There was trouble with Mrs. Prothero. At the time several of my father’s handkerchiefs were simmering away soapily in one of her saucepans. Also, my father thought that the holiday charge should be reduced by more than Mrs. Prothero would agree to.
However, within the hour, ourselves and our belongings (including, of course, Celia’s stowaway mouse) were packed into the car; Mrs. Prothero’s account had been settled (“Shark!” said my father); and we were off. For once, my mother drove, as my father’s injured hand would not allow him to.
Of course, Mr. Brown, having been at such pains to warn us, must have been on the lookout for our return. And if my father had hoped to catch the Miss Hardys unawares (let alone “red-handed”), he underestimated the alertness of elderly maiden ladies. We drove up under darkened skies and pouring rain, and my mother was about to get out of the car when the Miss Hardys, together under a huge umbrella, rushed down their front path to greet us.
My father had lowered the window on the passenger side and now called sternly, “Good evening. We need our front-door key, please.”
Unmistakably the Miss Hardys were taken aback by our arrival; indeed, they seemed the very picture of guilt caught red-handed. “Oh, dear!” and “Oh, no!” they cried desperately. “So early back from your holiday!” and: “Surely you won’t want to go into your house now, at once? Surely not! Oh, dear! Oh, dear!”
“The key!” said my father, and got it.
Quite a large party gathered in the shelter of our porch: my father in front with the key; the rest of his family behind him; behind us, again, the two Miss Hardys, still distraught; and behind them—although at first we were unaware of his having joined us—Mr. Wilfred Brown.
My father, left-handed but resolute, inserted the key in the lock, turned it, and pushed open the front door.
We had been expecting to enter or at least to peer forward, even if fearfully, into the hall. Instead, we found ourselves reeling back from a smell—a stench—which flowed out toward us. We knew when the tide had reached the last of our party because “Phew! What a stinker!” exclaimed Mr. Brown, thus declaring his presence through a handkerchief muffling nose and mouth.
But in spite of the smell, we could, of course, see into the hall. (Surely my father saw something, however much he afterward preferred to deny that?) To me the hall seemed somehow darker than one would expect, even on an evening so overcast, darker in the way of having more shadows to it, and the shadows seemed to shift and flicker and move. They were just above ground level.
And I was almost sure that for a moment only I glimpsed a taller shadow whose shape I could interpret: it was human and surely female. I was not alone in this perception. The Miss Hardys had edged forward, and one now whispered, “Yes, it is dear Mrs. Chamberlain!” and the other, clearly in an agony of social embarrassment, murmured: “We are in the wrong. We are intruding upon the privacy of dear Mrs. Chamberlain’s reunion!”
And then the shadowy figure had vanished.
Even before the Miss Hardys’ whispering, I was aware that Celia was standing on tiptoe for a better view into the hall. With the keen eye of love, she recognized—or thought she recognized—one shape among the low-moving shadows. She became certain. “Mildred!” she cried. She took three eager steps past my father and across the threshold of the front door into the hall itself.
There she was halted abruptly by the behavior of someone whom, in the excitement, she had quite forgotten, her dear Micky. Up to now he had been in the concealment and safety of a pocket.
If the extraordinary smell from the house was sickening for us, it must have crazed with fear the poor mouse. He attempted to escape.
His small white face was already visible over the edge of Celia’s pocket, and it was as if the shadowy house saw him. (If walls have ears, why not eyes, too? Eyes that stare, that glare, that stupefy.)
I suppose that if he were capable of planning at all, Micky must have meant to leap from Celia’s pocket and instantly leave the house at greatest speed by the open front door. But the gaze of the shadowy hall was full upon him: he did not leap but fell helplessly from Celia’s pocket onto the floor of the hall and lay there motionless.
(“Oh!” moaned my mother, and there was a small clatter as she fainted away in her corner of the porch among the potted plants. She knew how a lady should react to the sight of a mouse.)
