05 - Mistletoe and Murder (5 page)

“So because, in your
experience, hauntings begin with footsteps you are excluding the possibility
that a human agent was innocently behind the matter?”

“If it was a human in this
household why did they not come forward and say so?”

“Unfortunately I can think of
several reasons.” Clara said, “None of which involve the paranormal, but do
imply subterfuge. Of course we might also have a sleepwalker in our midst.”

“I used to sleepwalk.” Elijah
piped up from the bottom of the table, flashing a sheepish grin at everyone,
“But I wasn’t here in June. Sorry, that was a very pointless interruption.”

“Perhaps we should let Miss
Sampford continue?” Clara suggested.

“Perhaps indeed.” Andrews
agreed, still with that smug look on his face.

Miss Sampford started once
more on her task.

“This mystery of the opening
and closing doors, followed by footsteps, went on for another week, until I was
quite bored with the matter. I investigated a few more times and found nothing
and eventually gave up, resolving it was a queer fluke of sound, perhaps coming
from next door. As, up until then, everything had occurred on the first floor I
was not really perturbed and I began to ignore it, and then things began to
occur on the second floor, where I sleep. I had a young maid at the time, she
had been with the household about a month and though a little on the silly side
I had no reason to complain about her. Then abruptly she handed in her notice
one morning, naturally I asked what could be the matter, all had seemed well up
until that point. ‘I can’t abide that
thing
anymore.’ She told me, I
asked her to clarify what thing she meant. It took a bit of persuasion to get
it out of her, but at last she explained; ‘Whenever I goes on the second floor
I feel I am being watched. It’s worst in the library, when I bend to set the
hearth to rights I would swear on my mother’s grave someone is leaning over me
and I hear
breathing
.’ Had I not heard the strange noises in the night
myself, I might have thought her mad. In any case I found it quite impossible
to make her stay.”

Miss Sampford paused as
Humphry entered with a large Beef Wellington, followed by the maid Jane
carrying a large tureen of mashed potatoes in one hand and a dish of mixed
vegetables in the other. For several moments the guests had to wait impatiently
for the continuation of the story. Mr Humphry seemed inclined to serve very
slowly, but at last the food was on the plates and the servants temporarily
removed themselves. Miss Sampford passed a gravy boat to Clara and gave her a
smile. Then she picked up her fork and started forth with her tale again.

“Maids are a nuisance to hire
in this day and age, but I soon had another girl installed in the house. I had
quietly apprised Humphry and Mrs James on the strange matter of the last girl
feeling watched and it was understood the new maid should not be told anything.
In the meantime, I made a point of being on the second floor during the hour
the maid cleaned and set the fires in the rooms there. I looked upon it this
way, should this new maid feel watched she would put it down to my presence
rather than something supernatural. I spent my mornings in the library and, in
actual fact, it proved quite advantageous as it gave me the opportunity to work
on a book of memoirs I had been intending to complete for years.”

Miss Sampford smiled at her
guests as she sliced into a gently poached carrot.

“Remind me to show you my work
later Clara, I hope to have it published before I die, all the other
ex-suffrage girls are doing it.”

“I imagine there are quite
some stories to tell.” Clara nodded.

“It is the reason I get so
bothered about being troubled by a ghost. After all I went through, why should
I be afraid of something I can’t even see?”

“I think you will find that is
exactly the reason people are afraid of ghosts.” Andrews reinserted himself
into the conversation, “Ghosts combine our greatest fears; the unknown and the
unspeakable.”

“Not to mention they only show
up at night!” Elijah piped up, “I’m dreadfully afraid of the dark as it is.”

“That is actually a common
error perpetrated by novelists.” Andrews spoke with a know-it-all swagger to his
voice, “Ghosts are equally likely to appear during the day.”

