Speaker 1: And now mystery, the come in.
Speaker 2: Welcome. I'm e. G. Marshall.
Speaker 3: It is the fashion today, dating from Freud, to consider
that insanity is not hereditary, even the predisposition to it.
But the great Stigmund Freud died less than forty years ago,
and before him the taint of madness was accepted to
run in families, passed on down through the generations like
some congenital disease. Whether the belief is true or not,
there is a harrowing story of such a family.
Speaker 2: But Dad, mister Monkton is your best friend. It has
been all your life. Jim Moncton is one thing he
escaped the curse, thank the Lord.
Speaker 4: Well you can't for a woman, imagine that Stephen, who
happens to be my best friend, is anything but nor
my hope.
Speaker 5: And pray he is, but he's still young. Yet when
they say it skips generations, I'm not going to argue anymore.
Speaker 2: I know your mother put you up to The mother
had nothing to do with it. I'm thinking of my.
Speaker 5: Sister Anne would be far better off with a short
term headache than a lifetime of misery and despair. But
far no, David, I'd rather put her in a convent,
than see her married to a Mouncton. For as sure
as I'm standing here, I know it in my bones
that Stephen Moncton is marked by the curse of his family.
He'll end up a raving maniac or dead before his time.
Speaker 3: Our mystery drama Mad Moncton was especially adapted from the
Ookie Collins classic for the mystery theater by Ian Martin
and stars Christopher Tabori. The great Scottish historian Carlisle said,
history is a distillation of rumor. However, a contradictory quote
is where there's smoke, there's fire, whichever may be true.
Of the Muncton family, gossip had marked them as a
family damned by hereditary insanity. Every kind of insanity had
cropped up through the years, monomania being.
Speaker 2: The most common.
Speaker 3: The world of the Muncton family shrank to almost nobody
except for the Elmsleys, friends and neighbors.
Speaker 4: My father and mister Monkton have been school friends, and
when years later their paths crossed again, their.
Speaker 2: Friendship was renewed.
Speaker 4: By that time, my youngest sister and myself were almost
of age.
Speaker 2: Was little more than a year separating us.
Speaker 4: Mister Monkton's son, Stephen, was about Anne's age, and I
remember coming home in my last year of college to
find that they were in love and wanted to be engaged.
The Monkton family and my mother and myself were all
for it. My dad was the only stumbling block.
Speaker 6: It makes me so mad, David, mean, Dad can get
so big headed. Couldn't you shake him at all? You
are my last home.
Speaker 4: I did my best, princess, but it was running my
head against solid granite.
Speaker 6: But it's all so silly, It's so unfair. It's not
like him.
Speaker 4: No, Usually my father's pretty easy to get on with,
and usually you can twist him around your finger or mom.
Speaker 6: Not this time. How can he risk mister Monkton's friendship
with some crazy notion?
Speaker 2: What made me use that word princess?
Speaker 6: What know?
Speaker 2: I know how much Dad loves you and wants your happiness.
Speaker 4: It's hard to see him being set against this except
except what well? I mean, Dad is a doctor. He
has a lot of special knowledge none of the rest
of us have.
Speaker 7: Maybe, David, all three do you dare to stand out
here in our garden and suggest in front of God
and everybody that your best.
Speaker 4: Friend is all right, all right, hold it, just let's
get a couple of things straight. First of all, you're
my first interest in this second. Sure, Stephen is a friend,
but not my best one. I'm away at college most
of the time except summers like this.
Speaker 6: So you're against me too.
Speaker 2: No, I'm not. For all I can see. Stephen's a
darn nice guy.
Speaker 4: But if Dad knows something, I mean, if there is
some kind of disease we don't understand about.
Speaker 6: All I know is I love Stephen, and I'm gonna
marry him, even if I have to run away with him.
Speaker 2: You can't do that. You're both under age.
Speaker 6: We can wait. It's not that long, and once we
both get to be of age, we'll be married, even
though he's over Dad's dead body.
Speaker 4: Poor Anne, she was going to regret those words, but
before that, she was going to have more immediate regrets.
For as soon as my father refused to give us
consent to the engagement, and naturally he was forced to
reveal his reason for it, Monkton Abbey was closed to
our family forever, and Stephen forbidden to go near any
of us. Anne was beside herself till I worked out
a little subterfuge. I returned to college and wrote my father.
