A motor swept round the corner. He flattened himself against the hedge . . . only just in time. A curious greyish pallor crept across his face . . .
‘Good Lord, my nerves are in a rotten state,’ muttered Macfarlane, as he awoke the following morning. He reviewed the events of the afternoon before dispassionately. The motor, the short-cut to the inn and the sudden mist that had made him lose his way with the knowledge that a dangerous bog was no distance off. Then the chimney pot that had fallen off the inn, and the smell of burning in the night which he had traced to a cinder on his hearthrug. Nothing in it at all! Nothing at all – but for her words, and that deep unacknowledged certainty in his heart that she knew . . .
He flung off his bedclothes with sudden energy. He must go up and see her first thing. That would break the spell. That is, if he got there safely . . . Lord, what a fool he was!
He could eat little breakfast. Ten o’clock saw him starting up the road. At ten-thirty his hand was on the bell. Then, and not till then, he permitted himself to draw a long breath of relief.
‘Is Mr Haworth in?’
It was the same elderly woman who had opened the door before. But her face was different – ravaged with grief.
‘Oh! sir, oh! sir, you haven’t heard then?’
‘Heard what?’
‘Miss Alistair, the pretty lamb. It was her tonic. She took it every night. The poor captain is beside himself, he’s nearly mad. He took the wrong bottle off the shelf in the dark . . . They sent for the doctor, but he was too late –’
And swiftly there recurred to Macfarlane the words: ‘I’ve always known there was something dreadful hanging over him. I ought to be able to prevent it happening – if one ever can –’ Ah! but one couldn’t cheat Fate . . . Strange fatality of vision that had destroyed where it sought to save . . .
The old servant went on: ‘My pretty lamb! So sweet and gentle she was, and so sorry for anything in trouble. Couldn’t bear anyone to be hurt.’ She hesitated, then added: ‘Would you like to go up and see her, sir? I think, from what she said, that you must have known her long ago. A very long time ago, she said . . .’
Macfarlane followed the old woman up the stairs, into the room over the drawing-room where he had heard the voice singing the day before. There was stained glass at the top of the windows. It threw a red light on the head of the bed . . . A gipsy with a red handkerchief over her head . . . Nonsense, his nerves were playing tricks again. He took a long last look at Alistair Haworth.
‘There’s a lady to see you, sir.’
‘Eh?’ Macfarlane looked at the landlady abstractedly. ‘Oh! I beg your pardon, Mrs Rowse, I’ve been seeing ghosts.’
‘Not really, sir? There’s queer things to be seen on the moor after nightfall, I know. There’s the white lady, and the Devil’s blacksmith, and the sailor and the gipsy –’
‘What’s that? A sailor and a gipsy?’
‘So they say, sir. It was quite a tale in my young days. Crossed in love they were, a while back . . . But they’ve not walked for many a long day now.’
‘No? I wonder if perhaps – they will again now . . .’
‘Lor! sir, what things you do say! About that young lady –’
‘What young lady?’
‘The one that’s waiting to see you. She’s in the parlour. Miss Lawes, she said her name was.’
‘Oh!’
Rachel! He felt a curious feeling of contraction, a shifting of perspective. He had been peeping through at another world. He had forgotten Rachel, for Rachel belonged to this life only . . . Again that curious shifting of perspective, that slipping back to a world of three dimensions only.
He opened the parlour door. Rachel – with her honest brown eyes. And suddenly, like a man awakening from a dream, a warm rush of glad reality swept over him. He was alive – alive! He thought: ‘There’s only one life one can be sure about! This one!’
‘Rachel!’ he said, and, lifting her chin, he kissed her lips.
Chapter 44
The Lamp
‘The Lamp’ was first published in the hardback The Hound of Death and Other Stories (Odhams Press, 1933). No previous appearances have been found.
It was undoubtedly an old house. The whole square was old, with that disapproving dignified old age often met with in a cathedral town. But No. 19 gave the impression of an elder among elders; it had a veritable patriarchal solemnity; it towered greyest of the grey, haughtiest of the haughty, chillest of the chill. Austere, forbidding, and stamped with that particular desolation attaching to all houses that have been long untenanted, it reigned above the other dwellings.
