Short Stories

by Agatha Christie

  But of course it is all nonsense! Everything can be accounted for quite naturally. That the doctor believed in Sister Marie Angelique's hallucinations merely proves that his mind, too, was slightly unbalanced.

  Yet sometimes I dream of a continent under the seas where men once lived and attained to a degree of civilization far ahead of ours...

  Or did Sister Marie Angelique remember backwards - as some say is possible - and is this City of the Circles in the future and not the past? Nonsense - of course the whole thing was mere hallucination!

  THE LAMP

  It was undoubtedly an old house. The whole square was old, with that disapproving dignified old age often met with in a cathedral town. But No. 19 gave the impression of an elder among elders; it had a veritable patriarchal solemnity; it towered greyest of the grey, haughtiest of the haughty, chillest of the chill. Austere, forbidding, and stamped with that particular desolation attaching to all houses that have been long untenanted, it reigned above the other dwellings. In any other town it would have been freely labelled "haunted," but Weyminster was averse from ghosts and considered them hardly respectable except as the appanage of a "county family." So No. 19 was never alluded to as a haunted house; but nevertheless it remained, year after year, "To Be Let or Sold." Mrs Lancaster looked at the house with approval as she drove up with the talkative house agent, who was in an unusually hilarious mood at the idea of getting No. 19 off his books. He inserted the key in the door without ceasing his appreciative comments.

  "How long has the house been empty?" inquired Mrs Lancaster, cutting short his flow of language rather brusquely.

  Mr Raddish (of Raddish and Foplow) became slightly confused.

  "Er - er - some time," he remarked blandly.

  "So I should think," said Mrs Lancaster dryly.

  The dimly lighted hall was chill with a sinister chill. A more imaginative woman might have shivered, but this woman happened to be eminently practical. She was tall, with much dark brown hair just tinged with grey and rather cold blue eyes.

  She went over the house from attic to cellar, asking a pertinent question from time to time. The inspection over, she came back into one of the front rooms looking out on the square and faced the agent with a resolute mien.

  "What is the matter with the house?"

  Mr Raddish was taken by surprise.

  "Of course, an unfurnished house is always a little gloomy," he parried feebly.

  "Nonsense," said Mrs Lancaster. "The rent is ridiculously low for such a house - purely nominal. There must be some reason for it. I suppose the house is haunted?"

  Mr Raddish gave a nervous little start but said nothing.

  Mrs Lancaster eyed him keenly. After a few moments she spoke again.

  "Of course that is all nonsense. I don't believe in ghosts or anything of that sort, and personally it is no deterrent to my taking the house; but servants, unfortunately, are very credulous and easily frightened. It would be kind of you to tell me exactly what - what thing is supposed to haunt this place."

  "I - er - really don't know," stammered the house agent.

  "I am sure you must," said the lady quietly. "I cannot take the house without knowing. What was it? A murder?"

  "Oh, no!" cried Mr Raddish, shocked by the idea of anything so alien to the respectability of the square. "It's - it's - only a child."

  "A child?"

  "Yes."

  "I don't know the story exactly," he continued reluctantly. "Of course, there are all kinds of different versions, but I believe that about thirty years ago a man going by the name of Williams took Number Nineteen.

  Nothing was known of him; he kept no servants; he had no friends; he seldom went out in the daytime. He had one child, a little boy. After he had been there about two months, he went up to London, and had barely set foot in the metropolis before he was recognized as being a man 'wanted' by the police on some charge - exactly what, I do not know. But it must have been a grave one, because, sooner than give himself up, he shot himself. Meanwhile, the child lived on here, alone in the house. He had food for a little time, and he waited day after day for his father's return. Unfortunately, it had been impressed upon him that he was never under any circumstances to go out of the house or to speak to anyone. He was a weak, ailing, little creature, and did not dream of disobeying this command. In the night, the neighbours, not knowing that his father had gone away, often heard him sobbing in the awful loneliness and desolation of the empty house."

  Mr Raddish paused.

  "And - er - the child starved to death," he concluded in the same tones as he might have announced that it had just begun to rain.

