The Mammoth Book of Haunted House Stories (Mammoth Books) (52 page)

He crossed the square to the police station and marched straight into the Prefect’s private room. “Can you tell me where I can find a house with a pattern of shields and bugles on the supports of the stone door-frame?”

“I can,” replied the Prefect wearily, placing his pen carefully in the tray of his inkstand.

“A house with a door of some dark wood with a painted grid in it, and a lantern bracket over it.”

“I cannot. There is no such house in Brevolt.”

“Rubbish. I dined there last night.”

The Prefect bowed in silence. It is not wise to contradict Prussian officers. Otherwise he might not now have been acting as mayor in addition to his police duties.

“Well?” demanded Captain von Unserbach.

“There is only one house in Brevolt with a pattern on its lintels such as you describe, and that is the one at which you have just been ringing. There was once a lantern-bracket such as you describe, but it fell down five years ago. The door was painted for the first and last time some forty years ago. The house is to let; but it has a bad name.”

“Why?”

“Its last owners were not altogether desirable people.”

“I am not asking about its last owners. Who lives there now?”

“Nobody.”

“You had better be careful as to how you tell me lies. I know perfectly well that a lady and her daughter are residing in that house. I do not know what your reasons for denying that fact may be, but you need have no fear that I intend them the slightest harm.”

The Prefect crossed the room and opened a locker. He selected a bundle of documents, untied the string, and extracted a pencil drawing. “Is that the lady you are seeking?” he asked.

“Yes!” Von Unserbach shouted. “Thousand devils! Why have you been wasting all my time with your lies. Empty house – you blockhead! Do you mean to tell me that two ladies and their household and ten vans of furniture could move in under your very nose and you not know it! You shall hear more about this!”

“And what is it you wish?”

“Wish! Why to get in there of course!”

The Prefect held out his hand for the pencil sketch. “It belongs to the police records,” he explained.

“It belongs to me,” replied the Prussian.

The police officer took a large key from the locker, and returned the remainder of the documents. Captain von Unserbach followed him across the square and, as soon as the narrow door had groaned and grated open, he pushed past him into the hall.

The Prefect heard the guttural oath of astonishment which followed, and smiled drily behind his pointed grey beard.

Kurt von Unserbach stood on the threshold – staring straight ahead of him – rigid with horror and amazement.

The hall was empty. There was no trace of furniture, nor of the glass vases of flowers, nor of the rich stair-carpet. The dust lay half an inch thick over the tiled floor, over the stairs, over the bannisters, over everything.

“Are you looking for the frescoes?” inquired the Prefect politely. “They were painted out over thirty years ago. They were scarcely of a nature to attract respectable tenants.”

But it was not the invisibility of the frescoes, it was not the absence of the furniture, which had terrified the soldier. There were fingermarks trailing through the dust on the bannister rail. There were footmarks in the dust on the floor, footmarks which led past the walls where the frescoes had been, and showed upon the stairs. And the marks on the bannister rail had been made by his own fingers, and the marks on the floor had been trodden out by his own cavalry boots. And besides these there were no other marks in the dust.

“Now that we are here it is a pity that you should not see over the house once again,” suggested the police officer. “The owners would sell it for a mere trifle. But it would interest me very much to know how you got in last night? The keyhole was clogged with dust.”

Kurt von Unserbach followed him up the stairs in silence. His brain was numbed. It was capable of nothing save obedience to outside suggestions.

The door to the dining-room resisted the efforts of the Prefect to open it. The bolt of the lock had rusted and the handle refused to turn. The Prussian pushed him aside and wrenched and tugged and twisted. Then he put his shoulder to the door and burst it open.

The room was empty. The massive tables and the solid chairs had vanished. There was now no carpet on the floor save a carpet of thick dust patterned with marks of his own boots. In the centre of the room and by the end wall, where the tables had stood, the dust lay smooth and untrodden. He saw clearly the marks where he had paced up and down beside the sumptuous dishes while waiting for– ? For– ? Waiting for– ? With an effort he resumed control of his brain. He snatched the pencil sketch from his pocket and thrust it towards the Prefect. “Who is she?” he demanded. “Who is that?”

“Your pardon, one moment; but is that your cigar end, and cigar ash, over there in the grate?”

“Who is that – please?” He spoke civilly – almost coaxingly. He was no longer merely a Prussian officer. He was a man, striving to fight down the fear that was growing in him.

“She came from Alsace with her mother, after the great war of 1870. A Prussian officer made their house his headquarters.”

“Ach!” The tone was one of comprehension, disgust, and fury.

“Ah – how she hated the Prussians! They were too vile even for her. She vowed that she would never return to France while a single one of that breed grunted through it unharmed. She was a bad woman – but she loved her country passionately. She continued her profession here for three years.”

