Footsteps in the Dark Read online

  ‘I do wish you wouldn’t, Aunt!’ begged Celia. ‘Even in broad daylight you give me the creeps.’

  ‘Then you are being very silly, dear child. Good morning, Charles. I hope you slept well to make up for your loss of sleep earlier in the night.’

  Charles took his seat at the head of the table. ‘I am grateful for the inquiry, Aunt, but no, I didn’t. I might have, but for the fact that I was constrained to get up three times; once to look under the bed, once to open the wardrobe, once to demonstrate to your niece that the noise she persistently heard was the wind rustling the creeper outside the window.’

  ‘Well, I’m sorry, darling,’ Celia said, ‘but after what happened you can’t be surprised that I was nervous.’

  ‘Surprise, my love,’ responded her husband, ‘was not the emotion I found myself a prey to.’

  ‘Perhaps it’ll convince you that the only thing to do is to go back to town this very day,’ Celia said pleadingly.

  ‘I confess that a prospect of any more such nights doesn’t attract me,’ said Charles. ‘But what’s the opinion of Aunt Lilian?’

  ‘I was about to say, when you came in,’ answered Mrs Bosanquet, ‘that I have considered the matter very carefully, and come to the conclusion that we should be doing wrong to leave the Priory.’

  Charles paused in the act of conveying a piece of toast from his plate to his mouth, and stared at her. ‘Well, I’m damned!’ he said inelegantly. ‘Give me some coffee, Celia: I must drink Aunt Lilian’s health.’

  ‘Very wrong indeed,’ nodded Mrs Bosanquet. ‘Perhaps we have it in our power to set the ghost free. It probably wants us to do something, and to that end it has been endeavouring to attract our notice.’

  ‘I see,’ said Charles gravely. ‘And probably it can’t make out why we all seem so shy of it. I wonder how it’ll try to – er – attract our notice next? It’s already knocked a picture down, and thrown a skull at our feet, and made you faint. It must be getting quite disheartened at our failure to appreciate the true meaning of these little attentions.’

  ‘It is all very well for you to make a mock of such things, Charles,’ Mrs Bosanquet said with dignity, ‘but I am perfectly serious. So much so that I am determined to do my best to get into communication with it. And since Margaret is going to town on Thursday to see her dentist I shall ask her to call at my flat, and request Parker to give her my planchette board, which is in the old brown trunk in the lobby.’

  Celia was regarding her in fascinated horror. ‘Are you really proposing to sit with a planchette in this house?’ she asked faintly.

  ‘Not only I, my dear, but all of us. We sit round in a circle, laying the tips of our fingers on the board, and wait for some message to be transcribed.’

  ‘Nothing,’ said Celia vehemently, ‘would induce me to take part in any such proceeding! The whole thing’s bad enough as it is without us trying to invoke the Monk.’

  ‘Very well,’ said Mrs Bosanquet, not in the least ruffled, ‘if that is how you feel about it it would be no good your attempting to sit with us. But I for one shall certainly make the attempt.’

  ‘This means you won’t go back to town!’ Celia said unhappily. ‘I knew what it would be! No, don’t tell me I can go without you, Charles. I may be a bad wife, and wake you up to look in the wardrobe in the small hours, but I am not such a bad wife that I’d go away and leave you with a ghost and a planchette.’

  ‘I wish you would go back to town, old lady,’ Charles said. ‘I don’t mean that I don’t appreciate this self-immolating heroism, but it’s no use scaring yourself, and nothing dire is at all likely to happen to me. If I thought there was any danger,’ he added handsomely, ‘you should stay and share it with me.’

  ‘Thanks,’ said Celia. ‘I might have known you’d joke about it. I don’t know whether there’s what you call danger, but if you’re going to ask for trouble by putting your hands on Aunt’s horrible planchette I shan’t leave your side for one moment.’

  ‘Cheer up!’ Charles said. ‘I don’t mind giving the board a shove to please Aunt Lilian, but last night has completely convinced me that the Monk is as real as you are. In fact, if Margaret is going to town on Thursday she can rout out my service revolver, and the cartridges she’ll find with it, and bring them back with her.’

  ‘If you think that I should be pleased by you deliberately pushing the board, you are sadly mistaken,’ said Mrs Bosanquet severely. ‘Moreover, I have the greatest objection to fire-arms, and if you propose to let off guns at all hours of the day I shall be obliged to go back to London.’

  She was with difficulty appeased, and only a promise extracted from Charles not to fire any lethal weapon without due warning soothed her indignation. Breakfast came to an end, and after Celia had had a heart-to-heart talk with her husband, and Margaret had begged Peter not to do anything rash, such as shooting at vague figures seen in the dark, the two men left the house, ostensibly to fish.

  ‘What we are going to do now,’ said Charles, ‘is to carry on some investigations on our own.’

  ‘Then we’d better drift along to the Bell,’ said Peter. ‘We may as well put in some fishing till opening time, though. If you want to pump old Wilkes you won’t find him up yet.’

  Charles consulted his watch. ‘I make it half-past ten.’

  ‘I daresay you do, but friend Wilkes takes life easy. He’s never visible at this hour. Not one of our early risers.’

  ‘All right then,’ Charles said. ‘We might fish the near stream for a bit.’

  Sport, however, proved poor that morning, and shortly before twelve they decided to give up, and stroll on towards the inn. They were already within a few minutes’ walk of it, and they arrived before the bar was open.

  ‘Have you been into the courtyard yet?’ Peter asked. ‘You ought to see that. Real Elizabethan work; you can almost imagine miracles and moralities being played there. Come on.’ He led the way through an arch in the middle of the building, and they found themselves in a cobbled yard, enclosed by the house. A balcony ran all round the first storey, and various bedroom windows opened on to this. A modern garage occupied the end of the building opposite the archway into the street, but Mr Wilkes had had this built in keeping with the rest of the inn, and had placed his petrol pump as inconspicuously as possible. Some clipped yews in wooden tubs stood in the yard, and the whole effect was most picturesque. Having inspected the older part of the house, and ascertained that the original structure did indeed date from the fourteenth century, they wandered into the garage, which they found stood where the old stables had once been. Michael Strange’s two-seater was standing just inside the entrance and one of the garage hands was washing it down. Charles, under pretext of examining the car, soon fell into easy conversation with the man, and leaving him to extract what information he could, Peter strolled off to where he could hear the throb of an engine at work. He had some knowledge of such machines, and a great deal of interest. He easily located the engine-room, went in, leaving the door open behind him, and found, as he had thought, that the engine drove the electric light plant. No one was there, and the first thing that struck him was the size of the plant. Puzzled, he stood looking at it, wondering why such a powerful machine and such a large plant had been installed for the mere purpose of supplying light for the inn. He was just about to inspect it more closely when someone came hurriedly into the room behind him.

  ‘Oo’s in ’ere?’ demanded a sharp voice.

  Peter turned to find Spindle, the barman, at his elbow. The man looked annoyed, but when he saw whom he was addressing he curbed his testiness, and said more mildly: ‘Beg pardon, sir, but no one’s allowed inside this ’ere engine-room.’

  ‘That’s all right,’ said Peter. ‘I shan’t meddle with it. I was just wondering why…’

  ‘I’m sorry, sir, but orders is orders, and I shall ’ave to ask you to come out. If the boss was to ’ear about me leaving the door unlocked I should get into trouble.’ He had edged hims