He Arrived at Dusk by R. C. Ashby

by R.C. Ashby

"In reading it I had several splendid shudders. . . . It is a piece of living literature, not merely an evening's entertainment." - E. B. Osborn, "Morning Post" "A bang-up ghost-murder-detective story with a background of bleak Northumberland moors, an old house full of haunts, [and] a Roman Centurion who appears . . . with death in his wake." - "Scribner's Magazine" "A well nigh perfect admixture of eerie horror, romance and good detecting." - "Saturday Review" "Truly a little masterpiece of a book. Reminiscent of Christie at the height of her powers in its brilliant use of misdirection. . . . Really a classic of its kind." - J. F. Norris, "Mystery File" From the moment William Mertoun arrives to catalogue the library at Colonel Barr's old mansion on the desolate Northumbrian moors, he senses something is terribly wrong. Barr's brother Ian has just died, mysteriously and violently, and the Colonel himself is hidden away in a locked room, to which his sinister nurse denies all access. As strange and supernatural events begin to unfold, Mertoun learns the local legend of a ghostly Roman centurion, slain on the site sixteen centuries earlier, who is said to haunt the estate. Mertoun is sceptical at first, but after another murder, a harrowing seance, and an actual sighting of the spirit one lonely night on the moor, he realizes that he and everyone at Barr's mansion are in mortal danger. What does the ghost want, and can it be stopped? This first-ever reprinting of "He Arrived at Dusk" (1933), R. C. Ashby's classic tale of mystery and the supernatural, features a new introduction by Mark Valentine and a reproduction of the original jacket art.

Genres: Horror, Fiction, Classics, Crime, Mystery, Gothic

Paperback

First published January 1, 1933

About the author

Ruby Constance Annie Ashby Ferguson
aka
Ruby Ferguson and R.C. Ashby

Reviews

[Nancy Oakes · Rating 5 out of 5]

http://www.crimesegments.com/2019/10/...

Oh, Bravo!!! This is one of those novels where the armchair detective in me had things swirling in my head at all times trying to figure out what was really going on here, skirting the edges but never guessing the depth of things that were happening. Such a wonderful book, really best suited for true-blue lovers of old British mystery combined with more than a bit of supernatural pulpy goodness. For the fun quotient alone it's worth five stars. It is also is the perfect crime read for the Halloween season, and finally, what is there not to love about the cover art?

As is revealed at the outset,

"The story as here presented is in three parts; three stories in one, three points of view; in fact, murder through the eyes of three men of widely differing mentality and outlook."

As Mark Valentine notes in his introduction, He Arrived at Dusk is a "chilling story of apparitions, uncanny incidents, and dark legends... " and clearly the author has laid the foundations for such a tale in the way she immediately begins to evoke the atmosphere that ultimately permeates this entire story. The house at the edge of Northern Sea, the moors that could swallow an unsuspecting person, the periodic sweeping of the lighthouse beam across the landscape in the darkness, and the superstition surrounding the old tower at the center of this story all combine to create the perfect backdrop for what takes place here. Add to that sense of something "hideous" observed in the account of the first character on entering the house for the first time and his recounting of his own strange experiences there, the mysterious nurse, and the scene is more than set for the strangeness that follows over the next two accounts. However, there is also a seriously good mystery at the heart of it all, and as a keen reader of these old novels, for me the solution was almost as satisfying as the journey.

For devotees of these older books, or for people looking for something a wee bit different than your standard British mystery, you really can't do much better. He Arrived at Dusk is one of those hidden gems I live to discover, and my serious thanks go to Valancourt for bringing it back into print.

[Daniel Myatt · Rating 4 out of 5]

A brilliant ghost, mystery story set in the wilds of Northumberland (where I'm staying currently), I could imagine the desolate moors, the black North Sea, and the gothic house standing forlorn as the ghostly harbinger of doom stalks closer and closer...

A fun, three parter of a book, and I loved how the story unfolds through the different segments and how each segment is told from a different characters point of view.

Clever and enjoyable! I would recommend reading it in a Northumberland cottage, on a moor, in the dark....

[Jane · Rating 4 out of 5]

This supernatural mystery novel is written in an interesting way, from the perspective of three narrators who share different phases of the story. This would appeal to people interested in British ghost stories/mysteries and roman Britain.

[Andy Weston · Rating 3 out of 5]

The story as here presented is in three parts; three stories in one, three points of view; in fact, murder through the eyes of three men of widely differing mentality and outlook.

