The Big Book of Christmas Mysteries

by Otto Penzler (ed)

  THE HAUNTED CRESCENT

  Peter Lovesey

  FEW CONTEMPORARY MYSTERY WRITERS have been as beloved by their fans as Peter Lovesey, and fewer still have received a similar degree of the accolades of reviewers and his peers. His first book, Wobble to Death (1970), won the first prize in a contest sponsored by Macmillan for a best first mystery. The wonderfully funny novel The False Inspector Dew (1982) won the (British) Crime Writers’ Association Gold Dagger. Rough Cider (1986) and The Summons (1995) were nominated for Edgars. Waxwork (1978), The Summons, and Bloodhounds (1996) all won CWA Silver Daggers, and Lovesey was given the CWA’s Carter Diamond Dagger for lifetime achievement in 2000. There have been many other awards from all around the world, but you get the idea. “The Haunted Crescent” was first published in Mistletoe Mysteries, edited by Charlotte MacLeod (New York, Mysterious Press, 1989).

  The Haunted Crescent

  PETER LOVESEY

  A GHOST WAS SEEN LAST CHRISTMAS in a certain house in the Royal Crescent. Believe me, this is true. I speak from personal experience, as a resident of the City of Bath and something of an authority on psychic phenomena. I readily admit that ninety-nine percent of so-called hauntings turn out to have been hallucinations of one sort or another, but this is the exception, a genuine haunted house. Out of consideration for the present owners (who for obvious reasons wish to preserve their privacy), I shall not disclose the exact address, but if you doubt me, read what happened to me on Christmas Eve, 1988.

  The couple who own the house had gone to Norfolk for the festive season, leaving on Friday, December twenty-third. Good planning. The ghost was reputed to walk on Christmas Eve. Knowing of my interest, they had generously placed their house at my disposal. I am an ex-policeman, by the way, and it takes a lot to frighten me.

  For those who like a ghost story with all the trimmings—deep snow and howling winds outside—I am sorry. I must disappoint you. Christmas, 1988, was not a white one in Bath. It was unseasonably warm. There wasn’t even any fog. All I can offer in the way of atmospheric effects are a full moon that night and an owl that hooted periodically in the trees at the far side of the sloping lawn that fronts the Crescent. It has to be admitted that this was not a spooky-looking barn owl, but a tawny owl, which on this night was making more of a high-pitched “kee-wik” call than a hoot, quite cheery, in fact. Do not despair, however. The things that happened in the house that night more than compensated for the absence of werewolves and banshees outside.

  It is vital to the story that you are sufficiently informed about the building in which the events occurred. Whether you realize it or not, you have probably seen the Royal Crescent, if not as a resident, or a tourist, then in one of the numerous films in which it has appeared as a backdrop to the action. It is in a quiet location northwest of the city and comprises thirty houses in a semielliptical terrace completed in 1774 to the specification of John Wood the Younger. It stands comparison with any domestic building in Europe. I defy anyone not to respond to its uncomplicated grandeur, the majestic panorama of 114 Ionic columns topped by a portico and balustrade; and the roadway at the front where Jane Austen and Charles Dickens trod the cobbles. But you want me to come to the ghost.

  My first intimation of something unaccountable came at about twenty past eleven that Christmas Eve. I was in the drawing room on the first floor. I had stationed myself there a couple of hours before. The door was ajar and the house was in darkness. No, that isn’t quite accurate. I should have said simply that none of the lights were switched on; actually the moonlight gave a certain amount of illumination, silver-blue rectangles projected across the carpet and over the base of the Christmas tree, producing an effect infinitely prettier than fairy lights. The furniture was easily visible, too, armchairs, table, and grand piano. One’s eyes adjust. It didn’t strike me as eerie to be alone in that unlit house. Anyone knows that a spirit of the departed is unlikely to manifest itself in electric light.

