Calamity at Harwood

by George Bellairs

  UNINVITED GUESTS

  THE first signs of renewed hostilities against Mr. Burt and his works were manifest three days after the outbreak of war and in the kitchen of the Carberry-Peacockes. Seeking relaxation from the strain of recent past events, they were listening to a broadcast of gramophone records of an impressionist ballet, when they were disturbed by similar noises magnified tenfold in the maid’s quarters. On investigation they found all the crockery and china scattered, broken on the floor, the chairs and tables overturned, the refrigerator inverted in the middle of the room and the electric stove in the sink.

  At first, the Carberry-Peacockes suspected that the maid had arrived home drunk and, in an alcholic frenzy, developed almost superhuman strength. But when that young lady appeared later, bright-eyed, smiling happily and somewhat dishevelled after a tempestuous wooing by the local postman, they had to alter their theory.

  “It’s a poltergeist, my dear,” delightedly shouted Mr. C.-P., who was a bit of a psychic researcher, and he forthwith telephoned the good news to many friends inviting them to a seance to share his phenomenal luck, whilst his wife made tea in a flower-vase.

  The disturbances were not received so felicitously in other parts of the house, however.

  The elder Miss Pott was deaf and slept through everything in blissful ignorance, but her younger sister fared badly. She was outraged by the shades of scantily-clad Regency bucks and their brazen paramours parading in her virgin bower in the small hours of the morning.

  In their comfortable suite-with-loggia, the Hartwrights, struggling to get to sleep on the very spot where the Harwood Regency fops had gambled away the family funds, were kept awake by the ceaseless rattle of dice.

  Miss Elaine Freyle, resting between shows at the expense of an admirer whom Mr. Burt had a mind to oust if he got the chance, shivered and perspired alternately for several nights under changing currents of hot and cold air which blew upon her comely and recumbent form independently of the air-conditioning plant. Thuds, here, there and everywhere in her room wakened her when she managed to fall asleep in defiance of the draughts.

  Mr. Williatt, the dramatist, was disturbed by the persistent rhythmic bumping of what sounded like the village pump being handled strenuously.

  The Carberry-Peacockes’ maid gave notice at once and joined the W.A.A.F., for the postman turned out to be married.

  In fact, the only tenants who seemed immune from the attentions of unwanted guests were Professor Braun, occupying the cheapest suite alone, lost in anthropology and meditation, and Mr. Sol Burt, who was accustomed to falling asleep as soon as his head touched the pillow and who didn’t hear a thing. His tenancy agreements contained clauses promising “peaceful possession” to the renting party and these he upheld by a most vigorous denial of any untoward noises and a loud declaration of unbelief in spooks and such poppycock.

  In his heart, Mr. Burt was convinced that some rival in the estate world was trying to force a cheap sale by discrediting the property and he expressed to his clerk his intention of calling in the police if matters had not improved within a week.

  On the night following his profession of scepticism, Mr. Burt himself fell a victim to the strange forces he had defied.

  One minute we see him comfortably sleeping in his luxury bedroom. His mind is at rest, for although Miss Freyle, temperamental and fond of a scene, had packed up and taken herself off back to Maida Vale, and her boyfriend had promised to pay the penalty of her breach of contract, the rest of the tenants have declared their intentions of seeing this thing through and remaining where they are. They decline to be driven from their idyllic abode by powers unseen and are as one in standing by Mr. Burt. The Misses Pott, unexpectedly defiant and resolute, are confident in their virtue and strength of mind to withstand the attempts to demoralise them, and express their decision to call in the services of an exorcist. The Carberry-Peacockes in their scientific zest have almost adopted their poltergeist as one of the family, and Mr. Burt wishes their agreement had in it a loophole whereby he could increase the rent. The Hartwrights have, by stopping their ears and making up their minds to stick it, slept, and be hanged to the dice! Williatt, with the help of a strong nightcap, has managed to defy the pump-handle.

  So, we find Mr. Burt snoring and leering in his sleep at something he must be dreaming about. But not for long.

