The Spirit Murder Mystery (3 page)

“Yes, wide awake. Listen attentively!” came the reply in a strained voice, quite unlike Eileen's.

John Thurlow experienced a sudden and sharp insurgence of fear. He felt his skin creep and was quite certain that his hair was standing on end. With a supreme effort, he controlled himself and obeyed the summons to listen attentively. Some minutes passed without anything happening. A clock in another room chimed sweetly and faintly in the almost oppressive silence. Then, all at once, very faint strains of music seemed to hover and quiver in the darkened room. They were full of haunting melody and seemed to have that strange sweetness of music that is heard across a sweep of water. Eileen's breath was now coming in sharp, rasping gasps. John Thurlow sat petrified with amazement. Had he lost touch with reality? Surely his ears, in conjunction with his mental expectancy, had played him some fantastic trick, produced some aural hallucination? He listened again with almost painful concentration. Once more the silence was broken by the ghostly music; at times so faint as to be almost inaudible, and then at intervals so distinct as to render the atmosphere in the darkened room perceptibly vibrant.

As he sat motionless and attentive, his first sensation of terror gave place to a feeling of entranced awe. He now felt certain that he recognized here and there a familiar musical phrase, but could not place it; for, though fond of music, he never could assign to any particular work or composer an aria or passage which he chanced to hear or transiently remember. At that crucial moment, he wished that in the past he had paid more attention to such detail, instead of pleasurably gulping the stuff without noting its title or the name of its creator. Suddenly the unseen musician stopped and repeated more perfectly a passage, as if dissatisfied with his first execution. This unexpected occurrence seemed so characteristically human, that it at once charged John Thurlow's attitude with sceptical alertness. Surely there must be some ordinary and natural explanation of this musical phenomenon? Without rising from his chair, he stretched out his hand and quietly switched on the electric light. He glanced at Eileen. Her eyes were closed and her head had sunk forward on her breast. She seemed fast asleep. In a few moments her loud breathing returned to normal, she quietly opened her eyes, and looked across almost vacantly at her uncle. Noticing that he was about to speak, she raised her hand as if to enjoin silence. They both sat and listened. Once more the faint music seemed to surge gently into the room and roll up and recede with alternate strength and diminution. To Eileen it seemed supernal, ineffably beautiful.

“It's an organ!” exclaimed John Thurlow, unable to restrain himself any longer and, rising from his chair, he opened a door leading from his study into the garden and stepped out into the night.

A little later, he re-entered the room by the same door with a look of amazement on his face.

“It's certainly not the church organ, Eileen!” he said emphatically. “Outside there's not a sound to be heard. This is most mysterious.”

“The music has stopped,” replied Eileen with an air of annoyance. “Immediately you begin to fiddle about for natural explanations of a spirit manifestation, you simply ruin the conditions. You become a hostile influence, Uncle. You must remember that we're trying to get in touch with a spirit; we're not in a laboratory or a law court. It's well known that in an atmosphere of suspicion, with people whose minds are alert for detecting fraud, or intent on material explanations of supernatural phenomena, nothing will ever occur.”

“I'm sorry, Eileen,” replied her uncle apologetically, “I'll bear that in mind in future. To-night's experience has been an eye-opener to me. Positively stupendous!”

“And it's only the beginning,” added Eileen enthusiastically. “If we conduct our experiments in the right frame of mind, we'll get further manifestations, perhaps some kind of materialization.”

“You mean a ghost?” asked John Thurlow with alarm.

“Let's call it a spirit form. I like it better than ghost. The word ghost seems to imply fear, just as the word spook implies fear masquerading as courage. I'm feeling terribly tired. The experience has exhausted me and I'm going to bed. Good-night.”

Eileen rose languidly from her chair and noiselessly left the study. Hurrying upstairs to her room, she slipped on a light overcoat, descended again stealthily so as not to disturb her uncle, and wandered out into the garden. There was a strange vagueness about her thoughts which she ascribed to the after effects of her trance state.