  No house is totally silent, certainly no centrally heated house. The sounds produced by expanding floorboards in so-called haunted houses up and down the land must have fooled ghost-hunters by the hundred. In this case, as a precaution against a sudden freeze, the owners had left the system switched on. It was timed to turn off at eleven, so the knocks and creaks I was hearing now ought to have been the last of the night.

  As events turned out, it wasn’t a sound that alerted me first. It was a sudden draft against my face and a flutter of white across the room. I tensed. The house had gone silent. I crossed the room to investigate.

  The disturbance had been caused by a Christmas card falling off the mantelpiece into the grate. Nothing more alarming than that. Cards are always falling down. That’s why some people prefer to suspend them on strings. I stooped, picked up the card, and replaced it, smiling at my overactive imagination.

  Yet I had definitely noticed a draft. The house was supposed to be free of drafts. All the doors and windows were closed and meticulously sealed against the elements. Strange. I listened, holding my breath. The drawing room where I was standing was well placed for picking up any unexplained sound in the house. It was at the center of the building. Below me were the ground floor and the cellar, above me the second floor and the attic.

  Hearing nothing, I decided to venture out to the landing and listen there. I was mystified, yet unwilling at this stage to countenance a supernatural explanation. I was inclined to wonder whether the cut-off of the central heating had resulted in some trick of convection that gave the impression or the reality of a disturbance in the air. The falling card was not significant in itself. The draft required an explanation. My state of mind, you see, was calm and analytical.

  Ten or fifteen seconds passed. I leaned over the banisters and looked down the stairwell to make sure that the front door was firmly shut, and so it proved to be. Then I heard a rustle from the room where I had been. I knew what it was—the card falling into the grate again—for another distinct movement of air had stirred the curtain on the landing window, causing a shift in the moonlight across the stairs. I was in no doubt anymore that this was worth investigating. My only uncertainty was whether to start with the floors above me, or below.

  I chose the latter, reasoning that if, as I suspected, someone had opened a window, it was likely to be at the ground or basement levels. My assumption was wrong. I shall not draw out the suspense. I merely wish to record that I checked the cellar, kitchen, scullery, dining room, and study and found every window and external door secure and bolted from inside. No one could have entered after me.

  So I began to work my way upstairs again, methodically visiting each room. And on the staircase to the second floor, I heard a sigh.

  Occasionally in Victorian novels a character would “heave” a sigh. Somehow the phrase had always irritated me. In real life I never heard a sigh so weighty that it seemed to involve muscular effort—until this moment. This was a sound hauled up from the depths of somebody’s inner being, or so I deduced. Whether it really originated with somebody or some thing was open to speculation.

  The sound had definitely come from above me. Unable by now to suppress my excitement, I moved up to the second-floor landing, where I found three doors, all closed. I moved from one to the other, opening them rapidly and glancing briefly inside. Two bedrooms and a bathroom. I hesitated. A bathroom. Had the “sigh,” I wondered, been caused by some aberration of the plumbing? Air locks are endemic in the complicated systems installed in these old Georgian buildings. The houses were not built with valves and cisterns. The efficiency of the pipework depended on the variable skill of generations of plumbers.

  The sound must have been caused by trapped air.

  Rationality reasserted itself. I would finish my inspection and prove to my total satisfaction that what I had heard was neither human nor spectral in origin. I closed the bathroom door behind me and crossed the landing to the last flight of stairs, more narrow than those I had used so far. In times past they had been the m
eans of access to the servants’ quarters in the attic. I glanced up at the white-painted door at the head of these stairs and observed that it was slightly ajar.

  My foot was on the first stair and my hand on the rail when I stiffened. That door moved.

  It was being drawn inward. The movement was slow and deliberate. As the gap increased, a faint glow of moonlight was cast from the interior onto the paneling to my right. I stared up and watched the figure of a woman appear in the doorway.

  She was in a white gown or robe that reached to her feet. Her hair hung loose to the level of her chest—fine, gently shifting hair so pale in color that it appeared to merge with the dress. Her skin, too, appeared bloodless. The eyes were flint black, however. They widened as they took me in. Her right hand crept to her throat and I heard her give a gasp.

