by George Mann
The carriage lurched as a fresh barrage of rain beat against the window. Trees towered over us from either side of the narrow road, thick and unrelenting, blotting out the sunset’s light. I glanced at Millie, my maidservant, who was shaking, either from the cold or the rumours about the orphanage we were approaching.
I was numb. The past month had whizzed past in a blur. The funeral, the lawyers, the bureaucracy of it all. Not to mention the scandal it was as the fruit of my association with Gruner.
And now, this.
I had sat opposite Mr Valler, our family lawyer, in his office like one swimming through a dream.
“You should sell,” he said emphatically. “And sell right away. Sever your connection with Harlingdon as soon as you possibly can; your father never wanted you to have any association with your Aunt Penny, which is why he never told you she was residing in Bristol. And now, with these disappearances, do you really want your family name to be attached to such a place? Regardless of its sponsors the property is yours. It used to be a manor. Your father would’ve sold it; he would’ve wanted you to sell—”
“And how precisely would you know what my father would have wanted?” came a languid drawl, which took me a moment to realise that it was my own.
The carriage sharply turned and Millie gasped.
Through the flecks of rain was a clearing, and on its edge, a large red-brick manor gleamed in the sunset. Harlingdon. So pristine, so picturesque, it was the first time I laid eyes on it. It was hard to believe the supposed goings-on within its walls.
I glanced out of my window. Opposite the building and across the clearing, the sun was melting into a sharp precipice that gave way to the Avon Gorge. The expanse of orange-pink sky was deceptively welcoming as it distracted from the steep, jagged plunge below, right down to the Avon River.
The carriage pulled up in front of the door. A plaque read Harlingdon Boys and Girls Home.
The porter rushed out to meet us with umbrellas and ushered us in to the entrance hall where I was greeted by a young lady, no older than myself, wearing a severe black dress.
“Welcome, Miss de Merville, to Harlingdon Boys and Girls Home. I’m the matron of this establishment. It’s so wonderful to finally meet you after all our correspondence.”
“Mrs Eade,” I acknowledged, surprised at how young she was.
“Lillian, please. Now. You must be awfully hungry after your journey. How about some refreshments and then a tour of the orphanage?”
The food was nowhere near as edible as that of my London home, and I ended up having a meagre meal of soup and bread. But despite the need for a new cook, the orphanage completely met my expectations.
“The Harlingdons’ dream of having a home for the homeless manifested itself in this orphanage,” Lillian explained, as we walked down a corridor. She gestured to a classroom where children were having a mathematics lesson. “The teaching is second to none, as I’m sure you’re aware. This orphanage is prestigious. Its main sponsors are the Royal Navy Institute and the Corporation of Bristol. Many of the children here are sailors’ sons and daughters.”
She interrupted the class and I met some of the pupils and the teacher, Mr Trenor. I also met two other teachers, Miss Jenkins and Mr Ardham. I found the orphanage most satisfactory. Everything was clean, the staff were friendly but not overly so, and the children were polite and well-behaved.
As the building used to be a manor house, most of the rooms had been converted into classrooms or rooms for the girls to learn domestic service and for the boys to learn shoemaking. Upstairs were the dormitories and also a strongroom, and a couple of empty rooms. Lillian showed Millie and me to my room, which had been the master’s bedroom.
“Where is the master?” I asked.
“He… left. We have not yet found a replacement.”
It had stopped raining, and Lillian also gave us a tour of the grounds, pointing out the gardener’s shed and also warning us to stay a good distance from the cliff face. We went as close as we dared, and upon turning we had full view of Harlingdon. To the left of the main house, tucked away was a picturesque cottage adorned with different coloured flowers.
“Who lives there?” I asked.
“I do,” Lillian said, “with my husband, Mr Eade. I would like you to meet him but he broke his leg not long ago and hasn’t left the cottage since.”
We returned to the house and entered through a side door that led into the kitchen.
“There was a fire here, not long ago,” Lillian explained, pointing to burn marks on the wall. They had been painted over but you could still tell where the fire had eaten away at the wall.
“Caused by the last cook—but not on my watch!” said a plump lady whom I discovered to be the current cook, Marie. “I get up in the night sometimes because of my arthritis anyway, you see, but I always have a check. It’s a habit now but I don’t mind; better safe than sorry! As long as the ghost doesn’t come in the kitchen—”
“Marie.”
Lillian did not shout but her tone was like a knife. Marie blushed and apologised before shambling away, mumbling about dinner. My maidservant, Millie, who already had been behaving like a deer in an open field since the moment we arrived in Bristol, now looked like she’d seen a wolf.
“I’m very sorry about that, Miss de Merville.” Lillian smoothed her skirt. “Perhaps we should sit down and talk? In private?”
“Millie, go to our room and prepare our things for tonight. I’m sure we’ll be tired after dinner.”
Millie curtsied and scuttled off. I followed Lillian to her office on the ground floor, and took a seat before her at the desk. When she sat down she sighed and it was then that I noticed the bags under her eyes, the air of tiredness that exuded off her as soon as she wasn’t being overly hospitable. “How much do you know, Miss de Merville?”
