"Machen, Arthur - [07] - B Coney Court" - читать интересную книгу автора (Machen Arthur)

7B CONEY COURT


"7B Coney Court" is as unruffled on its surface as "A Double Return". It has a documentary
feel to it. Like many of Machen's best later tales, it records no more than a strangeness in the
structure of things.

A good many years ago the late Stephen Phillips, the poet and dramatist, got
himself into a very queer piece of trouble. He had just left his house somewhere
on the south coast, I think at Littlehampton or near it, and rumours had got
abroad that he had done so because the place was haunted. The rumours penetrated
to Fleet Street, and some paper sent down a reporter to interview the poet.
Stephen Phillips told the newspaper man his experiences in his late residence,
and they were, indeed, most remarkable. I have forgotten the detail, and cannot
recall the manner of the noises or voices or apparitions that had vexed the late
tenant; but there was no doubt that the house was haunted, and haunted very
badly. A sensational "story" appeared in the paper - and then the landlord of
the house sued everybody concerned for heavy damages. It had not occurred to
Phillips or the newspaper that you could libel a house; but the owner of it
pointed out that to call a house haunted made it unlettable, and that in
consequence of the statements in the interview the place once occupied by the
poet had been empty on his hands for the last eighteen months. How the matter
ended has escaped my memory, but I believe somebody, the poet or the paper, had
to pay, and I should think it was the paper. However, I am taking the affair as
a warning, and so I declare that all names and places in the following history
are fictitious. There is no such Inn of Court or Chancery as Curzon's Inn; there
is no such square as Coney Court, though South Square, Gray's Inn, once bore
that name. And therefore: no action will lie.

But assuming for the moment that names and places are as true as the tale, it
may be said that Curzon's Inn lies somewhere between Fleet Street and Holborn.
It is approached by a maze of crooked courts and paved alleys, guarded by iron
posts, and it consists of a small hall - note the very odd and elaborate "sham
Gothic" work about the principal doorway, date 1755 - a huge and ancient and
flourishing mulberry tree in a railed enclosure, a quadrangle called Assay
Square, and another which is Coney Court. In Coney Court there are nine
entrances in the buildings, which were rebuilt in 1670. All is of a dim red of
ancient brickwork; the entrances are enriched with Corinthian pilasters, in the
manner of the older doorways in King's Bench Walk in the Temple; and the carved
wooden penthouses over these doorways have been attributed to Grinling Gibbons;
somewhat doubtfully, as I am told, and on a misreading of an allusion in a
contemporary diary. But, at all events, there are nine doors in Coney Court, and
no more than nine, and hence the perplexity of Mr.Hemmings, the Steward, when he
received a cheque for г20, with a note to this effect:

DEAR SIR - Please receive the enclosed cheque for Twenty Pounds (г20 0 0), being the
quarter's rent due to you for my chambers at 7B Coney Court, Curzon's Inn.
I remain, Yours faithfully,
MICHAEL CARVER.