‘At least - not up there.’ His eyes met Dr
Who’s for a moment, then he quickly sought and recovered his
thread. ‘Lady Elizabeth’s body lay for the best part of two
centuries on an old iron bedstead in that room, which had no door.
The chamber was discovered in 1894 when Orlando Ferrers, the landlord
of The Three Mariners at that time, discerned the outline of a small
window for which there was no corresponding room in the inn.
‘Lady
Elizabeth – she was eventually identified via a monogrammed ring on
one finger – had, as research by a local historian established,
been a passenger on the Fanny
Salt,
a vessel that was wrecked on the rocks at Needle Head, half a mile
along the coast from here, at the end of the 1600’s. Eva - the
figurehead, you know - is said to be from that ship, which still lies
at the bottom of the bay. Most of the crew perished. Five of the
bodies were recovered and laid out in the parlour here – it’s
through that curtained archway in the far corner. A cold,
bone-chilling room to this day, the old parlour. Decidedly eerie,
too. It’s very easy to visualise a row of roughly-made coffins in
there. Very nice Dutch panelling on the walls, though, dating from
about 1700…Where was I? Oh, yes. Lady Elizabeth was found alive,
but badly injured, on the beach by the sons of Alice Stevenson, a
somewhat flint-eyed widow who kept The Three Mariners then and ruled
her boys with a rod of iron. They told no-one of their discovery,
brought Lady Elizabeth to the room upstairs and the Widow Stevenson
looked after her assiduously – though always with one eye on the
jewellery she had been wearing. When her ladyship died, the
Stevensons appropriated the jewellery, apart from the ring I
mentioned, which would presumably have been too identifiable a piece,
and sealed up the room.’
Dr
Who was staring intently at the old dealer. ‘You said you had seen
nothing upstairs, but implied that you had seen something elsewhere.
What were you referring to, hmm?’
Edwin
Chitty indicated the chair vacated by Granny Crumble. ‘Sit down, my
friend.’
As
Dr Who lowered himself onto the rickety seat, the old fellow moved
towards a fitted black corner cupboard decorated with brasswork. The
top of the cupboard was flush with the low ceiling. Old Chitty stood
precariously on a little wooden stool in order to open the door,
reached inside and produced a well-filled decanter.
‘Shall
we take a glass of sherry wine?’ he enquired.
The
tall signboard proclaimed, in faded red letters on a background that
had once been white, the availability of JUGS OF TEA FOR THE SANDS.
The idea appealed to Dr Who, for the glass of sherry had far from
slaked his thirst on this hot day. He had no time, however, to
indulge in a cup of Rosy Lee, on the beach or elsewhere, and he
continued to walk steadily along the seafront thoroughfare known as
Marine Parade, which was more or less thronged with largely noisy
examples of humanity intent upon enjoying to the full that somewhat
doubtful institution, the summer holiday.