by Neil Spring
First published in Great Britain in 2013 by Quercus
Quercus Editions Ltd
55 Baker Street
7th Floor, South Block
London
W1U 8EW
Copyright © 2013 Neil Spring
The moral right of Neil Spring to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
Every effort has been made to trace the original source material contained in this book. Where the attempt has been unsuccessful, the publisher would be pleased to rectify any omission.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Print ISBN 978 1 78087 975 8
Ebook ISBN 978 1 78087 976 5
Although it is loosely based on recorded events this book is at heart a work of fiction. Some names, characters, businesses, organizations, places and events are the product of the authors imagination while others have been changed or are used fictionally. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
You can find this and many other great books at:
www.quercusbooks.co.uk
This novel is dedicated to Mum and Dad, and my brother James
‘Of all ghosts, the ghosts of our old loves are the worst.’
SIR ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE
The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes
THE FINDING
OF MISS SARAH GREY’S MANUSCRIPT
1977
There had always been rumours about the eighth floor. According to the curator, John Wesley, the other librarians said there was something about it that made them uncomfortable. The braver of his colleagues who had ventured up there alone reported that shadows stalked its dusty stacks and secrets lingered in the air. The only way up, I learned the day we met, was via a small lift the same size and shape as a telephone box. The librarians called it the coffin.
I should say, to begin with, that before this I was never inclined to take such stories literally. Though I have always held a deep, theoretical – and private – interest in matters of the peculiar, tales of haunted libraries and similar legends have never represented anything more to me than fascinating insights into the way people think and form their beliefs. An appropriate subject for a university lecturer with a doctorate in psychology.
It was late one miserable afternoon in October when I arrived at Paddington, weary and agitated from a delayed train journey from Oxford. I promptly made my way to Senate House Library in Bloomsbury, north London, stepping out briskly against the windy weather that snagged at my spirits, squinting into the rain and still clutching, in my overcoat pocket, the curious letter I had received on the preceding day from Mr Wesley. ‘Dr Caxton, your assistance with an urgent matter is required. Come at once.’
I’m not at all the sort of man who responds quickly to such vague last-minute requests. My many commitments to the undergraduates – marking essays, preparing and giving lectures – simply wouldn’t allow the indulgence of such distractions, and the fact that this note had been hand-delivered to my home address made me all the more suspicious that someone was having a game with me: a disaffected student perhaps or a freshman put up to the joke by his friends. That was certainly the opinion of my wife, Julia. But then a familiar name within the letter made me think there was probably more to the mystery than a mere prank – and I was right.
Turning on to the slippery cobbles of Malet Street, I paused for some moments at the entrance to Senate House, admiring with quiet appreciation its notorious architectural character – an enormous tower of glittering Portland stone in the heart of London. It looked serene, dignified.
Though of course I regard the place somewhat differently now.
Once inside, glad of the refuge from the raw afternoon, I hastily sought out Miss Christine Eastoe, Head of Historic Collections, whom the letter had instructed me to ask for, and was instructed to wait by a young receptionist. I did so, wiping my spectacles clean and taking my place on a small bench at the end of a vast, marble-floored corridor. Alone.
I was hardly surprised by the emptiness of the library; it was the end of term and most of the students would have left for the holidays. Nonetheless, just then I felt … what was it? Uneasy. Unsettled. And I was aware suddenly of an uncomfortable chill.
‘Robert Caxton?’
The sharp voice made me turn to see a neat, precise-looking woman with a beehive of white hair.
‘You’re late,’ she said impatiently, ignoring my proffered hand. ‘Now then, if you would care to follow me.’
I waited with Miss Christine Eastoe in uncomfortable silence at the door to the rickety old elevator which was to take me up. It was her name I had recognised in Wesley’s note. Although I didn’t care for her cold manner I had dealt with her, years earlier, on a bespoke research project concerned with the religious revival of 1903, and she had impressed me by her diligent attention to detail. I wasn’t sure if she recognised me now – I hoped she didn’t. Eventually she said in a taut voice: ‘You know, there’s an old story that in July 1929 the Principal of the University of London, Sir Edwin Deller, fell to his death in this lift shaft.’
‘What an awful tale,’ I remarked. ‘How did he fall?’
‘When they were constructing the Senate House Tower, apparently. A skip fell from the top and struck him. Some of the librarians here think that’s why it’s so cold on the eighth floor.’
‘Do you believe the story?’
‘Not a word! John does, of course. But then’ – the corners of her mouth twitched – ‘he’d believe anything.’
‘Where is Mr Wesley?’
‘You’ll find him up there,’ she said coldly, looking up. ‘But please, I’ll thank you not to indulge his fantasies, Dr Caxton. He’s due to retire soon. And that suits the rest of us well enough. The eighth floor, that odd collection’ – she shook her head disapprovingly – ‘it fascinates him. Fascinates a lot of people – the lunatics!’
‘Why? What’s up there?’
Her flinty eyes darted a critical and surprised glance that stirred my discomfort. ‘You don’t know?’
‘To be quite honest with you, I’m not even sure why I’m here.’
