Tales from the Dead of Night

by Cecily Gayford

  But there was no doubt he was very tired: he had an unpleasant sensation, too, as of a wire stretched tight across his heart, and of some thrumming going on against it. The wire dully ached, and this thrumming produced little stabs of sharp pain. All day he had been conscious of something of the sort, but he was too much taken up with the joy of the finished garden to heed little physical beckonings. A good long night would make him fit again, or, if not, he could stop in bed tomorrow. He went upstairs early, not the least anxious about himself, and instantly went to sleep. The soft night air pushed in at his open window, and the last sound that he heard was the tapping of the blind tassel against the sash.

  He woke very suddenly and completely, knowing that somebody had called him. The room was curiously bright, but not with the quality of moonlight; it was like a valley lying in shadow, while somewhere, a little way above it, shone some strong splendour of noon. And then he heard again his name called, and knew that the sound of the voice came in through the window. There was no doubt that Violet was calling him: she and the others were out in the garden.

  ‘Yes, I’m coming,’ he cried, and he jumped out of bed. He seemed – it was not odd – to be already dressed: he had on a jersey and flannel trousers, but his feet were bare and he slipped on a pair of shoes, and ran downstairs, taking the first short flight in one leap, like young Peter. The door of his mother’s room was open, and he looked in, and there she was, of course, sitting at the table and writing letters.

  ‘Oh, Peter, how lovely to have you home again,’ she said. ‘They’re all out in the garden, and they’ve been calling you, darling. But come and see me soon, and have a talk.’

  Out he ran along the walk below the windows, and up the winding path through the shrubbery to the summer house, for he knew they were going to play Pirates. He must hurry, or the Pirates would be aboard before he got there, and as he ran, he called out, ‘Oh, do wait a second: I’m coming.’

  He scudded past the golden maple and the bay tree, and there they all were in the summer house which was home. And he took a flying leap up the steps and was among them.

  *

  It was there that Calloway found him next morning. He must indeed have run up the winding path like a boy, for the new-laid gravel was spurned at long intervals by the toe-prints of his shoes.

  MARJORIE BOWEN

  (1885–1952)

  Gabrielle Margaret Campbell, who wrote under the name of Marjorie Bowen (among others), was born between ‘All Saints and All Souls’, which, as she remarked in her autobiography, ‘is supposed to give the gift of second sight’. Her childhood was poverty-stricken and nomadic, driven by the need to escape debts; at one point the family lived in a house in St John’s Wood, north London, which was haunted by ‘all the usual psychic phenomena’, including a ‘hooded figure’. From an early age Bowen was the sole breadwinner for her sister and mother and she continued to publish prolifically throughout her life. One of her lasting literary legacies was to inspire Graham Greene, who described reading her first book, The Viper of Milan, aged fourteen: ‘From that moment I began to write. All the other possible futures slid away …’

  THE CROWN DERBY PLATE

  MARTHA PYM SAID that she had never seen a ghost and that she would very much like to do so, ‘particularly at Christmas, for, you can laugh as you like, that is the correct time to see a ghost’.

  ‘I don’t suppose you ever will,’ replied her cousin Mabel comfortably; while her cousin Clara shuddered and said that she hoped they would change the subject, for she disliked even to think of such things.

  The three elderly, cheerful women sat round a big fire, cosy and content after a day of pleasant activities. Martha was the guest of the other two, who owned the handsome, convenient country house; she always came to spend her Christmas with the Wyntons, and found the leisurely country life delightful after the bustling round of London, for Martha managed an antiques shop of the better sort and worked extremely hard. She was, however, still full of zest for work or pleasure, though sixty years old, and looked backwards and forwards to a succession of delightful days.

  The other two, Mabel and Clara, led quieter but nonetheless agreeable lives; they had more money and fewer interests, but nevertheless enjoyed themselves very well.

