by Robert Wilde
Bhavsar had parked up and Pohl followed, the front of the house now looking full with three cars, and as Pohl exited Bhavsar came over.
“I’m sure my sister will be out soon,” he said, just as the door opened on well-oiled hinges and a female version of Bhavsar came out, although she wore a combination of British and Indian dress, while the doctor was still purely in a suit.
“Professor Pohl,” he said formally, “I’d like to introduce you to my sister, Ms. Bhavsar.”
Pohl stuck her hand out to shake it, and Ms. Bhavsar did so slowly and carefully. There was no real strength in the hand, which was interesting as the woman looked capable and tough.
“Very kind of you to come Professor, I hope your stay in my home is a fruitful one.”
“Indeed,” Pohl smiled warmly.
“Let’s show you to your room so you get begin settling in.”
Pohl nodded agreement, and the doctor picked her bags from out of her back seat and they went inside. The house was furnished as if anything later than the fifties had never happened, and Pohl wanted to ask if this was a style issue or just an inherited inside, but she’d already spied Ms. Bhavsar carefully looking at her and decided to leave it for now in favour of something less controversial.
“When did you buy the house?” Pohl asked.
“Twenty years ago my… husband and I bought it.” She did not sound pleased to say the word.
“Who owned it before?”
“The previous owner had lived here since the 1930s. A widow.”
“I see. What was she called?”
“Mr. Moore.”
“Oh, right, I was expecting...”
“Here we are.”
A heavy wooden door was opened and Pohl was soon entering a marvellously antiquated bedroom. It looked like no one had slept here for decades, but it had always been kept ready just in case.
“I’ll prepare you a snack,” Ms. Bhavsar said, and the doctor closed the door as brother and sister left.
Pohl unzipped one case and put Joe’s box on the table. “Is it haunted?” she asked.
“Oh it’s haunted all right, there’s this girl who’s followed us about and keeps staring.”
“Excellent, she can tell us…”
“Actually, small problem there. She doesn’t want to talk. In fact she sticks her tongue out and refuses.”
Two motorcars chuntered up the drive and came to rest in front of a Georgian house which had been carefully prepared for new arrivals. In the front vehicle, which was of a more modest cost, rode the letting agent, who now climbed out with his regulation smile, ready to introduce the new owners to their bricks and mortar. In the second vehicle rode the Moore family, constituted as it now was.
Mr Moore was driving, and he was last out, because a side door allowed Mrs Moore to stand on her gravel drive, and behind her the daughters eagerly exited. There was Mary, the taller and older, and she stared suspiciously at the building, while Tabatha bounded over and laid a hand on the warm stone.
“It’s lovely!” Tabatha exclaimed to leave no one in doubt.
“I’m glad you think so,” the Agent said, hoping the happiness of his new step child would warm up both Mr Moore, who’d been a little apprehensive at the cost, and his blood daughter Mary, who always scowled at him.
“It really is wonderful,” Mrs Moore said, and she joined her daughter in touching the stone. She wasn’t sure what she was meant to feel, but it did seem like home.
“The place has been fully cleaned and renovated?” Mr Moore asked, a man who would rather have lived where a full cleaning hadn’t been necessary.
“Indeed it has sir, indeed it has. I know you have been guided round, but why don’t you let me give you a full tour of the building, because I know your daughters have yet to really see it.”
Mrs Moore smiled, turned and said “come on Tabatha.” She took her mother’s hand and they followed Mr Moore and the Agent as they entered into the building. Feeling every ounce of having not been called by name, Mary followed her hated sister into the building, trailing a few deliberate feet behind, as she began to make her own judgement on what she was seeing, and how they would live. Maybe, if she prayed really hard, Tabatha would fall down the new stairs and break her neck, and her mother would die of grief. Although, she supposed, it wasn’t god who would answer such a prayer, so she must pray to the devil, even though no one had ever taught her how to attract his attention. Perhaps it was the same prayer, just with the names changed? That seemed awfully simple, and adults made church seem awfully complicated, so the answer must be somewhere else.
