Resorting to Murder: Holiday Mysteries

by Martin Edwards

  Adey discovered that Findler had published at least one other story, but nothing more. To this meagre horde of information, I can add only that Findler was responsible for a pamphlet called Ghosts of the Lake Counties, published by Dalesman Publications in the 1970s. It seems that Findler lived in, or was at least very familiar with, the Lake District, and it would be pleasing if publication of this anthology leads to the discovery of more information about him.

  ***

  I had been on a walking tour through Cumberland when I discovered this House of Screams.

  Hidden among a clump of trees—there it stood: a mysterious looking building…windows and doors overgrown with green creeper…garden and lawn badly requiring attention.

  The nearest house must have been two miles away, and I can quite understand the ‘To Let’ board not appealing to those who were on the look-out for a residence near the Cumberland lakes and fells.

  To me, however, this house did appeal. Here was a house wrapped up in solitude—far from the noise and bustle of industrial Britain. Here was the very place I had often searched for, and had now found.

  By spending three months alone, I could write the book which I intended to be my great success. No noise—no servants—no conventions to upset my work—just to write, write, and write.

  I made my way back over the course I had come, and found the owner of the house was abroad, but his agents were in Penrith. By going on another mile I should be able to phone from a village Post Office.

  I reached the Post Office and General Store, and phoned the house agents in Penrith, who seemed delighted to accept my own terms as to rent. They informed me that the house had never been occupied since the owner had left to go abroad some years ago. It was well furnished, and they would send the key out by messenger immediately.

  I arranged to stay the night in this old world village, and then take possession of my newly acquired house. First thing next morning, I engaged two women to go out and clean and air the rooms, so that I could occupy it that evening.

  The village store also were asked to deliver groceries and necessaries every three days—and not being used to sudden increases in trade they willingly complied with my request.

  At 5 o’clock the cleaning and airing (such as it was) of the house was finished, and after tipping my two cleaners sparingly, I was left alone to commence my work.

  As I had previously stated, the house was hidden in a clump of trees—and except for an occasional bird pouring forth its twilight song, the world was quiet.

  I made tea, and ate up a portion of cake I secured in the village, and then I settled down to work writing my book.

  It is surprising how time flies when one is deeply interested in some work or hobby and what appeared to me to be a few minutes was close to five hours, because my watch said it was ten minutes past eleven o’clock.

  The day to me had been a busy one so I decided to give up my writing and toddle off to my bed.

  My chosen bedroom was large, but contained rather too much furniture, and the only means of lighting the room was by an old fashioned oil lamp, the glass of which was unusual in shape, very finely made, and of a peculiar green shade.

  You can imagine, then, how dull a bedroom would look—green lights—large ugly furniture—crowding any available space. Two windows were draped with heavy curtains, which I had drawn to the side, for the air seemed damp and thick. I tumbled into bed and left the lamp burning, for I have lately got into the habit of waking in the early hours, and reading a chapter of some favourite book.

  Outside, the wind was blowing a little stronger than it had done for days—and the dark skies foretold of a coming storm.

  As soon as my head touched the pillow I was asleep, and I remembered nothing more until I was awakened by a horrible scream which seemed in the very room where I was lying. The lamp still threw its flickering green light about the rooms and I felt every limb of my body shaking nervously.

  I got out of bed and slipped on my dressing gown, lit a cigarette to steady my nerves, and looked around the room for the person whose persistent screaming was unbearable, but not a sign of anyone could I see.

  I plucked up courage and started to search every room in the house, thinking perhaps some poor girl had got lost and had entered the house in fright, but room after room only contained horrid shadows that seemed like ghosts flying past me. I have never believed in things supernatural, but now that belief was getting badly shaken. The perspiration was standing like beads on my forehead.

  Towards the front of the house I made my way, and in the hall I lit another lamp—much the same kind of lamp that was still burning in my bedroom.

  No sooner had I left the hall than a second lot of screaming started. It seemed to me like a girl in mortal agony—but where she was I could not tell.

  The wind was whistling through the trees—and the two lots of screaming seemed to delight in making every sound.

  I had searched every nook and corner, with the exception of an attic room, of which the door refused to open. I made up my mind to explore that room at daybreak—to solve the mystery of this House of Screams.

  After half an hour enduring this ghostly serenade, the storm outside began to break, and strange though it may seem, the screaming started getting fainter too, until it gradually died away.

  It was now 4 o’clock and the strain of this haunted house was telling on me, so I wrapped a rug around myself and quickly went to sleep in an easy chair. I did not waken until 10.15, and found the sun peeping in through the window. My head throbbed—as though I had a horrible nightmare after too great a supper—but the peculiar green lamps still burning were sufficient proof to me that my experience was more than a ghostly dream.

  I made a jug of coffee, but could not eat anything, for my appetite had deserted me with my courage. After my necessary toilet, I found a large hammer and a wood chopper and made my way upstairs to the attic—the only room I had not been in.

  For ten minutes I battered and hammered at the door, until slowly it moved under the weight I had applied. When the door opened, a terrible sight met my eyes—for sitting on a chair by a small table was a skeleton.