  ‘Talking of ghosts,’ said Mabel, ‘I wonder how that old woman at Hartleys is getting on – for Hartleys, you know, is supposed to be haunted.’

  ‘Yes, I know,’ smiled Miss Pym; ‘but all the years we have known of the place we have never heard anything definite, have we?’

  ‘No,’ put in Clara; ‘but there is that persistent rumour that the house is uncanny, and for myself, nothing would induce me to live there.’

  ‘It is certainly very lonely and dreary down there on the marshes,’ conceded Mabel. ‘But as for the ghost – you never hear what it is supposed to be, even.’

  ‘Who has taken it?’ asked Miss Pym, remembering Hartleys as very desolate indeed and long shut up.

  ‘A Miss Lefain, an eccentric old creature – I think you met her here once two years ago –’

  ‘I believe that I did, but I don’t recall her at all.’

  ‘We have not seen her since. Hartleys is so ungetatable and she didn’t seem to want visitors. She collects china, Martha, so really you ought to go and see her and talk shop.’

  With the word ‘china’ some curious associations came into the mind of Martha Pym; she was silent while she strove to put them together, and after a second or two they all fitted together into a very clear picture.

  She remembered that thirty years ago – yes, it must be thirty years ago, when, as a young woman, she had put all her capital into the antiques business and had been staying with her cousins (her aunt had then been alive) – she had driven across the marsh to Hartleys, where there was an auction sale; all the details of this she had completely forgotten, but she could recall quite clearly purchasing a set of gorgeous china which was still one of her proud delights, a perfect set of Crown Derby save that one plate was missing.

  ‘How odd,’ she remarked, ‘that this Miss Lefain should collect china too, for it was at Hartleys that I purchased my dear old Derby service – I’ve never been able to match that plate.’

  ‘A plate was missing? I seem to remember,’ said Clara. ‘Didn’t they say that it must be in the house somewhere and that it should be looked for?’

  ‘I believe they did; but of course I never heard any more, and that missing plate has annoyed me ever since. Who had Hartleys?’

  ‘An old connoisseur, Sir James Sewell. I believe he was some relation to this Miss Lefain, but I don’t know –’

  ‘I wonder if she has found the plate,’ mused Miss Pym. ‘I expect she has turned out and ransacked the whole place.’

  ‘Why not trot over and ask?’ suggested Mabel. ‘It’s not much use to her if she has found it, one odd plate.’

  ‘Don’t be silly,’ said Clara. ‘Fancy going over the marshes in this weather to ask about a plate missed all those years ago. I’m sure Martha wouldn’t think of it.’

  But Martha did think of it; she was rather fascinated by the idea. How queer and pleasant it would be if, after all these years, nearly a lifetime, she should find the Crown Derby plate, the loss of which had always irked her! And this hope did not seem so altogether fantastical; it was quite likely that old Miss Lefain, poking about in the ancient house, had found the missing piece.

  And, of course, if she had, being a fellow collector, she would be quite willing to part with it to complete the set.

  Her cousin endeavoured to dissuade her; Miss Lefain, she declared, was a recluse, an odd creature who might greatly resent such a visit and such a request.

  ‘Well, if she does I can but come away again,’ smiled Miss Pym. ‘I suppose she can’t bite my head off, and I rather like meeting these curious types – we’ve got a love for old china in common, anyhow.’

  ‘It seems so silly to think of it after all these years – a plate!’r />
  ‘A Crown Derby plate,’ corrected Miss Pym. ‘It is certainly strange that I did not think of it before, but now that I have got it into my head I can’t get it out. Besides,’ she added hopefully, ‘I might see the ghost.’

  So full, however, were the days with pleasant local engagements that Miss Pym had no immediate chance of putting her scheme into practice; but she did not relinquish it and she asked several different people what they knew about Hartleys and Miss Lefain.

  And no one knew anything except that the house was supposed to be haunted and the owner ‘cracky’.

