“Sometimes I think I’ll never leave this place,” sobs young Elizabeth. “It’s all so sad. We all died in Newgate, you know? Father, mother, me and my brother? We were carted off there for fraud.”
“What?” There’s a horrible stab of dread in my gut. “What happened?”
“For a little while we were the toast of the town. You can see the kerfuffle for yourself down there. Dad selling tickets so folk can sit up all night, watching me trying to sleep. Everyone listening to the scratching and screams… Well, soon the tide of opinion turned against us. They found us out, they said. We were evil fraudsters and connivers and flaunters of counterfeit spirits. They carted us off—not very far—to the old gaol and left us there to rot. And rot we did. I never saw my mum and dad or my brother again. I’m the only one who came back to relive those times, every night, again and again… And sometimes I think it will never stop. And that screaming and scratching will fill my head forever…”
Oh, that poor dear little girl. We’ll try to sort it all out. Me and my friend Dodie. We come from the future! We come from two hundred years hence! But the little girl isn’t very reassured, really. She sighs heavily and launches herself off the church rooftop, dwindling away through the fumy air. “Thank you for even listening,” she tells me, and suddenly she’s gone.
Dodie
It was a long night listening to Brontosaurus, whose tunes, I realized early on, were not very catchy. Their band’s name was quite apt, I remarked to Timothy Bold. “Oh?” he said, distracted by chatting up their girlfriends. “Plodding and quite long,” I told him, but he wasn’t really listening.
Keith the DJ was there, rolling his funny cigarettes and nodding like he was having all kinds of profound thoughts. “Hey, man,” he said to me. “Has your friend Cassie told you anything more about our haunting?”
Cassie hadn’t reported back at this point, so I took the opportunity to ask our chunky friend what he himself knew about this phantom. “You already knew her name?”
“She’s a legend here,” he said. “Everyone who’s recorded or broadcast from these studios has reported strange noises, one time or another. People usually think it’s rats from the sewers getting into the basement. But it’s not. We hear her voice sometimes, just like your Timothy did. There was one famous phone-in DJ who was so freaked out that he left and never came back. Gary’s was a successful show, but he was really scared. She got into his head.”
I asked our DJ friend if there would be any recordings in their archive of such visitations. As the droning, wibbling, dreadful music of Brontosaurus continued to maunder on behind the glass partition, my new friend looked shifty. “Our archive is chaotic. Just a room filled with boxes of old tape. But!” And here he looked rather cunning. “Some of us have made a point of keeping this Scratching Fanny material separate. It’s important, somehow. Heavy and deep. I mean, it’s communications from the other side, isn’t it?”
I pursed my lips. “I rather think it is.”
He beetled his eyebrows. “And you clearly believe in all this jazz, don’t you? Because of your having a ghostly assistant of your own?”
“Precisely,” I said, without a smidgen of embarrassment. A year into our investigating partnership, and Cassandra’s phantom status was a mere matter of fact to me.
Keith went on. “I’ve often thought we ought to get someone in… to look into this business. I mean, it’s disruptive and frightening sometimes… but it’s something we need to understand, isn’t it? There might be all kinds of wonderful stuff to be learned from a spirit like the one that’s haunting us…”
I was more impressed by this sentiment of his than anything else I’d learned about our host so far. I asked if he could locate this special tape that he’d squirreled away. “The bootleg Fanny tape?” he asked grinning sheepishly, and scurried off to some unknown corner to find it.
I sat watching the band playing beyond the window in a fug of exotic smoke. Timothy Bold was canoodling with some of the girls on the beanbags in the control room. I caught his eye and waved him over. “Sorry about that, Dodie.” He grinned at me. For all his messing around, he’s a sweet boy. Quite innocent in some ways. He couldn’t see that dolly birds like those were only interested in using his fame and glamour to further their own ambitions. He just thought all these people were fond of him on a personal level, and I could see him—one day soon—coming a cropper as a result of his naivete. I was keeping a keen eye on him and sometimes felt like his nanny.
