The Shadow Guests

by Joan Aiken

  There was a trellised wallpaper on the wall, with bunches of roses, a picture of King George V wearing the Order of the Garter, and a soulful little girl looking up at a thrush.

  Just the same, it took a long time to get back to sleep.

  Next morning, Mr Marvell was brought in to inspect the fallen wardrobe.

  ‘You don’t hardly know what to make of a thing like that, do you?’ he said, after surveying it for some time in silence. He did not offer any suggestions as to what might have caused it to shift twelve feet from its base and fall on Cosmo, but added thoughtfully, ‘You want her put back where she were before, Miss Doom? I could get a couple of maintenance men down from the Place, I daresay, to help me do that.’

  ‘I think we’d rather get rid of it. What do you feel, Cosmo? You’d have a lot more space in your room without it, if you ever wanted to put up a model railway or anything of the kind.’

  Cosmo didn’t think he would be wanting model railways. But he was happy at the suggestion of his permanent residence at the mill house that Eunice’s words seemed to hold. And he was perfectly definite in his feelings about the wardrobe.

  ‘I’d sooner get rid of it, thank you.’

  ‘Can’t say I blame you. Well, Mr Marvell – can it be got out?’

  Mr Marvell measured it with his eyes.

  ‘Not in one piece,’ he said. ‘That must have been put together in here. Beautiful oak. Cut up a treat, that will. You could make yourself a nice dresser or half a dozen coffee tables.’

  ‘Oh well, we’ll think of something.’

  ‘Maybe there’s a skeleton in it,’ Cosmo said hopefully. It still gave him a very queer feeling to see the massive piece of furniture leaning drunkenly against the end of his bed. There must have been an earthquake. How, otherwise, could it have got there?

  Slightly to his disappointment he was not encouraged to help with the dismantling of the wardrobe.

  ‘Just indulge me in this, will you, Cosmo?’ Eunice said. ‘I can’t avoid a nervous feeling that it might fall on you again while it was being taken to pieces – or that you’d get your leg accidentally sawn off, or some other little mischance. I have to go into Oxford to leave my proofs at my publishers – would you like to come along? I don’t have to see my editor till two – we could do some sightseeing in the morning and have lunch out.’

  So the morning was spent cheerfully in looking at college gardens and going up the Radcliffe Camera and Magdalen Tower, followed by lunch at the Mitre.

  While Eunice was visiting her editor, Cosmo went into Blackwells bookshop; and there he was surprised to run into the pale, self-contained Moley, also browsing among paperbacks.

  ‘Hullo!’ Cosmo said unguardedly, forgetting the feud in his surprise. ‘What are you doing in Oxford?’

  ‘Hullo yourself.’ Moley did not sound particularly hostile; quite amiable, in fact. ‘Why shouldn’t I be here? I live in Oxford.’

  ‘Well then – if you live here, why in the world are you a boarder?’

  Moley said calmly, ‘I’m a boarder because I like it better.’

  ‘You’d rather board than live at home?’ Cosmo was thunderstruck.

  ‘Dear me, yes,’ Moley drawled. ‘You see my parents are divorced, and I don’t greatly care for my stepmama who lives here in Oxford with my Dad – let alone my dear, sweet, angelic little stepbrother and sister. Also I’m supposed to have a wonky ticker, you know –’ he thumped his skinny chest – ‘and old Doc Hobson said there would be less general wear and tear if I were residing at school, under controlled conditions, you know. Conditions at my father’s house are sometimes a bit uncontrolled.’

  Cosmo hardly knew what to say. He was greatly startled at this new light on Moley’s home-life, and felt sympathetic too. After a moment he asked,

  ‘What about your own mother? Where is she?’

  ‘Oh, well, she’s an actress, you see, Lalage Bosworth –’ even Cosmo, coming from so far away, knew that name – ‘so she’s mostly off somewhere making a film, or in a play. But if she’s working in London, where she has a house, I go and stay with her there, in the holidays.’

  At this moment Eunice came into the bookshop accompanied by a thin, worried grey-haired man.

  ‘Oh, there’s my Da,’ Moley said. ‘He’s not a bad old stick, actually. But my stepmama has him trussed, trephined and hogtied, un-fortu-nately.’

