The searchers did not give up until a quarter to ten, when they, with their hostess, went along to the village for their nightcaps and to their beds. Next day they resumed their labours, and Mrs. Bradley thought at One point that the mystery was about to be solved by Mr. Carris, who stood for nearly a quarter of an hour in the grass-grown courtyard, inspecting it from every angle and sometimes gazing down into the well. Although he had thus the first clue in his hands, he did not follow it up, but merely remarked that wells should be covered in, and that this one, so near the scullery door, was particularly dangerous.
Mr. Pratt found the second clue, but, lacking the first, made nothing of his discovery. He merely remarked to Mrs. Bradley that it seemed as though the foundations of the house might be older than its superstructure, an intelligent conclusion with which she gravely agreed. Not to be outdone by his companions, yet equally unable to apply his information, since neither of the others had thought it worth while to follow up their own discoveries, the Warden observed that it was odd to find no door at the top and bottom of the servants' staircase in a house of that period, especially as close inspection of the walls convinced him that such doors had originally been in position. He supposed they had been taken away for convenience by later owners, but he thought this made the house draughty.
During that afternoon, when the three, tired out by their exertions and slightly bored by the apparent fruitlessness of them, had given up exploring the house, the phenomena began again. Besides the usual destructiveness and noise, the watchers were greatly interested to discover some fresh markings on the walls. Some of these were mere random strokes and loops, but the word 'blimey' and two unprintable epithets were also among the exhibits.
The three men owned that they were puzzled by this new manifestation, but the Warden remarked that it seemed 'quite like home ' to find that kind of thing scribbled on walls. At this artless remark Mrs. Bradley grimaced, but she did not reply to it, nor indicate to the guests in any way that, among them, they now had the key to all the manifestations in their hands.
When night approached, all three (having sounded one another on the subject) asked permission to remain in the house for the night. She consented, and, having anticipated such a request, produced food and drink from the larder.
After supper it was agreed that Mrs. Bradley and Mr. Carris, who had not been known to one another before the visit, should keep the watch from midnight until half-past two, and the others, who were also strangers to one another, should take over at the end of the first watch and remain on guard until five. Collusion between the watchers would thus be extremely unlikely. Incidentally (as she learned later), Mr. Carris was told to keep as strict an eye upon Mrs. Bradley and her doings as on the ghosts and their performances.
The couples had drawn for watches, and it was agreed that no one should hunt alone. Mrs. Bradley and Carris, having drawn the first watch, saw the others go up to 'bed'—in this case into the bedroom in which Mrs. Bradley had been attended, as all could witness, by the shadowy presence—and then settled down, at Carris' request, in the dining-room. At the end of ten minutes, however, he further suggested that they should not restrict themselves to one guardroom, but should move from room to room about the house, both upstairs and down, at varying intervals, keeping together, but otherwise policing the place as carefully as they could. Mrs. Bradley grinned, and agreed. But, often though they changed their headquarters, the 'ghosts' were nippier still. Whenever they had left the dining-room or drawing-room unattended, and were upstairs, they would find, upon their return, that one or more objects in that room had been displaced during their absence. If they merely moved from one of these rooms to the other, however, Carris noted that nothing in the empty room was touched. It was clear that the whole thing was trickery and depended largely upon timing. Once or twice Garris felt, he afterwards observed, as though he were on the track, for doors slammed ahead of him, and, in following up the sounds, he thought he could hear light scurrying footsteps. They always remained ahead of him, however, except on one occasion, when he was passing along the kitchen passage, on his way back from the scullery to make sure that the door to the courtyard was still sealed. It was still sealed, yet he heard footsteps behind him as he began to walk back towards the hall.
Mrs. Bradley contented herself with remaining close beside or just behind him. Several times he leapt round on her, but there was never anything in her bearing or actions which gave indication that she was a prime mover, or even an assistant, in the trickery which his intelligence told him was being practised, and on the occasion just referred to he turned and darted back, forgot two steps which led down into the kitchen, took a toss, heard a slight laugh, but found no one.
Whilst he and Mrs. Bradley were in the spare room a frog jumped with the most startling suddenness out of one of the corners, and sat there, with pulsating throat and steady little eyes, regarding them with what appeared to be sedate amusement.
"One ought to be able to relate that frog to the well, I suppose," said Carris. "It did have steps, so I suppose the frog could get up to the courtyard ... but how upstairs to this room ... unless someone brought him?"
The other two watchers had a quiet time until just before five. But at ten minutes to the hour, when their spell of duty was supposed to end, they were aroused from their sleepy boredom by a succession of loud knocks on the wall. They were in the drawing-room, which was the most comfortably furnished of the downstair rooms, and as soon as they heard the knocking they rushed out into the hall. As nothing was to be seen, they examined the seals of the front door, found that they were still intact, and made for the back of the house.
