The Case of the Haunted Horrors

by Anthony Read

  Gathered in HQ that evening, the Boys were depressed and downhearted. Not even the fact that Queenie had managed to find some tasty scrag-end of mutton to go into her stew could raise their spirits. The idea that their friend was about to lose both his job and his home was too much to bear.

  “If only there was somethin’ we could do to help him,” wailed Rosie.

  The others nodded glumly, then after a moment’s silence Wiggins suddenly perked up. “Hang on,” he said. “P’raps there is!”

  “What?” asked Beaver.

  “Well,” Wiggins began, “they all say Sarge imagined seeing that ghost ’cos he was drunk, right?”

  “Right,” said Queenie. “’Cos they don’t believe there is a ghost.”

  “But what if somebody else – somebody what was stone-cold sober – was to go in there at night and see it?”

  The other Boys stared at Wiggins in admiration. Then doubt crept in as light dawned.

  “You don’t mean…?” Rosie began.

  “Us?” Shiner concluded. “Oh, no. Ain’t no way I’m gonna spend the night in that dungeon with no spook.”

  “You don’t have to,” said Wiggins. “It wouldn’t do for all of us to go. That might scare the ghost off.”

  “Yeah, I dare say it would,” said Gertie, sounding relieved.

  “But there’d have to be more than one, or nobody’d believe us. So that’s me and somebody else…”

  There was a pause, then Beaver bravely volunteered. “Me,” he said. “I’ll come with you.”

  “Good lad. Come on, let’s get round there now.”

  IN THE DUNGEON

  “You wouldn’t catch me spendin’ the night in there, not for all the tea in China,” Sarge told Wiggins and Beaver as he unlocked the door to Madame Dupont’s waxwork museum. “You’re very brave lads, and I appreciate what you’re doin’.”

  “We couldn’t just let ’em kick you out and do nothin’, could we,” said Beaver.

  “There’s a good many as would,” replied Sarge. “Maybe I should come in with you…”

  “No, you shouldn’t,” Wiggins said firmly. “If we’re gonna prove there really is a ghost in there, and not just in your imagination, we gotta be able to say we seen it for ourselves, without you. Right?”

  “I suppose so. But you take care. I’d never forgive myself if anythin’ happened to you.”

  “Don’t worry,” Wiggins told him. “It’s only an old ghost, ain’t it? Anyway, there’s two of us. We’ll look out for each other. Right, Beav?”

  “Right,” said Beaver, trying to sound confident, but the word came out as a squeak. He cleared his throat noisily.

  “Come on, then,” said Wiggins, pretending not to notice. He checked his trusty bull’s-eye lantern and stepped through the door. Beaver followed, sticking close to him.

  Inside, Madame Dupont’s Red Indian brave stood guard, threatening them with his tomahawk. The Boys were not afraid; they had seen him too many times before. But the main hall was dim and full of shadows, and the flickering of the gas jets, which had been turned down low for the night, caused some of the waxwork figures to look as though they might be moving. This made both Boys nervous, but they pressed on boldly towards the heavy barred doors of the Dungeon, wondering what horrors it would hold.

  “That door could do with a spot of oil,” observed Beaver as it creaked open.

  “It’s s’posed to sound like that,” Wiggins replied.

  “It made me jump.”

  “That’s the idea.”

  “Oh, yeah. See what you mean.”

  The gas lamps here had been turned down so low that it was very dark indeed, with big patches of shadow in which nothing could be seen and anything could be lurking. The Boys had never been inside the Dungeon before, and they looked around open-mouthed as the beam of Wiggins’s lantern picked out macabre scenes from the blackness.

  They gasped at the gruesome sight of an old, rotten gibbet, from which dangled the skeletal body of a dead highwayman in a metal cage, its flesh long decayed away, its bones covered with the tattered remnants of clothing, its blackened teeth bared in a ghastly grimace beneath the empty eye sockets. They trembled at an ancient Egyptian mummy, swathed in bandages, which looked as though it were about to sit up in its painted sarcophagus. They shuddered at the sight of a Tudor executioner, his face half hidden by a black mask, holding aloft the head of a queen, which he had just severed from her body with his bloodied axe.