“That ensemble looks marvelous on you,” he told me, but I didn’t have time for flattery: I knew I looked fabulous in my catsuit and poncho. At this very moment, Keith came bustling back in with several cans of tape. I explained quickly to Timmy what it was.
“Cool,” he grinned. He’d become quite keen on psychic-research-type stuff since learning about Cassandra last winter. My dear assistant had piqued his interest in a way that wasn’t quite the one she might have wanted, but any attention at all from Tim was okay by her. My two best friends were locked into a strange kind of off-on romance, with him more off than on, due to his not being about to see, hear, or sense her at all. It was bittersweet, really.
It took some moments for Keith to get the tapes threaded into an old reel-to-reel machine. By then Brontosaurus had mercifully terminated their endless number, and the last chords were still ringing in our ears as they entered the control booth to find us not at all interested in what they had just been playing. The gruff lady engineer Moira told them they could break for ten minutes, and they clustered round to see what we were up to.
“It’s a ghost caught on tape,” said Keith, and thunked down the heavy button that turned the spools.
All at once we heard the voice of Gary, the famous talk DJ who had reportedly left his job as a result of the haunting. He was jaunty and cajoling at first, as the conversation began.
“Look, this is kind of hard to believe… and who do you think you are, anyway? Interrupting my callers like that? Talking over everyone? How did you even get through? Sally on the switchboard says she didn’t connect you…”
“I’m a bloody spirit, ain’t I?” came a chilling, screeching voice.
One thing I was sure about, the very instant I heard it. That wasn’t a voice coming down a phone line. That was coming through the ether, and no mistake. There’s a particular sparkling, hollow quality to those dead voices. I shot a look at Timothy, and all the color had drained out of his dear face. This was exactly the voice he had heard in the lavatory earlier today, come back to wipe the smile off his face.
The Brontosaurus boys were amazed and agog.
“Are you saying you are a ghost?” asked the famous phone-in host. “Are you haunting us now? But, when did you live?”
The lights in the studio flickered and dimmed for a second, as if in response to the recording, as the woman’s voice came back on. “I’m here now and I’ve always been here, as long as can be. Ever since he did me in, that bastard, and told everyone I’d died of scarlet fever.”
“You were murdered?” asked the DJ. “Are you saying you’re out for revenge?”
She laughed. “Too late for that, innit? He got away scot-free. I tried to get the message through, and my poor old landlord… he tried his best to get everyone listening to what I had to say. But people don’t listen, really. They like the thrill and the scare of it all. But they ain’t really listening. And they dragged that family away, jealous that they’d made a few bob from the haunting… They was getting above their station, so they chucked ‘em all in Newgate in the end. Said they was lying. I guess I was to blame for that… They never really believed that poor little girl. Said the scratching and the shrieking was all her doing…”
The DJ piped up again, “Uh, I’m not really following your story. Try to be more clear if you want us to understand.”
It was true that her voice was sounding rather slurred. She
sounded like a drunk on the line, losing her thread and raving. “I’m Scratching Fanny!” she howled. “I was famous in these parts! Back in my day! Not while I was alive—oh no! No bastard came to see me then. But when I was dead—then they flocked! Then they couldn’t get enough of me! All those mighty gentleman of Fleet Street and the coffee houses of Mayfair. They came elbowing into my bedroom then, didn’t they? They wanted to listen to me then…”
The lights were dimming once more, and the voice on the tape was breaking up. “Fanny? Fanny?” called the DJ. “Are you there? Are you still there?”
But the conversation was over, and he was left with white noise. Keith clicked the tape off. “Twelve times she phoned in to his show. I think that time was the most coherent she ever got. Our friend Gary—the call-in host—got obsessed and freaked out, as I say. He said he started hearing her voice everywhere he went.”