What followed is difficult to describe. It was as if the house—not the bricks and mortar, of course, but the inside of the house, the shadowy air itself—gathered together swiftly and with one ferocious purpose against a terrified white mouse—
And pounced!
Micky gave one heartrending squeak, a mouse shriek that rose to heaven, imploring mercy, and met none. He died in mid-squeak, and Celia fell on her knees by his body, babbling grief.
And the last of the slinking shadows melted away, every last one of them.
Only the smell remained, and later my intelligent nose would remember and make a connection between the present appalling stench of cat and the peculiar and rather repellent stuffiness of our house after every seaside holiday. In that stuffiness lurked the very last faint trace of this present horror of a smell.
As for my father, he would never, anyway, countenance any idea of the supernatural; he had always ridiculed it. The very idea of evidence put him into a fury. Now he was beside himself with indignation. “What is going on?” he shouted into the empty hall.
There was no reply—no sound at all except a slight scuffling from the back of the porch, where my mother was beginning to struggle among the potted plants; also Celia’s quiet sobbing. He picked on that. He realized that the mouse had been Celia’s rash secret. In this she had been, he said, deceitful, disobedient, and—oh, yes!—defiant and disloyal. Under the fury of her father’s attack, Celia’s weeping became hysterical. Her tears rained down upon the corpse clasped to her breast, and she was led away by the Miss Hardys to be given sal volatile and sympathy.
My father now turned to the plight of my mother in her porch corner. On regaining consciousness, she had opened her eyes to find Mr. Brown’s gazing fully into them at a distance of about three and a half inches. And he was now gallantly assisting her with helping hands, one at her waist, another at her elbow. My father rushed down upon them, demanding that Mr. Brown remove himself instantly from his wife and his porch and the rest of his property. Without pause he went on to attack Mr. Brown’s birth, breeding, appearance, character, and former occupation—“trade”(Rage always inspired my father.)
Mr. Brown was neither foolhardy nor a fool. He retreated. Out into the drenching rain he went, and home. We all watched him go. That was really the last we saw of Mr. Brown. Within two days my father had caused a seven-foot-high solid fence to be built just our side of the laurel hedge.
Having dispatched Mr. Brown, my father became master again in his own house. He instructed us to go round opening all the windows to let what he called “this stale air” out and the fresh air in. Never mind the rain. Then we must unpack. “Our holiday is over; we are at home; we resume our routine.”
In the long term, however, our routine had been undermined, and for this my father could not forgive the Miss Hardys. He suspected them of conniving at happenings which were all the more deplorable because they simply could not have occurred. He had known of the existence of the late Mrs. Chamberlain, of course, because he had bought our house from her heirs. He may even have heard of her mania for cats. (“She couldn’t resist a stray,” the Miss Hardys explained to Celia. “She tried to keep the numbers down. But, by the end—well, the house did begin rather to smell. Cats, you know …”)
My father would never admit to what became obvious: that the ghosts of Mrs. Chamberlain and her cats had been returning regularly to haunts where they had been happy. They had been tempted by the absolute regularity of our holiday absences to hold a kind of annual old girls’ reunion in our house, but there must have been old boys as well. Only the attendance of at
least one tomcat could explain the strength of that smell.
The Miss Hardys had known what was going on every August but saw no harm in it. The ghosts came promptly after our departure for the seaside and had always vacated the house well before the date of our return. “It was all so discreetly done!” the Miss Hardys remarked plaintively to Celia as they administered the sal volatile. “Such a pity that it should have to stop!”
But it did. Before the next summer we had moved house, and I do not suppose that any family succeeding us could have had such a very dependable holiday routine. I only hope the ghosts were not too much disappointed.
After that summer my father became—and remained—jumpy about family holidays. We were never allowed to go at the same time for two years running. This meant, incidentally, that we no longer stayed in Mrs. Prothero’s guesthouse. In a huff she had said that she could not be expected to be “irregularly available.”
The Miss Hardys were seldom spoken of; Mr. Brown never.
