The Third Ghost Story Megapack

by Wildside Press

  Her presence mildly surprised Muriel. She knew that there was only one indoor servant—a capable, elderly person, whom she had already seen; but she had heard her step-mother mention a young dressmaker from the village, who had come in to help her with the nursing, and she took it for granted that this was she. Still, it was both annoying and puzzling to find her prowling about the passage at such an hour; and her appearance conveyed anything but a favourable impression.

  Leaving the door at which she stood slightly ajar, she slipped noiselessly across the landing, turned the handle of Mrs. North’s door, and peeped in.

  The night-light showed the occupant of the bed motionless in the heavy sleep of the thoroughly tired woman.

  On reflection it was perhaps natural to suppose that the dressmaker had come to ascertain that the worn-out watcher was really getting the rest she needed; but Muriel had not liked her expression, and returned to bed somewhat displeased at the incident.

  “What is the name of the young woman, the dressmaker you told me of, who is sleeping in the house?” she asked when she and Agnes met down-stairs at breakfast, having left the patient comfortable after his good night.

  “What, Miss Abel? But she is not sleeping in the house now; she went home yesterday morning.”

  “She was sleeping, or, I should say, walking about the house at half-past five this morning,” replied Muriel. “I was making up the fire, and heard your door shut. I thought you were on the fidget, and looked out to see; and she was standing just outside your door listening. I thought it rather queer, for she was fully dressed; but I supposed she thought she might be wanted.”

  Mrs. North, who had listened with open mouth, turned extremely red.

  “Oh,” she said nervously, “then—then, I suppose Miss Abel came back. I did not know; now I think of it, I believe I remember her saying something of the kind. She has been very attentive, and probably thought, as you say, that I might want her.”

  “Very attentive; but she doesn’t look like a country dressmaker, her dress did fit and hang so remarkably well.”

  “I will ask Caroline,” murmured Agnes, and, taking up her keys, she hurriedly went out of the room, leaving Muriel rather mystified. Miss Abel’s appearance had impressed her most disagreeably, and she wondered at Mrs. North’s liking to have such a person about; but then Agnes was always odd—apt to foregather with the most unlikely people.

  II

  At about eleven o’clock that morning the doctor arrived: a hale, elderly man, who seemed imbued with the strong, robust air of the Cotswolds, and whose general appearance captivated Muriel. She soon found that he knew all there was to know of every house, church, family, estate, barrow, or cromlech in the district; and with the keenest interest she began to ply him with questions about the Kenyons and White Gates.

  “I remember them well, of course,” he said. “I knew the whole family from a boy, but I had been already ten years in practice here when Miss Anna was found dead in her bed.”

  “Was she found dead in her bed?” asked the girl, with breathless interest.

  He nodded. “Sudden failure of the heart’s action,” he said. “But what caused it, my dear—what caused it is another matter, and did not come within the scope of my certificate.”

  “Then you knew what caused it?”

  “Certainly not; nobody knew. I do not suppose anybody ever will.”

  “What kind of old ladies were they, really?’ asked Muriel.

  “They were about the most detestable people I ever was personally acquainted with,” responded the doctor simply. The girl’s eager eyes drew him on, and after a bit he resumed. “The whole family of Kenyon was as odious as it is possible for people to be who live within the narrowest borders of respectability. The father of these two old women had made money in Bristol, and built this house upon the site of a farm which had belonged to his family for generations. He was a morose, evil-tempered man, repulsively ugly; and his wife was worse. The children were most of them sickly in constitution, and all hideous. One of the seven was an idiot—they used to say she was ill-treated, and had been heard to scream o’ nights; she died in her early teens. The eldest son also died young. The eldest daughter ran away with a gamekeeper named Hackett. She was the least ill-favoured of the lot, but as ill-conditioned as any, I should say. The second son went to London, and formed a liaison with some woman, so was not received at home. The others all died unmarried, fortunately for society; it was a stock one could not wish to see preserved. The Hacketts had one son; shortly after his birth they quarrelled—going, as I understand, to the length of fire-irons and carving-knives—and separated. I imagine he had thought he should get money out of the old man, and ill-treated his wife when he found he could not. She came back home with the child, who was brought up in this house; he was about thirty years old when his aunts died, and for nearly twenty years they had been his only living relations.”

  “Were they rich?”

  “They were commonly reported to be so. All the neighbourhood knew them as misers. They lived almost without servants, for their temper was so bad that nobody would stay with them. One woman, who had been their nurse when they were children, remained faithful; she survived them a few years. Except for her there was no indoor servant, save such women as could be persuaded to come in by the day from the village; and they kept no horses. But the curious thing, the thing that has never been explained, was—what became of their money?.… They left Hackett, their nephew, heir of all they possessed, on the sole condition of his erecting a suitable monument to their memory in the church. But when he came to examine their affairs, there was found to be just enough invested stock to bring in about £300 a year—a sum which would have more than covered their annual expenses for years past. Their lawyer—a solicitor of very good standing in Bristol—told Hackett that, ever since they had been mistress of their fortune they had been realizing large sums of money, whenever the condition of the market was advantageous. They had sold land, they had sold shares, they were constantly having big consignments of bank-notes sent down to them at White Gates. He had an idea that they turned this money into gems, or gold plate, or something concrete, which they could look at and treasure. There was something like forty thousand pounds to be accounted for. You look interested, Miss North.”

