The Mistletoe Bride and Other Haunting Tales (9 page)

Dean Hall, West Sussex
October 1922

The House on the Hill

All houses wherein men have lived and died
Are haunted houses. Through the open doors
The harmless phantoms on their errands glide,
With feet that make no sound upon the floors.

from ‘Haunted Houses’
HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW

In the house on the hill, there was a light. A single, flickering flame in a room on the first floor, like a candle burning.

Daphne looked at it from her bedroom in Dean Hall, her hands resting on the cold stone window sill. Her train from London had been late getting in, so she’d barely had time to say her hello to her cousin, Teddy, before being shown to her room. The other weekend guests had arrived some time before. She hadn’t had the chance to explore the parkland and was surprised there was so substantial a house within the grounds. It looked both rather splendid and rather isolated, despite its proximity to Dean Hall. Set on the ridge of the hill between two clusters of trees, a façade of brick, perfectly symmetrical, red tiled roof and tall chimneys. Though half hidden in the shadows of the woods, Daphne imagined there’d be a fine view from the house across the South Downs and down to the sea some eight miles away. She wondered if Teddy knew who lived there or if the house even belonged to the estate. He had taken Dean Hall on a six month lease and this was the first of his weekend house parties. She doubted he knew much about the place yet, though he’d sent her a photograph from the letting agent.

In the dying light, Daphne could make out the silhouette of the arboretum higher up the wooded hillside. Spread out below that, she knew, were fields of yellow rape like squares of a patchwork quilt, furrowed and brown now in the autumn.

She shivered, feeling the chill air creep over her bare skin, and drew back inside the comfort of her room. Daphne pulled the window closed, stiff on its mullioned hinges, and rattled at the metal catch until it was properly shut. She lingered at the window a moment longer, her gaze fixed upon the flickering orange of light on the distant hill, mesmerised, until suddenly it was gone.

If she’d been a jumpy kind of girl, she might have squealed. As it was, Daphne felt oddly put out, as if someone had caught her snooping and blown the candle out. She pulled more roughly at the curtains than she’d intended to block out the encroaching autumn night. The brass rings rattled on the rails, but didn’t want to shift. She gave it up as a bad job and left them for the maid. At Dean Hall, Teddy had stressed in his letter inviting her for the weekend, there was still staff to keep things ticking over. Like in the old days, before the war, when everything was easier.

The old days.

If Douglas hadn’t deserted her, life would have been so different.

As Daphne started to dress for dinner, she thought of her temporary room in the boarding house in Berwick Street, the single gas ring in the kitchen shared by four girls like her, who had not been brought up to earn a living by typing or working in a shop. She thought of the tatty WC at the end of the corridor, and nylon stockings hanging over the bath, the scarcity of hot water, and could have cried for the world she had left behind. Mrs Daphne Dumsilde, it had such a ring to it. Douglas had promised to look after her, in sickness and in health.

But he had not looked after her. He hadn’t kept his word.

Daphne folded her travelling clothes on the armchair and shimmied into a silk underslip, appalled at how easily she had immediately fallen back into her habitual blue state of mind. Why spoil a perfectly pleasant weekend? Invitations had been thin on the ground – a woman alone was always awkward and her circumstances made it doubly so – and she was too proud to ask for help. At Dean Hall there would be plenty of hot water, plenty of food and drink, perhaps a little dancing and amusing company to keep the dark thoughts at bay. She was glad to be here. Her cousin had seen out the war in America and had been abroad when the business with Douglas happened – but she liked Teddy and was determined not to spoil his weekend by being dull and gloomy.

In her slip and stockings, Daphne walked to the armoire and took a cigarette from her case, trying not to notice the inscription on the inside of the lid: T
O
D
EE
D
EE FROM
D
EE
D
UM
, their little joke. She tapped it sharply to tighten the tobacco, picked up her Ronson and jabbed at it with her thumb until it sparked. That, too, reminded her of Douglas. How idiotic that she kept the case and lighter to remind her of happier times, when in fact the sight of them only made her feel worse.

Daphne inhaled, feeling the calming smoke seep down into her lungs. From the Oak Hall below, she heard the sound of the gramophone and whispers of jazz. Oddly modern music for so antique a setting. Madrigals and spinets would suit the wooden panels and trophies of big game hunts mounted on mahogany surrounds rather better than the smudged chords of Louisiana and New Orleans.

She glanced back to the window, wondering if there would be a light in the house on the hill again, but it was dark in the park. Night had fallen, stripping the shape and character from the pleasant Sussex landscape. Tomorrow morning, she promised herself, she would take a walk, perhaps sit a while and paint, aim for a likeness of the wonderful flint façade of Dean Hall. Or, rather, perhaps she would go in search of the house on the hill, and paint that instead. She felt strangely drawn to it.

Daphne stubbed out her cigarette and finished dressing for dinner. A soft pink silk dress, which suited her pale colouring, with a dropped handkerchief waist and low V beaded neckline. Peach stockings and a light woollen blue shawl, to cover her bare arms. A ribbon tied around her forehead, a mist of scent, and she was ready. Daphne hesitated a moment, then removed her wedding ring and left it on the table beside the bed. She didn’t know if other guests would know about her situation but, whether they did or not, where was the sense in inviting questions?