  "And it is the child's ghost that is supposed to haunt the place?" asked Mrs Lancaster.

  "It is nothing of consequence really," Mr Raddish hastened to assure her. "There's nothing seen, not seen, only people say, ridiculous, of course, but they do say they hear - the child - crying, you know."

  Mrs Lancaster moved towards the front door.

  "I like the house very much," she said. "I shall get nothing as good for the price. I will think it over and let you know."

  "It really looks very cheerful, doesn't it, Papa?"

  Mrs Lancaster surveyed her new domain with approval. Gay rugs, wellpolished furniture, and many knickknacks, had quite transformed the gloomy aspect of No. 19.

  She spoke to a thin, bent old man with stooping shoulders and a delicate mystical face. Mr Winburn did not resemble his daughter; indeed no greater contrast could be imagined than that presented by her resolute practicalness and his dreamy abstraction.

  "Yes," he answered with a smile, "no one would dream the house was haunted."

  "Papa, don't talk nonsense! On our first day, too."

  Mr Winburn smiled.

  "Very well, my dear, we will agree that there are no such things as ghosts."

  "And please," continued Mrs Lancaster, "don't say a word before Geoff.

  He's so imaginative."

  Geoff was Mrs Lancaster's little boy. The family consisted of Mr Winburn, his widowed daughter, and Geoffrey.

  Rain had begun to beat against the window - pitter-patter, pitter-patter.

  "Listen," said Mr Winburn. "Is it not like little footsteps?"

  "It's more like rain," said Mrs Lancaster, with a smile.

  "But that, that is a footstep," cried her father, bending forward to listen.

  Mrs Lancaster laughed outright.

  "That's Geoff coming downstairs."

  Mr Winburn was obliged to laugh, too. They were having tea in the hall, and he had been sitting with his back to the staircase. He now turned his chair round to face it.

  Little Geoffrey was coming down, rather slowly and sedately, with a child's awe of a strange place. The stairs were of polished oak, uncarpeted. He came across and stood by his mother. Mr Winburn gave a slight start. As the child was crossing the floor, he distinctly heard another pair of footsteps on the stairs, as of someone following Geoffrey. Dragging footsteps, curiously painful they were. Then he shrugged his shoulders incredulously. "The rain, no doubt," he thought.

  "I'm looking at the sponge cakes," remarked Geoff with the admirably detached air of one who points out an interesting fact.

  His mother hastened to comply with the hint.

  "Well, Sonny, how do you like your new home?" she asked.

  "Lots," replied Geoffrey with his mouth generously filled. "Pounds and pounds and pounds." After this last assertion, which was evidently expressive of the deepest contentment, he relapsed into silence, only anxious to remove the sponge cake from the sight of man in the least time possible.

  Having bolted the last mouthful, he burst forth into speech.

  "Oh! Mummy, there's attics here, Jane says; and can I go at once and eggzplore them? And there might be a secret door. Jane says there isn't, but I think there must be, and, anyhow, I know there'll be pipes, water pipes (with a face full of ecstasy), and can I play with them, and, oh! can I go and see the boi-i-ler?" He
spun out the last word with such evident rapture that his grandfather felt ashamed to reflect that this peerless delight of childhood only conjured up to his imagination the picture of hot water that wasn't hot, and heavy and numerous plumber's bills.

  "We'll see about the attics tomorrow, darling," said Mrs Lancaster.

  "Suppose you fetch your bricks and build a nice house, or an engine."

  "Don't want to build an 'ouse."

  "House."

  "House, or h'engine h'either."

  "Build a boiler," suggested his grandfather.

  Geoffrey brightened.

  "With pipes?"

  "Yes, lots of pipes."

  Geoffrey ran away happily to fetch his bricks.

  The rain was still falling. Mr Winburn listened. Yes, it must have been the rain he had heard; but it did sound like footsteps.

  He had a queer dream that night.