  Had I solved the mystery of those screams? I walked nervously towards the table, which was thickly covered with dust. I picked up a small bottle from the floor, and faintly written on a red label was the word ‘Arsenic.’

  A leather wallet lay on the table, and I opened it. An envelope first caught my eye, and it was addressed ‘To the finder of my body.’ I opened the envelope with shaking fingers, and pulled out the letter which I now have in my possession. It is getting worn with being continually shown, but it reads thus:—

  ‘To Whoever You May Be.’

  ‘My end is drawing near, and the screams of my late wife continue. I have stood this horror as long as I dare, and now my brain is on the verge of snapping. My lawyer believes me to be going abroad, but the last few hours the spirit of Muriel will not leave me—but still goes on screaming—screaming—screaming. Before I die I must confess that my jealousy caused me to ill-treat my wife, who was both young and pretty.

  She was 21 when we married, and I was in my sixtieth year, and because of the many admirers she had, I bought this house and brought her here.

  Most of my time was spent in drinking—and when under the influence of liquor, I have thrashed her unmercifully.

  No wonder her ghost screams. She died a year after our marriage—a broken heart was the cause of it, but the village doctor said it was lung trouble.

  I thought that when she was gone that I would be rid of her incessant screams—but no, she has left them to torture my very soul.

  This attic is my only refuge, and I have boarded up the door—and now intend to prepare for my…

  Screaming again.—My God how she screams.’

  ***

  The letter remains un
finished, but it unfolds both romance and tragedy.

  Somehow I felt that the late owner of that skeleton had earned his deserts. His own actions had brought about his own end.

  ***

  Surely after hearing the screams of the ill-treated girl the previous night—and finding the skeleton of her brutal husband—no man could settle to write a book. So I packed up my few belongings, and walked into the village to notify a somewhat dull constable of my experience.

  He laughed at my idea of a screaming ghost and enquired the number of drinks it took to get like that, but when I told him of the skeleton in the attic, he thought he had better ask his Sergeant to come through.

  I had kept the wallet in which the letter was found, and in searching among its various contents, I came across a portrait of a beautiful girl. Her eyes seemed to be dark and bewitching, her face full of noble character and beauty, her lips were lips that most men would move heaven and earth to kiss. Was this the young girl who was the victim of that brute who believed in torture instead of love.

  This girl’s face has fascinated me ever since. Perhaps it is because I have heard her screams, and know her story, that one will understand how a few years ago I made my way back to the House of Screams.

  The building was in a bad state of repair, the furniture all removed. An old road-mender told me the house was haunted, and how the villagers imagined ghosts flitted through the trees every night at twelve o’clock.

  At the village where I had previously stayed the night, I was informed about the young bride who was ill-treated, and how she was buried in the little churchyard nearby. The village postmaster described her as a girl with dark eyes that fascinated man and beast, and I concluded from his description that she and the girl of the photograph were one and the same.

  I made my way to the churchyard, and found a stone bearing the name of Muriel Dunhurste, aged 22 years, over a small grave. A lump seemed to swell in my throat—I again pictured such a sweet innocent girl being ill-treated by such a drunken sot as he confessed to be.

  I made up my mind to leave the place forever; it seemed the uppermost thought in my mind. Just as I arrived at the little white gate of the churchyard, a big touring car pulled up and a young man got out, and made his way into the churchyard. At first I was filled with surprise, for this young man was the very image of the dead girl whose grave I had just visited.

  He made his way to the very spot where a few minutes previous I had stood, and I noticed he placed a small wreath of white lilies on the grass mound. By this I concluded that he must be the girl’s brother—and this proved to be correct, for when he came back to his car, I asked him if he was going towards Penrith, and if so would he give me a lift. He replied he would be delighted with my company.

  We had not gone far on our journey, when I showed him the portrait from the wallet. He recognised it immediately, and inquired from where it came, as it was a portrait of his late sister, whose grave he had just visited, taken before she married.

  I told my story carefully, and after thinking for a few minutes he smiled. ‘Well, friend,’ he said, ‘I owe you an apology. But let me tell you my side of the story—that of a self-confessed murderer.

  ‘I always loved my sister, and she wrote to me after her marriage and told me of her husband’s brutality—well, I arrived too late—for she had died.

  ‘Now I acted in a friendly way to her husband, and one night he admitted when under the influence of drink, that her screams upset him. I left him alone in his house, only to return a fortnight later, with two peculiar shaped lamps which I said were keepsakes of my late sister.

  ‘At that time I was on the variety stage as an Illusionist, and these lamps I had specially made to my requirements. They were manufactured so that if the lamps were lit these peculiar shaped lamp glasses would get hot. Now by making a whistle or scream of a special range nearby these lamp glasses would act as reproducers, and throw out a weird increased volume of the original sound.

  ‘A day or so before I gave him the lamps, I experimented with them in such a way that it was only when the wind was very rough—and caused a high whistle through the trees that surrounded the house—that the lamps screamed. By filing little bits of the lamp glass, I was able to get a sound as near to my sister’s scream as possible.