To begin with, William Mertoun relates his account of proceedings, to a friend in his London club over a drink, of how he had been engaged by a certain Colonel Barr to "value the contents" of his remote house in the Northumberland moors. When he arrives he discovers the the old Colonel is ill and indisposed, and that the house has a resident poltergeist. The Colonel’s nurse asks him stay on an additional week, and catalogue the books in the library. Mertoun discovers a local man has fallen to his death from the nearby cliffs, an apparent suicide, but things become even more bizarre when the Colonel’s mysterious nephew, who is acting as his host, tells him of the spectre of a Roman soldier who haunts the nearby moor.
This is an example of what the publisher, Valancourt, do so well, in discovering lost gems of British literature. It’s a sort of mix of Agatha Christie and Scooby Doo, though much more subtle than the latter.
Published initially in 1933, it bears that old adage, ‘they don’t write them like that any more’; a genuinely good mystery with a satisfying climax to it.

Ruby Constance Annie Ferguson, née Ashby, was born in Hebden Bridge, and lived her adult life in Manchester, where she subsidised her income as a secretary by writing short stories initially. She was better known for her children’s books which usually involved ponies, the Jill books.

[Andrew Sherwell · Rating 3 out of 5]

God damn Scooby Doo ending.

[Sandy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Not for the first time, a novel resurrected by the fine folks at Valancourt Books has turned out to be one of my favorite reads of the year. Back in 2020, J. B. Priestley's "Benighted" (1927), reissued by Valancourt in 2013, was one of my favorites, and just last month, Ernest G. Henham's "Tenebrae" (1898), brought back to life by Valancourt in 2012, became one of my top picks for 2023. And now, the firm has done it again, and the novel that I've just experienced from this enterprising publisher might just be the finest one yet. The book in question this time is the intriguingly titled "He Arrived at Dusk," by R.C. Ashby; a perfect mixture of Gothically inflected supernatural horror, murder mystery and detective story. To be succinct, I really loved this one!

"He Arrived at Dusk" first saw the light of day in February 1933; a hardcover edition released by the British publisher Hodder & Stoughton. An American edition from the Macmillan Company (with wholly different cover art) would follow four months later, and then the book would go OOPs (out of prints) for no fewer than 80 years, till Valancourt opted to resurrect it in 2013. Featuring the original cover art that had graced the British edition, as well as a scholarly introduction by one Mark Valentine, the book was a very welcome addition to Valancourt's already impressive catalog.

Before diving into the wonders to be found in Ashby's novel, a quick word on the author herself. Ruby Constance Ashby was born in Yorkshire in 1899, and before her marriage to electrical engineer/philanthropist Samuel Ferguson in 1934, managed to come out with eight novels, primarily mysteries; "He Arrived at Dusk" was her sixth. Following her marriage, she released 14 more novels, many of them romance, under the name Ruby Ferguson, as well as nine novels in the so-called "Jill series," concerning a young female equestrienne. R.C. Ashby ultimately passed away in 1966, at the age of 67.

Now, as to the author's "He Arrived at Dusk"--which, Valentine tells us, "was among her most successful thrillers"--the novel is divided into three discrete sections. In "Mertoun's Story,"our narrator is the 38-year-old, London-based antiques dealer William Mertoun, who relates his recent harrowing experiences to his friend, Ahrman, at their gentlemen's club by the Thames. It seems that several weeks earlier, Mertoun had received a letter from a Colonel Germain Barr, asking the antiques expert to come up to the Barr estate in Northumberland to appraise the contents of the house. Mertoun had found the house--called the Broch, a reference to the ancient rounded fortress, or broch, that stood on the hillside behind it--without much difficulty, situated as it was on a barren moor not half a mile from a high cliff overlooking the gray and wintry North Sea. He had met the two occupants of the home: the colonel's nephew Charlie Barr, an amiable fellow of the same age as Mertoun, and Winifred Goff, the colonel's nurse, who had forbidden one and all to step foot in the colonel's room. That gentleman, apparently, had recently suffered a stroke of some kind following the death of his brother Ian.

