The Mammoth Book of Haunted House Stories (Mammoth Books) (26 page)

“Probably from one of the men’s cottages,” said Mr. Ampleforth.

“I asked if it was far, and she said ‘No’, which was obvious, otherwise her clothes would have been wet and they weren’t, only a little muddy. She even had some mud on her mediaeval bridesmaid’s head-dress (I can’t describe her clothes again, Mildred; you know how bad I am at that). So I asked if she’d had a fall, and she said, ‘No, she got dirty coming up,’ or so I understood her. It wasn’t easy to understand her; I suppose she talked the dialect of these parts. I concluded (you all say you would have known long before) that she was a little mad, but I didn’t like to leave her looking so rotten, so I said, ‘Won’t you come in and rest a minute?’ Then I wished I hadn’t”.

“Because she looked so pleased?”

“Oh, much more than pleased. And she said, ‘I hope you won’t live to regret it,’ rather as though she hoped I should. And then I only meant just to take her hand, because of the water, you know, and she was lame—”

“And instead she flung herself into the poor fellow’s arms—”

“Well, it amounted to that. I had no option! So I carried her across and put her down and she followed me here, walking better than I expected. A minute later you arrived. I asked her to wait and she didn’t. That’s all.”

“I should like to have seen Antony doing the St. Christopher act!” said Ronald. “Was she heavy, old boy?”

Antony shifted in his chair. “Oh, no,” he said, “not at all. Not at all heavy.” Unconsciously he stretched his arms out in front of him, as though testing an imaginary weight. “I see my hands are grubby,” he said with an expression of distaste. “I must go and wash them. I won’t be a moment, Maggie.”

“Did you hear any more, Mr. Rundle?” asked a housemaid of the butler, who had returned from performing his final office at the dinner-table.

“I did,” said Rundle, “but I don’t know that I ought to tell you.”

“It won’t make an difference, Mr. Rundle, whether you do or don’t. I’m going to give in my notice to-morrow. I won’t stay in a haunted house. We’ve been lured here. We ought to have been warned.”

“They certainly meant to keep it from us,” said Rundle. “I myself had put two and two together after seeing Lady Elinor; what Wilkins said when he came in for his tea only confirmed my suspicions. No gardener can ever keep a still tongue in his head. It’s a pity.”

“Wouldn’t you have told us yourself, Mr. Rundle?” asked the cook.

“I should have used my discretion,” the butler replied. “When I informed Mr. Ampleforth that I was no longer in ignorance, he said, ‘I rely on you, Rundle, not to say anything which might alarm the staff.’ ”

“Mean, I call it,” exclaimed the kitchen-maid indignantly. “They want to have all the fun and leave us to die like rats in a trap.”

Rundle ignored the interruption.

“I told Mr. Ampleforth that Wilkins had been tale-bearing and would he excuse it in an outdoor servant, but unfortunately we were now in possession of the facts.”

“That’s why they talked about it at dinner,” said the maid who helped Rundle to wait.

“They didn’t really throw the mask off till after you’d gone, Lizzie,” said the butler. “Then I began to take part in the conversation.”

He paused for a moment.

“Mr. Ampleforth asked me whether anything was missing from the house, and I was able to reply, ‘No, everything was in order.’ ”

“What else did you say?” inquired the cook.

“I made the remark that the library window wasn’t fastened, as they thought, but only closed, and Mrs. Turnbull laughed and said, ‘Perhaps it’s only a thief, after all,’ but the others didn’t think she could have got through the window, unless her lameness was all put on. And then I told them what the police had said about looking out for a suspicious character.”

“Did they seem frightened?” asked the cook.

“Not noticeably,” replied the butler. “Mrs. Turnbull said she hoped the gentleman wouldn’t stay long over their port. Mr. Ampleforth said, ‘No, they had had a full day, and would be glad to go to bed.’ Mrs. Ampleforth asked Miss Winthrop if she wanted to change her bedroom, but she said she didn’t. Then Mr. Fairfield asked if he could have some iodine for his hand, and Miss Winthrop said she would fetch some. She wanted to bring it after dinner, but he said, ‘Oh, to-morrow morning will do, darling.’ He seemed rather quiet.”