“Which I believe I
demonstrated when I explained about the maid?” Miss Sampford said, “She
certainly wasn’t cleaning at night when she felt a ‘presence’, as the
Spiritualists call it. Unfortunately, my hopes that these strange problems
would leave with the maid were misguided. The doors shutting and footsteps pacing
continued, but now they were becoming clearer and more determined. I sleep
alone on the second floor and it was most disturbing to lie in my bed and
realise that someone was coming up the stairs from the floor below. Each night
the footsteps seemed to get closer to my own room and each night I would bounce
out of my bed, grab a candle and dash out into the hall and see nothing. I was
finding it very hard to convince myself this was still all imagination.

“Then the new maid came to me
with her notice. Her explanation was that someone had attempted to push her
down the back stairs more than once. She had distinctly felt a shove to her back;
thankfully it did not cause her to fall. But she turned around to confront the
culprit and found no one there. She was made of stern stuff, but after three
attempts like this she could no longer stand it. Now I was truly flummoxed, I
knew no one else in the household would play such dangerous games, so what
could I blame it on?

“Once again I hired a new maid
on the strict instructions she was not to know about the strange occurrences.
This girl lasted almost a month before she informed me she could stand the
house no longer, she described the pushing on the stairs, the feeling of a
presence and then added that one day she had seen a pair of red eyes glowering
at her from the open cellar door. This is the pattern that has repeated itself
up to today. I finally decided to hire two maids at once, so they could
accompany each other around the house. I can see you thinking how desperate
that is, but I can’t keep having maids leave.”

“And have Jane or Flo reported
anything?” Clara asked.

“Not so far. They know about
it, of course, after the third maid I knew it would be far-fetched to try and
keep the matter completely secret. People talk, after all.”

“What about the night-time
disturbances?” Andrews queried as he helped himself to more gravy on his
potatoes.

Miss Sampford hesitated, she
clearly was not sure how to proceed, perhaps even afraid she would be laughed
at by some of her guests. Her eyes met Clara’s.

“You can only state what you
have seen or heard.” Clara said gently, “Then it is for us to interpret it
according to our own prejudices.”

“For once, I agree with you.”
Andrews gave Clara an insincere smile. She ignored him.

“I must insist that you
believe me when I say these next things occurred when I was awake.” Miss
Sampford was almost pleading with her guests to understand her, “The footsteps
had been coming closer and closer to my room, but I never saw anyone, try as I
might to jump out just as the footsteps were nearest. This grew rather tiresome
after a while, and I resolved once more to ignore the sounds, whatever they
were. It was the second night after I had made that resolution that I
discovered what the owner of the footsteps intended all along, had I not kept
interrupting them by springing out into the hallway. I lay in my bed, and I
swear Miss Fitzgerald that I heard the footsteps stop right outside my door and
the handle
turned
.”

Someone gasped. Apparently it
was the easily over-wrought Elijah.

“Can you imagine what I felt
at that moment? I leapt out of my bed and I twisted the key in the lock and
heard the clunk as the levers fell into place. The handle had stopped turning
and for a moment I thought my heart would stop beating, silly old fool that I
am! I checked all my windows and then sat up all night in my bed waiting for
the creeper to return. So far the ghost, if that is what it is, has only
attempted to open my door once more. Fortunately I had locked it. The odd thing
was, I heard footsteps approaching my room, but I never heard them leave.”

“What you describe is the
classic pattern of a restless spirit haunting.” Andrews leaned forward, almost
letting his lapels fall on his empty plate, “In fact, it strikes me as what we
call in this business, a
poltergeist
!”

“I’ve read about those.” Tommy
had been carefully keeping silent through dinner mainly because, owing to his
cold, it was rather difficult to eat and breathe at the same time, “Harry Price
has described the poltergeist as an entity springing out of nothing.”

“Pah! Harry Price.” Andrews
snorted, “He is nothing more than a trumped up paper bag salesman. No, I have
spent considerable time observing such hauntings and I can state,
categorically, that behind them is a thinking spirit.”

“So you don’t think it a
result of disturbances in the atmosphere?”

“Humph, naturally not.”
Andrews waved a hand dismissively.

Tommy was prevented from
replying by the arrival of pudding; a rather over-decorated blancmange in the
shape of a turreted castle. The guests were given a moment to marvel at the
delight, which wobbled pinkly, before it was served into manageable portions.
Once everyone was silenced Miss Sampford continued her dialogue.