Speaker 2: That I was having a series of strange.
Speaker 4: Headaches, which brought him posthaste to diagnose them. So while
he was away, my mother could arrange to let the
two love birds meet.
Speaker 6: David was an angel and got Dad out of the
way for a day or two. Now, Stephen, what are
we going to do?
Speaker 1: Well, wait till you're twenty one, and then I'm going
to carry you off like night and the old stories
of Derek Doode.
Speaker 6: If your father will let you, I'll.
Speaker 1: Be twenty one in less than four months. There's nothing
he can do to stop me, nothing either of them
can do.
Speaker 6: But would he try?
Speaker 1: I don't know. He's awfully angry with your father, and
he could be just as stubborn that damn legend. You
know it bothers him and doctor Elmsley hit him right
where it hurts the most, in his pride.
Speaker 6: But what started it all?
Speaker 1: Ever knows the things I've heard, I won't shock you
by repeating, but there's no proof for any of it.
It all started so long, long ago, and it never
would have amounted to anything. I suppose that people weren't.
Speaker 7: So jealous because your family's always been so rich and powerful.
Speaker 1: Something like that. Lord knows, there's enough money we're rolling
in it. We can live like whatever we please, wherever
we please when I come into it.
Speaker 6: Unless your father's still angry enough to cut you off, well.
Speaker 1: Who would he leave it to? And there's only Uncle
Alfred left. He's off in Europe somewhere, and enough in
his own right.
Speaker 6: What's he like?
Speaker 1: Wu a monster? My esteemed uncle is enough to give
the whole family a bad name just by himself. I've
only seen him twice. I honestly think he is so
completely evil. My father pays him off to keep him
out of the country. Let's not worry about Uncle Alvie.
He's not any part of our problems.
Speaker 4: Prophetic words again, If pos Stephen could only have known,
if any of us could have known the future when
Anne wrote me from meeting with Stephen.
Speaker 2: But we didn't, and if he had, this story might
never have happened.
Speaker 4: Just before the Christmas holidays, Stephen's father died very suddenly
of a heart attack. Immediately after the funeral, and my father,
claiming that a lingering bronchial infection was endangering my mother's life,
moved the rest of our family to the south of Spain.
So it was that Stephen and I spent the Christmas
season together. For many reasons, I appreciate your company, David.
Where else would I go with my family over one
thousand miles away.
Speaker 1: You could have joined them in Spain.
Speaker 2: Most of the time would have been spent getting there
and back.
Speaker 4: Besides, it's more important now to find out about your
plans for the future.
Speaker 1: In a few weeks, I shall be twenty one, my
own master. I shall have an income up thirty thousand
pounds a year. In six months, your sister will be
twenty one. I have her own mistress. I intend to
marry her. Have you any objection?
Speaker 2: None? So you and Anne will be married by someone
with or without your father's consent.
Speaker 4: Whither without my father's consent, even if it's over his
dead body. Phrases that haunt me and will haunt me,
I suppose to my grave, I hope not beyond. For
a few days before my sister's twenty first birthday, my
father picked up a virulent case of the Spanish flu,
and within three days was gone. My mother and Anne
brought his body home to Wincot for burial.
Speaker 2: And I met them there.
Speaker 4: But during the week I waited for them to return,
I learned of the strange goings on at Monkton Abbey
and discovered that my one time friend Stephen refused to
see or talked to me.
Speaker 6: But well, I didn't he even come to the funeral, David.
Speaker 4: I don't know, Anne, he won't see me. That the
servants barred the doors. I can't even force my way in.
Speaker 6: But doesn't he want to see? Doesn't he ask for me?
Speaker 2: He? And I don't know how to tell you this.
Speaker 4: He well, ever since shortly after his father's death, peculiar
things have been going on at the abbey.
Speaker 6: What peculiar things?
Speaker 2: It's too soon to talk about them now.
Speaker 7: Oh what's he been doing? Locked up in that lonely
old mausoleum all alone?
Speaker 2: I can only tell you what the local gossip is
if you insist on hearing it.
Speaker 6: Oh, but I do, David, I must.
Speaker 1: Well.
Speaker 4: The local farm laborer that's been on the estate near
the house says that he's been wandering and walking about,
carrying dusty, old, crumbling papers in his hand. That he's
forcing open scores of old windows as if to let
the light into rooms. That have been closed for years.
