by R. A. Dick
Mr. Coombe looked at her steadfastly for a moment without replying. A struggle seemed to be going on in his mind. Finally he reached, if not a decision, at least an armistice.
“No,” he said, “the drains are in perfect order. The owner lives in South America and is anxious to let it and get it off his hands.”
“We will go to Gull Cottage first,” said Lucy.
Mr. Coombe stared at her even more compellingly. She could almost see his thoughts, trying to swim out at her like pale goldfish from behind his glasses, as if he were trying to force some information into her mind by other means than words.
“I asked at the station, and they told me there were two house agents’ offices,” said Lucy, a little nervous at her own daring, but if this was a new life, she must begin at once to lead it in the way she meant to go on. “Perhaps they have Gull Cottage on their books, too.”
Mr. Coombe abruptly pulled open another drawer in his desk and took out a large iron doorkey.
“My car is outside,” he said, rising to his feet. “Since you are determined, I will drive you there myself.”
The little seaside resort of Whitecliff curved itself round the bay in a neat esplanade to bask in the sun. In the hollow behind the hotels and boarding-houses, behind the bandstand and bathing tents, lay the station and shops, the Town Hall, the fire and police stations, and a small neat garden, where an ancient cannon, commemorating some ancient war, slept like a fossilized monster in the middle of the flower-beds. Newly awakened daffodils were shaking their heads in the wind, which penetrated even to that sheltered spot.
To the east and the west of the town, white cliffs rose to the downland, and on the lower slopes stood the residential houses, the churches, and the schools. Mr. Coombe took the road to the east with his car, and Lucy, sitting beside him, gazed out with interest at all she set eyes on.
She remembered now, she had been to Whitecliff once before with Edwin and a prospective client, who had thought of turning an old windmill into a modern villa; but while the plans were yet in the drawing, he had bought a property in the Lake district instead, and Edwin had never come to Whitecliff again. Nor did the sisters-in-law favour the place, preferring the more fashionable and larger town of Whitmouth a few miles up the coast. On that brief visit, ten years ago, Whitecliff had not seemed of any significance to Lucy; now she looked with different observation at the rosy cheeks of the babies in their perambulators, at the sturdy limbs of the children playing on the shore, at the beach itself and the sea breaking on it, shaking off white plumes of spray in the wind, as if, in some way, it had already become part of her own living.
“Grammar schools,” said Mr. Coombe briefly, nodding to the left, where two red brick buildings, separated by a high red brick wall, stood in their asphalt play-grounds.
“They look very—suitable,” said Lucy.
“As good an education as you’ll get anywhere in the country,” said Mr. Coombe. “I went there myself.”
“How interesting,” said Lucy, “and the fees would be quite moderate, I dare say.”
“Quite,” agreed Mr. Coombe, “and they’re well endowed. You can win scholarships to almost any university, besides the school scholarships themselves.”
“Did you win one?” asked Lucy politely.
“Well, no, as a matter of fact there was no need,” replied Mr. Coombe. “I had this business waiting for me and I took my father’s place in it when I was twenty—this is Cliff Road,” he added, as he changed gear for the steeper slope that rose from the end of the esplanade. Comfortable houses in well-kept gardens stood back from the road on one side, and the cliff and the sea on the other.
“And this is Gull Cottage,” he said a few minutes later as he stopped the car in front of the last house in the road, which ended abruptly at the edge of the down, continuing on as a narrow, white footpath.
It was a small, grey stone house, standing at some distance from its larger neighbour. A grey stone wall curved out into a round bastion, dividing the house and garden from the road. A large bow-window with faded blue shutters looked out from the upper floor over the sea, as if it were a trap to catch the sun’s rays from every angle of the day.
“I like it,” said Lucy impulsively, peering out of the car window. “I like it very much indeed.”
Mr. Coombe switched off the engine. “You can’t,” he said almost aggressively, “possibly judge anything by the outside,” and made no move to leave the car and show her the inside of the property.
“I think I should point out to you,” he continued, “that for a single lady it is very isolated.”
“But I’m not single,” said Lucy, staring at him in astonishment, for surely anyone must realize that she, with her over-craped draperies, her black kid and jet, her whole appearance of black-edged cards and faded lilies, was a widow.