“I know that there are eighty children here and that fifteen have gone missing within the past month, and that these disappearances started after the deaths in the winter, after a bout of influenza struck the orphanage. The family who ran this place, whom it is named after – the Harlingdons – all passed away. Penny Harlingdon was my aunt; she used to be a de Merville. I don’t know if you knew her—”
“Unfortunately not. I came in as matron just after Anna, their daughter, passed away. They died before her. Gregory and Penny Harlingdon were master and matron of the establishment.”
“Tragic.”
“I know.”
“I’ve heard that the police have been here and that staff have left due to the missing children, and that the committee is thinking of closing Harlingdon down as its sponsors are considering withdrawing support. All their hard work, all this acclaim, down the drain because of some ghost.”
I wasn’t sure if I was imagining it but I thought I saw Lillian wince ever so slightly.
“You… don’t believe it is a ghost?” she asked me, her voice even.
“Of course not! People die all the time everywhere; there are more dead people on this earth than those alive. It is obviously some fanciful story that small townsfolk wish to indulge in and I do not have time for. You seem like a level-headed woman, Lillian; there must be some logical explanation for all of this? The children have run away. Or they are playing a game, hiding in the woods—”
“We’ve searched the surrounding areas. Staff have slept in front of the doors of the dormitories and seen no one enter. There is no other explanation.”
I stared at her. Her gaze did not waver; her expression was open, honest.
“You’re not telling me you believe this is what’s been happening here?”
Lillian closed her eyes briefly. “We’ve been in touch with another orphanage. They don’t have space for the remaining children here but there is a ship setting sail for Canada—”
“Canada! They’re no safer in Canada than they are here! No, children can’t vanish into thin air. We need more staff, first of all—”
“We’ve been advertisi
ng for weeks.”
“And?”
“There is no interest. The public have found out about this; journalists came sniffing around and the newspapers have been calling us ‘Haunted Harlingdon’ since December. And the committee are questioning hiring new staff if they’re thinking of closing Harlingdon down anyway.”
“Haunted Harlingdon?” I couldn’t help but laugh. “On what grounds? So children have gone missing and everyone assumes—”
“There have been sightings,” Lillian said. There was a slight tremor in her voice.
“Sightings?”
“A ghost child. Standing right at the cliff edge.”
“And you’ve seen it?”
“No. But Marie, the cook has. And Mr Duncan, the gardener. Some of the children too. The other staff members who saw it left including the most recent master.”
“I’d like to talk to Marie again and meet Mr Duncan. And if anyone from the committee is visiting soon I’d like to meet them too.”
“William Pearson. He’s the relieving officer. He’ll be here tomorrow.”
“Excellent. As for sending these children to Canada, I must protest. Some of these children have fathers in the navy, am I correct? They should stay here in Bristol; perhaps we could sponsor them into other homes.”
“As you wish,” Lillian replied, though I could tell there was a whole barrel full of protests going on in her mind.
* * *
Later I conversed with Marie while she was preparing dinner.
“We’ve had priests here, and still I saw it!” Marie shivered.
“When?”
“About three weeks ago. I was sleeping, that door there, that’s my room—” She nodded to a door on the other side of the kitchen, and then pointed to the one closest to us. “This door leads to outside, and someone was knocking. I thought it must be Lillian, coming in from the cottage. Strange! I thought. Why isn’t she using her key? So I got up and opened it – plain as day, I saw him! Standing there, as pale as the moon, with his head hung low, right at the edge of the cliff, almost falling into the gorge!”
“Did you call someone?”
“Call someone? I fainted! Right on the spot!”
Mr Duncan, the gardener, had a similar story. He was a stork of a man, tall and grey, thin but strong-looking. He had a thick Bristolian accent, and said he saw the ghost of a child three weeks ago, standing by the cliff. Although he thought he was imagining it because one minute it was there and the next it was gone.
“Its head hung low, lolling across his chest. It was a terrible sight.”
I pondered on these accounts for the rest of the day. Impressed though I was with the orphanage and the way it was run, I did find it strange how none could prevent the disappearances of the children, and the ghost sparked a possibility that I could not snuff out.
Apprehensive of dinner, I was relieved to find Marie had prepared a separate meal for Millie and me, of chicken broth and bread. Supper was served with a doom and gloom that reminded me of the days before my father’s death. No amount of candles or strained conversation from the staff could hide the strange atmosphere that descended upon the orphanage that night and, I presumed, every night. Lillian, Marie, and Mr Trenor kept me company during the meal, which tasted like bitter nettles, but Millie’s constant restlessness by my side, and the suffocating tension in the hall, started to gnaw at me. The children ate in the eeriest silence, and their sense of dread was inextinguishable, even when a teacher tried to engage them in song, and reward them with sweets. The curtain closed; the show they had put on for me had ended, and the reality of the situation could not be masked any longer.
After the meal I felt so tired that I had Millie prepare me for bed in our room on the second floor. They had arranged two beds in our room, one close to the door and one by the opposite wall beside the window.