  “I should think so! Do go on! Who would have thought that Virtuous Retirement could he so sensational? Please—what happened?”

  “Why, nothing. The money was not forthcoming, that was all.”

  “Surely the heir searched—”

  “Searched? I should think so! After due investigation of the safe—”

  “The safe! What safe?”

  “Oh, haven’t you seen the safe? The one built into the wall of Miss Anna’s room! “Do show me,” urged Muriel.

  They were talking in the dressing-room adjoining the patient’s room, and the doctor, laughing to find so charming a listener to his gossip, led the girl across the landing, and opened the door into one of the two large communicating bedrooms at the back of the house.

  In the wall between these rooms was fixed the iron door of a safe: and there were signs that the wall had been artificially thickened for its reception, for the doorway leading from one room to the next was furnished with two doors, and between these was comfortable space for a person to stand.

  “The will,” said the doctor, “Particularly included the contents of the safe, in the list of the possessions to which Hackett was to succeed. But, when opened, it contained only a few trinkets which had belonged to the sisters, and a fair quantity of silver plate, the total value of the whole collection being perhaps fifty pounds. Everything was neatly arranged, packed, and labelled. There was no appearance of anything having been disturbed.

  “Hackett had the place pretty well pulled down, the safe taken from the wall, the space between the w
alls examined, inch by inch, the interior and exterior measurements of every inch of space ascertained mathematically. Then the floor, both of this and the adjoining room, was taken up, bit by bit, the beams and rafters overhauled, every scrap of furniture taken to pieces, the frames of the beds, the very rungs of the chairs subjected to the minutest scrutiny, since miserly old maiden ladies have strange ideas of securing the safety of their treasures. Every scrap of writing existing in the house was carefully gone through to see if any clue could be found. The old servant, of whom I spoke—her name was Deborah Blaize—declared most positively that her mistresses had frequent dealings with diamond merchants, that she had actually seen a sapphire which they told her was worth two thousand pounds; and that she knew for a fact that these treasures were packed in the safe, the gems being secured inside a dispatch-box with a triple lock, of which Miss Anna always wore the three keys on a slender gold chain round her neck, under her clothes.”

  “Surely the diamond merchants could have been found,” broke in Muriel.

  “Hackett could not discover them. Neither were there any keys found round Miss Anna’s neck at her death. There was no document found bearing the slightest reference to any such transactions. You see,” said the doctor, “the difficulty was this. Nothing of the terms of the will, nor of the existence of the secret hoard, came to light till the death of Miss Clara, who was the elder, but much the weaker-minded of the couple. In fact, I never used to think her quite ‘all there,’ as the saying is; but she was left by her father absolute mistress of the house and the money, because he had a spite against Anna, the only one of the family who used to dare to browbeat him. Anna ruled the roast, however, but it was thought extremely likely that her desire to realize the property was the result of a fear that she might die first, and Clara be induced to alter her will, or otherwise imposed upon. Clara survived her sister more than a month, so there was no question of opening the will until her death. It is perfectly possible, indeed most likely, that she, who was the one to find her sister dead, would instantly remove from her neck the chain and keys that guarded the treasure, and hide or dispose of them as best occurred to her. The two seem to have acted completely in concert about most things, though it was always Anna who led, and Clara who followed.”

  “What did the elder, Miss Clara, die of?”

  “Primarily, of the family scourge—consumption; they all had either weak hearts or weak lungs. The shock of her sister’s death, and exposure to the cold in her night-dress, brought on a paralytic stroke, and bronchitis supervened.”

  “Exposure?” queried Muriel.

  The doctor nodded, pointing to the adjoining room.

  “She slept in there. The door of communication was always open, and they burned a light all night—their solitary extravagance. One terribly cold night—a bitter black frost and an icy wind, such as we revel in here in Longstreet—old Deborah was aroused by being violently shaken in her bed, and sitting up in the pitch darkness, cried aloud to know who was there, getting in reply only curious, inarticulate sounds. Wild with terror she struck a light, expecting to find herself in the clutches of a lunatic; but it was Miss Clara who stood there, speechless, and with her mouth drawn horribly to one side. She wore only her nightdress, and was as cold as ice. Huddling on some clothes, Deborah ran with her along the passage to Miss Anna’s room; and there, in that place”—the doctor pointed—“though not in that bed you see before you—the old one was simply cut to bits afterwards to find treasure—there sat Miss Anna, still grim, erect, facing them—glaring at them in her frilled nightcap, with eyes astare, stone dead!”

  Muriel gave an involuntary gasp. The horror of that situation, and of the two lonely old women in the grip of it, made her shudder.

  “Was the nephew in the house?” she asked. “No, oh no, he was in Bristol.”

  “Were there any signs of confusion in the room?”