  ‘Is there a story?’ asked Miss Pym, who associated ghosts with neat tales into which they fitted as exactly as nuts into shells.

  But she was always told, ‘Oh no, there isn’t a story; no one knows anything about the place, don’t know how the idea got about; old Sewell was half crazy, I believe. He was buried in the garden and that gives a house a nasty name.’

  ‘Very unpleasant,’ said Martha Pym, undisturbed.

  This ghost seemed too elusive for her to track down; she would have to be content if she could recover the Crown Derby plate; for that at least she was determined to make a try and also to satisfy that faint tingling of curiosity roused in her by this talk about Hartleys and the remembrance of that day, so long ago, when she had gone to the auction sale at the lonely old house.

  So the first free afternoon, while Mabel and Clara were comfortably taking their afternoon repose, Martha Pym, who was of a more lively habit, got out her little governess cart and dashed away across the Essex flats.

  She had taken minute directions with her, but she soon lost her way.

  Under the wintry sky, which looked as grey and hard as metal, the marshes stretched bleakly to the horizon; the olive-brown broken reeds were harsh as scars on the saffron-tinted bogs, where the sluggish waters that rose so high in winter were filmed over with the first stillness of a frost. The air was cold, but not keen; everything was damp. Faintest of mists blurred the black outlines of trees that rose stark from the ridges above the stagnant dykes; the flooded fields were haunted by black birds and white birds, gulls and crows, whining above the high ditch grass and wintry wastes.

  Miss Pym stopped the little horse and surveyed this spectral scene, which had a certain relish about it to one sure to return to a homely village, a cheerful house and good company.

  A withered and bleached old man, in colour like the dun landscape, came along the road between the spare alders.

  Miss Pym, buttoning up her coat, asked the way to Hartleys as he passed her; he told her, straight on, and she proceeded, straight indeed along the road that went with undeviating length across the marshes.

  ‘Of course,’ thought Miss Pym, ‘if you live in a place like this you are bound to invent ghosts.’

  The house sprang up suddenly on a knoll ringed with rotting trees, encompassed by an old brick wall that the perpetual damp had overrun with lichen, blue, green, white, colours of decay.

  Hartleys, no doubt; there was no other residence or human being in sight in all the wide expanse; besides, she could remember it, surely, after all this time – the sharp rising out of the marsh, the colony of tall trees; but then fields and trees had been green and bright – there had been no water on the flats, it had been summertime.

  ‘She certainly,’ thought Miss Pym, ‘must be crazy to live here. And I rather doubt if I shall get my plate.’

  She fastened up the good little horse by the garden gate, which stood negligently ajar, and entered. The garden itself was so neglected that it was quite surprising to see a trim appearance in the house – curtains at the windows and a polish on the brass door-knocker, which must have been recently rubbed there, considering the taint in the sea damp which rusted and rotted everything.

  It was a square-built, substantial house with ‘nothing wrong with it but the situation’, Miss Pym decided, though it was not very attractive, being built of that drab, plastered stone so popular a hundred years ago, with flat windows and door; while one side was gloomily shaded by a large evergreen tree of the cypress variety which gave a blackish tinge to that portion of the garden. There was no pretence at flowerbeds nor any manner of cultivation in this garden, where a few rank weeds and straggling bushes matted together above the dead grass. On the enclosing wall, which appeared to have been built high as protection against the ceaseless winds that swung along the flats, were the remains of fruit trees; their crucified branches, rotting under the great nails that held them up, looked like the skeletons of those who had died in torment.

  Miss Pym took in these noxious details as she knocked firmly at the door; they did not depress her; she merely felt extremely sorry for anyone who could live in such a place.

  She noticed at the far end of the garden, in the corner of the wall, a headstone showing above the sodden, colourless grass, and remembered what she had been told about the old antiquary being buried there, in the grounds of Hartleys.