The Strange Illness of Mr. Arthur Cook
On a cold, shiny day at the end of winter the Cook family went to look at the house they were likely to buy. Mr. and Mrs. Cook had viewed it several times before and had discussed it thoroughly; this was a first visit for their children, Judy and Mike.
Also with the Cooks was Mr. Biley, of the real estate agent’s firm of Ketch, Robb, and Biley in Walchester.
“Why’s he come?” whispered Judy. (And although the Cooks were not to know this, Mr. Biley did not usually accompany clients in order to clinch deals.)
Her parents shushed Judy.
They had driven a little way out of Walchester into the country. The car now turned down a lane which, perhaps fifty years before, had been hardly more than a farm track. Now there were several houses along it. The lane came to a dead end at a house with a FOR SALE notice at its front gate. On the gate itself was the name of the house, Southcroft.
“There it is!” said Mr. Arthur Cook to his two children.
“And very nice, too!” Mr. Biley said enthusiastically.
But in fact, the house was not particularly nice. In size it was small to medium; brick-built, slate-roofed; exactly rectangular; and rather bleak-looking. It stood in the middle of a large garden, also exactly rectangular and rather bleak-looking.
Mike, who tended to like most things that happened to him, said, “Seems okay.” He was gazing around not only at the house and its garden but at the quiet lane—ideal for his bike—and at the surrounding countryside. It would be all far, far better than where they were living now, in Walchester.
Judy, who was older than Mike and the only one in the family with a sharply pointed, inquisitive nose, said nothing—yet. She looked round alertly, intently.
“Nice big garden for kids to play in,” Mr. Biley pointed out.
“I might even grow a few vegetables,” said Mr. Cook.
“Oh, Arthur!” his wife said, laughing.
“Well,” Mr. Cook said defensively, “I haven’t had much chance up to now, have I?” In Walchester the Cooks had only a paved backyard. But anyway, Mr. Cook, whose job was fixing television aerials onto people’s roofs, had always said that in his spare time he wanted to be indoors in an easy chair.
“Anyway,” said Mr. Biley as they went in by the front gate, “you’ve lovely soil here. Still in good tilth.”
“Tilth?” said Mr. Cook.
“That’s it,” said Mr. Biley.
They reached the front door. Mr. Biley unlocked it, and they all trooped in.
Southcroft had probably been built some time between the two wars. There was nothing antique about it, nor anything of special interest at all. On the other hand, it all appeared to be in good order, even to the house’s having been fairly recently redecorated.
The Cooks went everywhere, looked everywhere, their footsteps echoing uncomfortably in empty rooms. They reassembled in the sitting room, which had French windows letting onto the garden at the back. Tactfully Mr. Biley withdrew into the garden to leave the family to private talk.
“Well, there you are,” said Mr. Cook. “Just our size of house. Not remarkable in any way but snug, I fancy.”
“Remarkable in one way, Arthur,” said his wife. “Remarkably cheap.”
“A snip,” agreed Mr. Cook.
“Why’s it so cheap?” asked Judy.
“You ask too many questions beginning with why,” said her father, but good-humoredly.
It was true, however, that there seemed no particular reason for the house’s being so cheap as it was. Odd, perhaps.
“Can’t we go into the garden now?” asked Mike.
Mike and Judy went out, and Mr. Biley came in again.
There wasn’t much for the children to see in the garden. Close to the house grew unkempt grass, with a big old apple tree—the only tree in the garden—which Mike began to climb very thoroughly. The rest of the garden had all been under cultivation at one time, but now it was neglected, a mass of last season’s dead weeds. There were some straggly bushes—raspberry canes, perhaps. There had once been a greenhouse; only the brick foundations were left. There was a garden shed and behind it a mass of stuff which Judy left Mike to investigate. She wanted to get back to the adult conversation.
By the time Judy rejoined the party indoors there was no doubt about it: the Cooks were buying the house. Mr. Biley was extremely pleased, Judy noticed. He caught Judy staring at him and jollify, but very unwisely, said, “Well, young lady?”
