The Ghost of Fiddler's Hill: Corazon Books Vintage Romance

by Sheila Burns

  The Ghost of Fiddler’s Hill

  Sheila Burns

  Copyright © The Estate of Sheila Burns 2017

  This edition first published by Corazon Books

  (Wyndham Media Ltd)

  27, Old Gloucester Street, London WC1N 3AX

  www.greatstorieswithheart.com

  First published in Great Britain in 1968 by the author writing as Mary Essex

  The author has asserted her right to be identified as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, organisations and events are a product of the author’s imagination and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, organisations and events is purely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.

  Cover artwork: images © Kiselev Andrey Valerevich and Tim M / Shutterstock

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  from Corazon Books

  Doctor and Debutante by Barbara Blackburn

  The Eyes of Dr Karl by Sheila Burns

  Doctor Called David by Sheila Burns

  Dr Irresistible M.D. by Sheila Burns

  Her Australian Summer (novella) by Jean McConnell

  and many more coming very soon.

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

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  Preview chapter: Doctor Called David by Sheila Burns

  Chapter One

  Lindy yawned.

  She hated late nights at the reception desk of the hotel, but she was a temporary, whilst Miss Herman was in hospital, and dared not complain.

  The country hotel ran on oiled wheels, and she was lucky to be here, would never have got the job save that the management was desperate.

  Fiddler’s Hill had a glorious view of Surrey and of Sussex beyond. The Hog’s Back on one side of it, with the Devil’s Punchbowl seen through the far windows; only the rich stayed here and it was pricey in the extreme. The golf links sprawled to the right of it; in the spacious grounds were tennis courts, and squash courts built on to the hotel, for this place catered for everything.

  Once Lindy had thought it would be a joy to live with really rich people, riches were something that she had never known, but at Fiddler’s Hill she had discovered that they were just like everybody else, only perhaps a bit meaner.

  Lindy was nearing twenty-one.

  She was a quiet girl, thoughtfully-minded, very slender, with light red hair and dark brown eyes that did not really match it. ‘That combination should take you a long way, my girl!’ someone had once said to her, but so far it had taken her exactly nowhere, she would have said. She wore a spruce white blouse, washed every night before she went to bed, and a dark skirt. Her hair stayed as it was, entirely flat without thought of curl or wave, and anyway she could not have spent a fortune on it as some girls did. But she looked lovely.

  Mrs. Burman was the manageress. Mrs. Burman came from nobody knew where, and was of an age which nobody could locate. She had a round squashed-looking little face, minced as she walked, had small slottish eyes, and seldom smiled. Mrs. Burman was a martinet, and a hard driver. She was a magnificent hoteliere, everybody knew that, but she wanted every farthing out of a penny, five of them if she could get them. No nonsense! No funny ways!

  The hall clock warned midnight.

  The big Tudor lounge was now cleared for the night. Davies the porter was going the rounds, emptying ash-trays and tidying the magazines. He also felt in the sides of the red velvet chairs, for occasionally some foolish lady left a handbag, or a note slipped down at a Bridge party.

  Now only the one huge crimson-shaded lamp glowed, and the dark oak panelling made the place seem almost sinister. Lindy had always disliked darkness very much, and although she knew that it could not harm her, she still shrank from it. Davies, on the contrary, rather liked it.

  He had started to whistle now, cocksure that the day was over. The tune was Happy days are here again, which possibly meant that he had had a good find.

  Lindy thought, would happy days ever come to her? She had never really known them yet. One read of house parties, evening parties, exciting theatres, gay young folks’ clubs and such, but her life had none of these. It had boiled down into taking this job, just because she happened to be good at arithmetic. Her education had been scant, she had been very delicate, in and out of hospital, and the memories of that worried her. Today good jobs depended on good qualifications, and Lindy had none of these, just the natural ability to turn three and three into six. This was a temporary job, when it went what would she do, and where would she go next?

  She had hoped that Mrs. Burman would like her and help her to another hotel job, but Mrs. Burman never liked her employees on principle; she was coldly indifferent to them, and believed this to be the only way to treat them.

  Out of the distance Lindy heard the sound of an approaching car coming from Guildford way. It turned in at the big gates between the hotel grounds and the golf links which lay beyond the fencing. The sound increased. Then suddenly, when it was almost outside the door, there was the sound of a crash, a car shuddering, and a man’s voice saying ‘Damn!’ loudly.

  ‘Davies?’ Lindy called. ‘You’d better go out and see what’s happened.’

  ‘Righty-ho, miss!’ but he didn’t hurry.

  When he got to the door and opened it, there came a rush of cold springtime air, which always seems to have the memory of frost in it. Lindy waited. A young man came in. He was tall and very slender, and the first thing Lindy noticed particularly about him was that his hair was the colour of a new barnstack. It was pale corn. It was unusual to see a man with such very fair hair. He would be in the late twenties perhaps, but could be older, and was a man of the world. The stern straight line of a mouth showed that he was a force to be reckoned with, and she knew that he was furiously angry by the way he came stalking in at the big door.