“What profession?”

“In 1870 there was only one profession open to women,” replied the Prefect drily.

“But – the furniture! The furniture! How could it have been taken away in the night – and the dust not disturbed! In the night –? I tell you it was here at five o’clock this morning!”

“It was sold to pay off their debts. The table that was in the centre of the room has stood in the Mayor’s house for the last forty years. It is the one across which you fired at him. The chairs were purchased by the late Burgomaster and the other table” – he indicated the end wall – “was purchased by my father.”

“When?” Von Unserbach asked the question with an effort, and scarcely dared listen for the reply.

“The great oaken bed with the hangings of crimson velvet worked with golden fleurs-de-lys,” the old man continued in a tone of professional interest, “was broken up for firewood. No one would bid for it, by reason of the murder.”

“Broken up!” Kurt von Unserbach almost screamed the words. His forehead was damp. The colour had left his florid cheeks.

“Your pardon! You asked me when they were sold. It was in August 1874. I remember the date because it was exactly a month after the two women were executed. They cannot have been altogether bad, because they loved their country.”

Captain von Unserbach spoke rapidly in whispers. His words were inaudible. His lower lip hung loosely.

“Since that date the house has been closed,” added the Prefect after a polite pause. “You have doubtless noticed how thick the dust is.”

But Kurt von Unserbach was cursing his way through a half-forgotten prayer. He turned suddenly, with military precision, and strutted down the passage to the next room. He did not dare to go slowly, lest the remnant of his courage should fail him. He threw back the door and halted with a sharp click of his heels.

On the mantel-shelf lay his cigar case, exactly as he had left it.

The thick dust on the floor was undisturbed save for the imprints of his own bare feet.

He stared at the bare corner where, that very morning had stood the semblance of a great oaken bed – with hangings of crimson velvet worked with golden fleurs-de-lys. It was the space of a full minute before his eyes no longer focused on the patch of smooth dust. He turned – clicked his heels – and fell headlong on to the floor.

Captain Kurt von Unserbach is now an inmate of the great military asylum in the Koenigstrasse. He is not violent. He struts up and down his cell, clicking his heels when he turns. He sleeps only in the daytime, and then always upon the floor. Between the hours of eleven o’clock at night and five o’clock in the morning he is subject to strange fits of terror – and it is then only that he speaks – crying out always the same five words.

The Kisstruck Bogie

A. E. Coppard

Kisstruck told me this horrible tale. I do not believe a word of it, but I write it out, because it was vouched for by Kisstruck whose integrity I respect; his quick humour and pleasant intelligence (for a bachelor) are not easily beguiled. All the same I do not believe it, he has fooled me before now with notions just as outlandish as his name – for Kisstruck
is
a curious name. American, I fancy, or something equally peculiar. For if there were such things as ghosts one ought to be able, when all is said and done and seen and noted, one ought to be able to establish some yardstick of proof. I take my stand upon that, and that is how I put it to Kisstruck.

He sighed and said: “Well, I have only told you what I know.”

And I said: “Nonsense, you do
not
know it, you only told me what you
heard
, and to be quite frank with you I think you only think you heard it.”

He sighed again, morosely: “Then I claim that I think I heard it, but for
me
– don’t you see? – that is knowledge. To believe only in what you see is to ignore . . . O, the universe! It’s no better than seeing only what you want to believe in, like a bishop.”

That’s as far as I could get towards demolishing his belief in this episode. Because he certainly
has
a belief, with perhaps some private intimations of which I am unaware, or intuitions to which I have no clue. For myself I have not the faintest belief in it, having been born a sceptic; to this day, if it is possible to be sceptical about anything I become,
ipso facto
, uncontrollably sceptical.

He once bought – this was years ago, remember – he bought a tumbledown ruin of a house in a country neighbourhood that must have been the very personification of solitude. I never gathered exactly where this was, Kisstruck declined to tell me, but I have a hunch that if you took a reading of a line between the spire of the cathedral at Salisbury and the town hall of Bath, crossed by another line from Wells to St. Paul’s (I mean the one in London), the place would be found somewhere at the intersection: but it does not matter very much for the house was burnt to the ground long since. He gave me a nice-description of the house as it was after he had repaired it, an old-fashioned dwelling with a balcony, screened by trees in a place that seemed to be a sort of a park. There was a dull leaden lake close by. Quite solitary, I never saw the place, he having lived there before, I made his acquaintance, and, as I told you, it is now gone for ever. Apparently it had been empty for many years owing to a strange death or murder that occurred there, though nobody seemed to know what, as it was said to be haunted in consequence, though nobody seemed to know how.