What Dread Hand?

by Christianna Brand

  And tear-filled was the word. For, romantic and exciting it may have been, with royalty itself at the wedding and Edward’s Great Aunts giving pep-talks to the new countess on the Responsibilities of Privilege and the Honour of the Family; but to find that Edward almost immediately afterwards calmly embarked upon another long adventure and as calmly took it for granted that she was going to remain at Fitzmerrian with the Aunts in control—that was another matter. Any attempt at rebellion had been quelled with quite astonishing firmness. Lovely Victoria (Vi-vi) Fitzmerrian began to feel quite sorry for those poor old savages whom Intrepid Young Explorer Earl was always going out and bossing about.

  It was deadly dull. Fitzmerrian, as everyone knows, is at the other end of the world, an exploration in itself, too far even to be turned into a Stately Home and visited by half-crown paying barbarians, which would at least have brought some life to it. As it was, the only sign of life for miles around lay in the bright, dark eyes of Mario—Mario who, all the way from sunny Italy, had come, after the accident that had killed Hubert and Emmeline, to look after the Aunts’ carriage horses (for from that day they had refused all other means of locomotion)—and who was the terror of the village girls for miles around.

  Lovely Victoria (Vi-vi) Fitzmerrian, who up to now had never known which end of a horse what happened, and hadn’t cared—began to spend a great deal of time in the stables.

  ‘Oh, dear,’ said Great Aunt Honoria, ‘I do trust she isn’t going the same way as Elizabeth and Virginia.’ Elizabeth and Virginia were the wives of Edward’s younger cousins. ‘I’m afraid we shall have to tell her the story of Cousin William and Emmeline. It cured Elizabeth; and Virginia.’ (But really—that Mario! she added in a despairing tone.)

  ‘It seems hard on the parties concerned,’ said Great Aunt Felicity. ‘Not here to defend themselves.’ She gave a resigned sniff; no one had ever been less appropriately christened.

  ‘Cousin William fell downstairs,’ cried Aunt Adelaide, beating softly on the breakfast table with an egg spoon, ‘and broke his neck.’ Aunt Adelaide was the slightly unstable one. Batty Addie, Vi-vi called her: to herself.

  So that evening they took coffee in the Long Gallery, beneath the family portraits and more especially the portrait of that other Cousin William, of long, long ago, who had been known, even in those conspicuously wicked days, as the Wicked Earl. And a wicked gleam indeed he had had in his eye, thought Vi-vi: he wouldn’t go exploring off after savages; something a lot better to do, here at home. Got up regardless, he was, in a coat, hugely flared, of plum-coloured silk over a velvet waistcoat, inappropriately embroidered over with little innocent lilies, in thread of gold. His wig was enormous, heavily powdered, he carried in one hand a cane, amber headed, with two golden tassels to match the innocent lilies. ‘One can’t help thinking,’ said Vi-vi to the Aunts, ‘that he must have been rather a dish.’

  ‘A thoroughly bad man,’ said Great Aunt Honoria. ‘And I am sorry to say that his namesake took after him.’

  ‘Your Cousin William, you mean? The one that fell downstairs and broke his neck.’

  Veils drew down over wrinkled faces, bright old eyes grew shadowed. ‘Oh, goodness, I’m sorry,’ said Vi-vi, abashed by this unlooked-for show of emotion. ‘But it happened at least ten years ago, didn’t it? And if he was so wicked—? And only your cousin anyway—and once removed at that?’

  ‘Yes, he was between our generation and yours. He would have been—forty?—when he died,’ said Aunt Honoria, consulting Felicity. She thought it over. ‘Ten years ago, it would be, yes: just one year after Hubert brought Emmeline here as his bride.’

  ‘That’s Edward’s cousin, who was killed—and Emmeline too—in the motor smash?’

  ‘Such a pretty girl!’ said Aunt Adelaide, musing over it, rapping gently with the egg-spoon.

  ‘Handsome is as handsome does,’ said Aunt Honoria.

  ‘And what did Emmeline do?’ (Left all alone here with the Aunts as she, Vi-vi, was now left. The Fitzmerrian men, it appeared, were great ones for going off on business and adventure and leaving their ladies in chastity belts, at home: for Fitzmerrian, away here at the back of beyond, was a chastity belt in itself.)

