Forgotten Murder

by Dolores Gordon-Smith

  Jack grinned. ‘You’re doing very well. This is just like reading house particulars. To drop the house agent side of yourself for a moment, tell me what impression the house made on you when you arrived?’

  ‘I liked it,’ said Jenny impulsively. ‘It’s too big to be kept properly without a raft of servants, but I liked it. That’s the funny thing. I said as much to the housekeeper, Mrs Offord, that it seemed to be a welcoming house.’ She hesitated again. ‘I hope you don’t think I’m being fanciful when I talk about a house being welcoming?’

  Both Jack and Betty shook their heads. ‘Not in the least,’ said Jack. ‘I don’t know why some places accrue an atmosphere, but they certainly do.’

  ‘Well, as I say, Saunder’s Green did seem welcoming and the housekeeper was a lovely old soul, who obviously enjoyed showing me round. Mind you, she did say there were tales that the place was haunted.’

  ‘It sounds as if she was trying to put the wind up you,’ said Betty.

  ‘No, she wasn’t,’ said Jenny, shaking her head. ‘Apparently the old lady who used to live there sometimes saw a ghost of a woman in the garden, but neither Mrs Offord or the housemaid had ever seen anything.’

  ‘Did it worry you?’ asked Jack.

  ‘Not really. Goodness knows what the old lady had actually seen, but she couldn’t have seen a ghost. There’s no such things. Anyway, I started off in the kitchens, all of which were exactly as you’d expect, then Mrs Offord said we’d better go up to the attics and work down from there.’ She gulped. ‘That’s when I got my first scare.’

  With encouragement from Jack and Betty, Jenny related the experiences of the morning. ‘And it was weird,’ she finished. ‘In Mrs Offord’s room, it was as if I was seeing two rooms – the actual room and a sort of ghost room. Then I went into the adjoining room and the decoration and so on was exactly as I’d imagined. Absolutely exactly, I mean, right down to the tiles round the fireplace.’

  She shuddered. ‘It scared Mrs Offord, I could tell, but I managed to reassure her. Then I went into the garden. It was the same story in the garden. I knew the bridge was there before I came to it.’

  Hesitantly, guided by Jack’s questions, she took them through the details of her walk through the trees by the stream. ‘And then,’ she finished, ‘I came to the cedar tree.’

  Her voice faltered. Jack looked up sharply. ‘What about the tree?’

  Jenny crushed out her cigarette and lit another with shaky fingers. ‘Everything I’d seen up till then had been ordinary. I don’t mean the fact that I’d seen them was ordinary. I was so on edge that I was honestly starting to wonder if there was any truth in the idea that the house was haunted, but the things themselves, the wallpaper, the tiles, the bridge and so on, were all ordinary, everyday objects.’

  She pulled deeply on her cigarette. ‘The cedar tree was different. It’s a magnificent tree, the sort of tree you’d have afternoon tea under the shade of the branches. I thought that, and thought how nice it would be, with all the ladies in long dresses and men in blazers and straw boaters having afternoon tea in a world where the war hadn’t happened and everything was peaceful, secure and happy.’

  She said the last word with a note of wonder. ‘Happy. I was thinking of being happy. And then I touched the bark of the tree.’

  She lit another cigarette nervously. ‘I saw a monster.’

  There was complete silence.

  Jack drew his breath in. He didn’t know what he’d been expecting but it wasn’t this.

  ‘What sort of monster?’ he asked cautiously.

  Jenny put her hand to her mouth. ‘I know it can’t be real!’ she broke out defensively. ‘I know there aren’t any such things as monsters.’

  ‘Tell me what you saw,’ said Jack quietly.

  Jenny gulped. ‘It was horrible. It was as if the world had suddenly turned upside down. Instead of looking up at the tree, I was looking down. Beneath me was a thing with a skin that looked like black leather. It glistened where the sun caught it.’

  ‘Was it the shape of a man?’

  Jenny nodded. ‘More or less. It didn’t have a proper face with a nose or a mouth, but had this awful blank face with awful blank eyes. They were huge, square, shining eyes and they were looking at me. There was a light like fire coming from the eyes and I knew that if the light caught me, I would die. I was terrified. I couldn’t move. I knew that the monster was an utterly evil thing.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘I … I woke up.’ She faltered to a halt. Betty reached out and squeezed her friend’s hand. It was obvious Jenny was trying to hold back tears. ‘I woke up in the garden. I’d fainted and the gardener was bending over me, looking worried to death. Then the housekeeper came out and she and the gardener helped me into the house.’