  He dreamt that he was walking through a town, a great city it seemed to him. But it was a children's city; there were no grown-up people there, nothing but children, crowds of them. In his dream they all rushed to the stranger crying: "Have you brought him?" It seemed that he understood what they meant and shook his head sadly. When they saw this, the children turned away and began to cry, sobbing bitterly.

  The city and the children faded away and he awoke to find himself in bed, but the sobbing was still in his ears. Though wide awake, he heard it distinctly; and he remembered that Geoffrey slept on the floor below, while this sound of a child's sorrow descended from above. He sat up and struck a match. Instantly the sobbing ceased.

  Mr Winburn did not tell his daughter of the dream or its sequel. That it was no trick of his imagination, he was convinced; indeed soon afterwards he heard it again in the daytime. The wind was howling in the chimney but this was a separate sound - distinct, unmistakable: pitiful little heartbroken sobs.

  He found out, too, that he was not the only one to hear them. He overheard the housemaid saying to the parlourmaid that she "didn't think as that there nurse was kind to Master Geoffrey, she'd 'eard 'im crying 'is little 'eart out only that very morning." Geoffrey had come down to breakfast and lunch beaming with health and happiness; and Mr Winburn knew that it was not Geoff who had been crying, but that other child whose dragging footsteps had startled him more than once.

  Mrs Lancaster alone never heard anything. Her ears were not perhaps attuned to catch sounds from another world.

  Yet one day she also received a shock.

  "Mummy," said Geoff plaintively. "I wish you'd let me play with that little boy."

  Mrs Lancaster looked up from her writing table with a smile.

  "What little boy, dear?"

  "I don't know his name. He was in a attic, sitting on the floor crying, but he ran away when he saw me. I suppose he was shy (with slight contempt), not like a big boy, and then, when I was in the nursery building, I saw him standing in the door watching me build, and he looked so awful lonely and as though he wanted to play wiv me. I said:

  'Come and build a h'engine,' but he didn't say nothing, just looked as as though he saw a lot of chocolates, and his mummy had told him not to touch them." Geoff sighed, sad personal reminiscences evidently recurring to him. "But when I asked Jane who he was and told her I wanted to play wiv him, she said there wasn't no little boy in the 'ouse and not to tell naughty stories. I don't love Jane at all."

  Mrs Lancaster got up.

  "Jane was right. There was no little boy."

  "But I saw him. Oh! Mummy, do let me play wiv him, he did look so awful lonely and unhappy. I do want to do something to 'make him better.'"

  Mrs Lancaster was about to speak again, but her father shook his head.

  "Geoff," he said very gently, "that poor little boy is lonely, and perhaps you may do something to comfort him; but you must find out how by yourself - like a puzzle - do you see?"

  "Is it because I am getting big I must do it all my lone?"

  "Yes, because you are getting big."

  As the boy left the room, Mrs Lancaster turned to her father impatiently.

  "Papa, this is absurd. To encourage the boy to believe the servants' idle tales!"

  "No servant has told the child anything," said the old man gently. "He's seen - what I hear, what I could see perhaps if I were his age."

  "But it's such nonsense! Why don't I see it or hear it?"

  Mr Winburn smiled, a curiously tired smile, but did not reply.

  "Why?" repeated his daughter. "And why did you tell him he could help the - the - thing. It's - it's all so impossible."

  The old man looked at her with his thoughtful glance.

  "Why not?" he said. "Do you remember these words:

  "What Lamp has Destiny to guide Her little Children stumbling in the Dark?"

  "A Blind Understanding," Heaven replied.

  "Geoffrey has that - a blind understanding. All children possess it. It is only as we grow older that we lose it, that we cast it away from us.

  Sometimes, when we are quite old, a faint gleam comes back to us, but the Lamp burns brightest in childhood. That is why I think Geoffrey may help."

  "I don't understand," murmured Mrs Lancaster feebly.

  "No more do I. That - that child is in trouble and wants - to be set free.

  But how? I do not know, but - it's awful to think of it - sobbing its heart out - a child."