  ‘Can I help you, sir?’ and she craned forward across the counter with the usual solicitation which had been taught to her by Mrs. Burman. Mrs. Burman insisted on good manners, though her own were simply not there when she got annoyed.

  Plainly the young man had not expected Lindy to be here, nor had he thought that it would be somebody young at this hour of night. The stranger paused for a moment, then pulled himself together and said, ‘You’ve got a room free?’

  ‘One moment, sir.’

  Lindy opened the big book because that always looked well, and it was the right thing to do, though she knew perfectly well
that the only vacant room was that quite awful little attic, and was hardly the sort of accommodation that this type of visitor would expect. To make matters worse he stood there drumming on the sill of the reception office, impatient to get the matter settled.

  He went on with details. ‘Private bathroom, please, with shower, if you can do it.’

  There was not a shower in the place, but Lindy spoke quite mechanically when she said, ‘Yes, of course, sir,’ in the agreeable way which she considered to be proper.

  ‘Go and have a look at that ruddy car,’ he said to Davies with a jerk of his head.

  Davies had already gone, but almost as though he had heard this royal command, he came springing back. There was nothing that Davies adored more than a thrill, and now almost at midnight something had actually happened. Usually Fiddler’s Hill was too darned dull for him, and that was his one complaint about it.

  ‘You’ve got a petrol leak, sir, a real beauty. It stinks something awful, and it’s running like a tap all over our drive. You push her into the side of the hotel, sir, it’s in the way where it is, difficult for other cars to see it, and the manageress don’t like trouble.’

  The stranger let out one of the ruder oaths, and Lindy pretended that she had not heard it.

  ‘Most unfortunate, being so late, sir,’ she said with amiable simplicity.

  The two men went outside together, and she could hear them talking, but not what they said; then she heard the sound of the car being shoved out of the way and on to the piece of rough grass at the side.

  They returned.

  ‘That’s about torn it,’ he said. ‘You’ll simply have to give me a room for the night.’

  Lindy felt rather helpless, for nobody had ever really liked the attic and this was all she had. It was cold. Cars driving in at the gateway flashed their lights on to the windows so that they were awakened and nobody likes that. It was so absurdly small that how he would get his luggage into it, she could not imagine.

  ‘Well, what about it?’ he asked.

  ‘The trouble is that we’ve only got the one room free, and it ‒ it isn’t a very nice room, sir,’ Lindy explained.

  ‘I thought this was a four-star hotel?’

  ‘I’m afraid we’ve only got three stars,’ she corrected him. ‘I wish we could do better, but it truly is the only one we’ve got. Would you like to see it?’

  ‘It’s not on the third floor?’

  It WAS the third floor, of course. Davies then butted in. He had a positive genius for putting awkward situations right by coming in with one of his prize remarks. ‘Shall I get you a Scotch, sir? It always helps. Maybe we could scratch you up a bit of supper?’

  Obviously this was dead right.

  Whilst he got the Scotch, Lindy escorted the stranger up the stairs. He jibbed at the second flight, and yet again she had to maintain that it was this or nothing, for it was all that they had.

  The room was diminutive, little more than a large cupboard, and not for the world dare she admit that the bathroom was the whole length of the hotel away, for there were only three of them to the top floor, and idiotically arranged side by side.

  The young man looked at it, plainly loathed it, but knew that there was no alternative. ‘All right,’ he said, ‘get the luggage sent up for me, do.’

  ‘Is there anything else I can do, sir?’

  ‘The man said something about some supper. I haven’t had a mouthful, come all the way from Bristol. If there is a bite going I’d bless you for it.’

  ‘I’ll get you some sandwiches, it is about all that I can do, but I’ll be as quick as I can.’

  The hall clock was striking the half-hour when they came down again. She ran on ahead to hurry about the sandwiches and met Davies coming up with the remarkably good leather luggage, initialled S.L.

  In a sotto voce Davies said, ‘We’ve got something here! This is the goods!’ and he tapped the handsome bag and grinned. ‘There’s always more when they have this sort of bag!’

  Lindy ran down and through the reception office into the kitchen. It was left tidied for the night, with the thirty breakfast trays for those who had breakfast in bed, and there looked to be half an acre of early morning teas. Cook had also got the stove ready for breakfast, though few people ever ate it downstairs at this hotel.

  Lindy raided the bread bin and brought out a sliced sandwich loaf, which was one help; there was also a ham in the larder. She had frequently had to cut sandwiches in her life and was accustomed to the job, though she loathed it. She did it quickly, all of them manly sandwiches with mustard. She put a piece of parsley on top to give them an air, and handed them to Davies who had appeared to enquire how they were getting on as ‘the gent is a bit impatient’.