Judy, invited thus to join in the conversation, had a great many questions to ask. She knew she wouldn’t be allowed to ask them all, and she began almost at random: “Who used to live here?”
“A family called Cribble,” said Mr. Biley. “A very nice family called Cribble.”
“Cribble,” Judy repeated to herself, storing the piece of information away. “And why—”
At that moment Mike walked in again from the garden. “There’s lots of stuff behind the shed,” he said. “Rolls and rolls of chicken wire, in an awful mess, and wood—posts and slats and stuff.”
“Easily cleared,” said Mr. Biley. “The previous owners were going to have bred dogs, I believe. They would have erected sheds, enclosures, runs—all that kind of thing.”
“Why did the Cribbles give up the idea?” asked Judy.
Mr. Biley looked uneasy. “Not the Cribbles,” he said, “the Johnsons. The family here before the Cribbles.”
“Why did the Johnsons give up the idea then?” asked Judy. “I mean, when they’d got all the stuff for it?”
“They—” Mr. Biley appeared to think deeply, if only momentarily. “They had to move rather unexpectedly.”
“Why?”
“Family reasons, perhaps?” said Mrs. Cook quickly. She knew some people found Judy tiresome.
“Family reasons, no doubt,” Mr. Biley agreed.
Judy said thoughtfully to herself: “The Johnsons didn’t stay long enough to start dog breeding, and they went in such a hurry that they left their stuff behind. The Cribbles came, but they didn’t stay long enough to have time to clear away all the Johnsons’ stuff. I wonder why they left. …”
Nobody could say that Judy was asking Mr. Biley a question, but he answered her all the same. “My dear young lady,” he said, in a manner so polite as to be also quite rude, “I do not know why. Nor is it my business.” He sounded as if he did not think it was Judy’s, either. He turned his back on her and began talking loudly about house purchase to Mr. Cook.
Judy was not put out. She had investigated mysteries and secrets before this, and she knew that patience was all important.
The Cooks bought Southcroft and moved in almost at once. Spring came late that year, and in the continuing cold weather the house proved as snug as one could wish. When the frosts were over, the family did some work outside, getting rid of all the dog-breeding junk: they made a splendid bonfire of the wood and put the wire out for the garbage men. Mr. Cook took a long look at the weeds beginning to sprou
t everywhere and groaned. He bought a garden fork and a spade and hoe and rake and put them into the shed.
In their different ways the Cooks were satisfied with the move. The new house was still convenient for Mr. Cook’s work. Mrs. Cook found that the neighbors kept themselves to themselves more than she would have liked, but she got a part-time job in a shop in the village, and that was all right. Mike made new friends in the new school, and they went riding round the countryside on their bikes. Judy was slower at making friends, partly because she was absorbed in her own affairs, particularly in investigation. In this she was disappointed for a time. She could find out so little about the Cribbles and the Johnsons: why they had stayed so briefly at Southcroft, why they had moved in so much haste. The Cribbles now lived the other side of Walchester, rather smartly, in a house with a large garden which they had had expensively landscaped. (Perhaps the size of the garden at Southcroft was what had attracted them to the house in the first place. In the village people said that the Cribbles had already engaged landscape garden specialists for Southcroft when they suddenly decided to leave.) As for the Johnsons, Judy discovered that they had moved right away, to Yorkshire, to do their dog breeding. Before the Cribbles and the Johnsons, an old couple called Baxter had lived in the house for many years, until one had died and the other moved away.
The Cooks had really settled in. Spring brought sunshine and longer days, and it also brought the first symptoms of Mr. Cook’s strange illness.
At first the trouble seemed to be his eyesight. He complained of a kind of brownish fog between himself and the television screen. He couldn’t see clearly enough to enjoy the programs. He thought he noticed that this fogginess was worse when he was doing daylight viewing, at the weekends or in the early evening. He tried to deal with this by drawing the curtains in the room where the set was on, but the fogginess persisted.
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