  A month after this conversation Geoffrey fell very ill. The east wind had been severe, and he was not a strong child. The doctor shook his head and said that it was a grave case. To Mr Winburn he divulged more and confessed that the case was quite hopeless. "The child would never have lived to grow up, under any circumstances," he added. "There has been serious lung trouble for a long time."

  It was when nursing Geoff that Mrs Lancaster became aware of that other child. At first the sobs were an indistinguishable part of the wind, but gradually they became more distinct, more unmistakable. Finally she heard them in moments of dead calm: a child's sobs - dull, hopeless, heartbroken.

  Geoff grew steadily worse and in his delirium he spoke of the "little boy" again and again. "I do want to help him get away, I do!" he cried.

  Succeeding the delirium there came a state of lethargy. Geoffrey lay very still, hardly breathing, sunk in oblivion. There was nothing to do but wait and watch. Then there came a still night, dear and calm, without one breath of wind.

  Suddenly the child stirred. His eyes opened. He looked past his mother towards the open door. He tried to speak and she bent down to catch the half-breathed words.

  "All right, I'm comin'," he whispered; then he sank back.

  The mother felt suddenly terrified; she crossed the room to her father.

  Somewhere near them the other child was laughing. Joyful, contented, triumphant, the silvery laughter echoed through the room.

  "I'm frightened; I'm frightened," she moaned.

  He put his arm round her protectingly. A sudden gust of wind made them both start, but it passed swiftly and left the air quiet as before.

  The laughter had ceased and there crept to them a faint sound, so faint as hardly to be heard, but growing louder till they could distinguish it.

  Footsteps - light footsteps, swiftly departing.

  Pitter-patter, pitter-patter, they ran - those well-known halting little feet.

  Yet - surely - now other footsteps suddenly mingled with them, moving with a quicker and a lighter tread.

  With one accord they hastened to the door.

  Down, down, down, past the door, close to them, pitter-patter, pitterpatter, went the unseen feet of the little children together.

  Mrs Lancaster looked up wildly.

  "There are two of them - two!"

  Grey with sudden fear, she turned towards the cot in the corner, but her father restrained her gently and pointed away.

  "There," he said simply.

  Pitter-patter, pitter-patter - fainter and fainter.

  And then - silence.

  THE LAST
SÉANCE

  Raoul Daubreuil crossed the Seine humming a little tune to himself. He was a good-looking young Frenchman of about thirty-two, with a fresh colored face and a little black moustache. By profession he was an engineer. In due course he reached the Cardonet and turned in at the door of No. 17. The concierge looked out from her lair and gave him a grudging "Good-morning," to which he replied cheerfully. Then he mounted the stairs to the apartment on the third floor. As he stood there waiting for his ring at the bell to be answered he hummed once more his little tune. Raoul Daubreuil was feeling particularly cheerful this morning. The door was opened by an elderly Frenchwoman, whose wrinkled face broke into smiles when she saw who the visitor was. "Good-morning, monsieur." "Good-morning, Elise," said Raoul. He passed into the vestibule, pulling off his gloves as he did so. "Madame expects me, does she not?" he asked over his shoulder. "Ah, yes, indeed, monsieur. "Elise shut the front door and turned towards him."

  If Monsieur will pass into the little salon, Madame will be with him in a few minutes. At the moment she reposes herself."

  Raoul looked up sharply. "Is she not well?"

  "Well!"

  Elise gave a snort. She passed in front of Raoul and opened the door of the little salon for him. He went in and she followed him.

  "Well!" she continued. "How should she be well, poor lamb? Séances, séances, and always séances! It is not right - not natural, not what the good God intended for us. For me, I say straight out, it is trafficking with the devil."

  Raoul patted her on the shoulder reassuringly.

  "There, there, Elise," he said soothingly, "do not excite yourself, and do not be too ready to see the devil in everything you do not understand."

  Elise shook her head doubtingly.

  "Ah, well," she grumbled under her breath, "Monsieur may say what he pleases, I don't like it. Look at Madame, every day she gets whiter and thinner, and the headaches!"

  She held up her hands. "Ah, no, it is not good, all this spirit business.