by Neil Spring
‘It’s really clouded over out there,’ I heard Price say as he approached, ‘and the wind is picking up. It’s muggy. I think there’s a storm coming.’ He dropped the substantial suitcase he had retrieved from the saloon at his feet, then stooped down and peered in at us under the stairs. ‘Now then, you two, how are we getting on down here?’
‘Goodness!’ exclaimed Wall. ‘Mr Price – whatever are you wearing on your feet? Why, they look like slippers!’
And his shoes weren’t the only aspect of Price’s attire to have changed. A long black coat, which fell to his ankles, now concealed most of his favourite tweed suit and the pockets looked stuffed full.
‘Mr Wall, your talents in observation are really something to behold, I must say,’ said Price. ‘Of course they’re slippers – essential accessories for creeping about in big old houses like this one! Young man, take off your shoes. You too, Sarah. Can’t have you both clumping around this house making suspicious noises.’
Once we had come out from under the stairs we dutifully removed our shoes, Wall lending me his arm for support. As he did so, the journalist’s gaze fell upon the suitcase at Price’s feet. ‘I say, what have you got in there?’
‘My ghost-hunter’s toolbox,’ said Price proudly as he flipped open the lid. ‘I have packed everything we will need for our little adventure tonight.’
I was actually the one who had packed the case, but I decided this wasn’t the appropriate moment to make the point.
‘Steel screw eyes, fine thread and adhesive surgical tape. I’ll use this to seal up the windows and doors – anything on a hinge.’
Wall nodded. ‘And what’s that?’
‘A bowl of mercury.’
‘Why do we need that?’
‘Why do you think? For detecting tremors in rooms or passages. I can make silent electrical mercury switches too.’
‘Of course,’ said Wall. ‘How silly of me. And this?’ He pointed to a small leather case.
‘Cinematograph camera with remote electrical control, and films. And next to it, a packet of graphite and a soft brush for developing fingerprints.’ His speech was rapid now. ‘Mr Wall, you might wish to record the details of these items for your next article. I don’t want to tell you how to do your job, of course, but I really think such detail would give your readers a richer insight into the practical techniques of the ghost hunter.’
‘Do you indeed?’
‘Yes,’ Price insisted, ‘I do. And because I’m usually correct, you would be well advised to listen to me. Now then, what have we got here?’ He delved into the depths of his bulging pockets before producing several items: a ball of string, a stick of chalk, matches, a torch and candle, wires, nails, electric flex, dry batteries and switches, pencils, bandages, even a hairbrush – the oddest item of all, given that Price was bald! ‘See here, Vernon – a steel tape for measuring the rooms and corridors and calculating the thickness of walls. If there is a hiding place or secret compartment anywhere, I expect us to find it.’ He peered under the stairs, his eyes wide with fascination. ‘Now then, what about under here? Did you find anything while you were poking around?’
Of course we had found nothing suspicious under the stairs, and I quickly told him so, though I felt my cheeks flush as I spoke.
‘Then we shall progress to the attic,’ Price replied, giving me a searching look. ‘Plenty of room for someone to hide up there, I’m sure!’
‘Righty-ho,’ said Wall with unconvincing cheer. ‘Lead on, Mr Price!’
He did.
And I followed.
* * *
Note
1 In April 1942, Reverend Alfred Henning, the then rector of Borley, wrote to Harry Price relating the peculiar way in which objects had been displaced in Borley church after the building had been locked up: ‘I thought you might be interested to know of … matters connected with Borley Rectory. The first is the sanctuary lamp, which is kept burning near the Tabernacle on the altar, where the Sacrament is reserved. Mrs Pearson looks after this, lighting the small wick each morning and putting it out at night. For about a fortnight the wick was frequently moved. She told me this, and I suggested putting a book or cover over the lamp glass. She put a psalter over it, after putting the light out, and then locked up for the night. She was very surprised the next morning to find the book on the floor, especially as both doors were locked and no one could possibly have got in during the night. She next put a book-cover over the lamp, and this was removed on two occasions’ (The End of Borley Rectory, p.78).