Ms. Bhavsar might have been intolerant of young people, but by god she could cook. This was Professor Pohl’s conclusion when she carried her work bag down the stairs, found her way to the kitchen, and discovered the snack promised was a fully fledged meal of a kind Pohl had never seen before and doubted she’d ever taste so fine again. It was heaven on a plate, and there were lots of plates, and by the time Pohl had finished she really wanted a nap instead of doing any work, which was unfortunate because the good doctor wanted to show her the archive immediately.
Unable to think of a good reason to slip off and sleep off the meal, Pohl agreed to start searching, and just silently thanked fortune that she’d be enjoying these meals for the foreseeable future. They were soon climbing stairs, and they came to a door that obviously spent most of its time shut. Ms. Bhavsar allowed her brother to push the creaking door open, and Pohl gasped, because it was filled with racks of shelves, and every inch was filled with brown folders or brown boxes. A small room, a lot of reading material.
“This is impressive, when I saw the house I thought the archive would be far smaller.”
“Yes, we don’t know how much of it there is, but we estimate a lot.” The doctor was smiling.
“There was something I never got around to asking. Is there any reason you didn’t go through the archive yourself?”
“Yes, a very good one. Do step in and see if you can see it.”
Knowing she was being tested, and considering this only fair after doing it to students, Pohl stepped in and started to read the labels to orient herself. She soon realised, and exclaimed “everything’s in Latin!”
“Yes,” the doctor confirmed, “Mr Moore, who owned this house, kept records on everything, including the news, but he wrote and rewrote it all in Latin, including the news! Neither my sister nor I are well versed enough to go through this archive, but you, professor, are.”
Pohl beamed with pride. “I translate into Latin for fun. I can translate out of it.”
“Good, good. The archive is yours, go through as you wish, and see if you can answer our questions. My sister and I will never be far away if you need assistance.”
The doctor and his rather silent sister left, and Pohl looked round the room. This was going to… the door shut behind her.
Pohl turned, and jumped slightly, as she wasn’t alone in the room. A young girl was standing behind her, about thirteen, dressed in clothes Pohl identified from the twenties and thirties. She was smart, black haired, and was staring with such a look of intense enquiry that Pohl felt not just nervous, but positively frisked. Then, without any warning, the girl vanished, and Pohl was staring at a wooden door.
So, Pohl thought, this was going to be interesting.
Mr and Mrs Moore had been shown around their house, and they had to admit the maids who’d been sent in to clean had done a wonderful job, as the house was, as they say, spotless, and there was a faint smell of soap everywhere they went. They could truly move in here, truly bind their two widowed families together, truly unite. It was smart, contained just the right amount of gravitas, and a clear statement of wealth and intent. What more could any couple really want?
It wasn’t just the house. Their land extended behind the building, carrying on flatly through garden and field, until it fell away and came to a river, which marked the boundary. A lovely spot, and one Mrs Moore intended to sit at an
d paint as often as she could. Tabatha would, of course, continue her lessons from her mother. Mr Moore reflected warmly on how he would be able to come wandering down here and find the pair.
Behind them, still up the hill, Mary stood and silently raged, a body torn up by spite and hate.
Soon they returned inside, the agent left, and a large van arrived with their belongings. Men were directed to the many parts of the house carrying boxes, and Mr Moore made sure neither he, nor his wife, nor his children, carried one thing. Instead they directed the removal men, until the house was filled. However, the process hadn’t finished when the doorbell rang, and a curious Mr Moore went to see the culprit.
“Ah, you’re early!”
“I thought I should come and greet you as you move in!”
The newcomer was asked to wait there, and Mr Moore called his daughters together in what would be his study, and stood them behind the wooden table piled with boxes.
