As I have said, Uncle had decided to spend Sunday engrossed with his musty papers, and I had thought to seek amusement by exploring the first floor of the house. Accordingly, I mounted the rickety stairs and pushed open the door of a bedroom where Mrs Doake had told me that the spirit-child sometimes appeared.
The room was bathed in quiet sunlight, but held no sinister atmosphere. It was simply a small room with a single window, a collapsed iron bedstead, a chair, and a tallboy from which the drawers had been removed and stacked up in a corner, near a number of planks standing upright against the wall.
I smiled to herself – what had I expected to see? – and turned to go back on to the landing. Uncle Max would think me mad, maybe not without reason! As I mentioned, I had fancied that I’d glimpsed the little girl a week earlier, soon after we had arrived at Mayfield. Little more than a shadow, it had flitted across the head of the first-floor landing, and had then been lost in the gloom. I blush even now when I recall that I had been too frightened to investigate further.
It was as I stepped out of the little bedroom and on to the landing that a change in the light behind me made me turn round. I stood transfixed on the threshold of the room, quite unable to move. The somnolent rays of the afternoon sun lay across the chamber, revealing tiny motes of dust hovering in the air. Beside the iron bedstead I saw the figure of a young girl, perhaps ten or eleven years old. The child’s face was pale and expressionless, though her dark eyes seemed to be fixed earnestly on mine.
The blood pounded in my ears, and I remained motionless and totally consumed by supernatural dread. The child was wearing an ankle-length frock of faded muslin, and her dark hair fell down over her shoulders. She made no sound of any kind. You’re supposed to speak first, a little voice somewhere deep in my consciousness told me, otherwise they can’t speak. My voice, when eventually I found it, sounded thin and reedy.
‘Who are you? What do you want?’
The figure of the girl pointed to the bed. Her lips moved, but no sound came to my ears. I kept my eyes riveted on the child’s mouth, and fancied that she had said the word ‘Helen’. The figure pointed once more to the bed, and placed a finger to its lips.
I closed my eyes in dread, at the same time feeling for the frame of the door for support. Was this silent wraith really the spirit of the child who had once stayed in this house, long years ago? What had happened to her, that her spirit could not rest until some hidden truth were known? What was she trying to say, as she ventured for a while into this world from the world unseen? I opened my eyes again to find that the figure had gone.
On the Tuesday following, Uncle Max declared that he would spend the morning finishing his reading of the letters that he had inherited with the house.
‘Another couple of days, Catherine,’ he said, ‘and we shall be able to leave this benighted place and return to London. We’ve been here too long already.’
He settled himself at the table in what had become our common living room, and I decided that I would fetch a straw basket from the kitchen, and go out into the overgrown rear garden to pick some of the ripe raspberries that I knew were growing there.
There was a romantic stillness and peace about the gardens of Mayfield Court that appealed to me. Wild nature had taken up residence there, so that clumps of brilliant yellow poppies, and wild purple geranium sprang up defiantly from the sallow tangles of dock and bindweed covering what had once been the paths and beds of a kitchen garden. Behind some banks of dying rhododendron the stark roofless walls of an old washhouse had long ago yielded to the advance of the invincible ivy. I had never explored as far as the containing wall of the rear garden, but I could glimpse sections of it through the bushes.
I pushed my way through the tall weeds and made my way into that part of the garden where a number of raspberry bushes, covered in enticing fruit, were to be found. I spent some time picking raspberries, and placing them in the straw basket, at the same time enjoying the warm sun, and the sense of being apart from the mundane concerns of Mayfield Court.
Quite suddenly, a cloud obscured the sun and, at the same time, I was conscious of something moving near the ivy-clad ruin of the washhouse. I turned sharply to my right, and saw once again the child revenant who had mouthed the name ‘Helen’ when I had asked her her name.
I found myself utterly deprived of the will to move. My fear was such that I scarcely noticed that the sun had come out from behind the cloud, so that the silent visitor was now bathed in light. She was wearing the same faded muslin frock, and her dark hair fell freely over her frail shoulders. I could see now that she was barefoot. Her little round face, devoid of expression, was turned to face me and, as our eyes met, she began to speak, but no sound issued from her lips.