  ‘Did you tell them what you saw?’ asked Jack.

  ‘Good grief, no,’ said Jenny with a shudder. ‘I know what it sounds like, Mr Haldean. The housekeeper put my fainting fit down to not having eaten properly, but that’s rubbish. I simply couldn’t tell her what I’d seen. The last thing I want to do is for Wilson and Lee to find out I see things.’ She shuddered again. ‘I’d lose my job, for certain. The thing is …’ She hesitated, then shook her head.

  ‘You wondered if you were losing your marbles,’ said Betty. ‘You’re not.’

  ‘Have you ever seen anything like this before?’ asked Jack.

  ‘Monsters, you mean?’ asked Jenny with a nervous laugh. ‘No.’

  ‘I’m glad you don’t make a habit of it.’ Jack sat back thoughtfully.

  What on earth could she have seen? There were a couple of explanations he could think of for the wallpaper and the tiles and so on, but monsters were definitely out of the realm of normal.

  He glanced at her. The poor girl was horribly nervy. With an experience like that, it wasn’t surprising that she wondered if she was going nuts. Was she? No. He was certain of that. But monsters?

  It was time to clear the dead wood out of the way. Then, perhaps, he might be able to see the trees. ‘Please, Miss Langton, don’t worry about going off your head. I’m not a nerve specialist, but I have met men before who see things, in the common use of the term. You’re not like that. You strike me as completely and utterly sane.’

  He felt a twist of sympathy as he saw how relieved she looked. So that was madness cleared out of the way. She’d talked about the house being haunted, and she’d talked about seeing a room as a ghost room, so the next question was obvious.

  ‘From what you’ve said, I imagine the answer to this question is “no”, but do you consider yourself psychic at all?’

  ‘Psychic?’ She looked startled. ‘Do I see ghosts, you mean?’ She wriggled impatiently. ‘After this afternoon, I’m not sure what I believe any more.’ She gave an impatient sigh. ‘No. That’s all nonsense, isn’t it? It just has to be.’ She frowned. ‘Until today, the only thing that’s ever happened that I can’t explain is when the dog howled itself stupid in its kennel when poor Dad died. Poor old Pippin loved Dad.’

  Jack scratched his ear. So she wasn’t prone to visions. ‘I’ve heard of that sort of thing before, but having a psychic dog doesn’t make you psychic yourself.’

  Now to tackle the next obvious explanation. ‘Excuse me, Miss Langton, but are you taking any medicine at the moment?’

  Jenny shook her head blankly.

  ‘And – please do excuse me asking – you haven’t taken any drugs?’ He saw Jenny’s outraged expression and quickly amended the question. ‘Something to help you sleep, perhaps? Or to help you concentrate?’

  ‘Certainly not!’

  ‘Jack,’ said Betty reproachfully, ‘I don’t know how you can think such a thing.’

  He held up his hands in apology. ‘I’m sorry I had to ask, but it was just a thought. By the way, Miss Langton, I think you’re absolutely right not to want it to come to the ears of your employers. Mum’s the word until we get to the bottom of this.’

 
; ‘So what was it, Jack?’ asked Betty impatiently. ‘I told Jenny you’d be able to explain everything.’

  He shook his head. ‘That’s asking an awful lot, Betty.’ He nodded at Jenny. ‘We know that whatever it was you saw isn’t real.’

  ‘I said as much,’ said Jenny, sounding rather aggrieved.

  ‘But we know as much. If there had been anyone or anything else in the garden, the gardener would’ve seen them.’

  ‘That’s right. The gardener was there all the time.’

  ‘Okey-doke. So whatever it was, it happened in your mind.’

  ‘You mean I’m making this up?’

  ‘Not in the least,’ said Jack, calming her indignation. ‘I must say that, although I’m not a great believer in ghosties and ghoulies and things that go bump in the night, I have come across things I can’t explain.’

  Jenny stared at him. ‘But that’s dreadful! I don’t want to see things! Not things like that, I mean.’