In any other town it would have been freely labelled ‘haunted,’ but Weyminster was averse from ghosts and considered them hardly respectable except at the appanage of a ‘county family’. So No. 19 was never alluded to as a haunted house; but nevertheless it remained, year after year, To be Let or Sold.
Mrs Lancaster looked at the house with approval as she drove up with the talkative house agent, who was in an unusually hilarious mood at the idea of getting No. 19 off his books. He inserted the key in the door without ceasing his appreciative comments.
‘How long has the house been empty?’ inquired Mrs Lancaster, cutting short his flow of language rather brusquely.
Mr Raddish (of Raddish and Foplow) became slightly confused. ‘E – er – some time,’ he remarked blandly. ‘So I should think,’ said Mrs Lancaster drily.
The dimly lighted hall was chill with a sinister chill. A more imaginative woman might have shivered, but this woman happened to be eminently practical. She was tall with much dark brown hair just tinged with grey and rather cold blue eyes.
She went over the house from attic to cellar, asking a pertinent question from time to time. The inspection over, she came back into one of the front rooms looking out on the square and faced the agent with a resolute mien.
‘What is the matter with the house?’
Mr Raddish was taken by surprise. ‘Of course, an unfurnished house is always a little gloomy,’ he parried feebly.
‘Nonsense,’ said Mrs Lancaster. ‘The rent is ridiculously low for such a house – purely nominal. There must be some reason for it. I suppose the house is haunted?’
Mr Raddish gave a nervous little start but said nothing.
Mrs Lancaster eyed him keenly. After a few moments she spoke again. ‘Of course that is all nonsense, I don’t believe in ghosts or anything of that sort, and personally it is no deterrent to my taking the house; but servants, unfortunately, are very credulous and easily frightened. It would be kind of you to tell me exactly what – what thing is supposed to haunt this place.’
‘I – er – really don’t know,’ stammered the house agent. ‘I am sure you must,’ said the lady quietly. ‘I cannot take the house without knowing. What was it? A murder?’
‘Oh! no,’ cried Mr Raddish, shocked by the idea of anything so alien to the respectability of the square. ‘It’s – it’s only a child.’
‘A child?’
‘Yes.’
‘I don’t know the story exactly,’ he continued reluctantly. ‘Of course, there are all kinds of different versions, b
ut I believe that about thirty years ago a man going by the name of Williams took No. 19. Nothing was known of him; he kept no servants; he had no friends; he seldom went out in the day time. He had one child, a little boy. After he had been there about two months, he went up to London, and had barely set foot in the metropolis before he was recognized as being a man “wanted” by the police on some charge – exactly what, I do not know. But it must have been a grave one, because, sooner than give himself up he shot himself. Meanwhile, the child lived on here, alone in the house. He had food for a little time, and he waited day after day for his father’s return. Unfortunately, it had been impressed upon him that he was never under any circumstances to go out of the house or speak to anyone. He was a weak, ailing, little creature, and did not dream of disobeying this command. In the night, the neighbours, not knowing that his father had gone away, often heard him sobbing in the awful loneliness and desolation of the empty house.’
Mr Raddish paused.
‘And – er – the child starved to death,’ he concluded, in the same tones as he might have announced that it had just begun to rain.
‘And it is the child’s ghost that is supposed to haunt the place?’ asked Mrs Lancaster.
‘It is nothing of consequence really,’ Mr Raddish hastened to assure her. ‘There’s nothing seen, not seen, only people say, ridiculous, of course, but they do say they hear – the child – crying, you know.’
Mrs Lancaster moved towards the front door. ‘I like the house very much,’ she said. ‘I shall get nothing as good for the price. I will think it over and let you know.’
‘It really looks very cheerful, doesn’t it, Papa?’
Mrs Lancaster surveyed her new domain with approval. Gay rugs, well-polished furniture, and many knick-knacks, had quite transformed the gloomy aspect of No. 19.