The Ghost Hunters (23 page)

She sighed and said sadly, ‘So young. I’m sorry. It was a bad, bad time for so many people. I suppose the only solace is knowing we’re unlikely to see another war like it, at least not in our lifetimes.’

‘Perhaps.’

‘You must miss your father terribly,’ she said kindly.

‘We all lose people in the end,’ I said shortly, though I was conscious of nodding, for I had to acknowledge that I did miss him but only on the rare occasions when I permitted myself to recall the memories of the short time we had enjoyed together. I didn’t do that often, couldn’t. Occasionally, of course, fragments of the past drifted through my mind – Father teaching me piano, trips to the music hall – but time had stripped the memories of their colour. And yet, for me, they were enough; easier to endure than the consequences of opening up the recesses of my mind and becoming like Mother, consumed with sadness and grief and the darker side of life.

It seems extraordinary to me now that I should have shared all this with Mrs Smith, a stranger. I suppose I needed someone to listen, and I was glad that she had done so. But I saw now that she was looking at me intently and the natural curiosity of this aspiring novelist was suddenly obvious.

‘
Aren’t
you consumed with the darker side of life?’ she asked delicately. ‘It’s inevitable, isn’t it, when you work with a ghost hunter. You can’t avoid the shadows when your job is to chase them, surely?’

I had to confess that she had a point. ‘Is that how it seems?’

‘Oh, my goodness, yes, Miss Grey; you shine whenever you’re near him.’

‘If that is so, it is because I believe in his principles,’ I said firmly.

‘But what
are
his principles, my dear? Can you be sure of them? If you don’t mind my saying so, Mr Price’s work strikes me as contradictory.’

‘In what way?’

‘Well, the fact is …’ Mrs Smith looked down. She was choosing her words carefully. ‘As I understand, there was a time when he was on record, publicly, for believing in such things. His name was once a shining light at the Society for Psychical Research. Then he broke away and set up on his own, changed his mind. Became a sceptic. But what if he witnessed a display of supernormal happenings that was irrefutable, completely undeniable, would he admit his scepticism was misplaced? Could he admit he was wrong and that some mediums have merit, I wonder?’

If it suited him, I thought.

‘Yes, of course,’ I answered, running a hand through my hair. ‘I’m certain he would give his full support to any medium he tested who was capable of convincing him.’

‘And what about you? Could you admit you were wrong to doubt the beliefs of Spiritualists?’

I thought it would take a very special sort of proof to convince me.

‘I ask the question because I sense there is a part of you, somewhere deep down, that wishes it could all be true.’ She took my hand in her own. ‘Answer me honestly, dear: if there was the slightest chance that your father was looking down on you now and was able to communicate with you then you’d want to know about it, wouldn’t you?’

‘Yes,’ I whispered, shivering slightly. ‘Yes, of course. But—’

Before I could form my answer there came an interruption that brought Mrs Smith and me to our feet in alarm: the sound of smashing glass and the screams of two frightened men.

‘Quickly, come with me!’ I instructed and, taking Mrs Smith’s hand, I launched out into the kitchen corridor, half running, half stumbling, until we reached the main hall and the entrance to the library, which opened via French windows into the glass-roofed verandah spanning the entire back of the house. Price and Wall were standing at the far end of the room, next to the windows. The floor around them was covered with broken glass. ‘Harry! What on earth—’

‘Stay exactly where you are, Sarah!’

I saw a large red brick lying on the floor, just at the verandah. Price picked it up carefully and examined it. ‘This smashed straight through the roof above us.’

‘Good heavens, what has happened here?’ The disturbance had drawn the rector from the sanctuary of his study; he stood at the open door, one arm wrapped protectively around his wife, the other holding aloft an old storm lamp.

‘Perhaps it fell from one of the chimneystacks?’ said Mrs Smith, though even she sounded unconvinced by the idea.

‘Perhaps,’ Price answered somewhat distantly. He was still turning the brick over slowly in his hands. ‘This brick is warm.’

‘Warm?’ I remembered what I had learnt back at the Laboratory in my early years of study. I threw Price a questioning glance. ‘Harry, the first recorded incidents of poltergeist activity record that any object thrown or moved by the phenomenon is left warm to the touch immediately afterwards.’

Price nodded at my recital. ‘Yes, that’s right, Sarah. Something very odd is going on here.’

‘You’re telling me!’ said Wall, and I realised then how unusually quiet he had been in the last few moments. He was glaring at Price, his cheeks flushed. ‘Well, do you want to tell them or shall I?’

Silently Price turned his head away. ‘Very well.’ Wall faced the rest of us, took a deep breath and announced, ‘I saw her. I saw the nun!’

Note

1
Daily Mirror
, 14 June 1929.

Vernon Wall related his sombre encounter with such excitement, that it was a struggle for me to record every small detail with my usual care. But in the short time I had to consider the matter, I formed the intuitive belief that Price’s version of the events in the garden – when we heard it – would probably differ in many respects from Wall’s. And I was right, for when the rector asked Price whether he was able to substantiate the journalist’s story, his question provoked a simple shaking of the head and an insistence that he had not seen anything unusual himself, and certainly nothing quite as startling as the appearance of a nun.

‘We were stationed in the summerhouse,’ he said, ‘smoking. I had my gaze trained on the window of the Blue Room when Mr Wall here gripped my arm with a great flurry of excitement, pointing across the lawn. Before I could get a good look he had dashed off’ – Price looked disapprovingly at the journalist – ‘heading towards the Nun’s Walk.’