‘Upstairs is the Harry Price Magical Library,’ she said beneath her breath, as if the mere utterance of the phrase was a crime. ‘Harry Price was a maverick,’ she said sharply, ‘who devoted his life to the exposure of fraud and the proving of truth in the field of psychical research, of all things. In 1948, after his death, he bequeathed his collection to this university to assist students of the subject of phenomenological happenings.’
‘Phenomenological … ?’
She rolled her eyes. ‘What some people call the “paranormal”, Dr Caxton. The library upstairs contains some twelve thousand volumes dealing with magic, astrology, spiritualism, legerdemain, charlatanism, witchcraft and psychical research. I’m surprised you haven’t heard of it.’
But of course I had. It was impossible to work, even secretly, in the fields that had long fascinated me and not to know the name Harry Price, or be aware of the vast collection of books he had given to the University of London. For some years, I had been quietly conducting research into the esoteric fringes of psychology, more normally disparaged and dismissed by the orthodox mainstream as parapsychology. I had even published articles on the subject under assumed names. ‘It sounds fascinating.’
Her jaw clenched. ‘It’s an e
mbarrassment. To academia and to the reputation of this university. In truth, we would like to be rid of it, sell it off. Perhaps we’ll soon have our chance.’ She glanced away from me. ‘Mr Wesley is not at all well. He has become deeply paranoid – delusional, in my opinion.’
Just then the lift arrived with a thud and my eye happened upon a small wooden framed sign displayed on the wall next to it: ‘If the above alarm bell rings please telephone the engineer – No. 3344. The alarm indicates that passengers in the lift are unable to get out.’
‘Well, here we are,’ said Miss Eastoe, unlocking the lift’s wooden door with an ancient-looking key she produced from her cardigan pocket. ‘You’ll have to go up unaccompanied. There’s only room for one.’
As I stepped into the lift and drew the door to behind me I felt my pulse quicken.
The narrow box creaked up slowly, and as the seconds ticked by a nagging voice at the back of my mind willed me to go back down. When the lift eventually stopped it did so with a jolting thud, and with mounting trepidation I dragged the old cage door to one side, stepping out into the semi-darkness. Lamps overhead slammed on and the sight before me took my breath away.
Cardboard boxes fought for space amid tables and shelves piled high with photographs and artefacts, scrapbooks, cuttings, pamphlets and ancient volumes: George Melville’s ‘Bones and I’: or, The Skeleton at Home, as well as books on snake taming, The Physiology of Evening Parties, Memory in Animals and The Enigma of the Mind. I was relieved to note some order in the chaos: a glance at a nearby shelf revealed that the calfskin-bound tomes collected there were concerned with the subject of stigmata, with unsettling, curious titles such as Blood Prodigies and The Edge of the Unknown.
I trod over creaking floorboards into the thickening, mysterious smell of wood and old paper, and among the records of lost lives and lost souls – sundry letters, press cuttings and photographs – I soon lost all sense of time. It was growing dark. As I passed a small window and tried to peer out I saw nothing but my own reflection in the opaque surface of the rattling glass. Pinned to the wall was an tattered illustration of the prophet Nostradamus predicting the future of the sovereigns of France in the reflection of a great mirror. Outside, the wind was whining as it whipped around the towering building and rattled the glass. Otherwise, the place was as silent as a tomb. Where, I wondered, was John Wesley?
As I crossed to the south side of the building my route took me past a stack of shelves cluttered with dirty test tubes and wires and, finally, into a small area where I was confronted with a stone bust staring back at me, its eyes hollow and vacant. An inscription engraved on a brass plate beneath informed me that this was the man to whom all of these intriguing items had once belonged – Harry Price.
Behind the bust was a long corridor framed by ancient-looking bookshelves and at the end I could make out, in the shadows, a great wooden chair, its arms and legs tangled with wires. I was reminded instantly of the electric chairs used for executions in America. Unlike those chairs, however, this one was used not to inflict death but to understand it, for this, I knew, was a seance chair, once used to secure and control spiritualist mediums as they communicated with ‘the other side’.
As I looked upon the contraption, reassured by the fact that I was some distance away from it, I was startled by a short, quick movement at the far end of the corridor, close to the the chair, and by a shuffling sound, faint but discernible. Footfalls.
I stood, holding my breath, listening hard, squinting into my dim surroundings, and my eye was caught once again by a slight movement next to the seance chair. It was so quick, I might easily have missed it. I approached hesitantly, thinking it might not have been wise to come up here alone. But when I stood immediately adjacent to the chair, looking quickly about me, I saw nothing, heard nothing, and reminded myself that I was tired. My imagination was playing tricks with me. Still, I was unable to shake the uneasiness and I resolved to leave immediately.
Then, as I turned to walk away, I heard it – something behind me, moving.
I spun round just in time to see a figure shifting in the shadows.
‘Who’s there?’ I called, noticing, to my embarrassment, a tremble in my voice.
An elderly gentleman with half-moon spectacles stepped forward timidly, his sallow face showing an expression somewhere between relief and anxiety. ‘At last,’ he rasped, extending a bony hand to welcome me, ‘you have come.’