On her departure, John Thurlow glanced nervously round his study and then coughed as if to assure himself that he was not altogether scared. Drawing his pipe from his pocket, he lit it, and after a few vigorous puffs, swung round his chair to the table and resumed his reading of Sir William Crookes's book. He had only read a few pages, when to his unbounded astonishment, he heard again the faint sound of an organ being played. With nervous fingers he closed his book, shut his eyes, and listened attentively. Yes he recognized the air, and as he strove hard to recollect it the name all at once flashed into his mind. It was Handel's Dead March from “Saul.” He was very familiar with this march, and by some psychological trick his recognition of it at once dissociated the music in his mind from the region of the supernatural. He rose from his chair and, kneeling down, placed his ear to the ground. Surely he could now hear the sounds more clearly! Or was it mere fancy? He could not be certain. Rising to his feet again, he passed once more out into the garden. There, all was silence except for the plaintive hooting of an owl in a fringe of woodland bordering the adjoining paddock. More perplexed than ever, he returned to his study, where the very faint strains of an organ—he was certain the instrument was an organ—were still clearly audible.

“Most amazing!” he exclaimed and added with a note of rising exasperation. “But I'll get to the bottom of this thing, or my name's not John Thurlow!”

All trace of fear had now seemingly left him, and his face had assumed a look of sullen determination. He had reverted to the John Thurlow, successful merchant and financier, intent on getting the best of a deal, and in such a mood he was a man of unshakable resolution. His first thought was to summon Eileen, but remembering her air of complete exhaustion on retiring, he changed his mind and decided to investigate alone. For some moments he stood hesitant and then, thrusting his pipe in his pocket, crossed to his writing desk. Extracting a heavy army-pattern revolver from a drawer, he began silently to search the whole ground floor of the house.

When Fanny Raymer, one of the maids at Old Hall Farm, entered Eileen Thurlow's bedroom next morning with her mistress' morning tea, her ingenuous face was pale and her round blue eyes were starting from her head. Eileen, who was wide awake, knew on glancing at Fanny that something unusual had happened. At first she was not much perturbed, for a very minor catastrophe, such as the breaking of a tea-cup, was sufficient to produce unduly alarming effects on Fanny Raymer's face.

“You look startled, Fanny. What has happened now?” asked Eileen in a matter-of-fact tone so as to reassure the girl.

“I just took master's tea into his room, miss, and he ain't there,” replied the maid.

“Isn't there? What do you mean?” asked Eileen with a puzzled look.

“He ain't in his bed, miss, and he's nowhere about the house.”

“Then he's probably somewhere about the garden or grounds,” remarked Eileen and calmly poured herself out a cup of tea.

“What I mean, miss, is that he hasn't slept in his bed, and when I went to dust his study this morning, the electric light was burning on his desk and the window was wide open.”

Eileen, who had raised her cup of tea to her lips and was about to drink, suddenly returned the cup to its saucer and hastily put both down on a small table beside her bed.

“But he must be somewhere about the house!” she exclaimed with growing amazement. “Have you looked in all the rooms?”

“Yes, miss, even in the wine cellar,” replied Fanny with finality.

“Then he'll have gone out with his gun into the paddock after rabbits. Runnacles has been complaining of late about the damage they're doing in the vegetable garden.”

“I thought of that, miss, but master's gun is in the spare room where he usually keeps it. I went out and saw Runnacles. He was busy in the potting-shed, and when I asked him if he'd seen master about anywhere, he said: ‘No, my darling,' so I ticked him off for bein' so forward.”

For some moments Eileen was lost in thought. She had left her uncle immersed in his book at about ten o'clock the previous night. She had a vague recollection of then having gone out into the garden and returned. Her mind, evidently thoroughly exhausted by her attempt at mediumship, had almost been a complete blank for over an hour. She clearly remembered, however, that she had fallen asleep without hearing him come upstairs to his bedroom. It was evident he had not gone to bed at half-past eleven according to his invariable custom. But what had become of him? He couldn't have vanished into thin air. The power to dematerialize was emphatically not within the scope of her uncle, John Thurlow's abilities. The affair must have some simple explanation, however preternatural it might appear. The more she thought of it, the more confused and bewildered she became.