  More veils. And what went on behind the veils? she wondered—what thoughts went on in their heads, the three funny old things? All this blah about honour and the family and what not—it couldn’t have been difficult for them, poor dears, to safeguard their share of it: poor little crumpled-up Addie who looked as if a good huff and a puff (especially from a man) would blow her away, Felicity, lugubrious, her long thin nose oddly white against her pinched pink face; and Honoria—still solid as the house itself despite her eighty-odd years, rolling along in her stout tweed suits and ‘good’ crêpe de chîne blouses, pushing around the gardeners and the dairymen and the ancient butler and the cronies who still worked in the house; (not Mario, though—one cross word to Mario and—did not Vi-vi know it herself?—a look came into those velvety brown eyes that presaged an outburst of sulks and sudden nostalgic yearning for Italian skies. ‘They no send away Mario,’ he had boasted to her when she confided certain breakfast-table grumblings of the Aunts over his short-comings. ‘Very hard to get good man for carriage; and Mario he like an angel with the horses, the Signora Honoria she say so herself…’)

  ‘So,’ said Vi-vi, ‘what did Emmeline do?’

  Aunts Honoria and Felicity exchanged glances and suddenly thought it was time for Addie’s beddy-byes. An old witch known as Nanny, and so ancient as to appear to have been in fact Nanny to the aunts themselves, was summoned and led the protesting old lady away. ‘It would upset her,’ said Honoria, firmly.

  ‘You understand, Victoria, it is never to be spoken of outside the family,’ said Felicity.

  ‘Indeed no! Never to anyone at all, in fact. And above all, not to dear Edward, your husband. After all, Emmeline was his cousin’s wife and actually Countess Fitzmerrian for a couple of years. He was too young to understand it all at the time—ten years ago, Edward was just a boy. We did recently tell another young cousin of his, Elizabeth; and a cousin by marriage, dear Virginia. But apart from them—’

  ‘After all this was—well, between the women of the family,’ said Felicity.

  ‘Then if you will give us your absolute word—?’

  ‘Goodness, of course!’ said Vi-vi, much intrigued.

  So with many interruptions from Great Aunt Felicity, Great Aunt Honoria embarked upon the story of Cousin William and Emmeline. A pretty girl, it was true; but—mettlesome. Like a young foal, like the young Starlight colt that Mario was breaking-in at this moment—(‘Such a tiresome young man, by the way. I learn today, Felicity, that there is more trouble about that Betty Jones in the village,’ said Aunt Honoria in an aside; and watched two young hands clench tight and knuckles whiten.) Well—and, like any other young foal, longing to kick up her heels and scamper about in any meadow where the grass grew green. But of course young ladies, and especially when they married into Responsible Positions, couldn’t behave like young colts. So the Aunts had spoken to Emmeline, and after that things did seem to simmer down…

  Until one morning (Batty) Adelaide had come down to breakfast and announced complacently: ‘I saw one of the ghosts last night. I told you there were ghosts and I saw one.’

  ‘Of course there are ghosts,’ said Honoria severely; such a family, her tone suggested, would hardly be respectable without a ghost or two. ‘What did you see?’

  ‘A shadow gliding across the upper hall-way… Ah, there is Emmeline,’ said Adelaide, catching sight of her standing in the doorway of the breakfast room. ‘You saw it too, Emmeline, didn’t you?—for I caught a glimpse of your face at your bedroom door.’ But Emmeline, it seemed, could not take the fact of a ghost quite so calmly. ‘A ghost? Yes, I… Well, I did see something, Aunt Addie. I—I heard a noise and I got up and looked out…’

  ‘On the whole,’ said Cousin William, who happened to be staying in the house—a compliment h
e seldom played to his elderly cousins, let alone for so lengthy a visit—‘on the whole, it’s unusual for ghosts to make any noise?’ And he leaned back and twiddled his thumbs and looked up at Emmeline, still standing uncertainly in the doorway, with an oddly mischievous teasing air.

  ‘What else could it have been but a ghost?’ said Felicity.

  ‘Of course it was a ghost,’ said Emmeline, hastily. ‘Aunt Adelaide saw it, didn’t you, Aunt Addie? A woman—I think it was a woman—’

  ‘No, no, dear, positively a man. I saw the—nether limbs, you know…’

  ‘I expect the wig deceived you,’ suggested William, with another of those teasing looks at Emmeline. ‘In those days, the men wore powdered wigs.’

  ‘In which days?’ said Honoria.

  ‘Well, but wasn’t it an eighteenth-century ghost? We haven’t any later ones, have we?’

