The Mammoth Book of Haunted House Stories (Mammoth Books) (70 page)

So I waited while he backed into the road with his Leica. No traffic, nobody about but an old man walking a dog in the distance. Joe stuck his cigarette behind one ear and prowled quickly to find the best angle on Number 47. It was what the address had suggested: a narrow suburban villa in a forgotten road, an old maid of a house with a skirt of garden drawn round it, keeping itself to itself among all its sad neighbours. The flower beds were full of dead stems and grass.

Joe’s camera clicked twice. “House of Usher’s in the bag,” he said, and resumed the cigarette. “Think the garden has any possibilities?”

“Come on! We can waste time later.”

Weather had bleached the green front door. There was a big iron knocker and I used it.

“It echoed hollowly through the empty house!” said Banner. He enjoys talking like that, though it bores everybody. In addition he acts character – aping the sort of small-town photographer who wears his hat on the back of his head and stinks out the local Rotarians with damp flash-powder – but he’s one of the finest in the profession.

We heard rapid footsteps inside, the lock clicked and the door swung open, all in a hurry. And there appeared – yes, remembering those comic letters to the office, it could only be – our man.

“Mr. Hutchinson?”

“At your service, gentlemen!” He shot a look over Joe’s camera and the suitcase full of equipment, and seemed pleased. A small pudding-face and a long nose that didn’t match it, trimmed with a narrow line of moustache. He had the style of a shop-walker, I thought. “Come inside, please. Can I lend you a hand with that? No? That’s it – right along inside!” It sounded as if the word “sir” was trembling to join each phrase.

We went into the front room, where a fire was burning. The furniture was a familiar mixture: flimsy modern veneer jostling old pieces built like Noah’s Ark and handed down from in-laws. Gilt plaster dancers posed on the sideboard and the rug was worn through.

“My name is Staines,” I said, “and this is Joe Banner, who’s going to handle the pictures. I believe you’ve had a letter?”

“Yes, indeed,” said Hutchinson, shaking hands. “Please take a seat, both of you – I know what a tiring journey it can be, all the way from London! Yes. I must say how extremely gratified I am that your paper has shown this interest!” His voice sounded distorted by years of ingratiating; it bubbled out of the front of his mouth like a comic radio character’s. “Have you . . . that is, I understand you have special experience in this field, Mr. Staines?” He seemed almost worried about it.

“Not exactly a trained investigator,” I admitted, “but I’ve knocked out a few articles on the subject.”

“Oh . . . yes, indeed. I’ve read them with great interest.” He hadn’t, of course, but he made it sound very respectful. He asked if we had eaten, and when we reassured him he produced drinks from grandmother’s sideboard. Banner settled down to his performance of the “Hicks-in-the-Stick Journal” photographer out on a blind.

“You – you seem to have brought a lot of equipment.” Hutchinson said quickly. “I hope I made it clear there’s no guarantee of anything . . . visible.”

“Guarantee? Why, then you
have
seen something?”

He sat forward on his chair, but immediately seemed to restrain himself and an artfully stiff smile appeared. “Mr. Staines, let’s understand each other: I am most anxious not to give you preconceived ideas. This is your investigation, not mine.” He administered this like a police caution, invitingly.

Joe put down his empty glass. “We’re not easily corrupted, Mr. Hutchinson.”

To scotch the mock-modesty I said: “We’ve read your letters and the local press-clipping. So what about the whole story, in your own way?” I took out my notebook, to encourage him.

Hutchinson blinked nervously and rose. He snapped the two standard lamps on, went to the window with hands clasped behind him. The sky was darkening. He drew the curtains and came back as if he had taken deep thought. His sigh was full of responsibility.

“I’m trying to take an impersonal view. This case is so unusual that I feel it must be examined . . .
pro bono publico
, as it were . . .” He gave a tight little laugh, all part of the act. “I don’t want you to get the idea I’m a seeker after publicity.”