So this was John Wesley. ‘How long have you been watching me?’ I asked, thinly disguising my displeasure.
‘Too long, my friend, too long.’ He gave a sad nod, his hands clasped together in nervous expectation. ‘I apologise for startling you but you seemed so intrigued with the collection. Most people are, you know – when it takes hold of you it doesn’t let go.’
‘Tell me why you asked me here,’ I demanded, producing the note he had sent.
A dark expression slid on to his face. ‘This is a sensitive matter but I have something to show you, a manuscript which I would like you to read. If you are willing.’
‘That depends,’ I replied drily. ‘What is it?’
He hesitated. ‘I’ve read your work, Dr Caxton …’ He listed two of my books on his fingers: ‘Belief and Reason. Trauma in Childhood. All appropriate subjects.’
His smile was making me nervous, and as he stared at me in contemplative silence a thousand little thoughts seemed to flow into his craggy face. I sensed an inner restlessness stirring. Then: ‘Dr Caxton, have you heard of a place called Borley Rectory?’
The name sounded familiar, no more than that. I told him so.
‘Well, you do surprise me,’ he continued, beckoning me over to a nearby desk. ‘Borley is an isolated hamlet some sixty-five miles from here. A troubled place, to say the least.’
We sat down opposite one another and the curator produced from his cardigan pocket a small black-and-white photograph, which he laid before me. The image was of a gloomy, rambling old mansion from the Victorian era.
‘Borley Rectory,’ he said again, almost under his breath, before his rheumatic hand swept the image aside. ‘Harry Price called this building the most haunted house in England. The things that happened there … Dr Caxton, such terrible things – spectacular events – captivated the nation after the Great War.’ He nodded thoughtfully. ‘People needed something to believe in.’
Though open-minded on matters of the soul and undiscovered abilities of the human mind, I certainly didn’t believe in ghost stories. I had studied too many folk tales for that, had been to led to them by odd yearnings after arcane knowledge; and although I certainly knew of Harry Price’s reputation, I was not especially familiar with the intricacies of his work – his sensational investigations into ghosts.
I watched with rising curiosity as Wesley opened a drawer in the ancient desk, from which he produced a thick leather wallet of the sort used to contain manuscripts, fastened with a small lock. ‘Twenty-two years ago this manuscript was left here with me for safe keeping, the most important document in this collection. No one knows it exists. The archives and manuscripts catalogue contains no mention of it, nor does it appear in the wider catalogue. In fact you will find no trace, anywhere, of its existence.’
I couldn’t help but feel intrigued by this old man’s tale, his furtive manner. ‘What is it?’ I enquired. ‘A work of fiction?’
‘A confession.’ Wesley smiled mistily and leaned back so that his face was shouded in darkness.
Naturally, I wanted to know how he came by the manuscript. Was it genuine? Why was it important? For reasons clear to me now, the old man did not address my first question. But the issue of its authenticity and significance made his eyes widen and caused him to speak with increased passion.
‘The 12th of June, 1929 – that was the night when the Daily Mirror dispatched Harry Price to Borley Rectory so that he could assist their reporter in an investigation. There are various accounts of what happened that night and afterwards, most famo
usly from Harry himself. But this’ – he hesitated, resting his hand on the smooth brown wallet – ‘this is the most extraordinary account of all: the story of what happened at Borley Rectory as experienced by Harry’s secretary and personal assistant, Miss Sarah Grey.’
He flicked a quick glance across the table, as if afraid that someone was listening. ‘Her account, Dr Caxton, is incredible. Terrifying. Tragic. And now I am retiring, the future of this entire collection could be in doubt. I promised to look after this manuscript, but I no longer can. You must take it,’ he insisted, pushing the heavy wallet towards me.
‘Mr Wesley, are you all right?’ I asked. His face was ashen and I sensed there was more he wanted to tell me. ‘You seem troubled.’
He nodded and replied, unconvincingly, that he was fine. ‘Nevertheless,’ he added, ‘you are to have this and tell no one. I see the future in your eyes – I have followed your work, your clandestine research in folklore and mythology and matters of the mind. You are trustworthy and I have carried the burden long enough. Please, take it.’
And so I did. The wallet felt weighty, important. Although I wanted to open it immediately I had no wish to do so there, under the curator’s melancholy scrutiny. It seems odd admitting this, for I am not an anxious man and I certainly don’t scare easily, but something in Wesley’s tone had affected me. So much so that I wanted suddenly to escape the suffocation of the eighth floor.
‘Excuse me,’ I said, rising, ‘but I must go now. Thank you. I promise I will read this.’
I headed back towards the elevator, trying not to look again at the stone bust or the seance chair, choked with its wires.
‘Doctor Caxton,’ Wesley called after me. ‘Please, read it immediately. Time is short. Sarah … Miss Grey … she would want you to understand. And if you can, try to forgive …’
But I was quickening my pace now, unsettled, confused. Forgive what?
The curator’s icy eyes bored into me.
And the elevator door closed.