But for their compact, Pratt said afterwards, he himself would have made for the landing above, but as the Warden ran down the hall towards the passage leading to the kitchen and the scullery, he himself was bound to follow. They went as far as the scullery door, proved that it, too, was still sealed, and, coming back slowly, examining the passage walls and the dining-room as they came, discovered more scribbles.
Sucked-in was scrawled in one place, and Silly bastards in another. They went up by the front stairs and down by the back stairs, opening every door they came to and waking Carris, who was lying on the spare-room bed. Mrs. Bradley, in an armchair, was already awake, but her wrist was secured to his by a length of string, to ensure that neither moved about the house without the knowledge of the other.
The string was then detached, and the four went down to breakfast. Experiences were compared, and after breakfast two pillows fell downstairs into the hall. No more phenomena occurred before the departure of the journalists. They went reluctantly, and declared that, with another night on the premises, they could have solved the mystery.
Mrs. Bradley picked up the pillows and replaced them on the spare-room bed, then, watched by the Warden, she erased the new scribblings on the walls, only to find that two more had been done on the wall of the bathroom passage.
"I know that writing," said the Warden, suddenly. Mrs. Bradley chuckled as she erased it.
"I've no doubt of it, Warden," she said, "but you had better forget all that. Tell me, have you enjoyed your experiences?"
The Warden confessed that he had.
"And what do you really think of the phenomena?" Mrs. Bradley continued.
"Very interesting and stimulating," said the Warden. "And now—where are my boys?"
"Returned to the fold this morning. They left the house immediately they had done this last bit of writing," Mrs. Bradley replied. "I chose Price and Watermallow for this job, and I think you must agree that they have been most intelligent."
"I hardly know whether the Board ..." began the Warden.
"Did you know the two boys called Piggy and Alec, who disappeared from the Institution just before Miss Foxley inherited her aunt's money?" Mrs. Bradley enquired, coming adroitly between the Warden and his conscience.
"No. I heard all about it, of course. In fact, if you remember, that was why I w
as so grateful when you captured those other little scoundrels for us. Perhaps, if they had had your help over the two who got clean away ..."
Mrs. Bradley shook her head, and assisted the Warden to come to the conclusion that he also ought to be going.
They had lunch together at the inn, and she saw him off. Then she returned to the haunted house. The time was a quarter to three, and the high, untidy grass and overgrown shrubs of the garden, a broken wicket gate on to a paddock and a neglected summer-house on a weedy gravel path gave, at that still, close time of the day, an odd and ghostly effect which the first view of the gabled house did nothing to alter or dispel.
She walked up to the front door and opened it with the key which the caretaker had provided. Sunshine danced in motes of dust in the hall. The staircase, uncarpeted—for Miss Foxley had left the house only partly furnished—turned on itself at the end of the first eight stairs with an air of reserve and chilly watchfulness. Beyond it the dim kitchen passage led direct to the realm of ghosts, and one of these ghosts—so it seemed at Mrs. Bradley's first half-glance within—was already in occupation of the premises.
Mrs. Bradley was quick and lithe as a woman one-third of her age. She flung herself flat, and the bottle flew over her prone body and crashed against the wall of the staircase. She rose and sped forward to grapple with the poltergeist. The voice of Miss Foxley, from the point of vantage of cover behind the dresser, called out deprecatingly:
"Oh, Lord! I thought you were one of the ghosts!"
"I had the same impression about you," replied Mrs. Bradley, dusting her skirt with her left hand, and keeping her right in the pocket of her skirt.
"You—you needn't shoot," said Miss Foxley, emerging. "I assure you I'm not a ghost."
"So I perceive," said Mrs. Bradley, keeping her right hand where it was. "You came to see how we were getting on, I presume? Well, I'm afraid you've missed all the fun. We did have a little, although not as much as one had hoped."
"I'm glad you don't feel you've wasted your money," said Miss Foxley, nervously. "So often people complain. After all, I can't make things happen, can I?"
As Mrs. Bradley had her doubts about this, she did not reply. She merely asked whether Miss Foxley proposed to stay long in the village.
"Oh, I'm not staying at all," Miss Foxley hastily answered. "I'm due to return on the four-thirty train."
"I'll walk as far as the station with you, shall I?" said Mrs. Bradley. Miss Foxley demurred, Mrs. Bradley insisted. Miss Foxley caught the train with ten minutes to spare, and, to Mrs. Bradley's great satisfaction, completely obscured her features with a thick veil, and the lines of her figure with a long, loose mackintosh cape, before they set out from the house.