“Your mother and I have decided that, to help your education, we will hire a tutor to assist in polishing up the skills you both fell behind in while…” he couldn’t talk of his wife’s death, nor of Mrs Moore’s husband, nor of the events that led to the two meeting and marrying. It was too raw, so he simply said “things occurred. To this end, I have hired the perfect tutor, and he is waiting outside. Mr Johnson, please come in.”
A tall man with sandy blonde hair and a slightly crooked smile came in, wearing a suit that had clearly been cut well and exuding an energy for education which children of any generation found disconcerting.
“Hello, I’m Mr Johnson,” he said, which to Mary’s mind was unnecessary. “I’m going to be teaching you.”
He looked at young Tabatha, awkward and growing, and saw her smile at him. Then he looked at Mary, only a few years older, and wasn’t quite saw how to react to the look she was giving him. It didn’t look happy, it didn’t look sad. It just looked, well, somehow purposeful and portentous. Still, a teacher’s job was to get through to people.
“Did you see that?” was all Pohl could say as she stood there, but she got only silence in return. Then she realised the problem, so she went to her work bag. This was a specially constructed bag which had room for books, notepads and other research essentials, but which had a zipping section in which you could store Joe’s box. This was now removed from the bag, and Pohl flicked on the switch that let it work.
“You don’t have to keep turning me off you know.”
“Sorry. But…”
“You saw a ghost!”
“I saw a real bloody ghost!”
Well, Joe thought, she must be excited if she’s swearing. “She looked like a teenage girl?”
“Young teenage, but well dressed and arranged. Yes, yes I did. Is that the one who haunts here and refuses to talk to you?”
“That’s her, but she must want something if she’s willing to appear to you.”
“How can she do that?”
“I have no idea, I certainly haven’t worked out how. Then again, she’s been here a while.”
“You think so?”
“I suspect she looks like that because she died looking like that. Then her soul grabbed hold of these walls and wouldn’t let her go.”
Pohl looked thoughtful. “Died looking like that? That puts her in the thirties. Hmm, if she died young there’s bound to be some reference to it in this room. Mr Moore lived a long time, you’d think the death of a girl from his era in his house would merit a considerable place in the archive. In fact you’d think it was impossible not to find it.”
Pohl started scanning the shelves. “Can I help?” Joe asked.
“Keep an eye on whether she comes near.”
“Can you open the door then?”
“We’ve really got to get you looking through things. Really we do.” But the door was opened, and Pohl began looking. She took one likely box off the shelf, opened it up, and found it was packed with little notebooks. It took some force to prise a few up and out, and Pohl opened them heavy with anticipation.
“These are… these are… wow, he wrote down everything he ever spent money on.”
“Lots of people keep accounts.” Joe wondered where the scorn was coming from.
“This doesn’t list the sum of shopping on the 28th, it lists the items. 2 pints of milk, price together and singly. Price of a ball of yarn.”
“Okay, that is a bit freaky.”
“This looked likely, so maybe the one next to it…” Pohl took down another box, opened it, and found it filled with hardback A4 notebooks. Pohl opened one, and discovered it was filled with newspaper articles that had been translated and written in. This volume concerned a court case.
“Oh my god,” Pohl exclaimed.
“What?”
“Tabatha Moore was murdered by her tutor.”
“What?”
“Here it is, all this volume, it’s about the trial. He killed her after, after, you know what.”
Mary rose, opened her curtains, and decided it was a lovely day. A perfect day, so she dressed as smartly as her stepmother insisted, then went downstairs and joined the family breakfast. The girls had an hour before their tutoring was to start, because Mr Moore insisted the girls take a stamina boosting walk, and Mr Johnson said it stimulated blood flow and prepared the girls for thinking. Soon they had put their boots on, and with the sun high in the sky Mary led Tabatha out and across the Moore estate.