  Further back, the light from the lantern glistened on the blade of a guillotine from the French Revolution, about to fall on the neck of a hapless aristocrat. And in another corner a medieval torturer lowered a red-hot poker towards a half-naked man stretched on a rack, his face twisted in a soundless scream.

  Some of the scenes were from more recent times. The infamous Jack the Ripper, shown slashing a young woman with a long knife, had committed several murders in the East End barely ten years earlier and was still feared in the area. But the newest tableau was of a crime that had taken place only a few months ago, and which was still fresh in people’s minds. It showed a man in his mid-thirties about to shoot himself with a revolver after murdering his wife and child – and it was his ghost that Sarge had seen the night before.

  The scene was very realistic – Madame Dupont had bought up all the things that had been in the man’s study, where the murders had been committed, and she had recreated every detail with the help of photographs taken by the police at the time. Prints of the photos were displayed alongside the tableau, to show everyone how clever she had been. Wiggins and Beaver stared at them, and felt a fluttering in their stomachs at the thought that while all the characters in the scene were just wax models, these black-and-white pictures were of actual dead people.

  “Urgh! Gruesome,” said Beaver. He turned back to the figure of the man with the revolver. “D’you think that’s really what happened?”

  “I dare say,” Wiggins answered.

  “But what if it wasn’t? What if that’s why the geezer come back?”

  “How d’you mean?”

  “P’raps he wanted to tell people what really happened. I mean, if everybody says he done it, when really he didn’t, he wouldn’t be able to rest easy, would he?”

  “You mean he’d want to come back from beyond the grave to set things straight, like?”

  “Exac’ly. Wouldn’t you?”

  Wiggins thought about this for a moment, then grinned. “Well,” he said, “if he comes back again tonight you can ask him.”

  Beaver wasn’t too sure that he’d want to speak to a ghost – or even that he’d dare to. So he said nothing, and the two Boys crouched down in a corner, out of sight behind the guillotine and the doomed French aristocrat. Wiggins closed the cover of his lantern and they waited, nervously, in the darkness. It was deathly quiet. Even the tiny squeak of a mouse and the skittering of its feet on the floorboards seemed to echo around the Dungeon like the noise of stampeding cattle. And when the clock in the main gallery struck the hour, it sounded to the Boys like Big Ben itself. Wiggins counted the chimes under his breath – ten, eleven … twelve.

  “Midnight,” he whispered to Beaver. “Watch out now. This is when ghosts walk.”

  Right on cue, they heard a faint noise outside. The sound of a muffled footstep. Wiggins held his breath. Beaver clenched his teeth to stop them chattering. Then came an eerie creak.

  “That’s funny,” murmured Wiggins. “I didn’t think ghosts needed to open doors. I thought they walked right through ’em.”

  He raised his head very carefully and watched as a dark shape materialized in the doorway. It moved across the Dungeon and stopped by the new tableau. There was the scrape and flare of a match being struck, and then a softer light as a lantern was lit. The Boys could now see that it was held by a tall man, who began inspecting objects in the make-believe room, starting with a leather-bound book that lay on the desk. When he half turned, Wiggins saw that his face was indeed that of the mur
derer in the tableau, but ghostly pale. Unable to help himself, Wiggins let out a gasp.

  The man spun round, raising his lantern higher. “Who’s there?” he called sharply.

  The two Boys stayed still as statues – or waxworks. They stopped breathing. They didn’t even blink. But it was too late. The man knew they were there.

  “Come out and show yourself, whoever you are!” he barked. “I warn you – I am armed.”

  Reluctantly, cautiously, the two Boys stood up. The man stared at them. They stared back at him. He was tall, well-built and dark-haired, and wearing a long black coat.

  “Children!” he exclaimed. “What on earth are you doing here?”

  “’Ere, who you calling children?” Wiggins said boldly. “And come to that, what on earth are you doing here?”

  “You ain’t no ghost!” Beaver exclaimed.

  “Why should I be a ghost?”

  “’Cos … ’cos…” Beaver pointed a trembling finger at the waxwork figure.

