There was one turning which he had not so far investigated – a lane which led up past the Rectory and which terminated, according to an ancient sign-post, at the town of Wythendale twelve miles away. He accordingly set off along it, and presently paused at the Rectory gate to survey both the incumbent’s dwelling – a large, nondescript grey building – and the incumbent himself, who, clad in disreputable flannels, was bending down to peer at a diseased-looking hollyhock in the front garden. From these objects Fen’s attention soon strayed to a brightly hued insect which was perched on a twig beside the gate, and he prodded it experimentally with his forefinger. It at once stung him viciously and flew away. Fen, who lacked stoicism, uttered a cry of anguish and dismay, at which the Rector abruptly straightened up to stare in his direction. And in the instant following, a small white coffee-cup was projected from one of the upper windows of the Rectory and sailed past within a centimetre of the Rector’s nose.
CHAPTER 16
Now even in the most trivial afflictions Fen regards it as the inaliena ble duty of his fellow-men to offer him instant sympathy and relief, and to continue offering them during all the lengthy period of his complainings. He would not, therefore, normally have considered it other than entirely right and seemly that the Rector, at his cry, should hasten towards him with every appearance of the deepest anxiety and solicitude; where the pastoral duties of the clergy are concerned, Fen is a particularly exigent and fussy sheep. The present circumstances, however, gave him pause. It was no doubt the Rector’s business, after the first shock of surprise at being assailed with a coffee-cup, to thrust his own problem into the background of his mind and rush to succour Fen; but it was a little surprising that he should so completely ignore the coffee-cup as not even to glance in the direction whence it had come. It now lay, unbroken, on a flower-bed near him; he could not conceivably have failed to-see it, or at least to feel the wind of its passing; yet he might, to judge by his total failure to react in any of the expected ways, have been entirely unconscious of it. By the time he arrived at the Rectory gate, Fen was regarding him with some distrust. Moreover, it quickly appeared that the Rector’s anxiety was functioning in the wrong direction.
‘What did you see?’ he demanded. ‘What was it you saw?’
‘Saw?’ Fen frowned reprovingly. ‘I saw a coffee-cup thrown at you, if that’s what you mean.’
‘But your cry anticipated the throwing of the cup, if I’m not much mistaken. Can it be that you saw the thrower?’
‘No, it can’t,’ said Fen uncivilly. ‘I uttered an involuntary exclamation because I’d just been stung, and that most painfully. Look.’ He held out his forefinger for inspection.
‘Stung. Ah.’ The Rector’s anxiety grew visibly less urgent, and he put on a pair of horn-rimmed spectacles in order to examine the injured part. ‘Dear me, yes. By a bee, by a wasp?’
‘By, I think, some venomous tropical insect.’
‘Blue-bag,’ said the Rector. ‘It must be treated with blue-bag.’ He paused, and his face assumed a rather artificial expression of great shrewdness. ‘But there is, I am afraid, one thing which I am bound to ask before inviting you inside. Are you by any chance connected with the Psychical Research Society?’
‘The Psychical Research Society?’ Fen echoed in surprise. ‘No, indeed I’m not.’
‘And you would hardly – ha! ha! – be a believer in the supernatural?’
‘Well, I wouldn’t go so far as to say that,’ Fen answered rather impatiently – and at once saw that he had said the wrong thing, for the Rector’s expression changed, at the reply, from shrewdness to definite apprehension. ‘However,’ Fen added hurriedly, ‘I’m prepared, if you wish it, to suspend my belief for as long as it takes to be treated with blue-bag.’
The Rector appeared to ponder deeply; and eventually arriving at a decision: ‘Come in, then,’ he said, unlatching the gate. ‘I’m afraid you’ll be thinking me very discourteous and unready to help, but the fact is that what has just occurred puts me in a rather serious quandary.’
‘The sting?’ said Fen, whose sufferings continued to hold precedence, in his own mind, over all else.
The Rector was leading the way along the path and round the side of the Rectory. ‘No, no,’ he said over his shoulder. ‘The coffee-cup.’ And by a tulip-tree he halted with such abruptness that Fen nearly cannoned into him. ‘It would be useless, no doubt, to imagine that you are not curious.’