  ‘The lamps evidently did the work intended, and drove my sister’s husband to take his own life.

  ‘As for your experience, my friend, I regret you spent a night under such weird circumstances, but I gathered from your conversation that you were an author. If that is so—why not write a true description of the House of Screams.’

  Cousin Once Removed

  Michael Gilbert

  Michael Gilbert (1912–2006) was one of the most distinguished male British crime writers of the second half of the twentieth century. He combined a prolific career as an author of books, short stories, plays and screenplays with a busy life as a partner in a prestigious Lincoln’s Inn firm of solicitors. His clients included his friend Raymond Chandler.

  Gilbert’s facility for writing readable, well-plotted mysteries was matched by a fondness for varying the type of stories that he wrote. His work ranged from traditional whodunits and novels of psychological suspense to spy stories and international thrillers. Every now and then, he drew on his legal knowledge for plot material, and this story is a typically assured example.

  ***

  When Kenneth Alworthy said to his cousin Arthur, ‘I’ve fixed to take a little fishing holiday in early June. I’m going to a farm in Cumberland. It’s got two miles of fishable water and I’m told it’s as lonely as the Sahara Desert,’ Arthur (himself a fisherman) felt that peculiar thrill which comes when, after the casting of successive flies, each gaudy, each attractive, each subtly different, the big trout is seen to rise ponderously from the peaty recesses under the river bank and cock his eye at the lure.

  Arthur had wrought hard and long for this moment.

  Almost a year ago he had mentioned Howorth’s Farm to his cousin. He had done it casually—so casually that Kenneth had already forgotten who had told him about it. Twice thereafter he had mentioned it to friends who, he guessed, would pass it on to Kenneth. Then, in March, at the time when the first daffodils look out and far-sighted people plan their holidays, he had sent a copy of a Cumberland newspaper to his cousin. In it he had marked for him an account of the newly discovered rock fissure below Rawnmere, for Kenneth was an amateur of speleology.

  But it was not only the marked paragraph that he had counted on Kenneth seeing. Immediately below it was the five-line advertisement which the owner of Howorth’s Farm put into the local press each spring.

  After that Arthur left it alone.

  If a trout will not rise there is no profit in thrashing the water.

  ***

  If you were asked, why was it so important to one cousin that the other cousin go apparently of his own free will, to a particular farm in Cumberland, then you would have to cast widely for the answer.

  First you would have to examine the will of their common grandfather, Albert Alworthy, who had made his money out of quarrying, and tied it up tightly.

  His solicitor, Mr Rumbold (the father of the present senior partner), had drawn the will, and his client’s instructions had been clear. ‘Tie it up as tight as the law allows,’ said the old man. ‘To my children, and then to their children, and the survivor can have the lot. I dug it out of the earth by the sweat of my brow. Let them sweat for it.’

  Fifty years later Mr Rumbold, Junior, had attempted to explain these provisions to Arthur.

  ‘Two wars thinned you out a lot,’ he said. ‘Your father and your cousin Kenneth’s father—that was your Uncle Bob—were the only two of old Albert’s children who had any children themselves. And you and your cousin are the only two grandchildren left.’

  ‘And so it goes to Kenneth and me?
’

  ‘To the survivor of Kenneth and you.’

  ‘How much?—about.’

  The solicitor named a sum, and Arthur Alworthy pursed his lips.

  He wanted money. He wanted it badly, and he wanted it fairly quickly. Not next week, or even next month, but if he didn’t get it in a year he was done for. Certain bills were maturing steadily. He might borrow to meet them, but borrowing more money in order to meet existing debts is an improvident form of economy, even for a man with expectations. And even borrowing could not keep him afloat for more than a year at most.

  A second reason for the selection of Howorth’s Farm lay in a personal tragedy which had befallen Arthur some years before, when walking in the neighbourhood. He had lost his dog, an attractive but inquisitive cocker spaniel, down a pot-hole in the moor. It was a deep, ugly-looking hole, partly masked by undergrowth and surrounded by a rusty and unstable wire fence. Had it existed in a less lonely spot its dangers would have led to proper precautions being taken. As it was, it was fully three miles from Howorth’s Farm, and the farm was five miles from the nearest village. A few of the shepherds knew of the pot-hole’s existence and it was to one of them that Arthur had hurried, hoping there might be some way of saving the animal.

  The shepherd had shaken his head with the quiet firmness of a man who tells an unplesant truth.

  ‘Nothing come alive out of that pot,’ he said. ‘Poor little beggar, but you can reckon he’ll be dead by now. It’s not a dry pot, you see, Mister. There’s a scour of water at the bottom.’ Twenty years ago, continued the shepherd, a party of experts had gone down to explore. They had found a sheep, which had fallen in a month before. At least, they thought it was a sheep. The icy current and the jagged rocks had done their dissecting work very thoroughly and the evidence was by then inconclusive.

  ‘Another month,’ said the shepherd, ‘and there wouldn’t have been nothing left at all.’

  ‘They ought to put a proper fence around it,’ Arthur had said, angrily.