“Beyond the turning door
handle I have had one other experience which truly unnerved me. It was late one
night and I had been suffering with a slight fever which made me restless. I
awoke around two o’clock and to my alarm there was a veiled figure standing
over my bed and staring down at me. I rang the bell next to my bed at once and
then, much to my subsequent embarrassment, I hid my head beneath the blankets.
When Humphry arrived there was nobody there, but I was so certain…” Miss
Sampford hesitated for just a moment, “I am not the only one to have seen the
ghost. Mrs James is quite convinced she has seen someone walking about the
second floor when no one should be there. She has described them as tall and
possibly wearing a hat and large coat, or a cape, as they appear rather
shapeless. Over the last month she has witnessed this at least five times and
on each occasion the figure was outside my bedroom door. Mrs James is a brave
woman, but nothing would compel her to confront the figure, so on each instance
she has rushed to summon help, usually in the form of Humphry. On every
occasion he has searched the house thoroughly and found no one.

“Then there is the experience
of my dear friend Mrs Chambers, who came to call on me Wednesday last. She is
inordinately fond of ginger biscuits, and when the maids served tea I was quite
aggrieved to see they had placed bourbon creams in the biscuit jar, rather than
the ginger ones I had requested. I rose to personally attend to the matter and
left Mrs Chambers alone for around five minutes. When I returned she seemed a
little ruffled, but she said nothing. Then, as I was offering her a biscuit she
asked if I had another visitor that day. I answered no, only her. ‘Then it must
have been a maid I saw at the door,’ She said, hesitantly, ‘only, it was very
odd as they seemed to have a traveling cloak on, remember the old ones our
grandmamas would wear to go out in the cold or rain. It covered them from head
to foot.’ Where did you see this person? I asked, naturally thinking of the
strange happenings. But, I told myself, it
might
have been someone
coming to call then seeing I already had a guest, leaving. ‘Oh, they opened the
door.’ Mrs Chambers said, ‘Just a fraction as if they wanted to see who was
here. I didn’t see them direct, you understand, but spotted them in the mirror
over the fireplace.’ She pointed at the old big mirror I have hung there, ‘They
were gone within moments.’ I decided to brush off the incident, concurring with
my friend that it must have been another visitor who had popped in briefly. But
I suspect neither of us was completely convinced. As you may have noted, this
mysterious figure bore a very similar appearance to that which Mrs James had
described concerning the person on the second floor.”

Miss Sampford finished her
story and turned her attention to her blancmange. No one seemed inclined to
speak. Clara was mulling over all the possibilities the story suggested, the
one she was carefully excluding was that what Mrs Chambers had seen was a
ghost. Nothing she had heard, so far, required a paranormal explanation to
account for it. Finally Andrews broke the silence.

“You have presented a most
vivid account Miss Sampford, truly engaging.” He said with condescending
praise, “What you have described, as you may imagine, does not surprise me.
Like a doctor who has seen many diseases and is very familiar with the symptoms
of the commoner sorts of illness, I am experienced enough to recognise the signs
of a standard haunting. I propose that you have a restless soul in your home
who, with a bit of guidance, may be persuaded to leave. But first, to confirm
my diagnosis, I shall set up some equipment on the second floor, then I shall
summon my assistants tomorrow to prepare for an all-night vigil. Lastly I shall
use the services of a medium to perform the necessary exorcism.” As he spoke,
the clock in the hall chimed nine o’clock. Andrews gave a little start, “Good
heavens! I must get prepared, my equipment takes considerable time to set-up
and I cannot afford to miss a moment. Thank you for the dinner Miss Sampford,
please excuse me.”

Andrews cast down his napkin
and started from the table.

“Might I be of any help?”
Oliver offered, rising too, “I am a photographer, so I am good with technical
equipment.”

Andrews looked at him
suspiciously, no doubt seeing him as the enemy, associated as he was with
Clara. At the same time, quite a few of his pieces of equipment were heavy and
difficult to manoeuvre alone. Reluctantly Andrews accepted the offer of help.
The two men left.