One of the Brontosaurus boys said, “It’s really far out. Can we put it on our track? Like, subliminally winding through our track? That would be amazing.”
Suddenly Keith looked annoyed. “No! We daren’t make it public… This recording spreads bad karma. I’m thinking perhaps it was a mistake to play it aloud even briefly…” He glanced at the still-flickering lights in the bunker.
“I’m glad you played it for us,” I told him. “It’s very helpful.”
Cassandra
I arrive back in the studio just in time to hear the end of that recording. It gives me the shivers in a way that meeting poor Elizabeth in the ghostly flesh never did.
Dodie takes me aside and I quickly tell her everything I have learned tonight.
“Oh, that poor girl!” my soft-hearted employer gasps. “She was forced to endure a violent haunting, and then the indignity of all of fashionable London crowding into her house and her room, and then they all turned against her. They doubted her so much they threw her in gaol. Until she died?”
I confirm this. “It’s a ghastly story. But there’s worse, too, Dodie. I hovered around a bit longer, sifting through the permeable layers of months and years… watching that taunting crowd visit the slum dwellings of Cock Lane. I think the worst thing was that they put her to the test.”
Dodie frowns. “How?”
“They strapped poor Elizabeth down, hands and feet. So she couldn’t budge an inch. It was cruel. They wanted to hear if the noise still came. They wanted to be sure that she wasn’t doing it herself. They assumed she was just seeking attention, and enjoying all of this…”
Dodie shakes her head. “And the noises still came?”
“Of course. Fanny was real. But it didn’t stop the so-called investigators stripping off the girl’s night-things to see if she was concealing something underneath her stays. She was mortified. And there was, indeed, a small piece of wood that she kept encased in her undergarments, and they said she was a faker and a charlatan. They said she rapped and scratched on that piece of wood.
“Why did she have that wood under there? I wish I could have asked her, but the girl-ghost was gone by then. I watched as those men dragged her out of her room, triumphantly shouting and waving this small piece of wood in the air. They had found the true ghost! They had exposed her! And her parents fell back in shock, horrified that they had been taken in… and even worse—that they had taken so much money for a fraud…”
Dodie is very clever, of course. She snaps her fingers. “I’ve seen this before. Even in real hauntings, when outsiders come to look for evidence, the victims feel obliged to fake the effects, just to give everyone something to listen to. Just in case the ghost fails to show.”
I nod. I’ve been thinking something similar. Besides, there was no way all that hullabaloo could have been caused by that little piece of wood she had strapped in her corsets. “But all those men felt silly, you see. Flocking there and getting scared. They felt embarrassed at quaking and getting excited. They decreed that a fraud had been committed. Money had been extorted. And so someone had to pay.”
“And all the family were taken off to Newgate…”
I tell Dodie, “I’ve an idea. About how we might give poor Elizabeth… and maybe even Fanny herself… a little bit of peace.”
Dodie grins at me. “Do tell, dear heart!”
I like it when she calls me that, I must say.
Dodie
The little church was still there, at the other end of Cock Lane. It was set back from the winding street, its roof partially fallen in and the small cemetery sunken, overgrown, neglected. The whole place had the appearance of being about to be swallowed up by the dark heart of ancient London. In short, ghastly.
An hour before dawn we ventured out of the studios, along Cock Lane, and broke our way into the crypt. I know: insane. But I had a scent. I had things I needed to follow up. We had a conclusion to come to.
And so we crept along the forgotten, twisted route of Cock Lane with the spires and towers of the City of London crowding above our heads and blocking the view of the sodium-lit skies.
Keith the DJ, Timothy Bold, the members of Brontosaurus, two of their lady friends, myself, and the mostly-invisible, ethereal form of Cassandra. In the darkness she looked just like the cool silver bubbliness of a gin and tonic, poured into the shape of a girl.
We got Brontosaurus to do the strong-arm stuff, though they were actually rather willowy boys. Their lead singer was a bit excited, hoping they might get a song out of this adventure.