  ‘Yes, that’s right,’ said Emmeline, eagerly. ‘An eighteenth-century ghost. A big white wig and—and a long sort of reddish coat like a—like a dressing-gown. That’s why I thought it was a woman; I just saw the back of the wig and the long red silk coat—’

  ‘Not even a glimpse of the nether limbs?’

  ‘William, if you please!’ said Aunt Honoria. She bent a somewhat anxious look upon Emmeline. ‘Are you telling us it was the fifth earl, you saw? He wears a plum-coloured silk coat—his portrait is in the Long Gallery.’

  ‘Yes, yes, the Wicked Earl!’ cried Adelaide, delighted. ‘I saw him distinctly. A plum-coloured coat.’

  ‘Gold embroidery down the front?’ prompted Cousin William. ‘And the tasselled cane? And on his nether limbs—?’

  ‘That will do,’ said Honoria. ‘If he wore gold-embroidered plum colour and carried a cane—that is your namesake, William, certainly.’ And she looked at him piercingly. ‘Who was called the Wicked Earl,’ she said.

  ‘Goodness!’ said Vi-vi, listening starry-eyed to an outline of these events. ‘A real ghost?’ (And real is the word, she thought: that clever little Emmeline, so quick off the mark!) ‘And then?’

  Well, and then, it seemed, there had been no more visitations from the ghost, at least for a little while. Cousin William had betaken himself back to London but, not at all to the Aunts’ delight, had returned—with armloads of boxes and parcels, to be sure, full of presents for everyone, silky shawls for the Aunts—who put them back in their boxes and never looked at them again—a pearl necklace for Emmeline—which he said was only ‘cultured’—and even, apparently, a new dressing-gown for himself to replace his old red one. And perhaps it was his uneasy presence in the house, perhaps it was the attraction of their identical names and a certain family likeness—but soon the Wicked Earl, William, began to walk again. Aunt Felicity saw him this time—she couldn’t sleep, she said, felt restless and somehow anxious; and, imagining that she heard a door close, at some early hour of the morning, opened her bedroom door and looked out across the wide landing. And there he was. And there was no mistaking him this time—the great powdered wig, the plum-coloured coat over the embroidered waistcoat, one hand, beneath its ruffled lace, swinging a tasselled cane. And the face—it was the face of the fifth earl, not a doubt of it: right down to that—well, that look of his. He glided, unhurried across the landing and slowly mounted the curving stair that led to the corridors above.

  Vi-vi knew those corridors. The Family Wing, it was called up there, with guest rooms reserved for visiting Fitzmerrians. Her own suite—which would also have been Emmeline’s, as the then reigning Countess—was across the broad landing from the foot of those stairs. (Goodness!)

  But aloud she only said: “Weren’t you scared, Aunt Felicity?’

  ‘Certainly not,’ said Honoria, trumpeting in with it before Aunt Felicity’s pink face could show any reaction. ‘It was only a harmless ghost. I kept an eye out myself after that, and several nights later I saw it too: wig, silks and satins, cane and all.’ She glanced up at the Wicked Earl in his great gilt frame and he gave her back look for look. ‘He was a bad man, a braggart, a gambler, a trifler with women: what wonder he should rest uneasily in his grave?’ And she added that though one could not possibly be frightened, still it was all exceedingly disagreeable. On the occasion she herself saw him, he had been going the other way—moving across the landing with his back to her; and, upon hearing this next morning, poor Emmeline had confided, very white and scared, that he had actually appeared in her room, and stood there for a long time, with one hand on the upright of her great four-poster bed (Vi-vi slept there now in that very bed) and gazed at her. So even in the spirit, he had been up to his old tricks. Emmeline had seemed so nervous, that Cousin William had even suggested that she move out for a while; there were lots of vacant rooms in the Family Wing.

  ‘And did she?’ asked Vi-vi, all agog.

  ‘Certainly not; it would have been most improper, with William sleeping in the same part of the house.’

  ‘Goodness, yes, of course!’ said Vi-vi.

  Nevertheless, the Aunts had grown very anxious. If poor Emmeline were going to be upset in this way… What would dear Hubert think when he got home and heard the story?—(What, indeed? wondered Vi-vi.) ‘We took counsel, my dear, Felicity, Adelaide and I. Felicity was for calling in the parson and having the ghost exorcised; but really one would not care to submit The Family to that sort of intrusion; and, wicked or not, he had been a member of The Family.’

