Authors: Neil Spring
‘Sarah?’
The voice made me start.
Price swept into the room. ‘What’s keeping you?’ he asked impatiently. ‘We’re waiting for you downstairs.’
‘Harry – this house. Something is very,
very
wrong here.’
He looked at me doubtfully but I begged him to listen to me, looking pleadingly into his eyes. ‘I think this house, somehow, is dangerous. There is a ghastly atmosphere here. Mrs Foyster – she knows. She has some sort of ability. The wall writing, the nun, the medallion – it’s all connected to some sort of curse on people connected with this house who tell lies.’
It sounded crazy even to me.
‘Listen to yourself, Sarah.’
But I went on. I told him what Mrs Foyster had said to me, of her violent affair with Frank Peerless and her self-confessed bigamy. ‘But you mustn’t say anything to anyone,’ I insisted. ‘I promised her.’
He was quiet for a long moment, staring across the bedroom, before saying calmly, ‘And so this fog of ghouls and poltergeists dissolves, and we see clearly the truth of the matter. Sarah, sit down.’
‘No, there’s no time. Please, just—’
‘Sit down!’
His stern tone forced me to obey.
‘Now then, I want you to listen to me very carefully, all right?’
I nodded.
‘Marianne is behind all of this.’
‘What? Harry, no, I don’t think so.’
He nodded. ‘The woman is so bored I think she would do and say practically anything to draw attention to herself and to escape from the Rectory. Think about it. Almost every item thrown at her husband in the time they have been here has come from behind him, with Marianne out of sight.’
‘But that makes no sense,’ I insisted. ‘What about the bottles we saw flying about in the hall? Everything that happened in this house before we even came? The bells that rang when the Smiths were here?’
‘Ah yes, the bells,’ said Price cynically. ‘The Foysters have reported hearing them as well, haven’t they? And what sort of haunted house would this be without ringing bells?’ He reached into his creased jacket and produced a length of cord which he held out for me to see. ‘Look, I found this whipcord string dangling out of the ivy in the wall in the courtyard. I followed it and found it led through an open window into the house. Sarah, it was attached to a cluster of exposed bell wires at the back of the kitchen passage. Just one little tug and the bells ring. I rang it myself not long ago.’
‘No,’ I said, shaking my head. The idea that the bells were rigged with string just seemed too far-fetched; surely we would have noticed them? ‘There were certainly no strings attached when the Smiths lived here.’
‘Well, there are now,’ Price said firmly. ‘Sarah, there are cords like this running up to most of the bedrooms. I’ve had my suspicions about the Foysters since I learned about their time together in Canada. There they were known as the odd couple.’
‘Lionel as well?’ I asked doubtfully. ‘He doesn’t strike me as so odd.’
‘Lionel especially. A rather unsavoury business, to say the least. And there is more.’ Price reached into his jacket and produced yet another item, a small bottle. ‘I found this in his study – opium. I hardly need tell you that this is a highly illegal drug which can give rise to all manner of hallucinations. Pencils which rise and float in the air?’ He smiled and shook his head. ‘I think not.’
I found little confort in this revelation. Mrs Foyster’s words had infected me with lingering paranoia and I was convinced that there was more substance to the strange happenings than Price was willing to acknowledge. I tried telling him so then, but he interrupted and told me to go downstairs with him. I followed reluctantly, an inner turmoil slowing my step.
The Foysters were waiting for us in the drawing room. The night’s proceedings had taken their toll upon Foyster who, looking weary, had taken to his wheelchair. Mrs Foyster hovered silently by the fireplace, a glass in one hand and a cigarette in the other. I took a seat by the fire. Price stood by the bookcase and announced that his investigation of the downstairs rooms had been fruitful.
‘Well,’ said Foyster testily, ‘don’t keep us in suspense.’ He pointed at his wife who sat opposite him, her head turned away. ‘Have you see Marianne’s eye? She’s black and blue. I tell you,
they
are at it again.’
Mrs Foyster shot me a warning look.
Before the rector could say anything more on the subject of spirits, Price puffed up his chest and approached the old man. I held my breath.
He’s going to tell him!
‘Harry—’
‘Mr Foyster, are you really so blind to the truth that you cannot see it, even when it is sitting immediately in front of you?’
‘Whatever do you mean?’ The light from the fireplace glowed on Marianne’s cheeks.
Price gazed at Mrs Foyster with contempt. Then he said to the rector, ‘Your wife is behind it all, sir.’