  Suddenly, about 3 a.m., he is awakened by a firm hand which shakes him until his gold-filled teeth rattle. Once awake, he becomes aware of a commotion going on all around him. Heavy feet tread the corridors. The rattle of dice and loud shouts rend the night-watches. The distant sounds of quadrille music are heard coming from the minstrels’ gallery in the communal lounge. The noises of splitting wood and shattering china announce that Carberry-Peacocke’s poltergeist is hard at it once more.

  Mr. Burt’s particular trouble, however, soon occupies the whole of his attention.

  By his bedside stand two rakes scornfully regarding him through quizzing-glasses with the air of men inspecting some verminous intruder in their blankets.

  Burt’s bones turn to jelly and his inside seems to melt within him.

  “Get up, fellow,” lisps the principal buck, a spokesman in a lavender coat and blue-and-white striped trousers.

  Like a rabbit under the eye of a stoat, Mr. Burt obeys.

  “Let me slit his throat,” rumbles a husky voice from the shadows, whence emerges a most diabolical-looking villain, clad from head to foot in black and with a mask covering the upper half of his yellow face.

  “Behave, Richard,” says the spokesman to him. “You’re not smuggling now. Only teaching a demned rascal a lesson.”

  Mr. Burt strains to recognise his tormentors, but perceives that they wear grotesque carnival-masks which distort their features. Trembling and spluttering threats, he is gripped by ghostly hands and pushed, blundering and fumbling, downstairs, through the open front door and out to the moonlit lawn. He calls for help, but nobody answers. He is too scared to feel the night air or the dew on his bare feet. His eyes bulge and his breath comes in wheezing gasps. He cannot see properly, for he has been hustled-off without his spectacles.

  “It’s a nightmare,” Mr. Burt tries to tell himself. “I’ll wake up soon in my bed in Park Lane.”

  His three shadowy captors urge him on. He cries out again, but the noises going on in the house drown all his appeals. The party now reaches the converted fishpond.

  “Remove your clothes!” orders the ringleader.

  “Mercy! I can’t. I’ll die of cold. It’s not right. You’ll pay for this,” whines Mr. Burt, helpless, like a fish in a net.

  “Let me slit his throat,” again says the lugubrious voice of the smuggler in black.

  “Quiet, Richard,” say his companions.

  Mr. Burt, fearing the worst, slips out of his dressing-gown and pyjamas and stands naked beneath the moon. He is not a pleasant sight, for good living and lack of exercise have played havoc with his native flesh. He is still struggling internally as men do when they try to shake themselves awake from a terrible dream.

  “Jump in …” comes the next command, and the shapes from the shades point their fingers at the bathing-pool.

  “I can’t swim,” pleads Mr. Burt, forgetting how shallow he has made the pond in cheeseparing his specifications.

  He is seized and hurled headlong into the icy water, which stings him into vigorous action. Desperately he flounders to the bank. He scrambles ashore to the sound of mocking laughter and sees his torturers melt away into the bushes nearby. He cannot find his abandoned night-clothes, but he eventually stumbles over two coarse sandbags, conveniently left handy by departed workmen. He drapes himself decently in these and stealthily creeps to cover.

  The main door is closed and Mr. Burt fears to rouse the house and show himself in his present undignified and immodest plight. He seeks an alternative entrance and finds, at length, that the pantry window of the Carberry-Peacockes’ flat is unfastened. Laboriously, the ha
lf-clad financier climbs through the narrow opening and drops to the floor. Before he can collect himself, the inner door of the larder is flung open and there stands Mr. Carberry-Peacocke, furious at being disturbed in the middle of his psychic researches. He hauls Mr. Burt, madly clutching his sackcloth attire, into the main kitchen. The intruder blinks and looks frenziedly around. On the kitchen table is what looks like an outside-broadcasting apparatus, as if the performance of the poltergeist is being relayed on the air. Three other people are seated at the table and they eye him balefully, for he seems to have arrived at a crucial moment and is spoiling the show.

  “Why … what the … what are you doing here?” Mr. Burt manages to say through his chattering teeth and then, realising his semi-naked plight, rushes for the door and tears up the long staircase to his own quarters. He intends telephoning for the police at once.

