Ghosts of Mayfield Court (3 page)

Uncle Max made no move to accede to the doctor's request. He seemed dazed, as though talk of the skeleton had robbed him of the will to act.

‘This skeleton,' he said at last, ‘what's to be done?
Must
anything be done?'

The doctor drew a watch from his waistcoat pocket and consulted it.

‘Oh, yes, Mr Paget,' he said, ‘something must certainly be done. It's just after eleven o'clock. I have already sent a note to a neighbour of mine at Thornton Heath, and he should be here by twelve. He was working on his smallholding when I left, and I know he'll call in to the Volunteer for a glass of gin before setting off for his work in Warwick. But when he gets my note, he'll come here.'

While the doctor was talking, Uncle Max had regained control of himself. I saw the beginnings of a sardonic smile hovering about his lips.

‘And this gin-drinking smallholder,' he enquired, ‘is he an authority on skeletons?'

‘Well, yes, he is,' said the doctor, smiling in his turn. ‘I'll leave you, now. My neighbour will be here within the half-hour.'

2

Catherine's Narrative: Laying the Ghost

‘T
here's somebody making his way through that wilderness of a carriage drive,' said Uncle Max. ‘Probably a fellow yokel come to call on the peasant woman.'

It was just over half an hour after Dr Tracy had left. I joined my uncle at the window, and saw a heavy, thickset man approaching the front door of Mayfield Court. Despite the summer heat, he was clad in a buff overcoat which he wore open, so that it flapped about him as he walked. Beneath the overcoat he wore a dark moleskin suit, the trouser legs tied around his ankles with string.

The man held a riding crop, which he used to beat a way through the tangled weeds growing over the path. As he neared the door, I could see that he had a clean-shaven face, which was flushed either with exertion, or with what Uncle would have called ‘ardent spirits'.

There was a brisk knock on the door, and presently Mrs Doake came into the room. She gave a little bob of a curtsy in Uncle's direction, and told us that Mr Bottomley had ridden over from Thornton Heath to see us. In a moment, the man called Bottomley came into the room.

‘Mr Paget?' he asked. His voice held the pleasant accents of a Warwickshire man. ‘I'm Detective Sergeant Bottomley of the
Warwickshire Constabulary.' He fumbled in one of the pockets of his overcoat, and produced a rather grimy warrant-card. I noticed that there was soil beneath his fingernails.

‘You'd better go out into the garden straight away,' said Uncle Max. ‘I have no desire to see this skeleton myself, and it would not be fitting for my niece to do so a second time. The woman who looks after us here will show you the way.'

Our rustic visitor treated Uncle Max to an amiable lopsided smile.

‘Yes, sir,' he said, ‘I'll be looking at the skeleton in a little while – but not just yet.' His face became suddenly grave, and he turned to look at me from a pair of fine, shrewd grey eyes.

‘I'm told by Mrs Doake that you are Miss Catherine Paget,' he said, ‘and that you are the young lady who has been seeing ghosts.' There was no mockery lurking behind his words, and when he asked me to give an account of what I had seen, I had no difficulty in confiding in him. Uncle, I noticed, had fallen silent. Leaving him to his own devices, I bade Mr Bottomley follow me into the kitchen, where I told him of my three encounters with the spirit-child. He listened with what I can only describe as becoming gravity. It was a novelty, as I was accustomed to all my accounts of ghosts and spirits being met with derision.

‘A very interesting account, miss,' said Mr Bottomley, when I had finished. ‘The Pale Child of Mayfield. Would you care to show me the room where you saw this phantom?'

The first-floor bedroom was just as I had seen it when the spirit called Helen had appeared to me. I watched as Mr Bottomley leant down, his hands on his knees, and peered at the uneven floorboards. He made an inarticulate sound of satisfaction, and then moved slowly around the room. When he reached the corner where the drawers from the chest had been placed, he carefully moved them aside, and it seemed that he looked at the wall in the dark corner for minutes before straightening up and treating me to a gentle smile.

‘I don't suppose you like it here much, do you, miss?' he said. ‘You'd rather be back in Birmingham, I expect.'

‘Not Birmingham, Mr Bottomley,' I corrected him. ‘Uncle and I are from London.'

