Authors: Neil Spring
The Ghost Hunters (30 page)
He recognised the stocky woman immediately: it was Miss Ethel Bull, sister of the late Harry Bull of Borley and one of the original witnesses to the spectre of the nun. I could hardly believe that more than two years had passed since he had first met Ethel on his journey back to London from Borley, the morning after the Blue Room seance.
1
And now here she was, claiming to possess some new and important information about the case.
Ethel Bull was a woman who matched her name: she was both restless and forthright. She was insistent that whatever we were doing, however busy we were, she needed to be heard.
Price gave his best attempt at a polite smile, but I could see
the impatience in his eyes. ‘Please, won’t you sit down, Miss Bull?’
She coughed, covering her mouth with a white handkerchief, then took the chair indicated, nearest the grate where a good fire was burning. I imagined she was glad of its warmth; indeed I was, for the morning was depressingly damp and bitter.
‘Now then,’ Price continued, ‘what appears to be the trouble, Miss Bull?’
Our guest worked the strap of her handbag nervously. ‘
She
has been seen again, Mr Price.’
My employer arched his eyebrows.
‘
Her
. The Dark Woman, the Borley nun.’
Price sank into his high-backed leather chair. ‘I see,’ he said slowly.
‘Well, you needn’t look so despondent, Mr Price.’
‘I can’t help my face, Miss Bull. When I was a child, bus conductors used to ask me if I was all right.’ He regarded her ponderously, allowing the difficult moment to pass. ‘Tell me: who, this time, has witnessed the spectre?’
‘My cousin Lionel, who is the new rector, and his wife Marianne. Oh, Mr Price, they’re having the worst time of it now, poor things. In the past year the Rectory has been turned over with all manner of happenings.’
‘Is that so?’ Price sounded surprised. ‘I thought the house was empty.’
‘Empty?’ She coughed again, colour rising in her cheeks. ‘Lionel and Marianne have been living at the Rectory for more than a year now. You wrote an article about the case. Why haven’t you been out to see the Rectory since Reverend Smith left?’
Price stiffened, his expression full of angst. Here it was, the heart of the matter. I felt a surge of relief, for since our first visit
to that house I had brooded on his lack of interest in Borley. I found the place deeply fascinating and there were plenty of aspects about the case that I was anxious to have explained to me. Was there really a Dark Woman haunting that little hamlet and the Rectory? What was the origin and meaning of the octagonal brass medallion that had appeared in the Blue Room? Who – or what – had communicated with us during the seance? Was it really the spirit of the late rector reaching out to us to settle the mystery of his death, or something else? And what was the mysterious message we received that began with the letters D-E-C-E?
These and other similar questions were mostly avoided in the explanation Price proceeded to give, but he did at least try to explain why the Borley affair hadn’t commanded his full attention of late. ‘We have been extremely busy, Miss Bull. It has been a trying time for us here in London.’ He did not elaborate, but I knew he was referring both to his declining health and to the increasingly uncertain future of the Laboratory. Despite his efforts, he had yet to succeed in attracting interest from foreign and British universities to enable him to continue his work.
But Miss Bull pressed on. ‘What could have kept you so busy that you stayed away from England’s most haunted house? You, of all people, Mr Price, should—’
Again she gave a violent cough. I rose to fetch her a glass of water.
‘The pressures upon us have meant that we have needed to prioritise,’ Price said curtly. ‘For the past year we have been managing a series of seances with Mr Rudi Schneider, a spiritualist medium of some surprising talent. You have surely read of him in the newspapers?’
Miss Bull nodded.
‘The attention he has attracted has been well merited. We have conducted no fewer than twenty-two seances with Rudi Schneider and in every one he has impressed us under meticulously controlled conditions.’
‘Mr Price isn’t exaggerating,’ I said, handing Miss Ethel her water. She looked relieved as she took it from me. I explained that I had been present at all of the Schneider sittings as note-taker. Price would divide the seance room into two portions by means of a fine mosquito net, which we would sit behind while observing the medium and the sitters on the other side. Imprisoned in this large net cage, each person was connected to a red lamp. If anyone moved either a hand or a foot, these lamps would blink, alerting us. In such conditions the young Austrian had time and again demonstrated the most brilliant and varied phenomena: tables that tilted of their own volition, ghostly fogs and vapours, raps that sounded from nowhere and ectoplasm produced from his mouth.