“What’s he done to his hand?”

“I saw the mark when he took his coffee. It was like a burn.”

“They didn’t say they were going to shut the house up, or anything?”

“Oh, Lord, no. There’s going to be a party next week. They’ll all have to stay for that.”

“I never knew such people,” said the kitchen-maid. “They’d rather die, and us too, than miss their pleasures. I wouldn’t stay another day if I wasn’t forced. When you think she may be here in this very room, listening to us!” She shuddered.

“Don’t you worry, my girl,” said Rundle, rising from his chair with a gesture of dismissal. “She won’t waste her time listening to you.”

Maggie looked troubled.

“My headache is nothing, but I’m afraid Antony isn’t very well.”

“He’s gone to lie down, hasn’t he?”

“Yes.”

“The best thing. I telephoned for the doctor to come this evening. He can have a look at all of us, ha! ha! Meanwhile, where will you spend the afternoon? I think the library’s the coolest place on a stuffy day like this; and I want you to see my collection of books about Low Threshold – my Thresholdiana, I call them.”

Maggie followed him into the library.

“Here they are. Most of them are nineteenth-century books, publications of the Society of Antiquaries, and so on; but some are older. I got a little man in Charing Cross Road to hunt them out for me; I haven’t had time to read them all myself.”

Maggie took a book at random from the shelves.

“Now I’ll leave you,” said her host. “And later in the afternoon I know that Eileen would appreciate a little visit. Ronald says it’s nothing, just a little nervous upset, stomach trouble. Between ourselves, I fear Lady Elinor is to blame.”

Maggie opened the book. It was called
An Enquiry into the Recent Tragicall Happenings at Low Threshold Hall in the County of Suffolk, with some Animadversions on the Barbarous Customs of our Ancestors
. It opened with a rather tedious account of the semi-mythical origins of the Deadham family. Maggie longed to skip this, but she might have to discuss the book with Mr. Ampleforth, so she ploughed on. Her persistence was rewarded by a highly coloured picture of Lady Elinor’s husband and an account of the cruelties he practised on her. The story would have been too painful to read had not the author (Maggie felt) so obviously drawn upon a very vivid imagination. But suddenly her eyes narrowed. What was this? “Once in a Drunken Fitt he so mishandled her that her thigh was broken near the hip, and her screames were so loud they were heard by the servants through three closed doores; and yet he would not summon a Chirurgeon, for (quoth he)” – Lord Deadham’s reason was coarse in the extreme; Maggie hastened on.

“And in consequence of these Barbarities her nature which was soft and yielding at the first was greatly changed, and those who sawe her now (but Pitie seal’d their lips) would have said she had a Bad Hearte.”

No wonder, thought Maggie, reading with a new and painful interest how the murdered woman avenged herself on various descendants, direct and collateral, of her persecutor. “And it hath been generally supposed by the vulgar that her vengeance was directed only against members of that family from which she had taken so many Causeless Hurtes; and the depraved, defective, counterfeit records of those times have lent colour to this Opinion. Whereas the truth is as I now state it, having had access to those death-bed and testamentary depositions which, preserved in ink however faint, do greater service to verity than the relations of Pot-House Historians, enlarged by Memory and confused by Ale. Yet it is on such Testimonies that rash and sceptical Heads rely when they assert that the Lady Elinor had no hand in the late Horrid Occurrence at Low Threshold Hall, which I shall presently describe, thinking that a meer visitor and no blood relation could not be the object of her vengeance, notwithstanding the evidence of two serving-maids, one at the door and one craning her neck from an upper casement, who saw him beare her in: The truth being that she maketh no distinction between persons, but whoso admits her, on him doth her vengeance fall. Seven times she hath brought death to Low Threshold Hall; Three, it is true, being members of the family, but the remaining four indifferent Persons and not connected with them, having in common only this piece of folie, that they, likewise, let her in. And in each case she hath used the same manner of attack, as those who have beheld her first a room’s length, then no further than a Lovers Embrace, from her victim have
in articulo mortis
delivered. And the moment when she is no longer seen, which to the watchers seems the Clarion and Reveille of their hopes, is in reality the knell; for she hath not withdrawn further, but approached nearer, she hath not gone out but entered in; and from her dreadful Citadel within the body rejoices, doubtless, to see the tears and hear the groanes, of those who with Comfortable Faces (albeit with sinking Hearts), would soothe the passage of the parting Soul. Their Lacrimatory Effusions are balm to her wicked Minde; the sad gale and ventilation of their sighs a pleasing Zephyre to her vindictive spirit.”