– 14 –
‘ALL OF THIS CAN BE ACHIEVED BY A CLEVER MAN’
If I had known that our excursion to Borley Rectory would require me to dress in unflattering overalls and crawl through cobwebs and grime along the joists under the eaves of the rambling house, I might have thought twice about going in the first place, but of course with ghost hunting anything can happen and mostly never does.
We were up in the attic inspecting the bell wires, the light from Price’s torch throwing shadows across the rafters. Up ahead of me, Mr Wall was saying something about how annoyed he would be if Mrs Smith published any account of the Rectory’s alleged macabre history, and I was sure Price felt the same, for both men had a vested interest in making the story of the Rectory their own, and each would have their own particular versions of the tale. But my mind was on other matters, in particular Wall’s stirring words to me. Their meaning was clear: he was interested in me in a way that went beyond professional regard, and he had forced me to see myself properly for the first time in my life.
Was I to resent him or thank him? In truth I wanted to do both, for I was now preoccupied with the very same question that had invoked Wall’s emotional confrontation downstairs: why was I so irresistibly drawn to Price? Why was I now thinking not about the peculiar mysteries of Borley Rectory but about my employer and where he would be sleeping that night? And where I would be sleeping.
As we had yet to find anything of much interest in the attic, I was about to suggest we go downstairs when I heard Price announce excitedly that he had discovered something. Scrambling up next to him, I watched as he shone his torch on to one of the rafters. ‘There’s something written here.’ I duly recorded the faint inscription in my notepad: Bells hung by S. Cracknell and Mercur, 1863.
‘This confirms it,’ said Price. ‘The Rectory has stood for only sixty-six years.’
‘Surely haunted houses are far older than that,’ I remarked.
Price smiled. ‘Precisely, Sarah. You would think so, wouldn’t you? Now then, move back and watch out for any bats.’
We made our way cautiously out of the attic, sealing the entrance behind us, before continuing down to the first floor of the house. Here everything was unnaturally quiet and permeated by a frigid air that reached along the corridors, filling every corner of the vault-like rooms, the chill and the bleak bedrooms inspiring little confidence in the possibility of a peaceful night’s sleep. Everywhere about us were the scents and sights of neglect with damp patches blackening the walls and broken furniture lying about like firewood. I wondered how any house that was occupied could possibly feel so abandoned. No wonder so many rectors had refused to live here.
When we had examined the fireplaces and chimneys in all of the ten rooms on the first floor we came, finally, to the Blue Room at the top of the main staircase – the source of the house’s most disturbing influences. But before we could even enter the room, Price came to a sudden standstill and motioned at us to halt.
‘What’s the matter?’ I asked.
He remained quite still for long seconds before his fingers gradually came to life, gently caressing the air as if testing its quality or temperature. Then he said, ‘I fancy it is much colder in this spot. What do you think?’
‘I’m not sure—’
‘I wasn’t addressing you, Sarah.’ He turned his challenging gaze on Wall. ‘I was talking to you.’
The growing tension between the two men w
as making me anxious, but Wall, who gave Price a disarmingly cheerful smile, seemed perfectly relaxed. ‘You’re the expert, sir – you tell me. Or consult one of your many instruments.’
Price stared. ‘You find my methods disagreeable, sir?’
I kept my gaze on the young man as he stepped forward, his chin raised against my employer. ‘Your scientific instruments are attuned to the physical world, Mr Price. Physical, not spiritual. Why assume they should be any use at all in detecting corporeal presences? By your logic, I might as well hunt for a shark in the desert!’
Price looked down at the floor. ‘A loose board perhaps,’ he said quietly, almost to himself, ‘allowing cold air to enter from somewhere else. By my estimation this spot is almost immediately above the area we inspected in the cellar.’