Fen’s thoughts were preoccupied with blue-bag, so it was rather perfunctorily that he agreed that such a supposition would, indeed, be false.
‘Exactly so. And I feel that I must therefore take you into my confidence. . . . I am right, of course, in thinking that you are Professor Fen?’
‘Perfectly right.’
‘My name is Mills.’ And apparently feeling that this intelligence would be sufficient to occupy Fen’s mind for the time being, the Rector resumed his progress, fetching up shortly at the back door. Fen followed him in a dazed condition.
‘Mrs Flitch,’ the Rector called, opening the back door. ‘Mrs Flitch.’
A small, intense, untidy-looking elderly woman appeared, clutching a mop. ‘Yes, sir,’ she said breathlessly. ‘Yes, sir, yes, sir.’
‘Blue-bag, Mrs Flitch. This gentleman has been stung.’
‘There now,’ said Mrs Flitch. ‘Well I never.’ She retired, exclaiming continuously, into the kitchen, and was heard opening drawers and cupboards. Presently she returned with the blue-bag, and Fen dabbed it on the sting. It did not seem to do much good. He gave it back to Mrs Flitch, and the Rector, whose thoughts during these proceedings had transparently been elsewhere, took him by the arm and led him to a wooden seat on the lawn behind the Rectory.
‘And now, to resume what I was saying,’ said the Rector. ‘About the coffee-cup, that is.’
The pain, Fen thought, was abating slightly; presumably blue-bag took time to do its healing work. And he felt more capable, now, of attending to the matter of the coffee-cup, which, he began to realize, was decidedly queer. ‘Yes?’ he said encouragingly.
‘You will, I hope, keep what I am going to tell you a dead secret.’ The Rector briefly glowered at Fen, as though attempting to assess his capacity for reticence. ‘Indeed, I must ask you to promise that. There is nothing of an immoral or – um – criminal nature in what I have to say, but serious inconvenience may be caused if it leaks out.’
‘Ah,’ said Fen without comprehension. ‘Well, you may rely on my discretion. And please understand that you’re under no obligation to tell me anything at all, if you don’t wish to do so.’
‘But it will be better for me to do so, I think. And besides, it would be unfair to you not to do so.’ The Rector hesitated, drawing a deep breath. ‘You will have heard,’ he said, ‘of Borley Rectory.’
‘Most people have, I think. And there’s no doubt, to my mind, that it was in some fashion haunted.’
‘It was very thoroughly investigated,’ the Rector remarked, ‘over a period of years.’
‘Quite so.’
‘In fact, the incumbent can have had very little peace.’
‘From the poltergeist?’
‘No. From the investigators.’
‘Well, now you mention it, I suppose they must have been a bit trying.’
‘Sealed doors,’ said the Rector. ‘Microphones. Vigils. Seismographs, for all I know.’
‘I scarcely think – –’
‘But you admit the general principle.’
‘What general principle?’ Fen asked vaguely, contemplating his finger.
‘That the investigation,’ said the Rector with patience, ‘must have constituted a great hindrance.’
‘Well, yes, but – –’
‘A fact which I anticipated many years ago.’
‘Indeed.’
‘You perceive my drift?’
‘I’m afraid not,’ said Fen, shaking his head.
The Rector sighed. ‘The point is, you see, that
I have a poltergeist – that there is a poltergeist here.’
If he had offered to levitate, Fen could scarcely have been more dumbfounded.
‘Do you mean to say,’ he exclaimed convulsively, ‘that that coffee-cup – –’
‘It was thrown by the poltergeist. Yes.’
‘But are you sure you have a poltergeist? A more natural explanation would be – –’
‘A more natural explanation, Professor Fen, is not possible.’
‘Perhaps your housekeeper – –’
‘No, no. The thing continues to polter even when she is quite certainly miles away.’
‘A practical joker, then.’