‘What?’ cried Mrs Foyster, putting her glass down on the mantelpiece. ‘You think it’s
me
throwing bottles and stones, harming myself? You think I’m the one dressing up in dark
clothes, marching myself and everyone else up the garden path?’
‘Yes,’ said Price, ‘or rather, to be more precise, you and your accomplice.’ He wheeled round to face the rector. ‘Mr Foyster, it’s your wife who has been deceiving you.’
‘With whose authority do you say so, sir?’
‘Mine,’ said Price. ‘Only mine.’
And as the sole investigator of the case, that was all he needed. Price marched into the hall, gesturing for us to follow. We all did so, Marianne less eagerly than the rest of us. I soon understood why. Price was standing at an open window in the gloomy passage leading down to the kitchen. He got down on his knees and pointed to a small hole in the skirting board, which had come away from the floor. ‘The house is riddled with holes like this,’ he said, poking his finger into the crevice. ‘Every one of these holes is pitted with phosphorous powder which ignites when exposed to the air. This explains the sporadic outbursts of fire.’
The rector shook his head. ‘But the objects thrown at me …’
‘Have always come from behind you, have they not?’
‘Well, yes, but—’
‘And look here!’ Price remarked. From the fine gap which separated the skirting board from the floor he seized a delicate cord like the one he had shown me upstairs and held it up for us to see. It ran from his fingers up to the servant bells above his head. ‘This leads from the bells in the kitchen passage immediately out to the bushes in the garden,’ he announced triumphantly. He gave the cord a short, sharp pull and one of the servant bells above us rang out.
Reverend Foyster, slumped in his wheelchair at the entrance to the hall, looked stunned. I was surprised that he hadn’t
noticed the cord himself. Hadn’t noticed or hadn’t wanted to notice it.
‘I should point out,’ Price continued, ‘that the bells can also be rung from the bedroom passage upstairs, near the Blue Room’s door. Very clever indeed, Mrs Foyster! It must have taken you a good time to rig it all up. Ah, but then I am sure you had some assistance. Perhaps it’s your accomplice I should be congratulating.’
‘How dare you!’ she retaliated. ‘How dare you march in here throwing these accusations about like chicken feed! This is our home, Mr Price, and you are our guest.’
‘No,’ cried Price. ‘I am your inquisitor, madam. And I have found you out!’
Mrs Foyster stepped back into the shadows of the hall.
Reverend Foyster addressed Price. ‘What you are telling us is untenable, untrue. How do you account for everything that happened
before
my wife and I came here? Tell us that!’
‘I believe Mary Pearson, the former maid, had a lot to do with it,’ said Price.
What? I thought. Where has this come from? ‘Harry, you never mentioned the Smiths’ maid before—’
‘And between you both, I believe you have carried on these deceptive practices and made this haunt your own.’
‘No. This Rectory is disordered, I tell you!’
‘Indeed it is,’ said Price. ‘It is disordered in the worst sense imaginable. It’s bursting at the seams with physical, psychological and moral chaos. But this disorder has nothing to do with ghosts.’
‘Harry,’ I said. ‘Harry, you can stop now.’
But he was ignoring me, his words chilly and clipped. ‘Sarah, Mr Foyster, Mrs Foyster – this case has taken on more facets than
I ever imagined. It is without doubt the most intriguing and invigorating that has ever come my way. To expose it now as a hoax would be a revelation, a crushing disappointment to many thousands of believers. But that won’t stop me.’ He turned to the rector, his eyes flashing. ‘Mr Foyster, your wife is engaged in a love affair with your lodger, Frank Peerless. They’re in on it together.’
‘That’s a contemptible lie, sir!’ Foyster snarled. ‘Peerless came to us from an advertisement we placed in the
Church Times
seeking a companion for little Adelaide. He has a young boy, so the arrangement was ideal.’
‘Yes, it
was
ideal. For Mrs Foyster at least. Listen to me,’ Price ordered. ‘It’s not the spirits beating up your wife, Mr Foyster, it’s her lover. He’s consumed with jealousy and he wants you gone. They both do.’
‘Harry!’ I cried. My God, was there anything he wouldn’t say?
‘No, no,’ protested Reverend Foyster, his face crumpling in despair. ‘These stories, they’re nothing; they’re malicious gossip, that’s all, put about by mean-minded people who are jealous of Marianne, her charm and her kindness. They have no factual basis.’