  ‘There you are, Paul!’ Moley’s father gave him a harassed, affectionate look. ‘Professor Doom and I have to go back to her home to look through some extra material that we think might have to go into her book. Do you want to catch a bus home, or –’ he glanced from his son to Cosmo and Eunice – ‘do you want to come along? Professor Doom has kindly suggested it.’

  ‘Do come, Paul, if you’d like,’ Eunice said. ‘It would be fine for Cosmo to have some company.’

  This invitation made Cosmo very nervous. Would Moley think that pressure was being put on him to visit the form pariah? Did he himself want Moley to come?

  Moley appeared rather hesitant, but perhaps the mill seemed preferable to his stepbrother and stepsister; after a moment’s thought he said, ‘Thanks, I’d like to come.’

  It was decided that Moley should drive out with Cosmo and Eunice, while Professor Molesworth went back to his office for a spare set of Eunice’s proofs. On the drive out Eunice was unexpectedly funny, describing for Moley’s benefit, how, in the days when she had still been teaching at a school, she had taken a party of advanced A-level maths students on a working holiday, staying at a ruined Scottish castle, which turned out to be the storage place of an illicit whisky still, and her students had become involved with the whisky runners.

  ‘I began to wonder why their maths was getting better and better but also wilder and wilder – they seemed to be grasping concepts that I’d have thought were far out of their reach; and then I went out to dinner with the local Laird and his family, and when I got back the students and the whisky runners were having a great party, playing sardines all over the castle and hunting in the dungeons for the square root of minus one, which somebody swore they had seen down there.’

  Moley laughed uninhibitedly. ‘Were there any ghosts in the castle?’

  ‘No, none. But we think we have acquired a poltergeist at Courtoys Mill House, don’t we, Cosmo?’ Eunice told the story of the wardrobe.

  Cosmo, anxiously watching Moley’s expression while she told it, wondered if Moley would suspect this to be yet another piece of family boasting or exaggeration; he wished that Eunice had not mentioned the wardrobe. But Moley seemed sincerely interested and astonished.

  Cosmo could not help worrying too, slightly, about Moley’s weak heart; suppose some other piece of furniture fell over while he was at the mill house? They had better stay out of doors as much as possible. Although sad, it was also something of a relief that Con and Sim had gone – supposing Moley would have been able to see them. But very likely he would not.

  One way and another, Cosmo felt very nervous about the visit, and wished it had not taken place. He was rather silent and constrained on the drive out, and afraid that both Eunice and Moley had noticed this.

  Professor Molesworth, who had a nippy little Renault, caught up with Eunice at the roundabout – she had been driving slowly – and after that both cars proceeded in convoy and arrived together, the boys taking turns to open the gates.

  As soon as they reached the mill house, Eunice and Professor Molesworth vanished indoors to work on the book.

  A little half-heartedly, Cosmo began showing Moley round. They went to the island first, and looked at the weir and Cosmo’s clearing. By now nettles and huge burdocks and teazles had grown across the mill entrance; Cosmo did not suggest going inside, and Moley did not ask to be taken in.

  Then they went upriver a quarter of a mile in the skiff, with Cosmo at the oars, because rowing was one of the things forbidden to Moley. But it turned out that he was knowledgeable and enthusiastic about fishing and asked if
he could come back for a day of it sometime. Cosmo felt rather sad in the boat, remembering poor Sim; after a while he stopped rowing, let them drift back to the mooring, and took Moley, instead, to see the farm buildings and the pigs who were now occupying their new quarters. Scratching the pigs’ backs occupied some more time – the afternoon seemed to be dragging a bit, due to the fact that Cosmo was not certain what kind of things Moley liked doing, and Moley was being rather too polite.

  In the barn they found Mr Marvell mixing pig-mash.

  ‘There’s your wardrobe,’ he said, nodding to a stack of massively thick oak boards. ‘We didn’t find any skeleton in it, I daresay you’ll be sorry to hear. All we found was a George III penny. You’d better have it for a luck-piece – keep you safe from anything else falling on you.’

  He fished it from his pocket. It was dated 1765, was very thick, with a grooved edge, and the head of George wearing a wreath of laurel. Somebody had bored a small hole in it.

  ‘You could wear it round your neck,’ Mr Marvell suggested, and threaded a piece of binder twine through the hole.