You know, there must be some eighty rooms in the abbey,
and that once towards evening he was even observed standing
on the very highest of the crumbling turrets, never ascended
before in recent memory, which is supposed to be inhabited
only by the ghosts of the ancient monks who once
possessed the buildings.
Speaker 2: What's he looking for, Anne? I don't know unless.
Speaker 4: Unless what unless the old story is true your legend,
that's Stephen has lost his mind.
Speaker 2: No, and where are you going?
Speaker 6: I'm going to find out for myself, to prove you're
all wrong.
Speaker 2: I should have followed Anne, I suppose.
Speaker 4: I thought perhaps it was better for her to find
out the truth for herself, whatever the truth might be.
She came back later that evening, her face gray and haggard,
but composed. I saw her right up the drive and
went down to the stable to help her dismount.
Speaker 2: Well, did you see Stephen.
Speaker 7: Yes, we're not going to be married right away. Of course,
it's only decent to mourn father a while.
Speaker 2: This sounds strange. Is Stephen all right?
Speaker 6: He will be?
Speaker 2: You mean he is insane? No?
Speaker 7: He he has to go abroad for a few months
to settle, settle an affair of honor, and then he'll.
Speaker 6: Come back and we'll be married.
Speaker 2: Are you sure?
Speaker 6: I hope I am.
Speaker 2: And there's nothing more to be said, David.
Speaker 7: It's just going to take a little time. You'll must
go back to college and finish, and by that time
then and we'll see. It'll work out. It's got to
work out.
Speaker 2: I couldn't get any more out of her. Stephen still
refused to see me.
Speaker 4: I went back to college, graduated, and returned.
Speaker 2: My mother could tell me nothing new.
Speaker 4: I looked for Anne, and I found her in the garden,
gazing off towards the great bulk of Monkton Abbey. Her
face was drawn and white, and she was painfully thin.
When she saw me, she jumped up to hug me
with Joe.
Speaker 6: Oh, David, David, how good to have you back.
Speaker 2: He love, Prince, says, Let me look at you. You
don't look yourself. Is it still Stephen?
Speaker 6: Yes, Stephen.
Speaker 2: You miss him so much.
Speaker 6: I used to have letters every day, then Lass and Lessen.
Now I haven't heard from him in over a month.
Speaker 2: Well perhaps it's just as well.
Speaker 6: No, I love him. I'll never love anyone else. I'll
wait for him till till he finds what he has
to find.
Speaker 2: What is he doing in Europe?
Speaker 6: I can't tell you that's his secret?
Speaker 2: Well was he when you last heard from him?
Speaker 6: Italy and Naples? David? Aren't you going to Europe?
Speaker 4: Yes, I've been planning to travel a bit before I
settle down to the law.
Speaker 6: Then find him for me, please.
Speaker 4: I might as well start at Naples as any other place.
Oh my best language is Italian anyway, all right?
Speaker 2: If I find him, then.
Speaker 7: Tell him, tell him I need him and I want him.
I want him to come home and marry me. Tell
him it doesn't matter that We'll learn.
Speaker 6: To live with this ghastly thing somehow.
Speaker 4: And that was the most I could get out of
my sister, whatever this ghastly thing was.
Speaker 2: So I went to.
Speaker 4: Naples and his chance would have it. My first day
there I had news of Stephen. I ran into Chip Travers,
an old friend from school, now with the embassy.
Speaker 8: We had lunch together and I asked about Stephen. Heard
of him, My dear Elmsley, we can't even.
Speaker 1: Comb him out of our hair.
Speaker 2: What do you mean?
Speaker 8: The man has an obsession, the sick one. I might
add frankly, I'd say that old Monkton has gone round
the bend.
Speaker 1: He's as mad as a hatter.
Speaker 3: And so it seems that the black cloud of tragedy
does indeed hang over the house of Moncton, that madness
is an inherited trait. Yet and denies it. Is she
blinded by love? And if not, what is the ghastly
secret she and Stephen would have to spend their lives with?
In a moment, I'll return with that too. Monomania an
insanity in which the psychotic thinking is confined to one
idea or group of ideas. Dictionary definition. And the whispers
and rumors and accusations which have been voiced about the
Monkton family for centuries about the curse that eyes on
it have.
Speaker 2: Tended to stress this particular.