  The sensations I experienced in that moment of confrontation are difficult to convey. I was convinced that nothing of flesh and blood had entered that house in the hours I had been there. All the entrances were bolted—I had checked. I could not account for the phenomenon, or whatever it was, that had manifested itself, yet I refused to be convinced. I was unwilling to accept what my eyes were seeing and my rational faculties could not explain. She could not be a ghost.

  I said, “Who are you?”

  The figure swayed back as if startled. For a moment I thought she was going to close the attic door, but she remained staring at me, her hand still pressed to her throat. It was the face and form of a young woman, not more than twenty.

  I asked, “Can you speak?”

  She appeared to nod.

  I said, “What are you doing here?”

  She caught her breath. In a strange, half-whispered utterance she said, as if echoing my words, “Who are you?”

  I took a step upward toward her. It evidently frightened her, for she backed away and became almost invisible in the shadowy interior of the attic room. I tried to dredge up some reassuring words. “It’s all right. Believe me, it’s all right.”

  Then I twitched in surprise. Downstairs, the doorbell chimed. After eleven on Christmas Eve!

  I said, “What on earth …?”

  The woman in white whimpered something I couldn’t hear.

  I tried to make light of it. “Santa, I expect.”

  She didn’t react.

  The bell rang a second time.

  “He ought to be using the chimney,” I said. I had already decided to ignore the visitor, whoever it was. One unexpected caller was all I could cope with.

  The young woman spoke up, and the words sprang clearly from her. “For God’s sake, send him away!”

  “You know who it is?”

  “Please! I beg you.”

  “If you know who it is,” I said reasonably, “wouldn’t you like to answer it?”

  “I can’t.”

  The chimes rang out again.

  I said, “Is it someone you know?”

  “Please. Tell him to go away. If you answer the door he’ll go away.”

  I was letting myself be persuaded. I needed her cooperation. I wanted to know about her. “All right,” I relented. “But will you be here when I come back?”

  “I won’t leave.”

  Instinctively I trusted her. I turned and descended the two flights of stairs to the hall. The bell rang again. Even though the house was in darkness, the caller had no intention of giving up.

  I drew back the bolts, opened the front door a fraction, and looked out. A man was on the doorstep, leaning on the iron railing. A young man in a leather jacket glittering with studs and chains. His head was shaven. He, at any rate, looked like flesh and blood. He said, “What kept you?”

  I said, “What do you want?”

  He glared. “For crying out loud—who the hell are you?” His eyes slid sideways, checking the number on the wall.

  I said with frigid courtesy, “I think you must have made a mistake.”

  “No,” he said. “This is the house all right. What’s your game, mate? What are you doing here with the lights off?”

  I told him that I was an observer of psychic phenomena.

  “Come again?”

  “Ghosts,” I said. “This house has the reputation of being haunted. The owners have kindly allowed me to keep watch tonight.”

  “Oh, yes?” he said with heavy skepticism. “Spooks, is it? I’ll have a gander at them meself.” With that, he gave the door a shove. There was no security chain and I was unable to resist the pressure. He stepped across the threshold. “Ghost-buster, are you, mate? You wouldn’t, by any chance, be lifting the family silver at the same time? Anyone else in here?”

  I said, “I take exception to that. You’ve no right to force your way in here.”

  “No more right than you,” he said, stepping past me. “Were you upstairs when I rang?”

  I said, “I’m going to call the police.”

  He flapped his hand dismissively. “Be my guest. I’m going upstairs, right?”

  Sheer panic inspired me to say, “If you do, you’ll be on film.”

  “What?”

  “The cameras are ready to roll,” I lied. “The place is riddled with mikes and tripwires.”

  He said, “I don’t believe you,” but the tone of his voice said the opposite.

