“If you please, sir”—the girl had come out of the cabin and stood behind Peter—“I was so frightened, sir.”
“Come back to the house immediately,” said Hannay’s voice. “Really, it is too absurd of you, making me ridiculous and making yourself ridiculous. Ghosts! Whoever heard of ghosts?”
“I saw it, sir.”
“Rubbish!” said Mr. Hannay. “Come along. I’ll take you back to the house.”
Peter was a little relieved. He had no particular desire to accommodate a young lady for the remainder of the night. His little clock told him it was just after midnight, and he did not relish the prospect of sitting up all night with a companion whose only topic of conversation was ghosts and death watches. He helped the girl to the shore.
“Thank you very much, Mr.—uh——?”
Peter did not oblige him with his name. He was glad when the girl had gone, but for an hour he lay, turning from side to side in his bunk, speculating upon this strange little adventure. Death watch? Ghosts? He smiled.
He was just dozing off when there came another interruption. He got out of bed and again went out of the cabin, not in too good a temper. The man on the bank had no lantern.
“Excuse me, sir, are you the gentleman that gave shelter to Lile?”
For a reason best known to himself Peter went suddenly cold.
“Yes,” he said quietly.
“She took away your rug. Mr. Hannay asked me to return it to you.”
All Peter’s irritation was gone now. Dimly he could see the man on the bank. He had left his lantern in the cabin, but evidently the man on the bank could see him.
“Will you catch, sir?”
Something was thrown at him; the soft mass of the rug struck him in the chest.
“Have you got it? Good-night, sir.”
The man went scrambling up the steep path to the invisible house. Peter stood for a long time, the rain pattering on the shoulders of his waterproof.
“Good Lord!” he said softly.
He went back to the cabin, switched on the light, and sat down.
“Who the dickens was Diggin?” he asked aloud at the end of an hour of thought. “And what was his peculiar brand of folly?”
He left his moorings just after daybreak, stopped at Marlow, and went ashore, and at that unearthly hour engaged a room at the Red Lion, where he finished his interrupted sleep. At ten o’clock his boat was still moored at the big boathouse, and Peter was pursuing inquiries.
Diggin was a builder, long since dead. He had conceived the idea of building two villas on the crests of two identical hills. They were not good villas, but they were very precious in the sight of Mr. Diggin, who had been both the architect and the builder. They suffered from this disadvantage, that they were near no main road, were indeed almost unapproachable, since in the days when they were built the motorcar was an unknown method of transport. They were red brick villas, with bow windows and slate roofs, altogether unlovely, and they were called “Diggin’s Follies” because nobody wanted to buy them or hire them. Even the advent of the motorcar did not make them any more desirable.
The week before his death Mr. Diggin had sold one and the land on which it stood to a man who intended starting a poultry farm. He had never started it. The second, and more important, sale was conducted by Mr. Diggin’s executor, and the purchaser was Mr. Hannay, who had so built onto this villa that it had lost its native ugliness and had attained the dignity of a country home.
“In fact, Chesterford is one of the nicest houses in these parts,” said Peter’s informant. “It has beautiful grounds, a bathing pool, and everything.”
Mr. Hannay apparently was a wholesale draper who had passed his responsibilities on to a limited liability company in the days when company promoters were paying enormous sums for likely propositions. He had one child, a daughter—her name was Patricia. Peter had a glimpse of her, driving a big Rolls through the town. She wore a blue tennis jacket, and a gaily coloured scarf about her throat. Her head was bare, and her brown hair was flying in all directions. Pretty, he thought; but then, Peter had this weakness, that he believed most women were pretty.
His very discreet inquiries produced no stories of ghosts—at least, no ghosts attached to Chesterford. Yet something peculiar was happening in Mr. Hannay’s house. Servants were leaving; few stayed there more than a week—this he learned at a local employment agency. The butler had left a month before and had been replaced. Two cooks had left in one week; there had been five new maids in the house in the past two months.
Mr. Hannay was a gentleman of irreproachable character. He was rich, a churchgoer, had a large electric canoe and two cars. Obviously he was not a flighty man: a plain, matter-of-fact, sober, rather intolerant citizen, so far as Peter could make out. There had been some feeling locally because, at a recent Parliamentary election, he had discharged two gardeners who had had the temerity to vote for the Labour candidate and, very foolishly, had boasted of their fell deed.
He was, in fact, the kind of man one might meet in any small English town, who believed that the country was going to the devil and that something ought to be done about it.
Three days of his vacation Peter gave up to a little private investigation. He went near enough to the house to catch a glimpse of Miss Patricia driving the yellow Rolls, and was considerably impressed.
The household, he discovered, consisted of Mr. Hannay and his daughter, a working butler named Higgins, two maids, one of whom had left in a hurry—Peter supposed this was his terrified guest—and a gardener-chauffeur who had recently been engaged.