Speaker 3: Form of madness. But what one idea or a group
of ideas? What is the dread obsession that has seized
his forebears and apparently has reached into modern times to
fester now in Stephen Munkton's brain?
Speaker 2: Why do you say that? And why should he be
bothering the embassy?
Speaker 8: Well, you know, he had an uncle, a pretty bad lot.
He's been traveling around Europe for years. Yes, Alfred mont
that's our boy. Apparently one of his past misdeeds caught
up with him and he got himself shot in a
duel somewhere in Italy. News of it reached Stephen and
he arrived here a few weeks ago.
Speaker 1: Since then has.
Speaker 8: Been pestering living daylights out of us. The police, all
the authorities.
Speaker 2: Have some action taken against the men who killed his uncle.
Speaker 8: Lord. No, the police are trying to follow that up, naturally,
since under present law it constitutes murder. The opponent and
the seconds disappeared into thin air. But Munkton, by all
evidence doesn't give a hang about them. All he wants
is his uncle's body.
Speaker 2: Is that so impossible?
Speaker 1: Well?
Speaker 2: Probably, I don't understand.
Speaker 8: Look, we only heard of this duel from a French
journal some weeks after it happened. Moncton's second died and
left some papers constituting a partial confession. But the one
vital thing not included was where the duel was fought.
So nobody knows where Alfred Monkton was buried, or if
he was buried at all.
Speaker 1: Yes, Stephen, how are you? David David Elmsley, how good
to see you, but you're you're not alone?
Speaker 4: Of course I am who would be? Oh if you
mean Anne? No, I'm sorry she isn't.
Speaker 1: Here, Nor I didn't mean Anne. Uh. Uh, come in,
come in, thank you, Sit, sit down, sit down up
there by the reading lamp, by the fire. Uh. You
must tell me all about uh about home and Anne.
Speaker 4: As I crossed the shadowed room lit only by the
one lamp, my spine was still cold from that peculiar
moment at the door, the moment when Stephen at first
so obviously glad to see me, and let his eyes
wander for a moment and stay fixed at a spot
over my shoulder, as though someone stood there behind me, watching,
waiting for what.
Speaker 1: David, what brings you here to Naples?
Speaker 2: Oh?
Speaker 4: Part Touring the Continent? Part I promise to Anne.
Speaker 2: You haven't written her in a long time. No, she's
pretty heartbroken, Stephen.
Speaker 1: No more than I I I. I haven't written because
because for all my searchings I've I have nothing to report.
Speaker 2: She sent you a message, Stephen.
Speaker 1: Oh, may may I see it? Well?
Speaker 4: It's a verbal one. She was afraid of letters who
were going astray.
Speaker 1: What's the message?
Speaker 2: She said? Tell him?
Speaker 4: I need him and I want him. Tell him to
come home and marry me. Tell him it doesn't matter.
We'll learn to live with this ghastly thing somehow.
Speaker 2: Yeah, she's just don't believes what that. I'm not mad.
I don't quite know what you mean.
Speaker 1: Well, sometimes sometimes I I begin to wonder myself.
Speaker 4: Stephen, Stephen, what it is your What is it you're
looking at over my shoulder?
Speaker 1: There's nothing there, there's nothing that you can see. But
since you're here, since Anne, since you, you have a
right to know. Only before I tell you no, no, no,
don't leave your chair, I must I wanna make an
alteration a d Do you mind sitting in a strong light?
Speaker 2: No, it's quite dark in here anyway.
Speaker 1: Well, then just wait a moment.
Speaker 4: I won't pretend I was well, ah, what's the word uneasy?
Speaker 2: Shaken?
Speaker 4: Or to be totally candid? Frightened, especially as I watched
my friend's preparation, with the extra light, the wild glitter
of his eyes, and the dark shadows beneath them.
Speaker 1: From an adjoining room.
Speaker 4: He brought a large reading lamp, then two candles from
a table and two more from the mantle, placing them
between us.
Speaker 2: His hand trembled so much.
Speaker 4: I had to light them for him, and at his
direction take the shade off the reading lamp at Lancet.
He seemed satisfied, and we sat down. He started his
story without hesitation.
Speaker 1: Has Anne told you anything of why our marriage is delayed?
Speaker 6: Why I'm here?
Speaker 1: No? I came here to find the body of my
uncle Alfred.