  The man looked at it, puzzled. Then his face cleared. “Ah,” he said. “You thought I was…?”

  “And we weren’t the only ones,” said Wiggins. “Our friend Sarge did as well. It was you he seen last night, wasn’t it?”

  “Sarge? Oh, you mean the commissionaire. Yes, I’m afraid it was. I’m sorry if I gave him a fright.”

  “You did more’n that,” Wiggins said. “You cost him his job.”

  “In that case, I am truly, truly sorry.”

  Beaver stared at the man with deep hostility. “So you should be,” he said. “And where’s your gun?”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “You said you was armed.”

  “So I did. I was lying.”

  “Why? Don’t you know it’s wrong to tell lies?”

  The man shrugged.

  Wiggins smiled. “You was scared, wasn’t you?”

  “I confess I was. And that’s the truth.”

  “What of? It ain’t ghosts, is it?”

  “No.” He gave Wiggins a sharp look. “You’re a very astute young chap. And very bold, too. Who are you?”

  “My name is Wiggins. Arnold Wiggins. Captain of the Baker Street Boys. And Beaver here is my lieutenant.”

  “And what do they do, your Baker Street Boys?”

  “We’re special assistants to Mr Sherlock Holmes, the famous consulting detective.”

  “Sherlock Holmes! The very man I need.”

  “Well, he ain’t around right now. So you’ll have to make do with us.”

  “You?” The man gave a hollow laugh. “What could you do? A bunch of street urchins and ragamuffins?”

  “You’d be surprised what we can do,” Wiggins replied loftily.

  “Yes, I’m sure I would. How many of you are there?”

  “Seven.”

  “But we got lots and lots of friends,” Beaver interjected. “And we can go everywhere. Nobody notices us, ’cos they don’t think we’re worth botherin’ with.”

  “They think we’re just a bunch of street urchins and ragamuffins,” added Wiggins with a sly grin.

  The man paused, thinking hard. Then he shook his head. “I don’t think so,” he said at last. “It would be far too dangerous.”

  “Never mind that,” said Beaver. “We’re used to danger. Fenian terrorists, Black Hand gang assassins, Indian thugs, Chinese triads. We seen ’em all off.”

  “Course,” Wiggins continued, “we could just tell Madame Dupont and the police how you broke in here in the middle of the night, like a burglar…”

  “You could. But who’d believe you? A bunch of street urchins…”

  “Madame Dupont would. And PC Higgins – he knows us. And Inspector Lestrade of Scotland Yard. And then there’s Mr Holmes…”

  “Enough, enough! Very well, you may help me. But there is one condition. You must not breathe a word of this to anyone – not Madame and certainly not your police friends – until the matter is settled. Do you agree?”

  “Hold on,” said Wiggins. “We ain’t agreed to take the case yet. We don’t know who you are, or what it’s all about. Right, Beav?”

  “Right.” Beaver stared suspiciously at the man, and then indicated the wax model. “For a start, if you ain’t him, who are you?”

  “My name is Selwyn Murray. He was my twin brother, Alwyn.”

  “Twins! No wonder you look exac’ly the same.”

  “Not exactly. We are – were – what they call mirror twins. Everything was the same, but the other way round. I have a mole on my left cheek, for instance, Alwyn had one on his right, and so on. I am right-handed, Alwyn was left-handed.”

  “Oh, I get you,” said Beaver. “Just like lookin’ at yourself in a mirror.”

  “Precisely.”

  “Well, in that case,” said Wiggins, shining his lantern on the wax figure once again, “Madame D got it wrong. Look, he’s got the gun in his right hand.”

  “A natural mistake, you might think.”

  “Yeah – ’cept it weren’t her mistake.”

  “How d’you mean?” asked Beaver, puzzled.

  Selwyn Murray looked acutely at Wiggins. “Go on,” he said.

  Wiggins moved over to the photographs and tapped one of them meaningfully. “Look at this picture, where he’s shot hisself and he’s lying ’cross the desk, dead.”

  “Do I have to?” Beaver asked with a little groan.

  “See where the gun is?”

  “Oh, yeah – it’s by his right hand!”