Practically everyone who attended the sittings was impressed.
‘And where is Mr Schneider now?’ Miss Bull asked pointedly.
‘He has recently returned to Braunau,’ said Price, ‘but has promised to visit us again soon.’ He smiled. ‘The publicity has been extensive.’
Miss Bull seemed surprised to hear all this. ‘Then, Mr Price, am I correct in thinking you now consider yourself a believer in Spiritualist powers?’
He nodded with an air of seriousness. After the dozens of fake mediums he had exposed, he had found someone he could stand behind while facing down his biggest critics. It was a position he had moved closer to ever since Conan Doyle’s passing the year before. I have often wondered if the two events were connected somehow, for when Conan Doyle died I think perhaps something of the old, ruthlessly sceptical Price died too. ‘And so this is why
I have not been back to Borley, Miss Bull. I simply haven’t had the time. And when the last rector vacated the place, I did not have the means either.’
Miss Bull scowled as she opened her handbag. ‘Then I wonder if you will make time for what I have brought to show you. Given that your mind is now so open, I would hope so,’ she said curtly. ‘As I said, the situation at the Rectory is rapidly deteriorating. Lionel looks upon the matter with the greatest seriousness and has spent countless hours compiling a detailed summary of the many peculiar incidents that are making life unbearable for himself and Marianne.’
‘And who is Marianne, please?’
‘I have told you already; do keep up! Marianne is his wife,’ said Miss Bull, ‘though I’m sorry to admit it. She’s a beastly woman and mad as a hatter. But that doesn’t change the facts of the matter.’ From her handbag she produced a sheaf of papers covered with scrawled black handwriting. ‘I believe he has more than one hundred and eighty typed sheets of notes now, perhaps more. Here are a few of them.’
2
Price reached out his hand for the papers and placed them on the desk. ‘Appalling handwriting, practically as illegible as my own.’
‘My cousin suffers with chronic arthritis. His hands are so swollen now he’s practically crippled.’ She produced a small black-and-white photograph of the frail rector, then reached across the desk and took back the papers she had shown us. ‘Here, I shall read you some.’
Price nodded and leaned back in his chair, never once taking his eyes off Miss Bull and the papers she held in her hands.
These are the passages she read to us:
‘Since I have been asked by members of our family to tell what I know of the so-called Borley ghost, and since I think it is desirable that a record of our experiences should be preserved, I am writing this before the details have gone out of my mind. I should like to say, first of all, that had I been told by anyone what I am about to relate, I should not have believed it, unless I had the very highest regard for their general strict adherence to the truth. In fact I have, during these last few weeks or so, wondered more than once whether I should presently wake up and find it all a dream; I regret to say that I have not done so yet. As far as imagination goes, one can imagine one has seen things, or felt things, but one cannot imagine stones, bricks, books and pictures lying on the floor, things flying about the room and a broken window, when these things are still in evidence the next day and the next week.
‘To begin then. We had, before we came here, heard about my predecessor’s experience, and were rather inclined to attribute it to his imagination or to practical jokes played on him. When we came to Borley first of all we looked at the Rectory and another possible house, and decided to live in the former, neither of us feeling that there was an atmosphere about it.
‘We came into residence on 16 October 1930. Our first experience of anything at all out of the ordinary occurred one evening a few weeks later. I was lying down upstairs when Marianne, who was sitting in a room downstairs, came to ask what was the matter as she had distinctly heard me call “Marianne dear” more than once. I had not called at all.
‘A few days after this I went up to bed one night, and while I was upstairs I heard someone, whom of course I took for Marianne, walking about the hall. When I came down I found she had not left the room she was sitting in. I thereupon took a light and went
around the drawing room, study and dining room, but could see no sign of anyone.
‘Now I come to definite dates and the most extraordinary part of our experience. On Wednesday 25 February I mentioned to Marianne that I had missed the milk jug belonging to our breakfast set and some other jugs recently. She said she had looked for them, and a teapot, everywhere and could not find them, and added, “I wish they would bring them back.”