  ‘You take them along right now,’ she said. Suddenly she felt tired. She was the sort of girl who easily tired, it had troubled her all her life. That had been the main reason why she had not done well at school, and had never been able to keep a job very long. It seemed that her whole body slackened off, went limp, and she could do little more.

  She had come to Fiddler’s Hill hotel to a temporary job, one of the few bits of luck she had had. Her friend Elaine Herman had held it down for some months, then had gone off with a really furious appendix. Every complication had occurred. Elaine had suggested to the frantic management that Lindy could do the job in her absence, and the letter when it came to Lindy had made it sound most exciting. A three-star country hotel, where only the rich stayed, a hotel that had everything. Golf links surrounded it, there were grass and hard tennis courts, and a swimming pool for the summer months. It had indeed sounded good.

  ‘I’ll come,’ Lindy had said, and she had thanked her lucky stars.

  That was before she got there.

  When she did arrive it was quite true that Fiddler’s Hill had everything that Elaine had mentioned, but the people staying there vied with Methuselah. They were rich people, older people, people who always wanted their way and fought to get it. It was true that they had visiting sons and daughters, but all the men seemed to be married to sturdy wives. The idea of meeting delightful people, perhaps the lover of all lovers, had vanished in the first week, for Fiddler’s Hill did not cater for that sort of adventure.

  It should have been Lindy’s big chance, and it was not going to be a chance at all. There was also the manageress, and Mrs. Burman was, as Davies said, ‘not everybody’s cup of tea’. What would she say when it was discovered in the morning that last night Lindy had let the worst bedroom in the place to a young man with white leather luggage?

  ‘He’s ever so rich.’ This was Davies come back to the kitchen, his cockney face screwed into the eternal grin. He had about him that attractive quality of eager delight which one associates with Bow bells. ‘I opened his bag for him, and he gives me five bob! Five bob! Blimey, usually it’s half a crown. Tortoiseshell brushes with gold initials on them. I told you we’d got something here. A fair treat, I’d say.’

  ‘Well, don’t help yourself to any of it,’ and Lindy laughed. The whole world knew that Davies’s fingers were light as love, and into most pockets and ladies’ handbags.

  He pretended not to have heard that remark. ‘Wonderful stuff up there! It makes you think. Rich as they come, I’d say. You should see that car of his! Blimey! Every penny of two thousand, if you ask me.’ And then, as there came the sound of a chair scraping back in the lounge, ‘Look out! He’s coming along.’

  Lindy saw the stranger come back to the office looking refreshed, attractive, and yet half of her was afraid of him. It was absurd, for there was nothing sinister about him.

  ‘I forgot to register,’ he said.

  ‘My fault, sir, most remiss of me.’ What had she been thinking about? she wondered, for that was usually the first thing she did. She opened the big register at the right place, and offered the pen which never wrote properly. He took it and scrawled his name. Sir Simon Leeson, Bart. He gave a place name in Essex, and the name of his ho
me was Fiddler’s Hill! Again she was half afraid of him, strangely and contradictorily so.

  ‘Another Fiddler’s Hill?’ she said.

  ‘Yes, indeed. It’s a small world, isn’t it? I bought the place, the people living there left it to ruin. It has a heavenly view.’

  ‘We have a good view from this hotel, sir, you’ll see it tomorrow. The Hog’s Back, the Devil’s Punchbowl. It’s quite a remarkable view.’

  ‘One day I’ll show you the most remarkable view in England,’ he told her.

  It meant nothing, of course. She would never see the other Fiddler’s Hill, the one in Essex, and she smiled and said, ‘Thank you, Sir Simon.’

  ‘Those sandwiches. Were you the dear person who got them for me? I was utterly ravenous.’

  ‘The cooks had gone, and it wasn’t difficult to make them,’ she explained.

  ‘You make excellent sandwiches for you don’t forget the mustard, which a lot of people do.’

  ‘I hate them without mustard myself.’

  He opened a gold cigarette case, and offered it to her; when she refused he took one himself and lit it with a gold lighter. It must be quite beautiful to be all gold like chocolates, she thought.

  ‘What are you doing here, and where do you come from?’ he asked. ‘And do you like the job?’

  No one had asked her these things ever since she had come here, and somehow she had never thought that they would. She had been in the desperate position of requiring to earn money, as she explained. She had nothing of her own, just nothing at all.

  ‘Your people?’ he asked, not with unpleasant curiosity but with kind interest. She sensed that.

  She had no people. Quite truthfully she told him that she had arrived out of wedlock and been left on a doorstep; her mother had died when she was born and she would never know the name she had borne. She had been kept in a home for some weeks, then adopted by two simple suburban people who badly wanted a babe of their own. Later they rather wished that they had had a boy, and she half felt that they reproached her for this.

  When the woman died, after a time the man married again, and then Lindy had realised that she was in the way.