Maggie put down the book for a moment and stared in front of her. Then she began again to read.

“Once only hath she been cheated of her Prey, and it happened thus. His Bodie was already swollen with the malignant Humours she had stirred up in him and his life despaired of when a kitchen-wench was taken with an Imposthume that bled inwardly. She being of small account and but lately arrived they did only lay her in the Strawe, charging the Physician (and he nothing loth, expecting no Glory or Profit from attendance on such a Wretched creature) not to Divide his Efforts but use all his skill to save their Cousin (afterwards the twelfth Lord). Notwithstanding which precaution he did hourly get worse until sodainely a change came and he began to amend. Whereat was such rejoicing (including an Ox roasted whole) that the night was spent before they heard the serving-maid was dead. In their Revels they gave small heed to this Event, not realising that they owed His life to Hers; for a fellow-servant who tended the maid (out of charity) declared that her death and the cousin’s recovery followed as quickly as a clock striking Two. And the Physician said it was well, for she would have died in any case.

“Whereby we must conclude that the Lady Elinor, like other Apparitions, is subject to certain Lawes. One, to abandon her Victim and seeking another tenement to transfer her vengeance, should its path be crossed by a Body yet nearer Dissolution: and another is, she cannot possess or haunt the corpse after it has received Christian Buriall. As witness the fact that the day after the Interment of the tenth Lord she again appeared at the Doore and being recognised by her inability to make the Transit was turned away and pelted. And another thing I myself believe but have no proof of is: That her power is circumscribed by the wall of the House; those victims of her Malignitie could have been saved but for the dreadful swiftnesse of the disease and the doctors unwillingness to move a Sicke man; otherwise how could the Termes of her Curse that she pronounced be fulfilled: ‘They shall be carried out Feet Foremost’?”

Maggie read no more. She walked out of the library with the book under her arm. Before going to see how Antony was she would put it in her bedroom where no one could find it. Troubled and oppressed she paused at the head of the stairs. Her way lay straight ahead, but her glance automatically travelled to the right where, at the far end of the passage, Antony’s bedroom lay. She looked again; the door, which she could only just see, was shut now. But she could swear it had closed upon a woman. There was nothing odd in that; Mildred might have gone in, or Muriel, or a servant. But all the same she could not rest. Hurriedly she changed her dress and went to Antony’s room. Pausing at the door she listened and distinctly heard his voice, speaking rapidly and in a low tone; but no one seemed to reply. She got no answer to her knock, so, mustering her courage, she walked in.

The blind was down and the room half dark, and the talking continued, which increased her uneasiness. Then, as her eyes got used to the darkness, she realised, with a sense of relief, that he was talking in his sleep. She pulled up the blind a little, so that she might see his hand. The brown mark had spread, she thought, and looked rather puffy, as though coffee had been injected under the skin. She felt concerned for him. He would never have gone properly to bed like that, in his pyjamas, if he hadn’t felt ill, and he tossed about restlessly. Maggie bent over him. Perhaps he had been eating a biscuit: there was some gritty stuff on the pillow. She tried to scoop it up but it eluded her. She could make no sense of his mutterings, but the word “light” came in a good deal. Perhaps he was only half asleep and wanted the blind down. At last her ears caught the sentence that was running on his lips: “She was so light.” Light? A light woman? Browning. The words conveyed nothing to her, and not wishing to wake him she tiptoed from the room.