I thought Price would surely stop then, that he would recognise from the old man’s evident pain and uncertainty that he had gone too far. I thought he would have mercy. I willed him to have mercy.
‘Kindness? My good man, where is the kindness in
lying
to you, throwing things at you from darkened corners, whispering in the dark, just so that she can deceive you? I see no kindness in this.’
Reverend Foyster gave his wife an expression of such anguish and devastated betrayal that I couldn’t help but pity him.
Marianne didn’t even notice. She was standing like a naughty child at the bottom of the stairs, twirling a curl of hair around her finger.
‘But what really interests me, sir,’ Price continued, ‘is how you never even suspected what the two of them were up to, playing these tricks on you.’
‘No, I – I …’
But Price was relentless, unforgiving, his expression slyer than ever. ‘Or could it be that you
did
know and all the time you have been playing along with the whole deception? Perhaps, sir, you enjoy seeing your wife and her lover together? Is that it? Their casual relations thrill you? Or perhaps you have been compiling your diary with literary ambitions in mind. You wouldn’t be the first who has lived in this house and entertained such an idea. Your predecessor’s wife was a very keen author, as I recall.’
Watching all of this play out, my thoughts were occupied not by the Foysters and their convoluted relationship with their lodger, but by Price’s unforgiving attitude towards our hosts. They were feeling the ferocity of the sceptic’s rage. Was he really so insensitive as not to question, even for a moment, how his words, his attacks on them, would make me, his companion, feel? How would his attacks, which anyone in my situation would have found embarrassing, affect the way I viewed him? Had he thought of that? Did he even care? The fact that I didn’t know – couldn’t even tell – was most disheartening, disappointing even; for as much as I still cared for him, still
wanted
him, the radiance of his personality was beginning to fade in my eyes, dimmed by his outrageous behaviour. It reminded me of how he had shunned me back in 1929 when I had gone to Yorkshire.
‘This persecution ends now!’ the rector growled suddenly. He was glaring at Price. ‘Get out of my house. Get OUT!’
Price nodded and turned to face me. ‘Come along, Sarah. It seems we have outstayed our welcome.’
‘You were never welcome in this house, Harry Price!’ Foyster’s voice was deadly serious, his face flushed with anger. ‘Yes, I know all about it, your last visit ended in disaster. That seance you conducted upstairs. You let something in, something evil. You’re dangerous!’ He held out his trembling hand and said, ‘You have something that belongs to me. I want it back.’ Shakily, he held out his arthritic hand. ‘My
Diary of Occurrences
, if you would be so kind.’
I had never seen Price look so cold. ‘I don’t have it,’ he said flatly. ‘At least, not with me. I must have left it in my office at the Laboratory.’
‘He’s lying,’ Mrs Foyster said suddenly. Her eyes were wild and red. ‘They had it with them on the train. Frank saw them together.’ She pointed at me and said, ‘
She
has it.’
‘Is this true?’
When I said nothing Reverend Foyster held out his hand, opening and closing his fingers. ‘My diary, please, Miss Grey. I won’t ask you again.’
I had an opportunity then to set right some of the wrongs that were to come. If only I had known it. I stared at him blankly, feeling Price’s eyes upon me, torn by the choice I had no wish to make. Eventually, to my shame, I said, ‘I’m afraid your wife is lying to you, Mr Foyster. I don’t have it.’
At that moment something cold and invasive, some peculiar pulse of air, pressed past me. It came so suddenly and with such force that I staggered to one side.
‘I want it
back!
Do you hear me?’
Price’s voice rose to a crescendo. ‘I know perfectly well what you
want
, sir, and you will have none of it.’ He stalked angrily towards the rector, stooping to place his hands on both arms of Foyster’s wheelchair so that the old man was trapped. ‘Indeed, you will have nothing but the truth!’
‘No, Harry!’ For the briefest moment an image flashed through my mind, quick enough to shock me but vivid enough to be quite unmistakable. It was the nun, her withered arms stretching towards me, black robes billowing out behind her. I cried out, ‘Harry, please stop! Listen to me – they’re not making it all up!’
‘I know,’ Price continued, glowering into the rector’s face, ‘that before Marianne married you her was name Greenwood – a name she inherited from a previous marriage. I also know that there is no record of a divorce, and Mr Greenwood is still very much alive. And I know that in 1914, in Belfast, she gave birth to a child – a little boy who she is hiding from you.’