“You are, I imagine,” said Mr. Coombe more gently, “but recently widowed, which means that you will be living alone without a man’s protection.”
“But wherever I live I shall be just as unprotected,” said Lucy.
“But not so isolated,” said Mr. Coombe.
“In your book you call this house ideally situated,” said Lucy. “You read it out to me.”
“It is ideally situated, but not for a single lady,” persisted Mr. Coombe. “Do let me drive you to Beau Sejour.”
“After we have seen Gull Cottage,” said Lucy, and opened the door of the car at her side.
Mr. Coombe muttered something unintelligible beneath his breath, but he left the car and hurried round to help Lucy alight, continuing to hold her arm as he opened the gate and led her up the flagged path. It was obvious that he, too, was thinking, “Poor little thing,” as he disentangled her long, black veil from his coat button and held it down against the blustering wind.
The large key turned rustily in the old-fashioned lock, and the hinges of the faded blue door groaned as Mr. Coombe pushed it open. Facing the entrance, a staircase curved its way up to the floor above, and three dingy-white doors opened onto the square hall that was lit by a round window like a porthole. The doors stood open, and Lucy could see through to the kitchen at the back and the dining-room next to it. In the sitting-room on the right there was a black marble fireplace and over it an oil painting of a sea captain in his uniform. It was not a good painting; there was a stiff woodenness about the hand clasping the too-brassy telescope, an almost strawberry redness about the square-jowled cheeks, a look of twisted wire about the curly dark hair, but perhaps in very contrast the vivid blue eyes stared down at her with such intense vitality that for one moment Lucy thought one of them had winked at her, in a manner most unbecoming in a stranger at any time, and quite improper when the one winked at was such a very black-draped widow.
“What is the painting of?” she asked Mr. Coombe, looking up as severely as she could at the painting as they entered the room, and hoping to subdue the twinkling blue eyes to their proper status of dead paint by speaking of the owner thus neutrally.
“That,” said Mr. Coombe in a curiously strangled voice, “is the late owner of the property, Captain Daniel Gregg. You get a marvellous view from this room,” he went on hastily, almost dragging her with him to the window, which was a surprising thing for the young man to say, thought Lucy, since all that could be seen was a tangled wilderness of garden round a quite hideous monkey-puzzle tree, with the grey stone wall beyond.
She turned back, as soon as she could do so politely, and looked round the room. It was well proportioned, but contained the oddest mixture of the beautiful and the bourgeois that Lucy had ever seen.
On the heavy black marble mantelpiece stood a clock to match, flanked by two exquisite Ming vases; a Persian carpet, perfect in design and colouring, rubbed fringes with a cheap red hearth-rug; a red plush sofa had a delicately embroidered Indian shawl draped over one end, and a red lacquer Chinese cabinet of a past century housed an equally ill-assorted mixture of crested china from Blackpool, Cardiff, and Sout
hampton, and a Satsuma tea set and a fine collection of Waterford glass; on a bamboo stand in one corner stood an old ivory chess set; and on the rose-patterned walls photographs and lithographs hung side by side with kakemonos, Florentine embroidery, and fine old prints. The whole collection was covered with such dust and festooned with such cobwebs that the very air seemed veiled.
What an odd room, thought Lucy, but it could be charming, and she began at once to refurnish it in her own mind, painting the walls pale gold, ruthlessly cutting down her own brocade curtains, disposing of all the furniture and bringing in, instead, the few favourite antiques and the comfortable sofa and chairs left her by her father.
And you will be the first to go, she said to herself, looking defiantly up at the painting of the sea captain; but it must have been some trick of light that had made him appear to move his eyes, for now they stared back at her, dull and lifeless and strangely less blue.
“The dining-room needs doing up,” said Mr. Coombe gloomily as he led the way into the next room.
The dining-room did not so much need doing up as being done away with altogether and starting afresh. The wallpaper had gone past fading into death, turning in the process from a lilac-blue, still to be seen in dark corners, to a livid mauve, against which the peeling white paint looked like something stricken with leprosy. The varnished suite of table, sideboard, and chairs had lost its gloss, and the grey film of dust, spreading over them, looked like some other foul disease.