‘Oh, London,' he said, the suggestion of a smile playing about his lips. ‘London. I see. So you won't like it out here much, will you? Here in the parish of Mayfield, in the hundred of Yeadon Vale, and in the county of Warwick, within walking distance of the hamlet of the same name?'

‘What a strange man you are, Sergeant!' I laughed in spite of myself, and realized that it was the first time I had done so since the pathetic little haunting had begun. ‘Why won't you go out to see the skeleton?'

‘I will, miss, cross my heart; but the skeleton will stay where it is until I come, whereas ghosts and suchlike lead us a lively dance – or a deathly dance, I should say. When the spirit-child, this Helen, put her finger to her lips, did she do it like this?'

He placed the edge of his index finger to his lips, and held the pose until I became aware that Helen's action had been different. Mr Bottomley read this realization in my eyes, and slowly turned his finger until the front of it touched his lips. I could see his fingernail gleaming in the morning light. It had been the same with Helen.

‘That's right, Sergeant!' I cried. ‘That's how Helen did it. But how did you know? Have you, too, seen her?'

‘Oh, no, Miss Catherine,' said Mr Bottomley. ‘I've heard tell of her, but I've never seen her. But now that I know how she held her finger to her lips, I reckon I know all about her. So it's time for me to examine the skeleton.'

The amiable half-smile suddenly faded from his homely face, to be replaced by an expression approaching bleak despair. I suddenly felt in awe of this man, who looked like a farm labourer, but who was, in fact, a police detective.

‘I will examine the skeleton alone, miss,' he said, ‘but there'd
be no harm in Mr Paget and yourself watching me from one of the windows on the garden side of the house. As soon as I've finished my examination, I'll come back and tell you both what my conclusions are.'

From a window on the first-floor landing I watched Sergeant Bottomley as he went to work. Uncle Max had refused to join me, pleading more work on examining the bundles of letters. I suspected that he had no stomach for the macabre.

I saw Mr Bottomley, still wielding his riding-crop, thresh his way through the wilderness of the rear garden until he reached the crumbling wall where I had found the ghastly remains. Once again, this rural detective did not behave predictably. He stood for a while staring fixedly up at the wooded hill that rose above the unseen hamlet. Then he turned slowly towards the south, and seemed to sniff the air like an eager hound. He suddenly plunged through the choking wall of rhododendrons to his left, and did not appear again for ten minutes.

When he came back from wherever he had been there was a jauntiness in his step that intrigued me. Indeed, everything that this burly man did intrigued me, perhaps because I have always been attracted to the unpredictable. At last I saw him kneel down beside the breach in the old ruined wall. He remained motionless for so long that I wondered whether he was not, in fact, kneeling in prayer. He made no effort to remove the pathetic bones of the dead child, but after what seemed an age he rose slowly to his feet.

Seating himself on part of the ruined wall, he rummaged in his pocket and produced what looked like a half-smoked cheroot. Retrieving a box of wax vestas from the same pocket, he lit the cheroot, and puffed away delicately for a while. When he had finished smoking, he dropped the butt into the grass, and ground it vigorously with his heel. He stood up, glanced briefly back at the house, and then disappeared once more into the bank of
overgrown
and rank rhododendrons.

I remained looking out on to the quiet, sunlit garden, where I had encountered the child-spirit known only as Helen. I felt mesmerized by the scene, the lack of animation, the illusion that no sound emanated from any kind of woodland life in that tangled wilderness. It was a strange, darkly enchanted place, a place where this world and the hidden world of the afterlife met and acknowledged each other.

After what seemed an age, Sergeant Bottomley reappeared, and to my heightened imagination he seemed to be a denizen of that enchanted garden. And then my heart gave a leap of fear and disbelief as I saw that the burly police sergeant was not alone.

The spirit-child Helen walked beside him,
and she was holding his hand
.

‘This little girl, Miss Catherine,' said Herbert Bottomley, ‘is Hannah Price, and she is a Romany child.'

When Mr Bottomley came back into the house, he sat down on an upright chair near the table in the living room. Of Uncle there was no sign. The little girl stood beside the sergeant, leaning rather timorously against his right arm. I could see by her stance that Hannah Price knew instinctively, as children often do, that this was a man whom she could trust.