At that moment the Reverend Smith appeared on the main staircase. ‘Ah, so you’ve found where you’ll be sleeping this evening, Mr Price? I took the liberty of asking the maid to make the room up for you earlier.’ The rector looked at me and smiled. ‘Your room, Miss Grey, is just a few doors down the corridor. I hope you don’t mind but I hung some holy pictures on the walls and prayed to God to send His angels to watch over you tonight.’
I was greatly relieved that the room that was allegedly the source of so many supernormal happenings had not been reserved for me, and thanked the rector for his kindness.
‘No prayers for me then?’ Price muttered under his breath.
Reverend Smith gave a half smile. ‘Ah yes, your room. Let me show you, Mr Price.’
I hated the Blue Room from the moment we entered it. The space had a disturbing atmosphere, as though it had witnessed the worst domestic horrors. In my notepad I sketched its layout, noting its contents: a dressing table with a tilting mirror, a wardrobe, an armchair, a washstand, a single bed and a large marble fireplace on whose mantelpiece stood two red glass candlesticks. As I paced around the perimeter of the room the flinty gaze of the late rector, the Reverend Harry Bull, followed my every move from the enormous oil painting above the mantelpiece. The man in the picture had occupied this Rectory for nigh on sixty years and his father before him and, like his father, he had died in this very bedroom. How the Bull family must have loved Borley to have remained here for so long in a rectory they had not only designed and built but extended on two separate occasions! I was sure that this house had once been loved. How sad then that it should have fallen into such neglect, a shadow of its former self, consumed by time and the elements.
Reverend Smith was showing Price the window. ‘It is here that the mysterious light has appeared.’
Price scrutinised the black glass, and when he was satisfied that there had been no interference with the window frame he crossed to the far end of the room and knocked on the wall here and there, checking for concealed compartments.
‘Wait a moment,’ Wall said suddenly, his voice low. ‘Can you smell something?’
I couldn’t smell anything, but Price was nodding insistently. ‘Yes. It’s very faint, but I do believe that’s the scent of lavender.’
Odd that he should say so, for I had not seen any flowers in the room.
‘And look,’ he continued, bending down to retrieve an object from the floor.
‘What is it?’ I asked.
‘A mothball.’ He turned to the rector. ‘Did you bring these into the house?’
Shaking his head, Reverend Smith said with a sigh, ‘We did not. This isn’t the first time they have appeared either; these, and little scraps of paper. I’m afraid it’s just another of this house’s many mysteries.’ Then his mood lightened, and he invited us downstairs for some supper.
Before leaving, Price asked us all to wait while he secured the room by stretching fine lengths of thread across the door, knotting them and securing both ends. It was wonderful to see him working again with the same infectious passion I had observed when we first met, three years previously. I wondered whether this improved mood of his was sustainable. So much had happened since that January evening in 1926. We had learned to trust one another and a bond had formed between us (though it was, I suspect, stronger on my part than his). He was no longer solitary; he didn’t need to be, for when the critics attacked, I was there. In his blackest moments, it was I who consoled him. And notwithstanding the jealous warnings I had received from Wall, I was adamant I would to continue to do so. Vernon Wall might have disapproved, but if Price fell, I would be there to catch him. As Price was securing the door to the Blue Room, Wall observed the process with the keenest attention. As a journalist it was his duty to ask questions, so perhaps I ought not to have been surprised by the curiosity he had exhibited since our arrival at the Rectory. But it was the nature of his questions, and the way he asked them as we had explored the house, that had drawn my attention. Wherever Price went, Wall followed, all the time firing questions at him, taking notes and watching him with the same careful scrutiny my employer applied to dubious mediums.
Beneath the heavy ticking of the grandfather clock our group assembled in the dining room where we sat again at the table. It was darker now than before, the only light coming from glowing candlesticks above the grotesque fireplace and a paraffin lamp in the middle of the table.
Looking very much intrigued, Reverend Smith leaned forward and addressed Price. ‘Well then, sir, your inspection of the house has been most thorough. Please tell me you have reached some conclusions?’