Speaker 2: Yes, I know that much, and the jewel, and that
no one knows where it took place. Who told you?
There chip travers and attachated the embassy.
Speaker 4: He said something about your uncle's second having made a confession.
Speaker 1: Yes, yes, his name was Foulon. He died in Paris
two days before I located him. The confession he left
failed to tell us where the duel had taken place.
Speaker 2: Yes, but he must have given you some idea.
Speaker 1: If only he had. Uh. I I have the whole
document here y you can read it later.
Speaker 2: Was it fought honestly?
Speaker 6: Well?
Speaker 1: Apparently, if any duel can be considered. So they they
tossed for first fire. My uncle lost. They were placed
thirty feet apart. The winner of the toss advanced ten
paces and fired. Had he missed, my uncle could have
walked right up to the other and shot him through
the heart or head as he desired, but he didn't miss. No,
my uncle was dead before he hit the ground.
Speaker 2: N it's here.
Speaker 1: Foul then states that he tore a leaf from his
pocket book describing the circumstances of the death and pinned
it to my uncle's chest. Then they started with their
plan to dispose of my uncle's corpse.
Speaker 2: Will go on, Stephen, go on?
Speaker 1: Uh, I can't. That's where it ended, David. I've I've
haunted Heaven knows, I've thrown money around like a drunken sailor,
had a rich one at that. But I don't know
the country, I don't know the language. I'm insulted and
laughed at, almost to my face.
Speaker 2: Stephen, Wait a minute, can I ask a couple of questions?
Of course? How often have you seen your uncle twice
when when I was a child? Did you like him
that much? Like him?
Speaker 1: Sh I hated him as the family did. He He
disgraced our name wherever he went. He was a liar,
a cheat, for all I.
Speaker 4: Know, a murderer I gathered from my friend. That's sort
of the official attitude, too.
Speaker 1: I don't care about their attitude.
Speaker 4: What I'm trying to say is maybe you are being
given the run around, but maybe they don't think you're
in earnest.
Speaker 1: Not in earnest, Come with me, I'll convince you.
Speaker 4: Or He leaped to his feet, grabbing a candle, and
hustled me into the next room. On one side of
his bed was a packing case at least seven feet long.
Speaker 2: The top was open so that I could see. The
case contained a.
Speaker 4: Lead coffin magnificently emblazoned with the monked in arms and
on a plate the name Alfred Moncton, with his age
and the manner of his death inscribed underneath.
Speaker 1: Now I must tell you the secret so that you
don't pick me completely mad. What is it?
Speaker 4: You're looking over my shoulder again as if look at me, Stephen?
Speaker 1: Please yesh, yes, if you will just take your seat
again with the lights between us.
Speaker 2: Ah.
Speaker 1: So, now.
Speaker 2: Now you know the Monkton's reputation, Stephen.
Speaker 4: Let's spare ourselves all the old wives tales.
Speaker 1: I can't. You must be part of it. Now do
you also know or have you heard the family prophecy? No?
I can show you the original fading parchment. I will,
but for the moment it's easier to recite it. When
in abbey's vault a place waits for one of Moncton's race,
When that forlorn one shall lie graveless under open sky,
beggared of six feet of earth, the lord of acres
from his birth. That shall be a certain sign of
the end on Moncton's line from mortal men. From light
of day, the last monkt shall pass away, now Stephen
for a thousand years, at no matter what cost, no
matter where he fell or how he died, at at
no matter what cost, a sacrifice. In the vault under
the abbey at Winkett lies every one of my ancestors.
The succession of the dead in Moncton Valley vault has
never been broken till now I can see by your
face you you wanna ask me how I can believe
in a dogg orrel prophecy written and uttered in an
age of superstition and ignorance. I'll tell you why I do,
Because behind you, right at this moment, as he has
ever since you came, confirming my belief, stands Alfred Monkton himself.
Speaker 4: Something about the tone of his voice, the fixity of
his stare his own total belief in what he saw
kept me from turning my head at that moment, I
too believed that if I looked over my shoulder, I
would see.
Speaker 1: He stands behind you, death glare in his eyes. As
I've seen him, I've seen him walking and sleeping from
the moment he was shot.
Speaker 2: What do you mean from the moment he was shot?