This was too much. “No, no” I said, “you don’t have to explain yourself: we’re interested. Facts, Mr. Hutchinson, please. Just facts.”

“For instance, what time do the noises start?” said Joe.

Hutchinson relaxed, too obviously gratified for the purity of his motives. He glanced at his watch brightly.

“Oh, it varies, Mr. Banner. After dark – any time at all after dark.” He frowned like an honest witness. “I’m trying to think of any instance during daylight, but no. Sometimes it comes early, often near midnight, occasionally towards dawn: no rule about it, absolutely none. It can continue all night through.”

I caught him watching my pencil as I stopped writing; his eyes came up on me and Joe, alert as a confident examination-candidate’s.

“Footsteps?”

Again the arch smile. “Mr. Staines, that’s for you to judge. To me it sounds like footsteps.”

“The witness knows the rules of evidence, boy!” Joe said, and winked at us both. Hutchinson took his glass.

“Fill it up for you, Mr. Banner? I’m far from an ideal observer, I fear; bar Sundays, I’m out every evening.”

“Business?”

“Yes, I’m assistant headwaiter in a restaurant. To-night I was able to be excused.” He handed us refilled glasses. “A strange feeling, you know, to come into the house late at night, and hear those sounds going on inside, in the dark.”

“Scare you?” Joe asked.

“Not now. Surprising, isn’t it? But it seems one can get used to anything.”

I asked: “Just what do you hear?”

Hutchinson considered, watching my pencil. “He’s got the answer all ready,” I thought. “A curious pattering, very erratic and light. A sort of . . . playing, if that conveys anything. Upstairs there’s a small passage between the bedrooms, covered with linoleum: I’ll show you presently. Well, it mostly occurs there, but it can travel down the stairs into the hallway below.”

“Ever hear—?” Joe began.

Hutchinson went on: “It lasts between thirty and forty seconds. I’ve timed it. And in a single night I’ve known the whole thing to be repeated up to a dozen times.”

“– a rat in the ceiling, Mr. Hutchinson?” Joe finished. “They can make a hell of a row.”

“Yes, I’ve heard rats. This is not one.”

I frowned at Joe: this was routine stuff. “Mr. Hutchinson, we’ll agree on that. Look, in your last letter you said you had a theory – of profound significance.”

“Yes.”

“Why don’t we get on to that, then?”

He whipped round instantly, full of it. “My idea is – well, it’s a terribly unusual form of – the case – the case of a projection – how can I put it? It’s more than a theory, Mr. Staines!” He had all the stops out at once. His hands trembled.

“Hold it!” Joe called, and reached for his Leica. “I’ll be making an odd shot now and then, Mr. Hutchinson. Show you telling the story, see?”

Hutchinson’s fingers went to his tie.

“You were saying—?” I turned over a leaf of the note-book.

“Well, I can vouch for this house, you know. I’ve lived here for many years, and it came to me from my mother. There’s absolutely no . . . history attached to it.”

I could believe that.

“Until about six years ago I lived alone – a woman came in to clean twice a week. And then . . . I married.” He said this impressively, watching to see that I noted it.

“A strange person, my wife. She was only nineteen when we married, and very . . . unworldly.” He drew a self-conscious breath. “Distant cousin of mine actually, very religious people. That’s her photograph on the mantelpiece.”

I took it down.

I had noticed it when first we entered the room; vignetted in its chromium-plated frame, too striking to be his daughter. It was a face of character, expressive beyond mere beauty: an attractive full-lipped mouth, eyes of exceptional vividness. Surprisingly, her hair was shapeless and her dress dull. I passed the portrait to Joe, who whistled.

“Mr. Hutchinson! Where are you hiding the lady? Come on, let’s get a picture of—”

Then he also guessed. This was not a house with a woman in it. “She passed away seven months ago,” said Hutchinson, and held out his hand for the frame.

“I’m sorry,” I said. Banner nodded and muttered something.