‘I'm not one to belittle belief in spirits, Miss Catherine,' Mr Bottomley continued, ‘but as a local man I knew about this tumbledown old house, and how easy it was for curious folk to gain entrance. When you showed me that little bedroom, I saw that there was a cavity in the far wall, which someone had tried to cover up with some old drawers. Well, I could see quite clearly that if you crawled through that hole you'd come out on to a stone staircase, leading down to the kitchen yard. That's how little Hannah got into the house and out again.'

‘But why should she come here?' I asked. ‘She knew where that poor skeleton had been concealed, and she knew that the little
room on the first floor was where Helen had been lodged. She flitted about like a ghost, talking silently—'

‘Yes, miss, and that's when I suspected that an afflicted child had been wandering about here. When I asked you how she laid her finger on her lips, and you told me, I was almost certain. She'd been told always to do that in order to let people know that she couldn't speak.'

Bottomley suddenly encircled the child with his arm, hugging her towards him. He looked at her with a kind of grave
compassion
.

‘How old are you, Hannah?' he asked.

The girl spoke, and I saw her lips form the word ‘ten', though no sound came from her mouth. Immediately, she placed the front of a finger against her lips.

‘You see, miss?' said Mr Bottomley gently. ‘Hannah's telling you that she's dumb. She's also something else, Miss Catherine. I went looking for her in the gypsy encampment, because I knew there was no girl child of her age in the village. And there I found her, sitting on the ground in front of a caravan with her aunt. I sat down with them, all comfortable, like, and her aunt told me all about Hannah – another little orphan, like Helen. This little girl's not only dumb, she's “lacking”, as we say – not daft, miss, if you'll pardon the coarse word, but not always knowing what's right behaviour and what isn't. That's how she came to be wandering about in your house and garden – Hannah wouldn't understand the meaning of “trespass”.'

‘But she knew where Helen's remains were concealed. She knew that Helen had slept in that bed—'

‘I know, miss, and that's a mystery in its own right, but it's no good me questioning this little waif of a gypsy girl about it. However, her aunt told me that there was someone in their camp who knew a lot about Helen, and it was from this “somebody” that Hannah learnt about that iron bedstead in the room on the first floor, and the whole legend of the little ghost. What we had
here was one little girl looking for another little girl, and it was while she was doing that, that she discovered the skeleton. In her muddled way she kept her own counsel, miss, until she saw you. She must have liked you, and decided to share her secret with you.'

The door opened, and Mrs Doake bustled into the room, wiping her hands on her pinafore.

‘Oh, Mr Bottomley,' she cried, ‘is this the little mite that's been frightening us all? Well, Hannah, if you'll come with me to the kitchen, I'll give you a glass of buttermilk, and a big jam
sandwich
. Would you like that?'

For the first time since I had seen her, the little girl's face was lit up by a brilliant smile. She mouthed the word ‘yes' in reply to Mrs Doake's question, and immediately placed her finger to her lips. Evidently the action had become an almost unconscious reflex. The kindly woman took Hannah Price by the hand, and led her from the room.

I looked at the rural policeman, who had begun to scribble a few notes into a minute notebook that he had produced from an inner pocket. His lips quietly formed words which he then wrote down; occasionally he licked the tip of the stub of pencil that he was using. He seemed to be a friendly, kind-hearted sort of man, but one who evidently kept his own counsel. I was anxious to know what he had discovered about the pathetic remains of the dead child concealed beneath the ruins of the washhouse. I thought: should I ask him outright?

Mr Bottomley stopped writing, and returned notebook and pencil to his pocket. He looked speculatively at me for a moment, and then spoke.

‘I don't think your uncle, Mr Maximilian Paget, likes
skeletons
, miss,' he said, ‘which is why he isn't here to listen to what I have to say. So I'll let you know what's going forward, and you can tell him later. The skeleton, as I think you realized, is that of a child. Until the police surgeon has seen it, there's no way of telling how long it has lain in its hidden tomb.'

‘Poor little thing!' I cried. ‘What kind of people would murder a little girl? Poor little Helen—'