Speaker 1: How could you when when your father whisked Anne away
from me to Spain. I was at loose ends, waiting
for Anne to come of age so that we could
be married, and I had to fill my days with
something to do, and I was in a mood to
clean a specter's throw away the past. I decided to
look in every nook and cranny of the abbey, clear
out the debris, search my family history, and try to
lay the ghost for once and for all.
Speaker 2: What did you find?
Speaker 1: Great cabinets and iron clasped chests, filled with loathsome secrets
of horrors and darkness. D I suppose we were neither
better nor worse than all medieval barons. But the things
I found, well, that's dead and gone. I thought, it's
the past which I'm going to cut myself free of
and start a new future. I'd worked myself to the
highest turret by this time, and I was choked with dust.
I stepped out just before sunset, choosing my footing carefully,
watching the setting sun and thinking of Anne. And suddenly, yes,
standing in front of me, beyond the battlements in mid air,
was the figure of Alfred Monkton, faintly luminous.
Speaker 2: As he stands behind you. Now did he speak?
Speaker 1: No?
Speaker 4: Was this before or the news of the Duwel reached Wincott.
Speaker 2: Two weeks I.
Speaker 1: Didn't know the date of it then as I do now.
It was March fourteenth, the same day as I stood
on the battlement, the very moment the bullet entered his
side and killed him. And now you know why I
dare not marry your sister, not till I fill the
empty place in the mountain abbey with the body of
my uncle, and then, bright God, I will burn it
to the ground.
Speaker 3: So now we know what the monomania of Stephen Muntain's is.
But can it be cured by finding his uncle's body
and the other means he plans, or is it doomed
by the ancient prophecy that from mortal ken from light
of day he's the.
Speaker 2: Last Monkton to pass away.
Speaker 3: I'll return shortly with Act three. Poor David Elmsley caught
between his desire for his sister's happiness and a friend
who held it in his hand, but suffered from what
seemed to be a hereditary and incurable malady.
Speaker 2: But was it incurable?
Speaker 3: Was it only an aberration which could be disposed of
by the simple means of finding an errant corpse.
Speaker 4: After I left Stephen that night, I sat and thought
long and hard.
Speaker 2: I knew Stephen could no longer go this alone.
Speaker 4: Besides, while I could not believe the phantom, I was
intrigued by the story of the jewel and the missing corpse.
I read all the papers Stephen had given me carefully
before going to bed.
Speaker 2: By the next morning I had.
Speaker 4: Seen Chip, the police and all the authorities concerned and
made my decision.
Speaker 1: David, I thought you deserted me.
Speaker 4: Quite the contrary. We have plans to make and a
journey to take.
Speaker 1: Well, what is it you have in mind?
Speaker 2: First? Here are your papers. I've talked with all the authorities.
Speaker 4: As you know, there's no language barrier for me, so
I now know all that they have done.
Speaker 1: Nothing for all the money I've spent not.
Speaker 2: True, just misguided, I believe now.
Speaker 4: Look, the jew was arranged here in Naples two days
before it took place.
Speaker 2: The police have.
Speaker 4: Concentrated on trying to find counselink Low, the other principal,
and his second, so they have searched the road towards Rome.
Speaker 2: I agree with you that they were thorough. Where would
you search since the route was so round about, and
since they wanted to be out of.
Speaker 4: The Neapolitan states. I think the jewel was actually fought
not far from here. All the rest was a blind
to circle.
Speaker 2: Back but where.
Speaker 4: I'm not clairvoyant, but I think we ought to start
looking as close by as possible.
Speaker 2: You're right, I can feel it.
Speaker 1: We're going to find him and take him home, and
at last this long nightmare will be over.
Speaker 2: Poor Stephen.
Speaker 4: He built his expectations so high. For three days, we
coursed the neighborhood without success.
Speaker 2: Each day.
Speaker 4: Is hope diminished in traveling through that rough country, even
by mule.
Speaker 2: I was beginning to.
Speaker 4: Realize how few physical resources my poor friend had left.
Speaker 2: So on the fourth day I went alone.
Speaker 4: There was a pitiless sun that day, and I gradually
ascended into a deeper woods over the stony ground. By
the time my watch suggested that my return, I suddenly
came out of the thick greenery and saw before me
an ancient monastery half way crumbling into ruins. On my
way to it, I was oppressed by an overbearing odor,
A smell it.
Speaker 2: Suggested only one thing to me.