  As he reaches the first landing where the stairs turn, the lights go out. There is a mighty rushing sound and unseen shapes seem to come and go around Mr. Burt. He encounters a form in the dark which envelops him in a powerful grip. He screams aloud in his terror. Something hits him on the head and as he struggles in a sea of blackness for a brief second or two, he feels himself hurled through space.

  Then there is nothing more.

  THE TOLERANT POLTERGEIST

  CHIEF-INSPECTOR SHELLDRAKE of Scotland Yard pushed a tin of tobacco across his desk to Littlejohn.

  “Help yourself and sit down,” he said.

  “Thanks,” said his colleague, and as Inspector Littlejohn carefully filled his pipe, the Chief began to talk in his slow, gentle voice, with a trace of his Gloucestershire origins in the intonation.

  “I want you to go down to Harwood and look into this Burt business, Littlejohn,” he said. “I suppose you’ve read all about it in the papers.”

  “Oh, the chap who was hoisted from his bed, soused in the fishpond and then fell downstairs and broke his neck,” replied Littlejohn, with a quizzical smile.

  “Yes, and I can see by the way you’re looking that you know as well as I do that that’s not all there is to it.”

  “I’m sure of it,” replied Littlejohn. “The thing’s too absurd altogether. Still, I’d like a full story, sir. In normal times, I guess Mr. Burt would have enjoyed banner headlines, whereas the war’s forced him into back pages or snippets at the bottom of columns.”

  “Briefly, it’s this, Littlejohn. The Sussex police were called-out early last Tuesday morning to Harwood Park, a new lot of flats made from the old hall. A chap called Burt had converted the place and had a flat of his own there. There you are.…”

  Shelldrake flung across the table a sumptuous brochure issued by Harwood Park Country Estates, Ltd., in its early days, to attract tenants.

  “You’ll find a plan on the back page,” continued the Chief-Inspector. “During the conversion of the old hall into flats, they’d a lot of trouble from what might have been the pranks of a crowd of mischievous boys. But the tale got around that the place was haunted—had been for generations—and that the spirits, or whatever you care to call them, were resisting the changes in their abode. Burt’s man in charge of the letting told the Sussex police this on the spot. I’m surprised the local police weren’t sent for before, but gather that Burt didn’t want it noised abroad, as he’d got the flats to let when he’d finished ’em, so kept mum.”

  Sprites, ghosts, poltergeists, they might have been a crowd of pickpockets or sneak-thieves for any excitement Shelldrake showed! The Chief-Inspector smoked placidly, wove smoke figures in the air with his pipe-stem as he talked. His clean, pink face registered no trace of humour or wonder.

  “When the tenants got in, a regular haunting started. Noises, bumps, broken pots and furniture and such like. One of the tenants left at once. The others, loath to pull up their roots and get on the move again, decided to stick it for a bit, but some of them were getting fed-up with the business. Here’s a list of the inhabitants.”

  Shelldrake added to the prospectus a letting-list, a copy of Mr. Burt’s register.

  “The Freyle woman, an actress, cleared-out right away. The Peacocke people, it seems, are ardent psychic researchers, and were just in their element. The Potts and the Hartwrights liked the place and said they’d put up with it for a little while. The old Professor wasn’t disturbed in his flat in the attics. Williatt, who’s a dramatist and a cold-blooded sort of blighter, seems to have stuck it out in the hope of finding some copy for his work. Brownrigg is away and hasn’t yet entered into possession. There you have ’em and there they seem to have decided to remain. Even the death of Burt hasn’t shaken them and if it had, they wouldn’t have to go just yet, because the Sussex police want ’em handy. However, they haven’t shown signs of undue haste to get out.