Her bedroom was at the far corner of the south wing on the first floor. She stepped out into the dimly lit corridor, hearing sounds of the party down below, feeling a mixture of shyness and nerves at the thought of a roomful of strangers. She walked slowly, past perfectly acceptable paintings of sea and countryside, until she noticed, close to the top of the stairs, something delightful. A wonderful doll’s house, painted façade of brick, perfectly symmetrical, red tiled roof and tall chimneys. In the gable there was a clock, showing the time set at three forty-five and the date: 1810. She ran her finger over the surface. There were ribbons of dust on the slope of the red roof and chimneys, but it was still charming. Daphne had owned a doll’s house when she was little. It kept her entertained for hours, as she moved the tiny people from room to room, inventing lives for them, playing house. This doll’s house was far grander and there was also something familiar about it. Daphne wondered if she’d perhaps seen a picture of it somewhere, it was so distinctive, but she couldn’t bring anything to mind.

The noise from the Oak Hall was louder now and Daphne knew she should go down and join the party, but instead she unhooked the latch and opened it up to look inside.

The wooden façade swung open, revealing the entire household from top to bottom. A staircase ran like a spine up the middle of the house. At the lowest level were the working rooms – servants and a flock of geese and ducks, the mud room with harness, and the kitchen, with brass copper pots and an old rocking chair to one side. Cloth and wood figurines of a cook, parlour maids, and butler and boot boy, all perfectly dressed in black and white and green waistcoats. On the ground floor, a red and grey tiled entrance hall, a stone fireplace with marble mantel and a grandmother clock. To the left, a billiard room with the green baize table perfectly smooth and, to the right the dining room, with twelve mahogany chairs set round a polished oval table, and a maid in black and white uniform dusting the sideboard. On the floor above, the ladies and gentlemen of the house, whiskered and gowned in a drawing room and, above the billiard room, a study. A leather-topped desk, complete with inkwell and papers, bookshelves and a brass side table on which stood the smallest of glasses and a fold of paper, like a letter waiting to be read. Daphne frowned, something about this room in particular setting a memory scuttling in her mind. The chair was on its side. She reached in and picked it up, placing it back at the desk.

On the floors above, the family bedrooms. Each perfect in their detail, porcelain washbasins and jugs, matching counterpanes and portraits in tortoiseshell frames. In the attic, the maids’ quarters and a nursery with a metal cot and blackboard and chalk.

The gong rang for dinner, its brass song reverberating up from the hall below. Knowing she couldn’t put off joining the party any longer, Daphne reluctantly stood up and closed the glass fronted doors. She wondered if the doll’s house had been modelled on a real house, if it had been made for the daughter of the family that once owned Dean Hall, or whether it was a recent acquisition for decoration only.

The gong sounded again.

Daphne straightened her dress and her stockings, and was about to rush down the stairs when she noticed a pinpoint of light in the miniature study. Uneven, like the light from a candle flickering in a draught. She looked along the corridor, assuming it had to be some kind of reflection from the wall lamps bouncing off the glass frontage of the doll’s house, but the angles seemed wrong.

She cupped her hands over the glass and looked at the room on the first floor. Now, the study was dark again, of course it was, though the tiny chair was, once again, lying on its side. As if kicked away from the desk.

The final gong bellowed for dinner and, this time, Daphne heard Teddy shouting her name to hurry up. She ran to the minstrel’s gallery and waved down to the assembled company. She hurried down the stairs, suppressing a shudder as she passed the ghastly floor-to-ceiling display of stuffed birds. The hard beaded eyes and frozen feathers of the robins and blackbirds and malevolent cranes stood motionless behind the glass.

Teddy knew nothing about another house on the estate – though he knew there were a few grace-and-favour cottages for farm workers – and nothing about any of the pieces of art dotted around the Hall.

He was, however, an excellent host and the evening passed in a haze of vermouth and ragtime. The company was congenial and Daphne flirted a little with a boy who worked in a dispensary, putting out of her mind, for a while, the drab existence to which she would have to return on Monday morning.

Later, while the men talked finance, she got into a conversation with a girl from Surrey about the best new detective novels. Like Daphne, she thought Poirot rather tiresome and preferred Mrs Sayers’ Lord Peter Wimsey. An intimacy established, Daphne realised the girl was building up to ask about Douglas and everything came rushing back again, as it always did. Quickly, she excused herself and went in search of coffee. By the time she came back, the girl had moved on to someone else. It was, Daphne thought savagely, why she rarely ventured out. It was too dull always to have all eyes on her.

The party started to wind down at three o’clock in the morning. The men were slumped in the low armchairs with their ties loosened and their eyes bleary with booze and smoke. One of the girls had passed out on the sofa in the Oak Hall. Teddy had long since taken himself off to bed.

Daphne slipped away, averting her gaze from the display case as she climbed the stairs. The upstairs corridor was in shadow now and, though she glanced as she passed, there was no light to be seen in the doll’s house.

Her room was cold, the meagre fire in the grate long since burnt out. The maid had turned down the bed, but omitted to close the curtains. The house on the hill was no longer visible, but out on the Downs, the glint of white chalk in the Sussex soil turned over by the plough glistened white in the moonlight, like fragments of bone.

Daphne undressed and got in to her wonderfully warm cotton pyjamas. Before, she would have worn a nightgown, regardless of the temperature, knowing her appearance at night mattered quite as much as her appearance during the day. Now, she could at least put comfort before glamour. In fact, she’d taken up many things since Douglas had gone. Smoking, drinking cocktails and wearing trousers. Without her husband at her side, she could at last please herself.

But as she climbed into the cold bed, even though she told herself the evening had been a roaring success and a welcome change from her usual scratch suppers eaten alone with just a magazine for company, the stark truth was that she still felt as lonely as she ever did.

Daphne wasn’t sure what woke her, shortly after five in the morning. One moment she was fast asleep, dreaming of the beach at Deauville, the sun on her skin and sand between her toes and Douglas’s arm resting on her shoulders. The next moment, she was wide awake, heart pounding and mouth dry.