  ‘So I suggested that we do something of the sort ourselves,’ said Felicity. ‘I had heard that Holy Water was used—’

  ‘A Rome-ish practice,’ said Honoria. ‘I did not think we could stoop to it.’

  ‘But then Adelaide suggested that the poor ghost would get wet; and I replied to her that one only sprinkled the water. And Honoria became thoughtful, did you not, Honoria?—and said that such a man as the Fifth Earl would need something more than a sprinkling; and she went to the—the priest—’

  ‘Yes, I did,’ said Great Aunt Honoria, firmly; but it had cost her something, you could see that, to deal even so remotely with the Scarlet Woman of Rome.

  ‘—and that night we each had a whole ewer of the water and stood in our bedroom doorways…’

  For quite some days after that, it seemed, the house had been extraordinarily peaceful. The Holy Water apparently kept the ghost at bay; and even Cousin William was not there to talk to Emmeline across the Aunts in that mocking, double-meaning, teasing way of his: for Cousin William was confined to his bed with a bad sore throat.

  But soon the haunting began again and Emmeline acknowledged that the apparition had come to her room once more and stood, hand on bedpost, gazing down at her. For how long, she never could say: between waking and dreaming one couldn’t be sure. To the Aunts, sometimes catching a glimpse of him going one way, sometimes coming back—it seemed really a very long time. Once or twice they went to her room in the hope of surprising him there; but Emmeline nowadays kept her door locked and by the time she opened it to them, if any ghost had been there, it had vanished. The fact that it apparently took no account of locks and bolts suggested that she might as well leave the door open and give them a better chance of confronting it; but no—she felt happier with it locked, she said, and begged the Aunts most earnestly not to go to all this trouble. After all, she said demurely, the ghost never did anything she didn’t like. Cousin William choked into his cup of tea.

  And then one night Nanny saw the ghost, and Nanny told Cook and Cook peeked over the banister from the top storey and she also saw the crown of the powdered head; and soon the tongues of the neighbourhood would begin to wag. And what interpretation the incredulous would put upon these events, the Aunts did not care to think. Something very positive would have to be done to stop the visitations: and soon.

  ‘We must talk to the naughty ghost and ask him not to come,’ said Adelaide; and next night she called out to him as he passed her door. But he only turned his wicked white face towards her and stalked silently by and went on up the curving stair. ‘I
f we could somehow—barricade him in up there?’ suggested Felicity. ‘Put an obstruction of some kind across the stairs—’

  Honoria looked at her and once again grew thoughtful. ‘If a locked door won’t keep him out—’ began Felicity, but Honoria interrupted her. ‘The Holy Water kept him at bay for some days,’ she said. ‘Perhaps if we tied something across the stairs as Adelaide suggests—a scarf or sash, something soft—and soaked it well with Holy Water, he would be unable to pass that. We could renew it each day.’ And she made a second excursion to the Scarlet Woman. ‘There, Adelaide—as it was you who thought of the idea—you shall be the one to tie it across the stairs, from banister to banister.’ And she sent Addie off with a soft black silk scarf soaked with the Holy Water…

  Vi-vi’s bright enamelled nails dug themselves into the palms of her hands as she listened to this recital. ‘Great Aunt Honoria—you didn’t?’

  ‘How was one to know that she would tie it so low down, poor, foolish creature, as to trip anyone up? And anyway—what did it matter to a ghost where she tied it?’

  ‘You didn’t really still believe that it was a ghost?’

  ‘Certainly it was a ghost,’ said Great Aunt Honoria, looking back at Vi-vi with a steady eye.

  ‘So you… So you sent Aunt Adelaide to tie the thing across; and that night Cousin William tripped over it and fell down those steep, curving stairs, and broke his neck?’

  ‘Such an unfortunate accident!’ said Felicity. ‘Poor man!’ And on the very night, she added when he had made such elaborate preparations himself, to lay the ghost.

  ‘Preparations?’

  ‘Why, yes, my dear. He had actually been to a costumier’s and hired eighteenth-century costume, just like the clothes in the picture. The plum-coloured coat, you know, gold-embroidered waistcoat, the wig and the tasselled cane. To confront the ghost, you see, in its very own image. Or so dear Emmeline explained to us when she had recovered sufficiently from shock to do so. She was very much upset: young, of course and impressionable. She felt it was on her account—to lay the ghost because it might be troubling her—that all these arrangements had been made and the accident had happened.’