‘A practical joker whose operations continue uninterruptedly for eighteen years,’ said the Rector dryly, ‘is very much less credible, to me at any rate, than a supernatural explanation.’
‘Eighteen years?’
‘I have been rector here for eighteen years, and the start of the disturbances was coincident with my arrival.’
Fen gazed at him aghast. ‘But have you done nothing about it?’
‘Well, at first I was naturally very distressed, and considered applying to the Bishop for a licence for exorcism – as soon, that is, as I had ascertained that it was not some form of delusion or practical joke. But the plain fact is that in a week or two I got quite used to it.’
‘Remarkable,’ said Fen with restraint.
‘The point is, you see, that whatever may be the case with other poltergeists, this particular one has never inspired in me, or for that matter in anyone else, the conventional feelings of terror. It is materially a nuisance, since it throws things about and they have to be picked up again and replaced; but the emotional effects normally associated with such – um – phantasms are completely lacking. So although the thing was undeniably tiresome, rather in the way that defective plumbing would be tiresome, I decided eventually that the publicity which would inevitably follow an attempt to get rid of it would be even more tiresome. Moreover, my poltergeist has intelligence of a sort, and I feared that if an investigation was set on foot it would refrain from its activities while the investigators were present and thus involve me in the suspicion of insanity. All things considered, it seemed better to leave it alone, and I’ve never yet regretted doing so.’
Fen contemplated him for a moment, seeking in his face for some evidence that this was. an elaborate leg-pull. But he saw none. The Rector, though he might be deluded, was undeniably sincere. And other cases of poltergeist disturbances extending over a long period of years were, Fen reflected, tolerably well authenticated. Moreover, the Rector’s reactions were understandable – except, of course, that he must suffer considerable financial loss from the poltergeist’s depredations. . . . This issue Fen ventured to raise.
‘Well, no,’ said the Rector. ‘For some reason which I haven’t fathomed, things the poltergeist handles never break. That coffee-cup is an instance – and I know that even if it had hit the wall it would have remained intact. There are many recorded instances of the same phenomenon in other hauntings of a like kind. And my poltergeist is also in the best traditions in that although it constantly hurls small objects at Mrs Flitch and myself, it has never yet succeeded in actually hitting either of us. In the first weeks I was naturally apprehensive that it might, but since it invariably failed to do so my anxiety soon wore off, and nowadays I pay no attention to such occurrences at all.’
‘And apart from throwing things,’ said Fen rather faintly, ‘what else does it do?’
‘It pulls out drawers and drops them on the floor. That’s sheer rowdyism, and really rather trying at times. It also raps – on walls apparently, but it’s difficult to tell. Oh, and it occasionally makes a stupid howling noise on the stairs, which I imagine is intended to frighten, but which is actually no more alarming than a bicycle bell. That’s all, I think – there’s no writing, and I’ve certainly never seen an apparition of any kind. When I first came here I used to bound about the house trying to catch sight of one, but it was quite useless, and I’ve long since ceased to trouble about it.’
Fen produced a handkerchief and wiped the perspiration from his brow. ‘But in view of all this,’ he observed, ‘you must have found it very difficult to keep the matter secret.’
‘Well, not so difficult as you might suppose. The disturbances do not usually begin until about ten in the evening – daylight manifestations, such as you witnessed, have only occurred twice before, and then, fortunately, without being seen by outsiders.’
‘But your night’s rest – it must surely be very disturbed?’
The Rector frowned. ‘At first,’ he admitted, ‘it was very disturbed – but I soon succeeded in domesticating the thing.’
‘In domesticating it?’
‘Well, in training it, if you prefer the word; much as one trains a cat to be clean or a dog to come to heel. The means were simple, though I only discovered them by accident. The creature was rapping away one night at one a.m. when I was trying to get to sleep after a very tiring day, and in exasperation I sat up in bed and rapped back at it, much more loudly. And it was so astonished that it immediately fell silent. Thereafter I always replied in kind whenever it created a pother at an unseemly hour, and it gradually came to realize that it must keep quiet after about twelve midnight. On the whole it’s been very faithful to this arrangement. . . . I considered, of course, the possibility of driving it away completely by the method I’ve spoken of, but, to be quite candid, such a scheme seemed to me needlessly brutal. The thing clearly enjoyed its preposterous goings-on; they did no one any serious harm; and since I might conceivably worsen its condition by scaring it off, I felt it my duty as a Christian priest to let it alone.’