They stopped to look at the trees, examine the flowers, deduce what the gardener had done on his last visit, until they walked to the river. It was such a lovely hot day that Tabatha lent down to put her hand in the water, a frequent affectation, and she laughed to feel the liquid flow over her. Mary pulled out a black glove she had stolen from the house and picked up a stone she had spied weeks before, walked over to Tabatha, and struck her with it as hard as she could on the temple. As her step sister fell Mary struck again and again, until the rock was bloody and Tabatha’s head was cracked, and then Mary took out the pen knife she’d stolen was Mr. Johnson’s room and used it to cut and fold back Mary’s dress until her genitals were exposed. Mary now dropped the glove and the knife, and walked back up to the house.
An hour later Mrs. Moore made a discovery, and shortly after the police arrived. Mr Johnson was arrested in short order and taken to the station, where he gave his whereabouts but could provide no witnesses.
“So you claim you were in your room the whole morning?”
“Yes, yes!”
“And you didn’t take a glove, and your knife, and murder Tabatha Moore and then do god knows what you did over her corpse?”
“This is preposterous! What evidence do you have really? No fingerprints, no sightings, nothing. You are ruining my good name because someone, anyone stole my knife!”
“Mr. Johnson, we do have a witness. Mary Moore saw you leave the house that morning and head down to where Tabatha was, by the river.”
“Mary? Mary said what?”
There was a trial, of course there was, but the result was never in much doubt, and the papers made sure Mr. Johnson would have been lynched had he been freed. But he wasn’t, and a few months later he was marched through a prison, a rope was placed over his neck, and he was dropped, killing him instantly. The general public cheered, and the community of hate gradually broke up as people moved onto other horrors.
Back at her house, a place now filled with sorrow, Mary Moore would smile to herself in private. Her father was coming back to her, coming right back like she had planned.
Pohl had gone to tea, but had been back in the archive that evening, reading by electrical light. She went through the entire account of Mr. Johnson’s trial, which was conveyed across the ages thanks to the newspaper, but also small essays which Mr Moore had added. At first these had been clear and logical, even forensic, but over time had degraded, presumably as Mr Moore’s mind had too under the strain. His words grew haunting, with a power to affect that hadn’t dimmed over time but had never
been unleashed in his own. They had, perhaps, been wasted, until Pohl had found them.
Pohl had retreated to bed in the early hours of the morning knowing the mystery could have been solved. But there was something nagging away in her mind, and when she rose and went back to the archive, where Joe had been waiting – neither wished to have him in the bedroom – she asked “has that girl spoken yet?”
“No, no she hasn’t. Are you going to tell Bhavsar what you’ve found?”
“No, no I’m not. Not yet. There’s something unusual here, something we’ve not realised.”
“Tabatha was killed in this house, in the right years, and now haunts it. You’ve seen her. Do we really need to spend any more time here?”
“Well, the food is wonderful, that’s worth staying until tomorrow. But yes, yes there is something else. The ghost, the one we’re seeing, it’s not Tabatha. I’ve had children Joe, I mostly watched them grow, and the girl we’re seeing is older and more mature than the Tabatha we’ve found described. It’s not her at all. If anything, it’s like I’d imagine Mary to be.”
“Oh, err....”
“So if you could get a name that would be…”
“She’s here.”
Pohl spun round, and the girl was stood staring at them. The professor tilted her head, certain that this ghost was older, and that look in her eyes… it was strange, but Pohl felt she’d passed some sort of test. She felt like one of her pupils who’d passed an exam no one had shown her.
The ghost vanished soon after, and Pohl commenced her look through the archives. Mr Moore’s diaries were somewhere in here, but Pohl had only found earlier ones where both girls were still alive, and one before then which recounted how the first Mrs Moore had died from a fall while riding. On such small things are lives started and lost.
Pohl wasn’t searching alone. The ghost made frequent, if irregular visits, but they weren’t contained in the archive. Whenever Pohl went somewhere new, the ghost was there to greet her, and repeat physical visits could often bring a spiritual one, but the look on her face was usually one of reproach unless Pohl was battling through the records, in which case the look was more of a games master wondering how their players would handle the next jump. Seeing her was a strange, otherworldly sensation, and Pohl presumed that was exactly how it should be.