  ‘Could it not be you but the place?’ suggested Betty. ‘I don’t know much about ghosts and so on, but in the stories I’ve read, it’s the place that’s haunted, not the person. Anyone can see a ghost if they’re in a haunted house. If there are such things as ghosts,’ she added doubtfully.

  ‘Yes, but I don’t want to believe in all that,’ said Jenny impatiently. She turned to Betty. ‘You met my parents. You know what sort of people they were.’ She looked at Jack. ‘My mother was a very down-to-earth person. She’d have thought it not only absolute nonsense but plain wrong. She had very strong views on fortune telling and all that sort of thing. She was a regular church-goer. She’d have been horrified at the thought of anything supernatural.’

  ‘Doesn’t attending church mean you believe in the supernatural?’ asked Jack with an innocent expression.

  Jenny stared at him.

  ‘Jack,’ said Betty warningly. She turned to Jenny. ‘You’ll have to excuse him. He’s a Catholic and always saying things like that.’

  ‘Oh. I see,’ said Jenny cautiously. ‘Or I think I do, anyway.’ She shook herself impatiently. ‘That can’t be it. I’ve told you what my mother would’ve said and as for my father, he’d have just laughed at the idea. He was a doctor and prided himself on being a complete rationalist.’

  ‘Yes, he was,’ agreed Betty. ‘I remember talking to him about science. He believed in things that could be proved. He was a very hard-headed Yorkshireman.’

  ‘Yes, he was,’ said Jenny. ‘My brother Martin’s just the same. I’m sure you know the type.’

  ‘Absolutely,’ said Jack. ‘You mentioned your brother. Who else is in the family?’

  ‘There’s just the three of us. Martin, my elder brother, is a doctor in Leeds and Eric, my younger brother, is studying medicine at Leeds University. Dad grew up in Leeds but bought the practice in Salterbeck before I was born. That’s a village about three miles outside of Huddersfield.’

  ‘And you lived there all your life?’ asked Jack.

  ‘Yes. I went to school with Betty, of course.’

  ‘It was your mother’s old school,’ said Betty. ‘She enjoyed talking to us about it.’ She laughed. ‘Some of the mistresses who taught us had taught her.’

  ‘She liked school,’ said Jenny with the beginnings of a smile. ‘I did, too.’

  The mention of her family and school had obviously calmed Jenny’s nerves. She looked at Jack with baffled exasperation. ‘Haven’t you got any other explanation, Mr Haldean? A rational explanation, I mean? As far as I can see, I really am either going nuts or seeing things. I wasn’t just scared, I was terrified. If all you can tell me is that it’s all in my mind, what’s to stop it happening again?’

  ‘It’s not going to happen again,’ said Betty confidently. ‘Come on, Jack. You must be able to think of something else.’

  He could, of course, but it didn’t explain the monster. ‘Well, the only other explanation I can think depends on a massive coincidence,’ he said doubtfully. ‘Can I ask you why you chose to work in Stowfleet?’

  Jenny shrugged. ‘I didn’t, not really. Martin didn’t want me to come to London at all. He wanted me to stay in Leeds, but my mother was a Londoner and I fancied a change.’

  ‘And Stowfleet?’

  ‘That was just how things worked out. I answered an advert in the Evening Standard and was lucky enough to get the job.’

  ‘So you didn’t feel any sort of affinity with Stowfleet? You’d never heard it mentioned before, perhaps?’

  ‘No, I …’ Jenny broke off. ‘I might have done, as a matter of fact. My mother could’ve mentioned the place. As I said, she went to school in Surrey but Rotherdean’s miles away from Stowfleet.’

  ‘We’ll take that as a tentative yes, then,’ said Jack with a smile. He ignored Jenny’s mutter of ‘very tentative’ and ploughed on. ‘You see, Miss Langton, your sense of familiarity with the house may be just that. Think of the things in the house that you recognised – the toys in the toy box, the tiles round the fireplace and so on. Then there’s your recognition of the bridge and your idea of sailing a toy boat in the stream and so on. Doesn’t all that suggest something to you?’

  She gave him a puzzled look. ‘No, I can’t say it does. I know the French have an expression, déjà vu, for when you feel you’ve been somewhere before. Is that what you mean?’