What did she want? Why had she come back to haunt me?
The figure moved nearer to the ruin, and pointed to a particular spot close to the ground. The lips moved again, but no sound came. Then she placed her hands over her eyes for a moment, and seemed to move aside behind the bushes. I found that the spell had been broken, and that I no longer felt afraid. The little ghost had been trying to tell me something, but the words echoed in a world beyond this.
I picked up the basket in which the succulent raspberries reposed, and walked slowly towards the washhouse beyond the sprawling rhododendron bushes. With the disappearance of the apparition the garden had reassumed an air of encouraging normality. Even as I picked my way through the brambles one part of my mind was registering the fact that the fruits that I had just picked had come from the descendants of cultivated plants: they were too large and well-formed to be from wild stock.
When I came to the ruins I recalled the reappearance of the silent ghost-child. She had pointed to a spot in a partly-collapsed wall near where I was now standing. Had she come with a message? Had the spirit materialized to reveal some long-concealed crime or enormity?
I crouched down near the foot of the wall, and saw that there was a v-shaped fissure between the bricks, beyond which something white gleamed where a little beam of sunlight rested. I spread a handkerchief on the ground and knelt down, so that I could get a better view through the cleft in the bricks.
Delicate and beautiful, looking for all the world as though it had been sculpted from marble by a renowned artist, a skeletal hand and the bones of an arm were revealed to my appalled sight. I had no grounding in anatomy, but I knew at once that these were the bones of a child, and it was these pathetic remnants that the child-ghost had yearned to be revealed to the world.
I had experienced enough horrors for one day. I walked unsteadily back on to the tangled path, willing my legs to carry me where I wished to go. I would soon be back in the safety of the house, and Uncle, or Mrs Doake, would rouse someone in this sleepy, deadly hamlet to send for a policeman.
I glanced back involuntarily towards the secret tomb, and saw once again the phantasm of the dead child, standing near a tree, and pointing with a kind of silent accusation at the spot where her mortal remains had been concealed. Would this haunting never end? It was then that I fainted, as though my mind willed my body to banish the denizens of another world from my consciousness.
‘My niece has always seen things, Doctor. Ever since she was a little girl. Things that no one else sees, I mean. It’s due, I suppose, to a heightened imagination. She used to consort with mediums, lured into doing so by a giddy woman acquaintance of hers, someone who’s years older than she is, and ought to know better than encourage a young girl of twenty. But I soon put a stop to that after I found out about it. And now, Doctor, she’s frightened herself into a fainting-fit. It’s too bad. I shall take her back to London immediately.’
I lay on the sofa in our living room, watching my uncle through half-closed lashes. How long had I been unconscious? Long enough for Uncle Max to send Mrs Doake for a doctor. He was a man in his fifties, with a kindly face and shrewd eyes. He still held my wrist, measuring the progress of my pulse, while listening to Uncle Max’s dism
issive words.
I was suddenly overcome with a surge of indignation – the beginning of a rebellion against my uncle’s assumption that he could override anything that I said or thought as though I was a silly creature of no consequence. If I did not say something now in my defence, this doctor would prescribe a draught of some sort and leave the house. I opened my eyes, and fixed them earnestly on the doctor’s face.
‘I saw a skeleton—’ I began, but was interrupted immediately by Uncle Max. I glanced almost despairingly in his direction, and was shocked to see how his face had been suddenly drained of all colour.
‘You see, Dr Tracy?’ he cried. ‘She wilfully persists in these wild assertions. I shall take her to Harley Street. You foolish girl. You saw no skeleton’
‘Oh, but she did, Mr Paget,’ said Dr Tracy. ‘When she fainted, the good woman who helps here – Mrs Doake, isn’t it? – found her lying in the grass, and she, too, saw the skeletal remains, hidden in a ruined wall. She had the good sense to send a lad for me out at Thornton Heath, and when I came in the back way into your garden, I saw the skeleton too.’