Fen said:
‘Well, yes, I suppose that with a little luck you could hush the whole thing up. And I certainly don’t blame you for doing so.’
‘It’s meant that I’ve been unable to have people to stay with me,’ said the Rector, ‘and I’m afraid that on many occasions I must consequently have appeared most inhospitable. But on the whole, as I say, I’ve never regretted taking the course I have taken.’
‘And what about your housekeeper? What does she think of it all?’
For the first time during his recital the Rector looked uneasy; he stared, embarrassed, at his boots.
‘That,’ he said, ‘is the one feature of the whole affair which lies heavily on my conscience. Mrs Flitch has her own explanation of the matter, but unluckily it is far from being a true one; and although I did not suggest it to her in the first place and have never specifically concurred with it, I’m bound to say that I’ve always been too pusillanimous actually to deny it. And this is the more sinful of me in that her explanation reflects a great deal of quite undeserved credit on myself. . . . It seems that in her younger and more impressionable days someone gave Mrs Flitch a – translation of Anatole France’s novel Thais, and that reading this had a very profound effect on her mind. Early on in the book there are descriptions of the various temptations undergone by the Coenobite hermits in the desert outside Alexandria – and Mrs Flitch, confronted for the first time by the activities of the poltergeist, jumped to the erroneous conclusion that these had a similar – um – nature and purpose in relation to myself. It is her view that what she herself witnesses is only a part of the matter; that unseen by her’ – a glint of humour came momentarily to the Rector’s eye – ‘and on account of my extreme sanctity, spectral harpies foul me with their droppings as I sit writing at my desk, and alluring courtesans make nightly trial of my continence. . . . In all this, I’m afraid, she greatly overestimates my importance in the eyes of the devil, who no doubt has better uses for his courtesans than to assign them so regularly to me.’ He sighed deeply. ‘And I have been most guilty in not once and for all dispelling the illusion. Mrs Flitch, you see, is for some reason quite clear in her own mind that these – um – suppositious temptations must not be revealed to any outsider, and I have shamelessl
y taken advantage of her self-imposed reticence by failing to remove its cause. I shall not easily be forgiven – and particularly since my ultimate motive is nothing more elevated than a desire to pander to my own comfort by keeping the Psychical Research Society away.’
With as much gravity as he could muster, Fen gave it as his opinion that the sin was venial. ‘And have you,’ he asked, ‘your own explanation of the phenomena?’
The Rector, who up to now had been almost uninterruptedly serious, chuckled suddenly.
‘I sometimes suspect,’ he said, ‘that my poltergeist must be a demon who has been expelled from Hell for incurable incompetence. . . . But no, I haven’t really any explanation. At first I thought a good deal about the business, and read all the available literature on the subject. But I found that no one theory was any more provable or plausible than the next, so I soon gave up worrying about it, and haven’t, indeed, done so for years. Custom, Professor Fen, is an unspeakable blessing. I’m so used to my poltergeist now that weeks on end pass without a recollection of it ever entering my head.’
He paused, gazing absently at the upstairs windows of the Rectory, and then turned to Fen with a charming smile.
‘Now be honest,’ he said. ‘Have you believed a word I’ve been saying?’
‘Why not?’ said Fen. ‘I think the evidence for the existence of poltergeists is virtually unassailable; I see nothing specially unlikely in there being one here; and I find your own reactions to it quite natural. Moreover, if you should happen to be pulling my leg, it’s at least a quite amusing leg-pull, and hence not at all to be regretted.’
The Rector chuckled again. ‘Fair enough, sir,’ he said. ‘And whether you think it’s a leg-pull, or insanity, or hard fact, I shall still be grateful if you’ll keep it to yourself.’
Buried for Pleasure Page 14