  “Exac’ly! If he’d shot hisself, he’d have used his left hand, and that’s where the gun would have dropped.”

  “Hmm. You’re a clever lad to have spotted that,” said Selwyn Murray. “Maybe you will be able to help me after all.”

  “Course we will. It’s plain to me that there’s been some jiggery-pokery going on here.”

  “That’s precisely what I believe. Someone arranged this so that the world would think my poor brother killed his wife and child, then took his own life.”

  “You mean somebody else murdered them all?” gasped Beaver.

  Murray nodded grimly.

  “Why’d they do that?” Wiggins asked him.

  “Because,” he said, “they thought Alwyn was me.”

  Sarge opened the door of his lodge cautiously and peered out through the narrow crack.

  “It’s us,” whispered Wiggins. “Beaver and me.”

  “Are you all right?” Sarge opened the door wider, then stopped as he glimpsed a shadowy figure behind them in the darkness. “Who’s that?”

  “We found your ghost. Only it ain’t his ghost, it’s his twin.”

  “What you talking about?”

  “Let us in, quick, and I’ll tell you.”

  Sarge stood back and watched suspiciously as the dark-haired man followed the two Boys into the lodge. And although he had been warned, he still caught his breath as the light fell on Selwyn Murray’s face.

  “It’s him!” he exclaimed. “He’s the one I saw.”

  “That’s right, Sarge,” said Wiggins. “This is Mr Selwyn Murray, twin brother of Mr Alwyn Murray, deceased. He ain’t no ghost.”

  “So you wasn’t drunk,” added Beaver.

  “Not at first, anyway,” Wiggins said with a grin.

  “Well, I’m blowed.” Sarge puffed out his cheeks and collapsed into a chair.

  “I believe I owe you an apology, Sergeant.” Murray bowed his head to him. “I am very sorry to have caused you so much trouble.”

  “Trouble? You scared me half out of my mind last night!”

  “I really didn’t mean to. And I shall do everything in my power to make things right again.”

  “Hmph,” Sarge snorted. “That’s somethin’, I suppose. What was you doin’ in there anyhow?”

  “Visiting my brother – and looking for clues to his death.”

  “Couldn’t you have done that durin’ openin’ hours, like any normal person, ’stead of creepin’ about in the middle of the night
pretendin’ to be a ghost? All you had to do was come and ask.”

  Murray shook his head. “I might have been seen.”

  “You was – by me. And a real nasty turn you give me, I can tell you!”

  “There are people who want me dead. At the moment they cannot be sure that I am back in London, but I know they will be watching for me, waiting to kill me as they killed my brother.”

  “But your brother done hisself in,” Sarge said. “After he’d killed his missus and their poor little girl.”

  “No, he didn’t,” Wiggins said.

  “How d’you know that?”

  “’Cos he was a mirror twin,” Beaver explained. “So everythin’ was the other way round, only they didn’t know that, so they put the gun in his wrong hand, and Madame Dupont didn’t know that either, so she copied the photos and…”

  “Steady on!” Sarge cried, utterly confused. “Hold your horses. You’ve lost me.”

  “Perhaps it would be better if I were to explain,” said Murray.

  “I wish you would.”

  “My brother did not kill himself, or his wife and child. They were all brutally murdered.”

  “Whatever would anybody want to do that for?” Sarge asked, shocked.

  “Because they thought he was me.”

  “You mean whoever it was wanted to kill you? Why?”

  “Because I know too much.”

  Sarge shook his head in bewilderment. “I’d better put the kettle on,” he said. “I think I’m goin’ to need a strong cup of tea.”

  DANGLING THE BAIT

  Sarge filled his kettle with water and put it on his little gas ring to heat up. While they waited for it to boil, Murray began his story.

  “First,” he said to Sarge, “I must swear you to secrecy. Unless anything happens to me, you must tell no one about this – or about me. These boys have already agreed. I am only telling you because I have caused you so much trouble already and I want you to know why. I will do all I can to put things right, but you will have to be patient.”

  “I suppose I can wait till Lord Holdhurst gets back next week,” Sarge replied grudgingly. “That’s when I’ll get the sack.”