"I am just sufficiently like poor old Bella to look at, that I don't feel I want to give people a shock," she remarked, apparently feeling that an explanation was called for, although Mrs. Bradley had asked for none.
"Very proper," said Mrs. Bradley. As soon as the train pulled out of the station she telephoned for the police, and then returned to the house. This time there was nobody in occupation. She passed from room to room, and then went to the courtyard. There she removed the wooden cover of the well and peered into the depths.
There were footholds in the brickwork, as had already been noted by one of her amateur searchers after truth. She glanced round—at the scullery door, which opened almost on to the well; at the kitchen window, which overlooked it; at the pantry window, which, with all their zeal, the seekers had not troubled to seal nor she to point out to them.
"Selah," said Mrs. Bradley, removing all traces of the poltergeists' ingress and egress by this means. She returned to the well and soliloquised it:
"In five minutes we were at the well, and for some little time we sat on the edge of the well-head to make sure that no one was stirring or spying on us ... and so we began to descend cautiously, feeling every step before we set foot on it, and scanning the walls in search of any marked stone ..."*
*"The Treasure of Abbot Thomas." From Ghost Stories of an Antiquary. By M. R. James.
Mrs. Bradley began to climb carefully into the well.
The police were as painstaking as usual. Led by Mrs. Bradley, who availed herself of her position as temporary tenant of the house to act as guide and showman, they also climbed warily into the well, felt their way along a narrow tunnel which opened out of its side about a dozen feet above the water-line, and, after groping forward a couple of yards, emerged, as she had already done, into the cellars of the house.
The cellars were ancient, and were interesting, not only from the point of view of their age. Frogs hopped on the floors, for dampness was everywhere, chiefly because of the proximity of the well. The chief interest, however, lay not in the frogs but in the great thick groins of stone upon which the roof of the cellars was supported.
"Good heavens!" said the inspector, straightening himself as he came out of the passage exit. "Looks like something built to hold up a bridge."
"It was built to hold up the floor, including the stone pillars of a Norman church," said Mrs. Bradley, resting one of her thin yellow hands affectionately on the stonework. "This is a Norman crypt, and, I should say, one of the most interesting in England."
"No wonder there's been funny goings-on," said the sergeant, who was inclined to be superstitious and was marked for promotion because of it, his superiors being under the impression that it betokened imagination, about which they had been hearing in staff talks.
Mrs. Bradley nodded, and suggested to them that in order to obtain the results she thought probable, they would need to dig. As they had brought nothing down with them—indeed, they could not have transported spades down the well—the inspector looked at her as respectfully as circumstances, and the crude illumination of his countenance by the beams of electric torches, would permit, but did not reply. Mrs. Bradley did not relieve his mind by picking up a very beautiful frog, caressing it gently with her forefinger, and cackling loudly, and with a horrid echo from the vault.
"This way," she said. The overhead arches of the vaulting descended to earth in the form of thick, heavy, crudely-carved, round-capitalled pillars. Mrs. Bradley suddenly disappeared behind one of these, and the inspector, thinking to follow, discovered that she was gone. Unpardonably, since the place must at one time have been consecrated, he swore nervously, and turned round to speak to the sergeant.
"Disappearing trick," he said, introducing a regrettable adjective.
"Snatched away ... and no wonder, with a physog like that," said the sergeant. Suddenly Mrs. Bradley's voice spoke right in his ear.
"Tell the inspector to mind the step," she said. The flight of stone steps was immediately visible to the sergeant. He blushed—fortunately in the darkness—and followed the inspector up to a little square trap-door.
"So if the one entrance or exit was not feasible or available, the other was," Mrs. Bradley explained, as the three of them emerged at the foot of the servants' staircase. "This passage, you see, is to the kitchen and scullery, and from the scullery the door opens almost on to the top of the well. The well is a good deal later in date than the crypt, of course, and may have existed independently of it for a hundred years or so. I know very little about such things, but I should put the date of the crypt as not much later than 1090. The well may have been sunk in the fifteenth century, and the passage connecting the two I should be inclined to associate with Tudor times, although I have nothing much to go on apart from the type of brickwork. I should think the connection was made to give protection to a Catholic priest. The Jesuits, I believe, were active towards the close of the sixteenth century.
"Anyhow, that's how the poltergeist worked. He could always be somewhere else—the essence of a good game of hide and seek. Let us return to the cellars. I have more to show you."
It was, the sergeant declared afterwards, as good as a film. They returned to the cellar by the way that they had used to ascend to the kitchen passage. A short leng
th of linoleum had been removed to give free access to the trap-door.
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