  “Now, there are one or two funny features about this death and that’s why the local police want our help. First of all, Mr. Burt was an influential man in the West-End and the case must be settled quickly. Already, the Commissioner has received a hint that our best efforts will be appreciated by certain well-known financier-politicians. Then again, look at the features of the affair. Stone, the caretaker, who lives at the lodge, wakens in the night, sees a light streaming from the front door of the hall and gets up to investigate in fear of the black-out regulations. The door is shut before he can get properly dressed, however, and from his bedroom window he sees a motley procession in fancy dress come traipsing across the lawn and throw Burt into the bathing-pool. He’s apparently terrified until the party breaks up, but goes off as soon as the so-called spooks disappear. He finds Burt dressed in sacking lying in the hall with his head battered and his neck broken. And somebody tries to say that a poltergeist’s done it! I’ve never heard such nonsense! Then the Freyle woman plunges into print for the benefit of ‘Our Special Correspondent,’ with a hysterical account of blood-curdling happenings which drove her out. The local police have had to put a cordon round the hall to keep out the single and collective ghost-hunters. And all the time, believe me, the whole show’s a frame-up, covering something underhand. There’s neither rhyme nor reason in any other theory.”

  “I quite agree, Chief.…”

  “Either somebody had it in for Burt and put on a show to create a diversion while they made away with him, or else it’s a rival in the estate market who’s tried to ruin the speculation and gone a bit too far. Or again, it might have been old Harwood, who’s been damned badly treated and swindled by Burt in the matter, except that the old chap’s eighty or more, with one foot in the grave. Anyhow, go down and find out what’s the matter and all about it and let’s be done with it, quick. We want to be getting on with winning the war, not hunting a lot of spooks.”

  Littlejohn rose and stretched himself.

  “Right,” he said. “I’ll get down straight away. I know the place. Been through it on the way to Brighton.…”

  “Take this with you to read in the train,” said Shelldrake, and he passed over a copy of F. W. H. Myers’ “Personality and Its Survival After Bodily Death.”

  “It’s the only book I’ve got myself on the subject and it’s written by an intelligent man, not a crank or one with an axe to grind. You’ll find I’ve marked a page there on poltergeists. As a rule, when one of those is about, spooks, ghosts, goblins and the rest keep off. The Harwood Hall one, however, is more complacent. He allows all the stops to be pulled out of the organ and a complete revue-chorus of every kind of haunting, bumping, banging, and the such to pervade the place. If you want any further technical help on the subject, refer to Caffin, the psychic expert. Here’s his card. Mention my name. He’ll tell you anything, or lend you any of his books. Now look after yourself, Littlejohn, and don’t you be trying conclusions with the china-smasher. Good-bye and good-luck.”

  And Shelldrake’s face eased into its first smile as he extended his hand.

  Before making his way to Victoria Station for his train, Littlejohn called at the late Mr. Burt’s offices in Hanover Square. Th
ere he was received by Mr. Stagg, the secretary of the Harwood Park Company, and a man who, to hear him talk, enjoyed his late master’s confidences to the full.

  Mr. Stagg was under forty and was small, thin, dapper and had fair curly hair, a pink feminine complexion and hazel eyes set in dissipated-looking sockets. He had an air of going in for art in his spare time. Perhaps he was a specialist in decorations and bathroom tiles. He was smoking a cherrywood pipe and presiding over the labours of a bevy of about twenty good-looking girls, all writing or typing furiously. He might have been the chamberlain of Mr. Burt’s seraglio, for he sternly handled his staff as though conscientiously refusing to mingle business with pleasure.

  At first, Stagg mistook Littlejohn for a client, bowed him into a sumptuous interviewing-room and pushed a box of cigars in the detective’s direction. On hearing the purpose of the visit, however, Mr. Stagg changed from estateagent to taxpayer. He behaved as he thought a citizen should do towards one whose salary he helps to pay. He grew grave, less obsequious and he closed the lid of the cigar-box. Littlejohn felt that had he accepted one, Mr. Stagg would have taken it back.

  After a short and flattering funeral oration on his late employer, Mr. Stagg assured Littlejohn that he would in no way suffer himself through the tragedy. Mr. Burt’s ventures were all frozen into impersonal companies, limiting their founder’s liabilities and securing their continuity.

  “… in fact, you might say that as soon as he created anything fresh, Mr. Burt made a present of it to the public. He floated it as a company and gave the shareholders the benefit of it in future.”

  “In exchange for their cash, of course,” Littlejohn could not help adding.

  “Certainly. You can’t expect something for nothing.”