  “None whatever, nothing to make any one fancy that any special thing had occurred in the night. Miss Clara could not speak, and the idea of writing does not seem to have occurred to her feeble brain in the first moments of horror, so no suspicion was aroused. On ascertaining that Miss Anna was dead, old Deborah tried to force the body into a recumbent position. But it was frozen stiff; and, at that culminating horror, the old woman told me that her nerve deserted her, and she rushed screaming from the room. Her first care was to bestow the shivering, trembling old Miss Clara in her own bed, then she rushed from the house, roused the gardener, who then lived in the cottage across the road, and sent him for me.

  “When I got here Miss Clara was delirious—quite wandering in the head. She had still the use of her hands at that time, and had her brain been clear, she could have written us some account of what had passed in the dead hours of that night. She was icy cold when she aroused Deborah, we felt sure she must have been long out of bed. But she was never sensible again till very near death, when she evidently wished to say something, but by that time all power of communicating anything had left her. On the day of Miss Anna’s death there was a severe snowfall, I never remember a worse in all my winters on these wolds. It was some days before we could send a telegram to Hackett, two or three more before he could reach White Gates. When he came, it was evident that his surviving aunt was dying, and he could do nothing but wait for the end. He knew of the treasure in the safe, though I fancy he had no idea of its comprising the bulk of their fortune; but nobody said a word that could lead him to suppose it had been tampered with. The shock of finding her sister dead was more than enough to account for Miss Clara’s seizure. It was not until her death that old Deborah first awoke his suspicions by saying that she could not find the triple keys, and at there dawned upon us all the extreme probability that something might have happened on that night to cause the failure of heart which had killed Miss Anna.

  “It was then too late to search for traces—the snow out of doors and house-cleaning within had eliminated all such; the only thing that could be called a clue at all, was the testimony of a charwoman to the effect that, some weeks after Miss Anna’s death, she had found the remains of burnt paper in the stove in the hall, which was never by any chance lighted.”

  “You suppose, then, that the valuables really were in the safe, but were carried off by a thief?”

  “Against that theory is the fact that no such person was ever seen or heard of; and that the safe was apparently quite undisturbed, being securely locked when Hackett first examined it, the key in its usual position in the old ladies’ key-box. On the other hand, the triple keys, of whose existence old Deborah was positive, were gone. There was no sort of reason, either then or afterwards, to doubt old Deborah’s complete fidelity. Most people inclined strongly to the idea that the jewels were concealed somewhere in the house, and this opinion grew when months went by and no sales of important gems could be discovered to have taken place, though Hackett had people on the watch everywhere. He and his wife came and lived here for a bit, for it turned out that he was married, had been secretly married for more than a year. He did nothing all the time but ransack the place, quite fruitlessly. Soon his wife died, in her first confinement. He said then that the house was no better than a grave, and he went back to Bristol with his little boy. Then there was a rush of people anxious to rent White Gates; everybody thought that they were sure to discover the treasure. But it has never been found; perhaps you may hit upon it, Miss North.”

  “Perhaps; I shall dream of it, at least,” she laughed. “Why, here comes Agnes, wondering what on earth we are plotting here in the cold!”

  Mrs. North looked surprised, and anything but pleased, to find them in this room.

  “I am showing Miss North the safe,” said Dr. Forrest. “You ought to get her to find the treasure for you, ma’am; she looks a bit of a clairvoyante.”

  “Oh, I don’t believe that nonsense about the treasure,” said Mrs. North frigidly. �
�Muriel dear, go to your father, I want to speak to the doctor;” and, as the girl left the room, she heard her begin, urgently, “I do hope you have not—” The rest was lost in the shutting of the door; but as she moved away, she caught the doctor’s hearty response—

  “No, no, my dear madam, certainly not!”

  That night Muriel slept soundly and undisturbed in the small front room, never moving until awakened at eight o’clock. The major also slept well, so well that on the morrow his wife declared that she did not want her “night off” again; but Muriel insisted.

  “While I am here, I may as well do my share,” she urged. Accordingly she slept again on the sofa, and slept well until two o’clock, when her father woke, and grew restless. As it soon appeared that he was not likely to sleep again, Muriel suggested reading aloud; he seemed pleased with the idea. She had a volume of Kipling with her, which she had left in the drawing-room, so, lighting a candle, she softly stole from the room to get it. There was, perhaps, a half-thought in her mind that Miss Abel might be prowling on the landing; but she was not there, nor in the house at all, as far as Muriel knew. She went with noiseless feet to the stair-head, the thoughts that occupied her being, as nearly as she could afterwards remember, as to which of the stories in Life’s Handicap she should select to soothe the major.

  She was half-way down; her candle flung long, wavering shadows across the hall; something light, something that moved, caught her eye in the darkness near the floor. She turned her light fully upon the place, grasping the balustrade, and with an undefined feeling of expectation in her heart she stood still.

  There was a woman, stooping, crawling on her hands and knees, upon the black and red diamond tiles that paved the hall. The curiously fair hair, with its conspicuous arrangement, could only belong to Miss Abel. What in the world was she about? The momentary terror became merged in curiosity; she was picking up something from the floor.