At last! I was to be vindicated. Whoever this Dr Tracy was, my heart warmed to him. He turned then to address me directly.
‘There,’ he said, ‘your colour is returning. You will be quite all right, now. Mr Paget, ask someone to bring your niece a cup of well-sweetened tea.’
Uncle Max made no move to accede to the doctor’s request. He seemed dazed, as though talk of the skeleton had robbed him of the will to act.
‘This skeleton,’ he said at last, ‘what’s to be done? Must anything be done?’
The doctor drew a watch from his waistcoat pocket and consulted it.
‘Oh, yes, Mr Paget,’ he said, ‘something must certainly be done. It’s just after eleven o’clock. I have already sent a note to a neighbour of mine at Thornton Heath, and he should be here by twelve. He was working on his smallholding when I left, and I know he’ll call in to the Volunteer for a glass of gin before setting off for his work in Warwick. But when he gets my note, he’ll come here.’
While the doctor was talking, Uncle Max had regained control of himself. I saw the beginnings of a sardonic smile hovering about his lips.
‘And this gin-drinking smallholder,’ he enquired, ‘is he an authority on skeletons?’
‘Well, yes, he is,’ said the doctor, smiling in his turn. ‘I’ll leave you, now. My neighbour will be here within the half-hour.’
2
Catherine’s Narrative: Laying the Ghost
‘There’s somebody making his way through that wilderness of a carriage drive,’ said Uncle Max. ‘Probably a fellow yokel come to call on the peasant woman.’
It was just over half an hour after Dr Tracy had left. I joined my uncle at the window, and saw a heavy, thickset man approaching the front door of Mayfield Court. Despite the summer heat, he was clad in a buff overcoat which he wore open, so that it flapped about him as he walked. Beneath the overcoat he wore a dark moleskin suit, the trouser legs tied around his ankles with string.
The man held a riding crop, which he used to beat a way through the tangled weeds growing over the path. As he neared the door, I could see that he had a clean-shaven face, which was flushed either with exertion, or with what Uncle would have called ‘ardent spirits’.
There was a brisk knock on the door, and presently Mrs Doake came into the room. She gave a little bob of a curtsy in Uncle’s direction, and told us that Mr Bottomley had ridden over from Thornton Heath to see us. In a moment, the man called Bottomley came into the room.
‘Mr Paget?’ he asked. His voice held the pleasant accents of a Warwickshire man. ‘I’m Detective Sergeant Bottomley of the Warwickshire Constabulary.’ He fumbled in one of the pockets of his overcoat, and produced a rather grimy warrant-card. I noticed that there was soil beneath his fingernails.
‘You’d better go out into the garden straight away,’ said Uncle Max. ‘I have no desire to see this skeleton myself, and it would not be fitting for my niece to do so a second time. The woman who looks after us here will show you the way.’
Our rustic visitor treated Uncle Max to an amiable lopsided smile.
‘Yes, sir,’ he said, ‘I’ll be looking at the skeleton in a little while – but not just yet.’ His face became suddenly grave, and he turned to look at me from a pair of fine, shrewd grey eyes.
‘I’m told by Mrs Doake that you are Miss Catherine Paget,’ he said, ‘and that you are the young lady who has been seeing ghosts.’ There was no mockery lurking behind his words, and when he asked me to give an account of what I had seen, I had no difficulty in confiding in him. Uncle, I noticed, had fallen silent. Leaving him to his own devices, I bade Mr Bottomley follow me into the kitchen, where I told him of my three encounters with the spirit-child. He listened with what I can only describe as becoming gravity. It was a novelty, as I was accustomed to all my accounts of ghosts and spirits being met with derision.
‘A very interesting account, miss,’ said Mr Bottomley, when I had finished. ‘The Pale Child of Mayfield. Would you care to show me the room where you saw this phantom?’
The first-floor bedroom was just as I had seen it when the spirit called Helen had appeared to me. I watched as Mr Bottomley leant down, his hands on his knees, and peered at the uneven floorboards. He made an inarticulate sound of satisfaction, and then moved slowly around the room. When he reached the corner where the drawers from the chest had been placed, he carefully moved them aside, and it seemed that he looked at the wall in the dark corner for minutes before straightening up and treating me to a gentle smile.