Hutchinson was expressionless. “Yes,” he said, “I’m sorry too.” Which was an odd thing to say, as there was evidently no sarcasm in it. I wondered why she could have married him. There must have been twenty-five years between them, and a world of temperament.

“She was extremely . . . passionate,” Hutchinson said.

He spoke as if he were revealing something indecent. His voice was hushed, and his little moustache bristled over pursed lips. When his eyes dropped to the photograph in his hand, his face was quite blank.

Suddenly he said in an odd, curt way: “She was surprisingly faithful to me. I mean, she was never anything else. Very religious, strictest ideas of her duty.” The flicker of a smile. “Unworldly, as I said.”

I tried to be discreet. “Then you were happy together?”

His fingers were unconsciously worrying at the picture-frame, fidgeting with the strut.

“To be honest, we weren’t. She wanted children.”

Neither Banner nor I moved.

“I told her I couldn’t agree. I had to tell her often, because she worked herself up, and it all became ugly. She used to lose control and say things she didn’t mean, and afterwards she was sorry, but you can’t play fast and loose with people’s finger feelings! I did my best. I’d forgive her and say: ‘I only want you, my dear. You’re all I need in the world,’ to comfort her, you see. And she’d sob loudly and . . . she was unnecessarily emotional.”

His voice was thin, and tight. He rose and replaced the photograph on the mantelpiece. There was a long silence.

Joe fiddled with his camera. “No children, then?” Cruel, that.

Hutchinson turned, and we saw that somehow he had managed to relax. The accomodating smirk was back.

“No, none. I had definite views on the subject. All quite rational. Wide disparity in the prospective parents’ ages, for instance – psychologically dangerous for all parties: I don’t know if you’ve studied the subject? There were other considerations, too – financial, medical: do you wish me to go into those? I have nothing to hide.”

It was blatant exhibitionism now: as if he were proffering a bill on a plate, with himself itemized in it.

“There’s a limit even to journalists’ curiosity,” I said.

Hutchinson was ahead of me, solemnly explaining. “Now! This is my theory! You’ve heard of poltergeist phenomena, of course? Unexplainable knockings, scratchings, minor damage and so on. I’ve studied them in books – and they’re always connected with development, violent emotional development, in young people. A sort of uncontrolled offshoot of the . . . personality. D’you follow?”

“Wait a minute,” Joe said. “That’s taking a lot for granted if you like!”

But I remembered reading such cases. One, investigated by psychical researchers, had involved a fifteen-year-old boy: ornaments had been thrown about by no visible agency. I took a glance at the unchipped gilt dancers on the sideboard before Hutchinson spoke again.

“No, my wife may not have been adolescent, but in some ways . . . she was . . . so to speak, retarded.”

He looked as pleased as if he had just been heavily tipped. If that was pure intellectual triumph, it was not good to see.

“Then . . . the sounds began,” Joe said, “while she was still alive?”

Hutchinson shook his head emphatically.

“Not till three weeks after the funeral! That’s the intriguing part, don’t you see? They were faint and unidentifiable at first – naturally I just put down traps for rats or mice. But by another month, they were taking on the present form.”

Joe gave a back-street sniff and rubbed a hand over his chin. “Hell, you ask us to believe your poltergeist lies low until nearly a month after the – the—”

“After the medium, shall we say, is dead!” His cold-bloodedness was fascinating.

Joe looked across at me and raised his eyebrows.

“Gentlemen, perhaps I’m asking you to accept too much? Well, we shall see. Please remember that I am only too happy that you should form your own – your own—” Hutchinson’s voice dropped to a whisper. He raised his hand. His eyes caught ours as he listened.

My spine chilled.

Somewhere above us in the house were faint sounds. A scuffling.

“That’s it!”

I tiptoed to the door and got it open in time to hear a last scamper overhead. Yes, it could have been a kitten, I thought; but it had come so promptly on cue. I was on the stairs when Hutchinson called out, as if he were the thing’s manager: “No more for the present! You’ll probably get another manifestation in forty minutes or so.”