‘That afternoon I was away and she was alone in the house, except for our young daughter, so she locked the back door and sat in the drawing room, from where she could hear anyone coming in by other doors. Presently she went into the kitchen and found, on the table there, the jugs all together on a little plate that had also disappeared, on a table. She said, “I wish you would bring me back my teapot.” That evening that also appeared.
‘Thursday 26 started with our finding that two books had been placed under our bed during the night. Then the bells started ringing. First the front doorbell rang with no one there, and then two or three other bells. During the afternoon a whole lot of books were deposited on the rack for warming plates over the kitchen range; these included a number of Durham Mission hymn books that we use at the Lent weekday services (of which we were rather short, so they were a welcome addition) and two other large books.
‘So far, it was just amusing; but what followed was not. That night, just as we were going to bed, I was in the bathroom and Marianne was on the landing outside our room with a candle in her hand when suddenly she was hit by a terrific blow to the eye. When she got to me in the bathroom her brow was bleeding, and she had a black eye for some days to follow.
‘The following night we had just gone to bed when things started flying round the room. First something hit the wall and fell on the
bed (it turned out to be a large cotton reel from the mantelpiece), and then something whizzed past fairly close to Marianne’s head and fell to the ground with a great clatter. I lit a lamp and discovered the head of a hammer with the broken handle lying on the floor.’
There was a brief interruption as Miss Bull paused to ensure we were giving her our fullest attention. When she saw that we were, she nodded, turned a page and said with some excitement, ‘Now then, we come to the apparitions.’
‘I cannot remember the exact date, but we had not been in the house very long before Marianne began seeing Harry Bull. Twice she was with me when she saw him, but I saw nothing…. The last time she saw him was some time before Christmas. He seemed to be carrying something, so possibly he wanted to communicate about his will, about which he might well be uneasy since it is said that he talked about making another and possibly did so, and if so, it has been mislaid. Anyhow, I must not wander into conjecture.’
3
When Miss Bull had finished reading aloud this curious narrative she closed the diary and stared across at Price. He raised his eyebrows expectantly before saying quietly, ‘One question, Miss Bull. What sort of man is Lionel Foyster?’
‘Why, he is a good man, an honest man. Intelligent and wise. Cambridge educated.’
‘Would you say he is impressionable?’
‘I know what you’re implying, and I will have none of it, Mr Price. Lionel knows his own mind as well as the next man.’
‘But does he know
your
mind?’
Her mouth fell open. ‘I beg your pardon?’
‘I will speak candidly,’ said Price. ‘The account you have just read to us, while undeniably sensational and striking in its content, sounds very much to me as though it has been coloured by your own biased opinions.’
‘What opinions?’ she asked, but the acerbic tone of her question suggested she had no desire to hear the answer.
‘The extract you have read us implies that Mr Foyster might share your personal conviction, Miss Ethel, that this whole matter is in come way connected to the suppression of a will in your favour made by your late brother, Harry Bull.’
‘Indeed, Lionel does think exactly that.’
‘Except that Sarah and I have heard this tale already, from the Reverend Smith and his wife. I did not believe the tale then, and I do not believe it now.’
‘Why ever not?’
‘Because it is nonsense. Mabel Smith was even adopting it as her own literary project. It is the product of an overactive female imagination.’
‘Harry!’ I interjected.
Miss Bull looked very much affronted. ‘How on earth can you know such a thing?’
‘Because I have checked, Miss Bull, and double-checked.’
This was news to me. ‘Harry, what do you mean?’
As Miss Ethel began another violent spate of coughing Price stood up and crossed the room to gaze out of the window. ‘I did not want to bring this matter up in conversation as I consider it unseemly. But given that you have pressed the matter, I can see nothing else for it. You see, Miss Bull, after our first investigation at Borley, and at Mrs Smith’s insistence that you believed some wrongdoing to have befallen your late brother, I took the liberty of checking the status of his death certificate with the
local coroner and the status of his will. There was nothing suspicious about either of these documents. Harry Bull was not murdered. Nor was his marriage to Ivy Brackenbury bigamous, as you implied to Mrs Smith when she first occupied the house and discovered the sugar of lead in the cellars. The only people who truly benefited from your brother’s demise were you and your sisters. That’s right, isn’t it?’