It had only taken a few days before Mertoun learned of the poltergeist that afflicted the Barr household; that the broch sitting on the hillside was supposedly haunted and hence shunned by one and all; and that Ian Barr was thought to have been thrown off the cliff to his death by the living ghost of an ancient Roman centurion named Vitellius Gracchus...dead now for 1,600 years! Mertoun's initial skepticism had been shaken following some spectral manifestations, including the nighttime slashing of a Barr family portrait; the increasingly legible writing of Gracchus incised on a stone in the Broch's cellar; and a nerve-racking séance at which Gracchus' voice had boomed out with maniacal laughter. A local doctor, Dr. Peter Ingram, half insane with grief after the loss of his wife and family, had given Mertoun much in the way of confirmatory information regarding the centurion's history, and Mertoun had managed to have some happy moments away from the dreary Broch household with Ingram's niece, Joan Hope, a woman half the antique dealer's age with whom he'd nevertheless fallen quickly in love. But the worst was soon to follow. A shepherd named Blaik had been foolish enough to go exploring in the ruined broch tower, and had been found dead, murdered, with an ancient Roman short sword in his back. Mertoun had even seen the ghostly centurion walking on the moors on the night of the murder, his face a shimmering haze of smoke. And then, another calamity had struck, as the colonel had been mysteriously spirited away, despite Nurse Goff's unremitting attentions.

Part 2 of Ashby's novel consists of "Hamleth's Diary," Hamleth being the young brother of Winifred Goff. Hamleth's job was to tend the nearby lighthouse, along with his father, and his diary goes far in explaining what had happened to Colonel Barr, and what transpired when Mertoun and Ahrman returned to the vicinity three months later to do some investigating on their own. Finally, in the book's third section, "Ahrman's Report," all the novel's many inexplicable manifestations are clarified by this most objective of observers....

"He Arrived at Dusk" is a difficult book to write about without giving away any of the story line's many surprises and secrets, so my comments here must perforce be comparatively brief. The book manages to keep the reader guessing from beginning to very close to the end as to whether or not the events depicted are supernatural in nature, if something more mundane (but certainly no less diabolical) is going on, or if perhaps a combination of the two might be occurring, as was the case, from what I hear, in the final book under the Ashby byline, 1934's marvelously titled "Out Went the Taper." I would not think of revealing which to you, the prospective reader, and thus spoil the enjoyment of finding out for yourself. I will say, however, that the book is often brilliantly ambiguous in its use of misdirection, and in its employment of misleading dialogue (such as when Winifred and her brother Hamleth discuss "that fiend"); a perusal of the book after one is finished will reveal how fairly Ms. Ashby has played with her readers, however. This is the sort of novel in which every little detail is meticulously arranged, as in some of the finest mystery stories, a top-tier category in which "He Arrived at Dusk" must surely be placed.

In addition to being an ingeniously designed, genuinely frightening mystery, Ashby's book is also beautifully, indeed elegantly written, with a wonderful emphasis on atmosphere. Thus, the author has Mertoun tell us:

"...I couldn't go to bed. I threw up the window and let the wet, gusty air rush in; wild and salt from the sea, fresh and clean on my face. The night shadows were deep over the tangled garden and the crouching hill; above was a tattered sky, like a grey pool into which inky poison had been dropped...."

Any number of marvelously atmospheric sequences are skillfully interspersed throughout, including Nurse Goff's and Mertoun's discovery of the slashed portrait in the dead of night; the séance, during which several ghostly presences make themselves known before Vitellius Gracchus overwhelms the proceedings; Mertoun's spotting of the Roman centurion on the moor at night, revealed in the glare of the lighthouse's revolving beacon; the discovery of Blaik's body on the moorland on a dreary rainy morning; and, of course, the exploration of that haunted broch at 2 A.M. These well-done sequences are alternated with fascinating bits of backstory and some lighthearted escapades engaged in by Mertoun and Joan; trust me, you will never grow bored or restless.

Ashby's book is filled with credible and well-drawn characters, half of whom are hiding secrets and are not what they initially appear to be. The dialogue crackles, and the author's use of dialectical English, the vernacular of the northernmost English county, is never forced. The book has a delicious sense of place as well, and the bleak moorlands are clearly depicted in both their winter and springtime glories. Many readers, I have a feeling, will experience a desire to visit Northumberland for themselves after reading Ashby's book, and visit Flodden Field and Hadrian's Wall; two historic locales mentioned in passing during the course of the story. All told, "He Arrived at Dusk" is the perfect book to read on a rainy October night, I would imagine. Personally, I read it during the course of a nasty, early-September heat wave, but found it quite good company, nevertheless. As mentioned, it is yet another inspired revival from Valancourt; ideal for all fans of Gothic literature, supernatural horror, and the ingeniously plotted murder mystery. It is appalling that such a fine work could have been allowed to languish in oblivion for 80 years, so Valancourt, I suppose, is to be doubly thanked.