“This house can’t have been lived in for years,” said Mrs. Muir.
“No,” said Mr. Coombe, “the kitchen is next door.”
Here, too, the dust and dirt lay like a shroud, turning the green baize bags holding the dish-covers on the walls in four graded sizes, into the appearance of some large mildewed fruits, while the copper preserving pan and the saucepans seemed to have turned their faces to the wall in very shame at their unpolished state.
“I see now why you didn’t want me to come inside,” said Lucy triumphantly. “You wanted to have the house cleaned first, you didn’t want anyone to see it in such a state.”
A gas oven stood against the farther wall with a kettle on it and a frying pan. In the frying pan were two rashers of uncooked bacon. On the table under the window a teapot, milk jug, cup and saucer, a plate, half a loaf of bread, and a dish of butter stood on a sheet of newspaper. Lucy, glancing down at the newspaper, saw that it was dated but a week earlier.
“I thought you said the house hadn’t been occupied for years,” she said, pointing at the date.
“Nor has it been,” said Mr. Coombe. “The charwoman came in to do a bit of cleaning.”
“To do what?” asked Lucy, raising her eyebrows.
“She did clean the hall and the staircase,” said Mr. Coombe defensively.
“Was she called away in a hurry?” asked Lucy. “It seems strange that she left this good food behind and never came back to fetch it.”
“She may have been taken ill,” said Mr. Coombe.
“But don’t you know?” said Lucy.
“Or she may have found it too big a job,” said Mr. Coombe. “We found the key in the letter-box at the office, but she never came for any wages.”
“I’m beginning to think that there’s something very odd about this house,” said Lucy slowly.
“Then in that case there’s no point in going upstairs,” said Mr. Coombe in a relieved voice. “I knew it wouldn’t suit you.”
“But it does suit me!” said Lucy. “It’s exactly the house I want. But there’s something funny about it, and I mean to find out what it is even if you won’t tell me.”
Without a word Mr. Coombe turned and led the way upstairs. A bathroom and three bedrooms opened onto the square landing above. The back bedrooms were simply furnished under the usual coat of dust, and the front room with the big bow-window was arranged with equal simplicity. There were blue rugs on the stained wood floor, an iron bedstead, a chest of drawers, a cupboard, a large wicker armchair in front of the gas stove, and three pictures of sailing ships on the white-washed wall. What took the eye in this room, and held it, was a brass telescope standing on a tripod in the window, glittering in the afternoon sun.
Lucy stared at this object and stared at it again. She had seen telescopes before. What was there then so strange about this one? True, they were not usually considered necessary as furnishings to a bedroom, but after all the late occupant had been a sea captain, and to a sea captain a telescope, even in retirement, might be as comforting as a favourite violin to an old violinist. No, there was something about this particular telescope that had hit her sight with almost physical violence as soon as she had entered the room.
“Of course,” she said aloud, “you’re clean!”
“I beg your pardon,” said the startled Mr. Coombe.
Lucy scarcely heard him. Another sound seemed to be filling the room and her ears, a deep rich chuckle. She glanced at Mr. Coombe, but that young man was certainly in no laughing mood. He had flushed to the roots of his thin fair hair and was staring at her; his pale eyes seemed to swim out at her, more than ever like a fish in a glass bowl, from behind his thick lenses.
“Come,” he said hoarsely and, seizing her arm, hustled her out of the room, down the stairs, and from the house, before she had time to protest.
“I thought so!” said Lucy as he helped her into the car and climbed in himself. “The house is haunted.”
“I didn’t want to show it to you—you would see it,” said Mr. Coombe, and stepping on the accelerator, he sent the car forward feverishly.
“Oh!” said Lucy, gasping, as the car rocked down the hill, “do you always drive so fast?”
“No—I’m sorry,” he replied, slowing down as they came to the esplanade, with its peaceful scene of perambulatored babies, bath-chaired old invalids, and playing children. “The fact is, I don’t feel very well.”
“You do look pale,” said Lucy. “Should we stop at a chemist’s and get some sal-volatile for you to take?”