  This find cheered Cosmo, and he took Moley round the side of the house and showed him the lookout platform in the walnut tree.

  ‘Gosh,’ said Moley enviously. ‘Did you make that? Gosh, what a place! I wish I could go up – but that’s just the sort of thing I’m not allowed to.’

  ‘Oh, then you’d better not,’ said Cosmo hastily, feeling that it had been rather unkind to show it to Moley. But the last thing he wanted was to encourage any forbidden activity.

  ‘You go up though – let’s see you use those holds.’

  Cosmo scurried up the pitons – he was getting expert at this by now, had worked out the most economical movements for getting from each hold to the next, and could nip round and up the big serrated trunk almost as fast as a squirrel.

  From the last piton he had formed the habit of launching himself up with a push, grabbing, as he did so, at the guard rail post on the left of the entrance gap for a last pull-up. But today, when he did this, to his complete and disbelieving astonishment, a section of the rail simply crumbled away in his hand. He felt himself falling backwards.

  Down below he heard Moley’s startled yell.

  ‘Cripes! Cosmo!’

  Using muscles in his legs and thighs that he didn’t know he had, Cosmo thrust himself sideways with his feet, just before they came away from the trunk of the tree. The sideways push was just enough to allow him to get one hand over a smallish branch, which he gripped with frantic strength, managing to use the time of his swing past it to hook his other hand up and over the branch. Once dangling by both arms he was all right; he swung his legs up over the branch and worked back to the trunk, inspected the defective guard rail, and climbed down by way of the pitons.

  ‘Wow!’ said Moley. ‘That was quite exciting! What’s the matter, have you got an enemy, or something? Or just suicidal tendencies?’

  ‘I can’t understand it,’ Cosmo said. Now that he was back on the ground, his knees felt as weak as milk; in fact he was shaking like a fool. ‘Mr Marvell and I went over those posts carefully. I’d have sworn that one was as solid as a rock. He said they’d last ten years.’

  ‘He sure was mistaken, chum. Look at that.’

  Moley had retrieved a bit of the piece that came away in Cosmo’s hand. It was completely rotten – powdered and crumbling like a sponge cake.

  Cosmo was struck quite speechless. But after a minute or two he said,

  ‘I still don’t believe it. Mr Marvell looked at them all so carefully. And so did I. None of them were rotten.’

  Thinking it over he went on,

  ‘I’d rather my cousin didn’t get to hear about this, if you don’t mind. She’d worry. After all, she’s supposed to be in charge of me till my father gets to England.’

  And Father would be upset if he got back and found his other son had a broken neck.

  ‘Whatever you say,’ Moley’s tone was equable. ‘You’d better hide the evidence somewhere.’

  ‘I’ll take that rail down and burn it later.’ Cosmo shivered. A light drizzle was beginning to fall; the afternoon had deteriorated. ‘Come on, let’s go in. It must be about teatime, anyway.’

  In fact Mrs Tydings appeared in the doorway, about to ring the bell, as they walked up to it. Cosmo went across and threw his piece of rotten wood on to the log fire that smouldered in the hearth.

  Mrs Tydings had cleared the big refectory table and set one of her splendid teas on it. Moley ate all her home-made delicacies with enthusiasm.

  ‘Much more than he eats at home,’ Professor Molesworth remarked, watching his son with a wistful eye.

  ‘More than he eats at school,’ Cosmo said.

  Cosmo himself found it hard to eat. When Mrs Tydings scolded him he said defensively, ‘Well, we had lunch out.’

  After tea, Eunice and the Professor went back to work in her study, and, as it was now raining steadily, Moley and Cosmo got out the box of ivory pieces and played chess on the tea table. Cosmo was not a bad player – he played quite often with Eunice and beat her occasionally – but Moley was better, making moves with great dash and imagination. He won four games to Cosmo’s two.

  ‘You ought to try playing against my cousin,’ Cosmo was saying, ‘I think you’d be pretty equally matched –’ when they heard a loud crash from upstairs, followed by a series of thumps, as if one of the horses, Prince or Blossom, were walking heavily across the upstairs landing.