Peter made a very careful survey of the grounds, but did not approach the house. It was easier to examine the second of Mr. Diggin’s Follies, for the red brick villa stood more or less as it had been delivered from its maker’s hands: an atrocity of a building, gaunt, desolate. It stood in two acres of untidy ground. No attempt had been made to form a garden; the weeds were knee-high; the windows blurred with the rains and dust of years. In one part of the field—it was little more—he found the old chicken huts that had been delivered years before and had been stacked at the back of the house. The weather had taken toll of them: most of them had fallen to pieces.
He cleaned a pane of glass with his handkerchief and stared into an empty room, the walls of which had been covered with a paper of atrocious pattern. It was peeling from the walls, and as he stared he saw a little brown form whisk across the floor and disappear into a cavity which he identified as the fire grate.
“Rats and rubbish,” said Peter.
He tried the doors, front and back: they were locked. At the back door he thought he saw the trace of a footprint, but this was not remarkable: the people in the neighbourhood often came over to stare at Diggin’s Folly; they overran the surrounding ground, and would have picnicked there if its bleak character had encouraged such a frivolity.
About twenty years before, the gloomy house had gained notoriety as the scene of a very commonplace murder. A tramp woman had been murdered by another wanderer of the road, who had long since fallen through the trap in expiation of his crime. It was when he was making inquiries about this deserted place that Peter heard the first hint of a ghost.
The place was reputedly haunted, or had enjoyed that reputation till the public grew tired of its mystery. Yet Peter discovered an elderly man who had seen the old tramp woman walking in the grounds of the house, wringing her hands and moaning.
“I admit I’d been drinking that night,” said his informant, “but I know when I’ve had enough.”
“That,” said Peter, “is a more common illusion than ghosts.”
He had three weeks’ vacation. Nearly a week of it was gone. He went up to Scotland Yard and saw his chief.
“Surely, you can have six weeks if you want it. It’s due to you, but you told me
that three would be sufficient?”
Peter explained that he needed the rest. He had just finished with an important and tiring case, and the extra leave was granted.
He had another object in coming to town. He collected his car. Peter Dunn was a rich man. It was the complaint of Scotland Yard that he ought not to be there at all.
He came back this time to Maidenhead. He did not want to be at Marlow too long, and with his car the question of distance was no object.
It was not to be supposed that his presence in the immediate neighbourhood of Chesterford should pass unnoticed. After dinner one night Pat Hannay asked a question.
“A young man? Good heavens, I don’t notice young men! One of the maids’ admirers—that new girl, Joyce, is rather pretty.”
“He doesn’t look like a maid’s admirer,” said Pat. “In fact, I cherish the romantic impression that he might be waiting to catch a glimpse of me.”
“Nonsense!” said her father.
“You’re very rude,” said Pat, and then: “Do you realize that we know hardly anybody in this neighbourhood? We’ve got a lovely tennis court that nobody plays tennis on, and even my London friends do not come to Chesterford.”
Mr. Hannay looked at her in amazement.
“Why on earth do you want people here?” he said. “Half the delight of the country is that one is alone.”
“It isn’t half my delight, or even a quarter of it,” said Patricia Hannay, and went on without a pause: “He was rather nice looking.”
“Who was?” asked her baffled father. “Oh, the young man you saw? Well”—heavily jocose—“why don’t you ask him to play tennis with you?”
“I thought of that,” said Pat, and then struck a more serious note. “You know the cook has left?”
“Has she?” said Mr. Hannay in astonishment. “I thought to-night’s dinner was extraordinarily good——”
“I cooked it,” said Pat. “It was rather fun, but if I did it more than twice it would be a bore. Daddy, do you realize what an awfully ugly house this is?”
She was touching Mr. Hannay’s tenderest point. He was an amateur architect. It was his boast that he had designed the additions that had turned a villa that was plain to the point of ugliness into something which bore a resemblance to a charming country house.
“I don’t mean that the architecture’s ugly,” said Pat, hastily tactful, “but it’s so isolated, and I can almost understand the servants getting ideas about ghosts and groanings and rappings. Why don’t you let it, Daddy? That was a magnificent offer you had the other day.”
“Let it?” scoffed Mr. Hannay. “Absurd! It would be—um—derogatory to my position. I can’t let furnished houses. I either close them up or sell them. I was saying to Dr. Herzoff at the club—he’s an excellent player; in fact, I had all my work cut out to beat him——”
She had heard of Dr. Herzoff before.
“Is he living at the clubhouse?”
“I don’t know where he’s living—at some hotel in the neighbourhood. A charming fellow, with a tremendous sense of humour——”
“Which means he laughs at your jokes and hasn’t heard your ancient stories, Daddy. Does he play tennis?”
Hannay thought he might.
After tea the next night Pat strolled out down to the lower garden. Beyond the trim box hedge ran a road which had not been a road at all until Mr. Hannay had made it. It was here she had seen the mysterious young man who had excited her interest. She wondered what he would say if, with the boldness of despair, she invited him to a game of singles. She was a little disappointed that she had not the opportunity of making this test.