A fire crackled in the fireplace, casting the room in a warm yellow. I nestled into the bed nearest the door.
“You hardly ate at dinner, are you not hungry?” I asked Millie.
“No, Miss.” She settled into bed. “What do you intend to do?”
I closed my eyes. “Hire more staff from somewhere other than Bristol. Find the children.”
“How?”
“I… don’t know.”
“Will you not just sell?”
“Seeing as I own this property I feel like I am responsible for these children and the orphanage. Besides, I’m not sure where home is anymore. I couldn’t stay in London. I needed to get out.”
* * *
I’m not sure who fell asleep first but what happened next neither of us could have anticipated.
I was woken by a thud or some other loud noise, in the middle of the night.
“What was that?” Millie whispered.
The room was dark apart from a stream of moonlight that came in from the window and fell across my bed. The fire had somehow gone out and the room was freezing. I still felt half asleep.
And then, out of the darkness, from somewhere in the room…
“Violet.” A child’s voice.
Millie cried out. In the silvery shadows she gripped the covers and cowered in her bed.
“Miss, where is it? Miss?”
I scanned the room, my heart beating against my chest. There – in the corner – what was that?
“Violet.”
I climbed out of bed and stood up. There was something in the corner.
“Look at me.” A boy’s voice.
Millie whimpered.
I couldn’t take a step closer. “Where are you?” I said. “What do you want?”
“The window.”
Millie screamed. She jumped out of bed and ran to me, as far away from the window as possible.
“The window?” I echoed, walking towards it.
“Miss, no!” Millie grabbed my wrist. Then I saw him.
The master bedroom’s window overlooked the cliff edge, and like a beacon on the horizon, he stood there glowing, as white as the moon, his head hung low, a step away from plummeting into the gorge. Could it be? Such things did not exist! But I could see the ghost with my own two eyes, hear his voice in my ears.
Like an unyielding pull, I had to move closer, I had to go to the window, even though my mind was screaming at me to flee, and Millie tugged at my arm. He’d said my name, he was calling to me—
A scream filled the room – Millie dragged me away from the window and to the door. My limbs felt heavy. I was tired, so tired…
“Someone help us please!” she wept.
“He’s trying to say something.”
But all I could hear was Millie crying. I wrenched myself free from her grasp and ran to the window again.
“He’s gone.”
* * *
Millie could not be calmed or consoled no matter what I said to her and in the end I had to exert my authority as her employer, which, in light of a supernatural being versus a human, did not do much. She wanted to fetch someone even though I assured her whether porter or police, the ghost would not care about their status.
I admit I expected, even wanted, the ghost to appear again or to hear his voice. The fact that both Millie and I had seen and heard the same thing made it all the more real. And yet, how was it possible? I did not believe in such things. A part of my brain still questioned it all, still could not rationalise it.
“His voice was in this room,” I thought aloud. “But his body was at the cliff.”
“Miss, stop.”
“How is that possible? Yet we saw it and we heard it. And how did he know my name?”
Millie put her hands over her ears.
“They have had priests here,” I continued. “And police. But there must be someone—”
And suddenly I remembered a tall man sitting across from me at my house in London last year, composed, rational, unfeeling.
* * *
I’d never before been to 221B Baker Street. It was filled with books and newspapers and smok
e. Dr Watson, whom I’d never met before, led me to an armchair. Sherlock Holmes sat opposite me, his pipe in his hand.
I was anxious, not from the ghostly encounter but rather from the news that morning: another child had disappeared. Jim Carrison, the son of a navy officer, ten years old.
Even more upsetting was the way the staff reacted. The relieving officer, William Pearson, who Lillian boasted had held the post for Harlingdon for twenty years, visited the same morning. He solemnly nodded at the news, collected receipts from the matron, and filled out documents relating to the missing boy. I overheard two teachers talking about funding cuts, and their current job applications to a private school. Millie was mothered by the cook, and her cries were the only legitimate reaction out of all that I witnessed; the teachers’ passivity enraged me, so much so that I felt even more determined to do what I’d intended: I told my staff I’d return to Bristol with Sherlock Holmes.
Millie was in no condition to travel back to the orphanage with me. I left her at my father’s house and travelled to Baker Street alone.
The famous detective and I looked at each other. He appeared exactly the same as when I had previously met him.
“Mr Holmes.”
“Miss de Merville.”
“Not the Miss de Merville?” Watson exclaimed. “My condolences about your father, the general.”
“Why, thank you.”
“Whatever is the matter?”
“It is rather a strange situation.”
“Well, we have heard many a strange thing here haven’t we, Holmes?”
Mr Holmes watched me. “Please begin.”
And so I talked. Watson interjected with questions here and there but the detective only listened intently, puffs of smoke rising occasionally from his pipe until I’d finished.
“Now, Miss de Merville,” Holmes began, “your staff. What do they sound like?”
“Sound like, sir?”
“Their accents. Are they regional? Bristolian?”
“A few are. Most sound like they are from other parts of the country.”
“And this ghost has never been spotted amongst the dormitories or within the orphanage? Only outside?”
“Yes, although I heard his voice in my room—”