  ‘Not exactly. What I’m getting at is that your feeling of remembering the house and garden may be just that. A memory.’

  ‘A memory? A real memory, you mean?’ Jenny shook her head. ‘That’s impossible. Until I started work with Wilson and Lee I’d never been near Stowfleet and I’ve certainly never been to Saunder’s Green until this morning. I told you. I grew up in Salterbeck.’

  ‘But your mother went to school in Surrey and so did you. You said your mother was a Londoner. Don’t you think it’s at least possible that she had friends in Stowfleet?’

  ‘It’s possible, I suppose,’ admitted Jenny. ‘But my mother’s memories aren’t mine.’

  ‘No, of course not. But say she did have friends in Stowfleet. Could she have visited them? And taken you with her when you were very small?’

  ‘And those friends lived at Saunder’s Green?’ said Jenny sceptically.

  Jack shrugged. ‘Why not? They’ve got to live somewhere. You see, you started off by saying it’s impossible that you actually remembered Saunder’s Green, but I’m saying that it’s not impossible. It’s a coincidence, I agree, but it’s not impossible.’

  Jenny took a deep breath. ‘All right, I agree it’s possible. Just about.’

  ‘But Jack,’ broke in Betty. ‘That can’t be the explanation. Yes, Jenny could’ve visited the house when she was little.’ She turned to her friend. ‘I like that idea because of you remembering the toys and the little sailing boat and so on. All that adds up. But what about what happened at the cedar tree?’

  Jenny put her hands to her mouth. ‘What I saw by the tree wasn’t human. It was a monster. An evil thing. It can’t be real.’

  ‘Can it be real, Jack?’ demanded Betty.

  He tapped his cigarette in the ashtray thoughtfully. ‘That’s an interesting question,’ he said, after a pause. ‘You see, if I’m right and what you experienced at Saunder’s Green House wasn’t you going off your head – which it obviously wasn’t – déjà vu or something supernatural, then the only thing it really can be is a memory. So what were you remembering?’

  FOUR

  Jenny gulped. ‘It wasn’t real,’ she whispered. ‘It can’t have been real.’

  ‘Maybe it was a nightmare,’ suggested Betty. ‘Not now, I mean, but a nightmare you had when you were little. Perhaps you fell asleep under the tree, years ago, and had a really bad dream and seeing the tree brought it all back, about how scared you were. Jack? Don’t you agree?’

  ‘Not really, old thing. It must have been a dickens of a nightmare to have caused Miss Langton to have fainted years later.’

  ‘I want to know!’ broke in Jenn
y fiercely. ‘I want to know if my mother and I really ever did visit Saunder’s Green House when I was small. I want to know if there really was anything in the garden or if I was just frightened by a bad dream. But,’ she said, breaking off helplessly, ‘I don’t see how I can know. Mum could’ve told me, but she’s dead. I don’t see how I can ever know the truth, but if I don’t find out, I’ll always be worried that I really am going nuts or seeing things.’

  Betty looked appealing at Jack. ‘Can we help?’

  ‘Can we help?’ repeated Jack. ‘We can certainly try.’

  ‘But how?’ demanded Jenny.

  ‘We need to find out about the history of the house. I don’t mean who built it and so on, but who lived there. If this really is a memory of something that happened to you when you were little, it tells us the approximate time we should look for. Say this happened to you before you were six years old. I think after you were six, you’d have a fairly clear memory of the house, at least. When does that take us back to? Are you the same age as Betty?’

  Jenny nodded. ‘Yes. I’m twenty-three.’

  ‘Which means you were born in 1903. I can’t believe you’d remember much when you were a babe in arms, so we’re looking for whoever lived there between 1904 and 1910. If we can find who that was, you might recognise the name.’

  ‘That’s true,’ said Jenny, brightening. ‘If I recognised the name as belonging to one of my mother’s old friends, say, that’d show us we were on the right lines.’

  ‘They could easily still be alive,’ put in Betty. ‘Then all you’d have to do is to find out where they live now and ask them.’

  ‘Ask them what?’ said Jenny. She hesitated as the memory of the fear that had gripped her in the garden returned. ‘We can’t ask if anyone ever saw a … a monster.’