The doors crumbled damply under their slight weight. The broken stones sepulchres feet seemed to be sinking and squelching with every step we took.
Keith shone his torch around the cramped cellar. “It looks as messy as our archive room” he breathed, and so it did. There were catafalques and sepulchers everywhere you turned. Tombs of all kinds were listing and slumping drunkenly, as if there had been an earthquake that had dislodged everyone from their slumbers. But there’d been no earthquake. Just time itself. Time dislodges us all in the end, I thought bleakly. The whole place had the feeling of a shop after a closing sale, with the last few unwanted items lying strewn and discarded in the dark.
Timothy Bold found the stone with Fanny’s name on it. He’s got a very keen eye, that boy.
“What do we do now?” he asked nervously, anxious about the grave mold and green slime he was getting on his pale slacks. “Some kind of ceremony or prayer to appease her soul?”
I shook my head. “No, we open her up, and we learn the truth.”
They all looked pretty reluctant to indulge in a spot of grave-robbing. The Brontosaurus boys protested that they weren’t sure about all that Van Helsing jazz. I was rather hoping we wouldn’t have to stake anyone through the heart, but you never know. It’s best to be prepared. I reflected that I could have asked the drummer for one of his drumsticks, which I might have sharpened to a ready point, just in case. But I really didn’t think we were dealing with vampires here.
The boys and the two girls crowded round the tomb and heaved and pushed at the worn stone that covered her up. What a fancy grave, I thought, for some simple, common woman who screamed and ranted in an obscure corner of Cock Lane. She was infamous, though, I supposed. In her time, she had brought a crowd to her door.
The stone gave and there was the most horrible squeal as the tomb yawned open. My helpers gasped and panted and exerted themselves splendidly. Cassie peered over my shoulder as I trained my torch beam into the inky hole.
Fanny was glaring back at me.
Quite still. Completely dead. I jumped at first, and so did everyone else. But she wasn’t budging an inch, thank goodness.
A haughty, hatchet-like countenance. Furious. Stymied.
And perfect. There wasn’t a blemish on her face, and her hair and talons had continued to grow.
“Perfectly preserved…” Cassie sighed.
“Hmm, so it wasn’t scarlet fever,” I told them all. “If s
he’d died of the fever, this casket would contain liquefied remains. Fanny would have been reduced many years ago to a hideous, reeking broth.”
Timmy blinked at me. “But she’s perfect!”
“Arsenic,” I told him. “She tried to tell everyone, didn’t she? Her husband fed her that mixture of beer and gin and poison. He brought it to her bed every night and so he did her in. And that’s why Fanny was screaming and scratching every night. That’s why she haunted this street all this time. And that’s what she wanted us to know.”
We stared at her face. I wasn’t sure if it was the dawn light coming through the transom windows, high up on the crypt walls, but maybe her rictus-like expression was softening? Maybe it was less furious and more resigned?
Brontosaurus took photos of themselves clustered around the tomb, but I didn’t really approve of that. I urged them to cover her up again, and we left, just as a soft magenta light was creeping over the city.
“Those poor women,” Dodie sighed, floating alongside me.
Timothy was sniffing the morning air. “Hang on… Can you smell bacon sandwiches?”
Sharon Leigh Takes Texas
Sandra Murphy
“I signed your skip jumper over to the sheriff’s office. They’ll wire the money. My share better be in my account in two days. I’m on day three of the payment grace period for the Mustang.” I shifted around on the car seat as I passed a slow-moving RV. I shouldn’t argue with a knucklehead, drive seventy miles an hour, and talk on the phone at the same time. “I swear to gawd, Jimmy Lee, I will not ever tart up like this again. Find somebody else to do your bounty hunting. Oh hell, these pantyhose just gave me a wedgie.”
The Book of Extraordinary Amateur Sleuth and Private Eye Stories Page 10