‘I don’t suppose you like it here much, do you, miss?’ he said. ‘You’d rather be back in Birmingham, I expect.’
‘Not Birmingham, Mr Bottomley,’ I corrected him. ‘Uncle and I are from London.’
‘Oh, London,’ he said, the suggestion of a smile playing about his lips. ‘London. I see. So you won’t like it out here much, will you? Here in the parish of Mayfield, in the hundred of Yeadon Vale, and in the county of Warwick, within walking distance of the hamlet of the same name?’
‘What a strange man you are, Sergeant!’ I laughed in spite of myself, and realized that it was the first time I had done so since the pathetic little haunting had begun. ‘Why won’t you go out to see the skeleton?’
‘I will, miss, cross my heart; but the skeleton will stay where it is until I come, whereas ghosts and suchlike lead us a lively dance – or a deathly dance, I should say. When the spirit-child, this Helen, put her finger to her lips, did she do it like this?’
He placed the edge of his index finger to his lips, and held the pose until I became aware that Helen’s action had been different. Mr Bottomley read this realization in my eyes, and slowly turned his finger until the front of it touched his lips. I could see his fingernail gleaming in the morning light. It had been the same with Helen.
‘That’s right, Sergeant!’ I cried. ‘That’s how Helen did it. But how did you know? Have you, too, seen her?’
‘Oh, no, Miss Catherine,’ said Mr Bottomley. ‘I’ve heard tell of her, but I’ve never seen her. But now that I know how she held her finger to her lips, I reckon I know all about her. So it’s time for me to examine the skeleton.’
The amiable half-smile suddenly faded from his homely face, to be replaced by an expression approaching bleak despair. I suddenly felt in awe of this man, who looked like a farm labourer, but who was, in fact, a police detective.
‘I will examine the skeleton alone, miss,’ he said, ‘but there’d be no harm in Mr Paget and yourself watching me from one of the windows on the garden side of the house. As soon as I’ve finished my examination, I’ll come back and tell you both what my conclusions are.’
From a window on the first-floor landing I watched Sergeant Bottomley as he went to work. Uncle Max had refused to join me, pleading more work on examining the bundles of letters. I suspected that he had no stomach for the macabre.
I
saw Mr Bottomley, still wielding his riding-crop, thresh his way through the wilderness of the rear garden until he reached the crumbling wall where I had found the ghastly remains. Once again, this rural detective did not behave predictably. He stood for a while staring fixedly up at the wooded hill that rose above the unseen hamlet. Then he turned slowly towards the south, and seemed to sniff the air like an eager hound. He suddenly plunged through the choking wall of rhododendrons to his left, and did not appear again for ten minutes.
When he came back from wherever he had been there was a jauntiness in his step that intrigued me. Indeed, everything that this burly man did intrigued me, perhaps because I have always been attracted to the unpredictable. At last I saw him kneel down beside the breach in the old ruined wall. He remained motionless for so long that I wondered whether he was not, in fact, kneeling in prayer. He made no effort to remove the pathetic bones of the dead child, but after what seemed an age he rose slowly to his feet.
Seating himself on part of the ruined wall, he rummaged in his pocket and produced what looked like a half-smoked cheroot. Retrieving a box of wax vestas from the same pocket, he lit the cheroot, and puffed away delicately for a while. When he had finished smoking, he dropped the butt into the grass, and ground it vigorously with his heel. He stood up, glanced briefly back at the house, and then disappeared once more into the bank of overgrown and rank rhododendrons.
I remained looking out on to the quiet, sunlit garden, where I had encountered the child-spirit known only as Helen. I felt mesmerized by the scene, the lack of animation, the illusion that no sound emanated from any kind of woodland life in that tangled wilderness. It was a strange, darkly enchanted place, a place where this world and the hidden world of the afterlife met and acknowledged each other.
Ghosts of Mayfield Court Page 2