Remarkably, I cannot find any faults at all with Ashby's work here; no minor quibbles to raise. Oh, the incorporation of British slang may pose some minor challenges for the modern-day American reader ("scrummy," anyone?), but nothing that a quick trip to the Google machine couldn't clarify. As far as I am concerned, this is a flawless book, and a highly satisfying and entertaining one, too. "Truly a little masterpiece of a book," wrote J. F. Norris on the Mystery File website; "Really a classic of its kind." But perhaps I will leave you with a line from Mark Valentine's very astute introduction to this Valancourt edition: "...if ever a book justified the term 'page-turner' it is this one." I could not agree more.

(By the way, this review originally appeared on the FanLit website at https://fantasyliterature.com/ ... a most ideal destination for all fans of supernatural literature....)

[Brucifer · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you've ever wanted to read that perfect blend of British "golden age" detective novel and atmospheric horror story, but weren't sure if such a thing actually existed, this is the book you've been looking for. R.C. Ashby, a.k.a. Ruby Ferguson, was known primarily for her children's books under the latter name, but before that she was a mystery writer. I've not read any of the others (which are all long out of print and don't appear to have ever been issued in paperback, save one other title, Death at Tiptoe, which is itself now out of print), but if this book is any indication, I'd love to read more. Thanks once again to Valancourt books, who started out publishing mostly in the area of 18th and early 19th century rare gothic novels, but have recently branched out into reissuing lesser-known but extremely well-chosen 20th century novels that deserve reappraisal. I've read a bunch of their reissues and have yet to be disappointed. And dig that cover art taken from the original 1933 edition of the book, which only adds to the fun. I've never caught so many people craning their heads to see what I was reading while on the subway.

[Carol Masciola · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a super fun and atmospheric ghost story from the 1930s. So well written. The protagonist is hired to come to a weird old family estate on the moors (of course) in England to appraise the value of the place and its contents. He soon learns of the ghost of a Roman centurion that is haunting the property, supposedly because the house was built atop the site where he fell in battle more than a thousand years earlier. Things get more serious when the Roman is seen lurking the moors and a dead body appears ... romance, intrigue and suspense.

[Vera Viselli · Rating 2 out of 5]

In quarta di copertina scrivono "uno straordinario romanzo del 1933 dove il soprannaturale e il terrore si mescolano con la pura detection. Un piccolo capolavoro, lo ha elogiato il critico J. F. Norris su Mystery File, il più importante sito di gialli classici del web".

Io invece l'ho trovato maledettamente lento, ho fatto una fatica immane per terminarlo. La storia viene narrata secondo tre punti di vista diversi, ma non è questo il problema. La parte di detection è praticamente inesistente, perché viene presentato un fantasma come autore di presunti delitti e maledizioni, e non è neanche presente questo mood gotico che forse poteva salvare qualcosa.Nel finale poi la spiegazione del mistero è affrettata, buttata lì, senza capo né coda. Un grandissimo no.

[Gabriele Crescenzi · Rating 2 out of 5]

Riconosco la bravura dell'autrice nelle descrizioni, ma questo "giallo", se così si può definire, mi ha proprio deluso. Forse il peggiore che ho letto fino ad ora. Parte con l'idea di un assassino fantasma ma alla fine la vicenda gialla è totalmente marginale. Non ci sono indizi per capire il colpevole, anche se io l'ho intuito per il ridotto numero di personaggi. Inoltre la faccenda del sovrannaturale viene liquidata facilmente, con una spiegazione banalissima. Io lo sconsiglio a coloro che cercano un vero giallo.

[Todayiamadaisy · Rating 4 out of 5]

A 1930s attempt at a Victorian Gothic novel, with successive narrators relating a ghost story/murder mystery: on a desolate moor lit by a sweeping lighthouse beam, the inhabitants of a house are tormented by the angry ghost of a Roman centurion. Full of mysterious deaths, mysterious accidents and mysterious disappearances, it wraps up abruptly and has an entirely unnecessary romance shoehorned in, but is overall a cracking good read.

[Naomi · Rating 4 out of 5]

Deserves to be much better known and more widely read. It's rare that I find a book I can't put down.