  “This ghost is supposed to walk on Christmas Eve,” I told him. “I want to capture it on film.” I gave a special resonance to the word “capture.”

  He said, “You’re round the twist.” And with as much dignity as he could muster he sidled back toward the door, which still stood open. Apparently he was leaving. “You ought to be locked up. You’re a nutcase.”

  As he stepped out of the door I said, “Shall I tell the owners you called? What name shall I give?”

  He swore and turned away. I closed the door and slid the bolts back into place. I was shaking. It had been an ugly, potentially dangerous incident. I’m not so capable of tackling an intruder as I once was and I was thankful that my powers of invention had served me so well.

  I started up the stairs again and as I reached the top of the first flight, the young woman in white was waiting for me. She must have come down two floors to overhear what was being said. This area of the house was better illuminated than the attic stairs, so I got a better look at her. She appeared less ethereal now. Her dress was silk or satin, I observed. It was an evening gown. Her makeup was as pale as a mime artist’s, except for the black liner around her eyes.

  She said, “How can I thank you enough?”

  I answered flatly, “What I want from you, young lady, is an explanation.”

  She crossed her arms, rubbing at her sleeves. “I feel shivery here. Do you mind if we go in there?”

  As we moved into the drawing room I noticed that she made no attempt to switch on the light. She pointed to some cigarettes on the table. “Do you mind?”

  I found some matches by the fireplace and gave her a light. “Who was that at the door?”

  She inhaled hard. “Some guy I met at a party. I was supposed to be with someone else, but we got separated. You know how it is. Next thing I knew, this bloke in the leather jacket was chatting me up. He was all right at first. I didn’t know he was going to come on so strong. I mean I didn’t encourage him. I was trying to cool it. He offered me these tablets, but I refused. He said they would make me relax. By then I was really scared. I moved off fast. The stupid thing was that I moved upstairs. There were plenty of people about, and it seemed the easiest way to go. The bloke followed. He kept on following. I went right to the top of the house and shut myself in a room. I pushed a cupboard against the door. He was beating his fist on the door, saying what he was going to do to me. I was scared out of my skull. All I could think of doing was get through the window, so I did. I climbed out and found myself up there behind the little stone wall.”

  “Of this building? The balustrade at the top?”

  “Didn’t I make that clear? The party was in a house a couple of doors away from you.
I ran along this narrow passageway between the roof and the wall, trying all the windows. The one upstairs was the first one I could shift.”

  “The attic window. Now I understand.” The sudden draft was explained, and the gasp as she had caught her breath after the effort.

  She said, “I’m really grateful.”

  “Grateful?”

  “Grateful to you for getting rid of him.”

  I said, “It would be sensible now to call a taxi. Where do you live?”

  “Not far. I can walk.”

  “It wouldn’t be advisable, would it, after what happened? He’s persistent. He may be waiting.”

  “I didn’t think.” She stubbed the cigarette into an ashtray. After a moment’s reflection she said, “All right. Where’s the phone?”

  There was one in the study. While she was occupied, I gave some thought to what she had said. I didn’t believe a word of it, but I had something vastly more important on my mind.

  She came back into the room. “Ten minutes, they reckon. Was it true what you said downstairs, about this house being haunted?”

  “Mm?” I was still preoccupied.

  “The spook. All that stuff about hidden cameras. Did you mean it?”

  “There aren’t any cameras. I’m useless with machinery of any sort. I reckoned he’d think twice about coming in if he knew he was going to be on film. It was just a bluff.”

  “And the bit about the ghost?”

  “That was true.”

  “Would you mind telling me about it?”

  “Aren’t you afraid of the supernatural?”

  “It’s scary, yes. Not so scary as what happened already. I want to know the story. Christmas Eve is a great night for a ghost story.”

  I said, “It’s more than just a story.”

  “Please.”

  “On one condition. Before you get into that taxi, you tell me the truth about yourself—why you really came into this house tonight.”

  She hesitated.

  I said, “It needn’t go any further.”