  As the knock had no effect, she stepped back and looked at the house: it was certainly inhabited – with those neat windows, white curtains and drab blinds all pulled to precisely the same level. And when she brought her glance back to the door she saw that it had been opened and that someone, considerably obscured by the darkness of the passage, was looking at her intently.

  ‘Good afternoon,’ said Miss Pym cheerfully. ‘I just thought I would call and see Miss Lefain – it is Miss Lefain, isn’t it?’

  ‘It’s my house,’ was the querulous reply.

  Martha Pym had hardly expected to find any servants here, though the old lady must, she thought, work pretty hard to keep the house so clean and tidy as it appeared to be.

  ‘Of course,’ she replied. ‘May I come in? I’m Martha Pym, staying with the Wyntons. I met you there –’

  ‘Do come in,’ was the faint reply. ‘I get so few people to visit me, I’m really very lonely.’

  ‘I don’t wonder,’ thought Miss Pym; but she had resolved to take no notice of any eccentricity on the part of her hostess, and so she entered the house with her usual agreeable candour and courtesy.

  The passage was badly lit, but she was able to get a fair idea of Miss Lefain. Her first impression was that this poor creature was most dreadfully old, older than any human being had the right to be; why, she felt young in comparison – so faded, feeble and pallid was Miss Lefain.

  She was also monstrously fat; her gross, flaccid figure was shapeless and she wore a badly cut, full dress of no colour at all, but stained with earth and damp where, Miss Pym supposed, she had been doing futile gardening; this gown was doubtless designed to disguise her stoutness, but had been so carelessly pulled about that it only added to it, being rucked and rolled ‘all over the place’, as Miss Pym put it to herself.

  Another ridiculous touch about the appearance of the poor old lady was her short hair; decrepit as she was and lonely as she lived, she had actually had her scanty relics of white hair cropped round her shaking head.

  ‘Dear me, dear me,’ she said in her thin, treble voice. ‘How very kind of you to come. I suppose you prefer the parlour? I generally sit in the garden.’

  ‘The garden? But not in this weather?’

  ‘I get used to the weather. You’ve no idea how used one gets to the weather.’

  ‘I suppose so,’ conceded Miss Pym doubtfully. ‘You don’t live here quite alone, do you?’

  ‘Quite alone, lately. I had a little company, but she was taken away – I’m sure I don’t know where. I haven’t been able to find a trace of her anywhere,’ replied the old lady peevishly.

  ‘Some wretched companion that couldn’t stick it, I suppose,’ thought Miss Pym. ‘Well, I don’t wonder – but someone ought to be here to look after her.’

  They went into the parlour, which, the visitor was dismayed to see, was without a fire, but otherwise well kept.

  And there, on dozens of shelves, was a choice array of china, at which Martha Pym’s eyes glistened.

 
‘Aha!’ cried Miss Lefain. ‘I see you’ve noticed my treasures. Don’t you envy me? Don’t you wish that you had some of those pieces?’

  Martha Pym certainly did, and she looked eagerly and greedily round the walls, tables and cabinets, while the old woman followed her with little thin squeals of pleasure.

  It was a beautiful little collection, most choicely and elegantly arranged, and Martha thought it marvellous that this feeble, ancient creature should be able to keep it in such precise order as well as doing her own housework.

  ‘Do you really do everything yourself here and live quite alone?’ she asked, and she shivered even in her thick coat and wished that Miss Lefain’s energy had risen to a fire, but then probably she lived in the kitchen, as these lonely eccentrics often did.

  ‘There was someone,’ answered Miss Lefain cunningly, ‘but I had to send her away. I told you she’s gone; I can’t find her and I am so glad. Of course,’ she added wistfully, ‘it leaves me very lonely, but then I couldn’t stand her impertinence any longer. She used to say that it was her house and her collection of china! Would you believe it? She used to try and chase me away from looking at my own things!’

  ‘How very disagreeable,’ said Miss Pym, wondering which of the two women had been crazy. ‘But hadn’t you better get someone else?’