‘What did you do?’ I asked.

‘What
could
I do? I was quite taken by surprise as my attention had been solidly focused on the window of the Blue Room; and
of course it was dark, so I waited a matter of seconds, directing my gaze at the area indicated by Wall.’

‘And … ?’

Price hesitated. ‘Certainly I saw something …
moving
against the darker background of the trees surrounding the garden. I suppose it seemed to glide, almost, down towards the little stream.’

‘There you have it!’ Wall exclaimed. ‘A gliding apparition!’

‘But I was not certain!’ Price countered loudly.

And yet there remained the question of where the brick that had smashed through the roof of the verandah had come from and, more importantly, who had thrown it. Price, I could see, was bothered by the problem. But his bafflement did not prevent him from groping for any explanation he could find that would throw further doubt on Wall’s experience.

‘Our minds are such wonderful, powerful things,’ he announced. He sighed and gave Wall a somewhat patronising look. ‘Under the right conditions we can imagine all sorts of things. The light outside in the garden was not good, and our imaginations were on high alert. What you so readily believe was the nun, Mr Wall, could just as easily have been a shadow or a phantom of the mind.’

He was right, of course, but Wall had spoken with such conviction. Soon after, I took a seat in the deserted drawing room to gather my thoughts, and Wall joined me there, sitting beside me on a chaise longue.

I had to ask him. ‘Did you really see her? You’re certain?’

‘I saw
something
, Miss Grey. I would swear it under oath.’

I said nothing for a moment or two, until I remembered that Mary had slipped away just after supper. ‘Perhaps it was the maid playing a trick on us. She knew we were coming here and
she knew why. Scaring us, tricking us, would have made a great tale for her to tell her friends in town.’

He shook his head. ‘I don’t think so – it was the most unnatural sight, a figure like a drifting shadow, half present and half not. And there was something else – a droning sound like a swarm of flies.’ He shrugged. ‘I didn’t see any.’

This hesitant description only heightened my creeping sense of unease – call it a suspicion if you will – that all was not quite as it appeared at Borley Rectory. It was not that I suspected Wall of lying, but the animated manner in which he had described the event made me doubt him. The experience should have invoked at least some semblance of fear, some sign of alarm, but there was no evidence of either reaction – only his forthright, eager manner.

He could read me well. ‘I say,
you
believe me, don’t you?’

‘Yes, yes, of course, but …’

I was about to ask him why he didn’t seem more troubled by the experience when another question occurred to me. ‘Mr Wall, when is your next newspaper article expected?’

He caught the cynical suggestion in my question. ‘Tomorrow, actually.’

‘I see.’

‘Please, Miss Grey, surely you can’t imagine that I would invent such a story just to please my editor?’

I said nothing, rubbed my forehead. He seemed to be telling the truth.

‘Sarah, please.’ He sighed, frustrated. ‘This is Mr Price’s doing, isn’t it? He’s turned you against me.’

‘No – it’s not that. Listen. It’s in my nature to be sceptical. I’ve seen what lies can do.’

Wall looked unconvinced. ‘I know Mr Price disapproves of
my being here, I can tell. But you don’t have to protect him, or me for that matter.’

‘Vernon—’

I had wanted to ask him what they had talked about in the garden. But before I could finish my sentence we both started, disturbed by a noise which sounded like a stone falling to the floor. It seemed to come from the opposite side of the room.

‘What was that?’ The urgency in my voice surprised even me.

We listened attentively, perched on the edge of the ugly chaise longue, but the only other sounds – apart from the ticking clock in the hall – were of Price and Mr and Mrs Smith, the three of whom were conversing in the next room as they busily swept up the shattered glass. ‘Perhaps we should go and help them,’ I suggested.

And then Wall slipped a comforting arm around me. My natural reaction was to go rigid, but I quickly relaxed, allowing my shoulders to loosen.

‘Please, sit a moment with me,’ said Wall.

There was a tense moment as, for a few seconds, we sat perfectly still, neither of us saying anything, looking everywhere except at each other.

‘I hate this place,’ I said after a while. ‘It just feels wrong to me somehow. When we arrived I thought the silence was oddly soothing, but it’s not soothing, is it? It’s just unnatural. It doesn’t make any
sense
.’

I saw him nod. ‘I feel as though we’re being watched even now.’

A gust of air passed me. Wall must have felt my nervous shiver, for he promptly squeezed closer to me; but the warmth of his embrace was useless against the creeping chill which seemed to be talking hold of the room. I reminded myself of
the date – June 1929 – as if to confirm that I wasn’t imagining the drop in temperature, to reassure myself that the capacity for coherent thought had not abandoned me. Two and a half years. Was it really so long since I had embarked on this journey with Price? I tried to remember all that had happened in that time, but the very notion that memories or coherent thought were possible in this house or had any meaning here, where the rest of the world seemed so very far away, felt misplaced; indeed, if I had known then of the events still to come that night, I would willingly have left the Rectory at that instant. But I didn’t know, and the growing strength of my conflicting emotions towards Wall and Price was serving only to anchor me here.

I glanced furtively at the door leading into the hall, afraid we would be discovered in such an intimate embrace, and was about to rise when Wall said, ‘Sarah – in another time, another place, more normal than this, when we’re not frightening ourselves out of our foolish wits, it would give me the greatest pleasure to see you.’