“That wouldn’t help, thank you,” said Mr. Coombe gloomily. “It’s in my mind that I feel ill. Does one owe a greater duty to one’s client or one’s conscience?”
“I’m afraid that I wouldn’t know the answer to that question,” replied Lucy, “never having had a client, and having lived mostly by other people’s consciences until now.”
“That house!” groaned Mr. Coombe. “I’ve let it four times in the ten years that I’ve been in the firm. The longest time any tenant stayed in it was twenty-four hours. I’ve written, I’ve cabled to the owner, but he’ll do nothing to help me. ‘Rely on you,’ he cables back—and I don’t want to be relied on.”
“But how about the other agents?” asked Lucy. “Why not leave it to them?”
“Oh, I couldn’t do that,” said Mr. Coombe, “that would be complete failure. And they’ve never been able to let it at all. I suppose honesty does pay—I mean if I’d tried to force the house on you you wouldn’t have wanted it—that’s human nature. Gregson and Pollock always try and pretend there’s nothing wrong with the property, and they’ve never been able to get a prospective tenant past the sitting-room; but though I do let the place no one ever stays, so they really have the laugh on me every time. If it weren’t that I were a married man with a family, I really think I’d set fire to the house one dark night. It’s getting on my nerves—I dream about it. Damn Captain Daniel Gregg and all his works!—I beg your pardon.”
“Why does he haunt?” asked Lucy. “Was he murdered?”
“No. He committed suicide,” said Mr. Coombe.
“Oh, poor man, was he so unhappy?” said Lucy.
“Did that laugh sound unhappy?” asked Mr. Coombe.
“No, it didn’t,” admitted Lucy. “But if he wasn’t miserable, why did he put an end to his life?”
“To give as much trouble as possible to other people,” said Mr. Coombe.
“Well, it’s very selfish of him,” said Lucy, “and so inc
onsistent. If he wanted to be dead, why not stay dead?”
“Exactly,” agreed Mr. Coombe.
“Some one should lay him,” said Lucy. “How does one lay a ghost?”
“I haven’t the slightest idea,” said Mr. Coombe. “I should forget all about it if I were you—it’s not your trouble.”
“But it is,” said Lucy. “I loved Gull Cottage and I want to live in it.”
“Well, you see for yourself you can’t live in it,” said Mr. Coombe, “and I will now take you to Beau Sejour.”
Victoria Drive, in which Beau Sejour was situated, was a long straight road leading up from the station to the Fever Hospital, with a view over the allotments to the gas works. Beau Sejour was a neat little semi-detached villa with a smug expression on its stucco face in a long line of similar little semi-detached villas.
“Oh, no!” said Lucy as the car came to a standstill, “I’m sorry but I couldn’t live there.”
“You could live there very comfortably,” said Mr. Coombe severely. “It is full of labour-saving devices.”
“The only way to live in a house like that,” retorted Lucy, “would be for it to be so full of un-labour saving that there would be no time left to look out of the windows and realize one was in such a place—so shut in.”
“Better to be shut in than haunted out,” said Mr. Coombe. “I have the key, we will go in.”
“No,” said Lucy, “no!” And huddling down in the corner of the seat, she covered her ears with her hands, for fear that old custom of obeying other people’s plans for her should prevail yet again. Common sense and suitability and the right thing and what every one does, my dear, all clawing at her budding independence, to tear it to pieces and fling it to the four winds.
“I know,” she said suddenly, sitting upright, “couldn’t you let me Gull Cottage on approval for one night?”
“On approval!” repeated Mr. Coombe. “I never heard of such a thing!”
“Oh, I know it’s very irregular,” said Lucy, “but it’s not a very usual house, is it? Don’t you see,” she went on, warming enthusiastically to her idea, “I could sleep there one night and find out if there really is anything there that might frighten the children. I might even lay Captain Gregg, if he really does haunt the place. I mean,” she continued, as Mr. Coombe remained silent, “if everyone rushes off at the slightest sound, of course the house gets a bad name. It’s too ridiculous, really, in the twentieth century to believe in apparitions and that middle-ages nonsense. All sorts of hidden things make noises in houses. Look at the way furniture creaks and groans all by itself in the night sometimes, and the way rats rustle and gnaw in the wainscotting.”