  ‘What the dickens –?’ began Moley, and Cosmo said, ‘Oh, heavens, now what –?’ while Mrs Tydings, coming in with a bag of her home-made flapjacks for Moley because he had enjoyed them so much, exclaimed,

  ‘Lawks! Did you ever!’

  She was looking past the boys at the stairs which led down into the room where they were sitting. Cosmo spun round just in time to see his bed negotiate the turn round the banisters and come tobogganing down, all by itself apparently, the legs on their castors sliding heavily from step to step, thumpity-thumpity-thump.

  Eunice and the Professor, startled to death at the noise, which was like houses falling down, came dashing from the study and witnessed the bed clatter down the last four steps and come to a stop, still right way up, on the brick floor. Even the bedclothes were still in place, though somewhat disarranged as the mattress had slipped down against the bedhead.

  ‘Well!’ said Eunice.

  Professor Molesworth was highly suspicious.

  ‘Did you boys rig that up? With a rope or something?’

  ‘No, honestly, Da, we didn’t,’ said Moley, who was suffocating with laughter, leaning back helplessly in his chair. ‘P-p-please, P-professor Doom, c-can I come to tea every week? I’ve n-never had such a good time in my life! N-no wonder Cosmo isn’t very keen on school if he has all these larks going on at home!’

  Eunice gave Cosmo a sharp look and said, ‘You didn’t pull the bed down, Cosmo? You swear you had nothing to do with it?’

  ‘You know I didn’t. I’ve been with you all day – or outside with Moley.’

  ‘Yes – I know,’ she said. ‘Well, as you can see,’ she told the Molesworths, ‘we have a slight case of poltergeist.’

  ‘It really is remarkable,’ said Moley’s father. He inspected the bed carefully, then went up to look at Cosmo’s room, from where it had travelled by itself. ‘For a start,’ he said accusingly, ‘it couldn’t have got through the door unless the legs had been unscrewed first.’

  ‘Oh, why boggle at a little thing like that?’ said Eunice.

  Moley began singing to the Miller of Dee tune:

  ‘Let’s spend the day at Courtoys Mill

  It’s really jolly there,

  Where wardrobes made of solid oak

  Come floating through the air

  And beds as well as naughty boys

  Toboggan down the stairs.’

  ‘I’m glad you’re enjoying yourself,’ said Eunice tartly – Cosmo could see that she liked Mole
y though – ‘but how are we going to get the bed back again, just tell me that?’

  ‘If I were you,’ said Professor Molesworth thoughtfully, ‘I wouldn’t be in a hurry to put it back just yet. I’d wait till this disturbance settles down. Otherwise it might well just happen again.’

  Eunice sighed. ‘I daresay you are right. I can see that in the end we shall have all the furniture down here on the ground floor. Or chopped in pieces outside.’

  Cosmo’s bed was put in the garden room, and Eunice told him that he had better continue to sleep in Emma’s cottage until things had settled down in the mill house.

  ‘Would you consider getting in an exorcist?’ Professor Molesworth suggested to Eunice. She looked doubtful.

  ‘The trouble is, I don’t think that I’d believe in lighting candles and drawing circles on the floor. And if it doesn’t convince me, why should it convince the poltergeist? No, I think we’ll just have to sweat it out. I’m sorry this visit has been a bit disturbed, Norman.’

  ‘Oh, don’t apologize; Paul and I wouldn’t have missed the experience for worlds, would we, Paul?’

  ‘It’s been terrific,’ sighed Moley. ‘I haven’t laughed so much since Granny locked herself in the pantry on Boxing Day.’

  ‘Well you’d better come here for a weekend sometime,’ Eunice said. ‘When things have settled down a little.’

  As the father and son were about to depart, Professor Molesworth, on the point of getting into the car, stopped to have a last word with Eunice about a footnote. While he did this, Moley said to Cosmo in a low voice,

  ‘I say, I know you don’t want to worry your cousin with the business about your tree house, but, honestly, I should watch out if I were you.’

  ‘I’m certainly going to,’ Cosmo said. ‘Thanks.’

  ‘Actually,’ Moley said, ‘I didn’t mention it in there in case I was speaking out of turn but I shouldn’t be surprised if that skinny old girl in black had something to do with it. Is she your grandmother? She was giving you an uncommonly old-fashioned look when we were playing chess.’