That night there came a crisis in the affairs of Chesterford. Pat was in that pleasant stage between sleep and wakefulness when she heard a shrill outcry. She sat up in bed, listening. From somewhere near at hand she heard a “click-click-click,” and, despite her philosophy, shivered.
The death watch! She had heard it before, but not quite so distinctly. Again came the scream. She reached for her dressing gown and slipped out of bed. In another second she was in the corridor.
The maid’s room was at the end of the passage. She tried the door; it was locked, but the incoherent babble of sound which came from within told her she had not made any mistake.
Mr. Hannay had heard the cry. Pat turned her head at the snap of his lock. He came out, a gaunt figure, more exasperated than frightened.
“What the devil’s the matter?” he asked.
Pat did not answer. She was rattling the handle of the maid’s door.
“Joyce! Joyce! What is the matter? Open the door.”
The key turned and the door opened. Joyce stood there in her nightgown, her eyes staring wildly.
“Oh, miss, I saw it!” she gasped. “I saw it as plainly as…”
“Saw what?”
Pat brushed past her into the room, closing the door. The girl fell back on the edge of her bed, her face in her hands.
“What did you see?” asked Pat again.
For a little time the maid did not speak.
“It seemed to pass through the door, miss,” she said in a hollow tone, “and I locked the door before I came to bed. It walked slowly past me and sort of disappeared…it was almost as if it walked through the wall.”
“It was a nightmare,” said Pat, her heart quaking.
Joyce shook her head vigorously.
“Oh, no, miss, it wasn’t. There was no nightmare about that. It happened, just as the other girls said it happened. And I wasn’t asleep; I was wide awake—as much awake as I am at this very minute.”
Pat meditated for a second. She simply dared not ask any more questions: this type of terror grew on what it fed on. Then her natural curiousity overcame her discretion.
“What was it like?”
“A horrible-looking man. He had a terrible face. Dressed in tramp’s clothes…dirty-looking…he was awful. There was blood on his hands; it seemed to be dripping as he walked!”
Pat looked at her helplessly, then went to the door and opened it.
“May my father come in?”
Hannay was standing outside.
“Joyce says she saw a ghost—a tramp or something, with blood on his hands.”
“Stuff and nonsense!” growled Mr. Hannay. “She must have been dreaming.”
The maid looked up at him resentfully.
“It’s not stuff and nonsense, sir, and I’ve not been dreaming.”
She got up suddenly from the bed, walked to the window, and, drawing aside the thick curtains, peered out. Pat saw her draw back, an expression of horror on her face.
“Look!”
Hannay pushed her out of the way, and, throwing open the casement window, thrust out his head. Then a chill ran down his spine, for he saw the man distinctly. He was tall, grotesque in the moonlight, a figure that moved and made strange and hideous noises as it walked.
“That’s him,” quavered Joyce. “Do you hear? That was what I heard…quite near, miss!”
There was perplexity on Hannay’s face, anxiety on Pat’s, twitching terror on the face of the maid. Pat supposed, with a quiet malice, that the girl found some enjoyment in her terror—was at least laying the foundation for horrific stories to be told to her friends.
“I was wide awake. He came so close to me I could have touched him.”
She seemed loth to leave the subject.
“What did he look like?” asked Mr. Hannay.
“She’s told you once,” said Pat impatiently.
But Joyce was not to be denied her narrative.
“His face was horrible!” She shuddered. “Like a man who was dead!”
“Come into the library,” said Pat to her father.
She turned
to the maid.
“You’d better wake up Peterson and get him to give you something hot to drink.”
They left the girl sitting on the edge of the bed, covering her face with her hands. Mr. Hannay led the way, walking to his desk in the library. It was the one spot in the house where he could command any situation. And here was a situation which asked for command. Yet, as was his wont, he waited for a lead from his daughter. Mr. Hannay initiated nothing. He found the weak place in the suggestions of others, and by this process, which operated throughout his life, he had amassed a fortune.
“Father, we’ve got to do something.”
Nobody knew this better than Mr. Hannay.
“Well, what do you expect me to do?” he asked.
There was an obvious solution, and she suggested it.
“Send for the police,” she said.
Her father snorted.
“And make myself a laughing stock! Police—ghosts! I’ve never heard such nonsense! Don’t you suppose that that idea has already been considered by me and rejected?”
“What are we going to do about it?” she asked squarely. “Daddy, I can’t go on; this thing is getting on my nerves.”
It was getting on Mr. Hannay’s nerves also.
“It is all very stupid,” he said.
There was a little pause as he thought, his head on his hands.
“That man I met at the golf club…Professor Herzoff—he’s a very well known scientist. Have you heard of him?”
Patricia shook her head.
“Neither have I,” admitted Hannay naïvely. “It’s very odd, we were talking about ghosts. I don’t know what fool brought it up. He believes in them.”
Pat stared at him.
“Is he grown up…and believes in ghosts?”
“He’s grown up and believes in ghosts,” said Hannay firmly. “I’ll bring him over to-morrow morning. He might give us a new angle to the situation.”
The Big Book of Reel Murders Page 168