Speaker 4: I turned my mule off the path to a building
from which the odor came. It was closed, save for
a jagged hole where the roof had broken in. By
standing up in my stirrups, I could glimpse almost to
the floor a sight of horror grasped my gut. Stretched
on a rude table supported by trestles was the decomposing
body of what had once been a man. The sheet
that had once covered it rotted away. Suppressing my desire
to scream, I cleared my head with a pinch of snuff.
Speaker 2: Then I rode the mule down.
Speaker 4: The hill to the monastery, and by its ancient gait,
pulled on the bell cord.
Speaker 1: What is it you please to want?
Speaker 2: I'm a traveler who we live in a miserable place.
We have nothing to show travelers.
Speaker 4: I don't come to see anything except what I have
already seen.
Speaker 2: Will you please come out or must I force my
way in?
Speaker 1: Are you alone? Yes?
Speaker 2: Quite alone? Oh reman with you?
Speaker 1: No none, remanta were the grace of God.
Speaker 2: I have just seen a gruesome and horrible sight.
Speaker 4: In that outbuilding back there is the decomposing body.
Speaker 2: Of an unburied man.
Speaker 1: M an ugly sight.
Speaker 2: Do you know about it? Everything?
Speaker 1: Everything? Some months ago, you're at our poor meal in
the refectory and we hear of a sudden bang, M
a gun. We thought it to be a hunter.
Speaker 2: Where did the sun come from? From the meadow beyond
the trees? And that's all you heard of?
Speaker 1: Patient, The old goes slow, Let me see. Oh yeah, yes,
there was a ring at this gate, or the devil
of a ring. And the father Supperior, said, go, brother,
see who it is. Hum. I opened the door, and
lying on the threshold was a man dead, with black
eyes open, staring to the sky's blood soaked shirt.
Speaker 2: The same man who lies out there, the same. But
why did you not give him a decent burier?
Speaker 5: I think I can answer that, Sir, I am the
father superior of this monastery.
Speaker 1: You may leave us.
Speaker 5: Brother, I have been hoping and praying that the Lord
would send you me. Yes, are you not some relative
of the deceased? Are you not seeking him?
Speaker 4: I myself am not a relative, but his nephew is nearby.
Speaker 2: Infandi, Yes, I.
Speaker 4: Was seeking him, But you still haven't answered my question.
Speaker 5: This piece of paper pinned to the man's chest when
we found him.
Speaker 2: Do you eat French? I'm afraid with difficulty. Then I
shall translate it for you.
Speaker 5: This paper is attached to the body of an Englishman,
mister Alfred Moncton. He has been shot and killed fairly
in a duel. Since we must fly to escape the law,
the body is placed at the door of this monastery
to receive burial at the hands of its inmates.
Speaker 2: It is signed only the initial F, of course his second.
Speaker 5: But father, why haven't you buried him? The man is
not of our faith. He died unshriven. This is consecrated
ground that we are, not, by the laws of our order,
permitted to leave its confines.
Speaker 2: We did what we could. I had sent a missive.
Speaker 5: To Rome by those who were bringing our food once
a month, asking permission for my superiors to take what
action they deemed right and sanctified.
Speaker 2: But as yet I have had no answer.
Speaker 5: Ah, has this nephew papers to prove his relationship.
Speaker 2: Everything, to prove it beyond a doubt.
Speaker 5: Then I pray to you, my son, bring him to
take his uncle and bury him, so that he may
be commended to God.
Speaker 4: The next ten days were a fever of activity. I
arranged to have em bombers with what chemical assistance was needed.
Stephen wrote immediately to Anne, warning to expect him home
and that all was well. They would be married as
soon as he returned, and placed the casket with his
uncle in the vault. Only one small hitch seemed to
halt our arrangements. There was no space on any merchant
vessel leaving Naples. That was quickly solved by our chartering
a stout little brig and within a fortnight Stephen, myself
and uncle Alfred, casketed and boxed securely in his crate,
were on our way home.
Speaker 2: But the end was not yet in sight.
Speaker 1: I can almost smell England.
Speaker 2: How much longer do you supposed? The captain says, that's
up to the wind. Two days for at most. Can't
believe it's almost over it is. Tell me does the
phantom still appear to you?
Speaker 6: Oh?
Speaker 2: Yes, didn't I tell you, he followed me everywhere.