“Was the study door leading into the garden shut, Fanny?” she asked at length.

“Yes, miss, and locked. So were all the other doors leading out of the house.”

“Then he must have gone out by the window,” remarked Eileen, but she felt there was something quite irrational about the inference. Why should her uncle leave the house by the window? There was clearly no valid reason. The idea was ludicrous. She rose hastily from her bed with an air of resolution, and Fanny, leaving the room, went about her usual household duties.

Eileen breakfasted alone, and her first feeling of amazement at the sudden and unaccountable disappearance of her uncle was giving place slowly to a decided sensation of fear. She argued with herself that as yet there was no cause for alarm, but it failed to stem the slowly ebbing tide of her courage. Before lunch, with the aid of the three maidservants, she had made a thorough search of Old Hall Farm from the attics to the cellars; and Runnacles the gardener, with his assistant, had been through all the stables, outbuildings, and lofts. John Thurlow was not to be found. He had seemingly vanished without leaving a trace.

Just before lunch, Arthur Orton of Church Farm, their nearest neighbour, called about some repairs that were necessary to one of his barns, for Orton rented his farm from John Thurlow. He was shown into the drawing-room and there interviewed by Eileen.

He was a tall* wiry man with a lean, bronzed face and dark, flashing eyes beneath rather abundant and unruly eyebrows. The deep lines from the nose to the corners of his mouth, and the thin upper lip, slightly depressed where it met the lines from the nose, gave him a shrewd, cynical air, but whenever a smile lit up his face, it would alter its whole ascetic cast.

On Eileen's entry, his glance swept over the graceful lines of her tall, well-proportioned figure and glowed warmly. His silent appreciation was not lost on Eileen, for she had experienced it before and found it agreeable. In spite of herself, a faint flush tinted her cheeks, and her unmistakable satisfaction was reflected in her countenance. For Eileen thought Arthur Orton an attractive man, and though there was something about his slightly saturnine air that disagreeably disturbed her, she had for some time been secretly fascinated by him. He was, moreover, a bachelor, a good farmer, ostensibly well-off, and reputed never to have been worsted in a business deal. In the parish of Yarham, he was not popular. He was reserved and inclined to be sarcastic, which was construed as equivalent to giving himself airs, but his worst fault, in combination with these, was that he was a stranger. Though he had now been at Church Farm for many years, he was a stranger for the simple reason that he had not been born in the parish of Yarham. Worse still, he was not a Suffolk man.

His arrival at Old Hall Farm at this critical moment was too much for Eileen Thurlow's command of her troubled feelings. On his sympathetic remark that she looked as if she were upset about something, she frankly unburdened herself and told him the whole story of her uncle's inexplicable disappearance. Overwrought by her morning's excitement and worry, she ended her tale on the verge of tears. Arthur Orton was solidly comforting. He deftly brought bright common sense to bear on the subject, and contrived that a light-hearted breeze should blow away the portentous atmosphere of tragedy from Eileen's outlook.

“When did you go to bed, Miss Thurlow?” he asked.

“I left my uncle in his study about ten o'clock.”

“Well, I and my man, Joe Battrum, saw Mr. Thurlow step into a car at about eleven o'clock, just as you enter Yarham village. We naturally thought it was his own car and paid no more heed to the matter. You say his car was never out of the garage yesterday. Then it must have been a friend's car, and they've had a breakdown at some outlandish spot. In fact, the whole of Suffolk's outlandish, so that's easy. You mustn't start worrying about nothing, Miss Thurlow. Your uncle'll turn up when he's downright hungry, or he'll ring you up and let you know where he is and what's happened. I wanted to see him about some repairs to my barn, but it's not urgent and I'll look in to-morrow. In the meantime, if there's anything I can do, you've just to let me know. 'Phone me and I'll be on your doorstep in no time. Don't hesitate.”

“That's awfully kind of you, Mr. Orton,” said Eileen sincerely. “I hope I haven't worried you by telling you all my troubles.”

“My dear girl, there's nothing like getting your worries off your chest. I'm very glad you've told me. I want you to think of me as a friend you can turn to when in trouble.”