Price lit his pipe and said evenly, ‘I am happy to confirm that your suspicions were correct: there are no intruders in your home, no prowler playing tricks on you. I have discovered nothing that leads me to that supposition.’
‘Then the matter is settled,’ said Wall with triumph. ‘The place is haunted.’
‘If I believed that,’ said Price, ‘then by now I would have summoned the rest of Fleet Street to the door!’ He laughed gently, as I wondered if he were serious. ‘No, no. Although the Rectory is fairly new, it is extremely rundown, with loose floorboards everywhere and rotting window frames wherever I look. All of these faults cause draughts, chills and light breezes. And like every country house, the place creaks and groans. All perfectly natural. It’s the villagers’ fertile imaginations and the legends of Borley that make the place feel eerie.’
‘Ah,’ said Wall, ‘so you admit the house does feel uncomfortable.’
Price smiled. ‘I always feel uncomfortable in the company of rodents.’1
‘All right then; what about the voices in the passages?’ Wall demanded.
‘Echoes rebounding from the courtyard walls, I should think. The lane outside runs almost immediately adjacent to the property.’
‘And the scent of lavender in the bedrooms?’
‘Simple! On our journey here we passed a turning for Stafford Allen, the largest lavender factory in the country. It’s just across the valley, two miles away, in Long Melford.’
‘Mr Price, your habit for debunking is unceasingly agitating,’ said Wall. ‘Explain to us, if you can, the globe of light that Mrs and Mrs Smith and I as well as countless locals observed in the window of the room upstairs.’
‘Reflections from lights inside the Rectory, from the landing over the kitchen, or indeed from outside.’
And there it was. The simplest, most obvious explanation, yet only Price had deduced it. There was a cottage adjoining the Rectory and beyond this a farm, with a block of piggeries and farm buildings. It was quite possible that the mysterious light in the window of the ‘haunted bedroom’ was in fact the reflection of duplex lamps carried outside by the cottage’s tenants after dark when drawing water from the well.
But Mr Wall, who sat opposite Price, protested loudly: ‘How can you proclaim so conclusively on happenings you haven’t even witnessed, Mr Price? I suggest that you—’
‘Look!’ the rector cut in. And as I tracked his amazed gaze, alarm rose within me.
*
The pepper pot, which stood on the table before us, was trembling. I had never seen anythin
g so peculiar. And as if this were not enough to startle us, a glass of white wine that had been poured for Price just minutes earlier turned an inky black.
‘Good God,’ said Reverend Smith. He quickly made the sign of the cross.
All of us but Price got up sharply and backed away from the table, our eyes fixed firmly on the pepper pot. It shot along the table and stopped at the opposite end, immediately in front of Mr Wall. He jumped back, startled. ‘There! You see now, Mr Price!’ he cried. ‘These things do happen.’
For a few baffling seconds no one said anything. Only Price remained calm, sitting motionless and smiling. ‘I see very well indeed, Mr Wall – and so hopefully do you – how easy it is to be fooled by the trickery of man. As Sarah will verify, I am trained in the ways of conjuring. You approve of my abilities?’
I still don’t know how the trick was accomplished, but nevertheless it was wonderful to watch. Wall looked angrily at Price when he realised he had been fooled, but the others, myself included, relaxed and saw the humorous side.
‘So you see,’ Price continued, ‘all of the goings-on in this Rectory can be achieved by a clever man – or woman.’
‘Like yourself?’ Wall asked pointedly.
‘Indeed,’ said Price. ‘Now, after dinner I suggest that you and I, Mr Wall, keep watch from the summerhouse in the garden for this legendary nun. After that we can retire to bed and put this little business to rest.’
‘Agreed,’ said Wall as he resumed his place at the table, still glowering at Price. ‘But aren’t you going to tell us how you did it? Your little trick? Invisible thread, I suppose? Or magnets?’