Speaker 1: I sha'n't lose him till the empty place is filled
in the abbed vault.
Speaker 2: An entire David, good friend. I think I'll go below
for a while, till later a good rest.
Speaker 8: Your troubles are over, I'm afraid not quite, mister Elmsley,
Why Captain you startled me?
Speaker 2: I didn't see you.
Speaker 8: I were waiting behind the bulkhead. I wanted to talk
to you alone, and mister Elmsley, we have a serious problem.
Speaker 2: And yes, what is that you see?
Speaker 8: There's a Maltese boy aboard a bat sort. He's told
the whole crew that the packing case in mister Monkton's
cabin contains a dead body. Now and we're in for
some rough weather. There's a squall almost on top of us.
It'll it'll give us a breather, but after it's over,
you have one or two choices. Either tell the crew
the boy is lying and I'll hand him up to
the rope, or throw that packing case overboard if it
does contain a body.
Speaker 2: And suppose I refuse both conditions, then.
Speaker 8: We'll have a muty on our hands and a box
will go over Or I'll have to put in for
the nearest. I'm ti to discuss that. Now get on below,
you'll only be in the way here.
Speaker 2: I scarcely made it blow death squally hit us.
Speaker 4: Brig gets strained and groaned, and we can feel her
whirl about it, and came a deafening crash, and the.
Speaker 2: Foot of water flowed into the chapel. He was sent
hurtling to one side, and could feel her suddenly settled
that way, yish and a.
Speaker 9: Cad the stern Pa, she's broke, stol. Make you read
it a pie or a bind? The name shine, I
see a hard not without him?
Speaker 2: Are you out of your mind?
Speaker 9: It takes six men even funds that cas it.
Speaker 2: You'll go, David.
Speaker 1: You don't talk about it about me. I have no
future in this coming yard, dear.
Speaker 2: I stay with this ship. If she thinks I say what,
I'm learned to lie, to kill yourself. The rest was madness.
Speaker 4: After I knocked Stephen out, I got him on deck.
Speaker 2: Somehow he came to and he was like a maniac.
Speaker 4: It took five of us to get him aboard the
long boat and hold him as we pulled away from
the ship. Swab passed as suddenly as it had come up,
And by that time the brig dragged down by her
broken mast and sail, and the water she had shipped,
sank to the bottom, taking Alfred Moncton with her, and
as she went Stephen sagged.
Speaker 2: In her arms and lay quiet and hopeless.
Speaker 4: I'm sorry, I'm too late, Anne, I didn't get your
message in time.
Speaker 6: It doesn't mat a date. He spoke of you at
the last.
Speaker 7: He was quite lucid about what a good friend you
are and how hard you tried to save him.
Speaker 4: I'm glad he's gone. It's been a terrible year for you, princess.
Why you ever married him?
Speaker 7: I loved him and he had to have some one
to take care of him.
Speaker 2: Oh, he was quite mad.
Speaker 6: He was ill, That's all. He lies there, David.
Speaker 4: Next to the empty spot where Alfred Monkton's casket should lie.
Speaker 2: The prophecy fulfilled.
Speaker 7: Who know, No, Stephen was not the last of the Mounkins.
You see, I'm carrying his child.
Speaker 2: You must be mad too.
Speaker 7: No, No, for some day he will fill the empty spot,
and the nonsense will be gone. Forever our grandchildren could
come out in the sun. The curse will be dead.
Speaker 6: And this family will at last escape from the heritage
of being the man Moncton's.
Speaker 2: So goes the story.
Speaker 3: Anne Moncton never married again, but she did bear her child.
Was she right that the taint was ever removed? Or
had love betrayed her into perpetuating a legend? That is
something only time can tell. I'll be back shortly. Just
one addendum to our tale. Shortly after the events in it,
a raging fire swept the abbey, and its ancient stone structure,
weakened by the flaming heat, and its own antiquity, collapsed
in a mass of rubble. Fortunately, Missus Moncton and her
young boy Stephen were away visiting her brother, mister David
Elmsley and his wife in America, where David had gone
to live. As far as I know, their heirs still
live here, happily, I hope, and especially for the Muncton
family ever afterwards. Our cast included Christopher Tabori, Marion Soudis,
Russell Horton, Ken Harvey, and Paul Hecht. The entire production
was under the direction of Hyman Brown.