Mrs Brockhurst had gone to bed. The house was locked up tight. It was hot. The clock had struck midnight, and then one. Val was gently dozing in her chair and Arbie was fighting not to do the same.
He undid the top two buttons on his shirt and got up to take a quiet stroll around the hall, having discovered on previous such occasions that getting a case of cramp was no fun at all. Although he knew that, strictly speaking, you were supposed to keep quiet and still on vigils, Arbie had never taken the ‘rules’ on these matters all that seriously. As far as he was concerned, if a spook was so sensitive it objected to a chap stretching his legs, then the bally thing could forget it.
He yawned and studied yet another painting of the late Amy Phelps’s mother that was bathed, for the time being, in bright moonlight. Having learned a little about art from his uncle, he found her amateur but well-painted country scenes pleasant and inoffensive. Of course he …
Suddenly, Arbie froze. Not only did he become totally still and his thought process utterly stall, but he felt his blood run cold, and icy shivers began to crawl up his back. And all because he could hear, faintly but unmistakably from somewhere in the house, the tinkle of a tiny bell.
Arbie swallowed hard as his heartbeat accelerated like a bolting hare. Moreover, he was inclined to make like a hare himself and head for the hills at a considerable rate of knots.
Although, as a boy, he’d had little doubts that his chapel home was haunted by an organ-playing spook, probably the spirit of some disobliging organist or a reluctantly deceased pastor, that belief had gradually dimmed and mellowed as he matured. So that by the time he’d come to write his Gentleman’s Guide he, along with the majority of his hosts, took the family spooks under investigation with a pinch of salt, so to speak. But since others firmly believed in their existence, he had always been scrupulous (up to a point, vis-à-vis getting the cramp) when researching and ghost-hunting, otherwise he felt that he hadn’t earned his daily bread. But he’d never been surprised when he’d seen and heard nothing at all. Apart from the times when some of the younger members of his family, or residents of the holiday hotels, had thought it amusing to play tricks on him, naturally.
But now he felt the hairs rise on the back of his neck, and his skin began to crawl. The grandfather clock ticked ponderously, and in her chair, Val gave a small, ladylike snore. Arbie ignored both, his ears just attuned to listening out for one specific thing, and tried to get his breathing under control. When he’d managed to stop snorting like a man who’d just run a marathon, he could hear nothing alarming.
Perhaps he had imagined that tiny sound? But no sooner had he given the thought voice in his head than he heard it again. As if it were mocking him, and his pathetic attempts to explain or will it away. It was faint – but it was still a thread of sound that was unmistakably the musical tinkle of a small bell.
And now that he had his wits about him and was actively listening out for it, it sounded to him as if it was coming from somewhere above him. Reluctantly, and dry-mouthed, he turned his head slowly and forced himself to look up the stairs.
It was a full moon, and plenty of light was streaming in through the high hall windows. Enough light anyway, so that he could see clearly that there was nothing to be seen. Not with the human eye, anyway.
All right, Arbie old son, he told himself firmly. Don’t get a case of the old collywobbles now. Just think what a chump you’d make of yourself! He needed to be logical about this. So, what had experience taught him? Well, every time he’d thought he’d seen or heard something specific it had turned out to be a hoax. And with Val in plain sight, snoring obliviously and happily away on her chair, blast her, the only person who could be ringing that little bell was the housekeeper, Jane Brockhurst.
Which seemed, on the face of it, very unlikely. Still, he knew Reggie was away in dreamland over in his studio, and besides which, he didn’t have a key to the Old Forge itself. And he’d seen for himself both Murray and Phyllis leave for their own residences.
So – the housekeeper it had to be. Perhaps she’d invented ‘the ghost’ to torment Amy Phelps for making her give up her baby all those years ago? But in that case – why was she keeping the legend of the ghost alive (so to speak!) now that Amy Phelps was dead? Tiptoeing past Val, Arbie headed for the stairs, congratulating himself that he’d had the forethought to get from Miss Phelps a layout of the house before he began his vigils. A layout which had included the allocation of bedrooms, so that he knew where the housekeeper slept.
His knees felt just a little bit rubbery as he put his foot on the first stair. He paused and listened nervously. No bell.
He climbed silently up to the small half landing, where Amy Phelps had taken her tumble a week or so earlier. No bell.
He reached the top of the now less moon-lit corridor and looked towards the room where the lady had died, trembling a little and half-bracing himself to see some ghostly human figure watching him. But there was nothing, and better yet, still no sound of any bell.
Beginning to feel less like a human jellyfish, he turned and headed away down a small offshoot of the main landing, towards the room where he expected to find the empty bed of the housekeeper. Although he still couldn’t for the life of him think why she should have taken to tormenting her mistress with ‘warnings’ from her dead ancestor and pretending to be his restless spirit. Or why she was now trying to put the wind up a certain inoffensive author of holiday guides! The only thing he could think of was that Mrs Brockhurst had been quietly going doolally over the years and no one had noticed.
Somewhere, at the back of his mind, a little voice was warning him that he’d forgotten something. He tried to chase what it could be back to its lair, but it was having none of it, and remained stubbornly elusive. Probably because he was too distracted by the need not to get nabbed by a ghost or a madwoman to give it the concentration it needed!
He shook off the nagging of his subconscious and approached the door that he was fairly confident belonged to the housekeeper and was just reaching out to the handle to turn it when he heard a sound. No spine-chilling ring of a bell, but a far more human and comical sound altogether. The sound of a snort, and a deep resonating snore, coming from behind the wood. This was followed by the unmistakable ‘twang’ of bedsprings as the occupant of the bed rolled over, no doubt in search of a more comfortable position.
So, Jane Brockhurst must have finished her bell-ringing trick and was back in bed, pretending to be innocently slumbering. Coward that he was, he felt nothing but relief, since he hadn’t really wanted to catch the poor demented woman red-handed ringing a …
Bell!
Arbie, his heart shooting up somewhere past his tonsils, heard it again. That faint but unmistakable tiny tinkle of a bell. Somewhere not too far away now. But definitely not coming from the room in front of him.
Now he broke out into a real sweat. He swallowed hard. It was at times like this, or so he’d been informed, that a chap found out if he was a man or a mouse.
He promptly ran swiftly away from the sound and back down the stairs. He had the front door firmly in his sights, and almost screamed blue murder when he sensed movement from something pale stirring close by.
‘Arbie? Did I fall asleep?’ a soft voice asked.
Val! By the almighty cringe, he’d forgotten all about Val being there! A chap couldn’t be seen acting like a sensibly fleeing rodent in front of a lady. He hastily came to a halt, straightened his shoulders and ran a shaky hand through his hair. ‘Oh hello, Val. Did I wake you?’ His voice was somewhat on the squeaky side, and he cleared his throat and tried again. ‘I was trying not to.’
‘Aren’t we supposed to be qui …’ She began to ask, then stopped talking abruptly as the sound of the tiny tinkling bell once again sounded faintly from upstairs. She shot up off her chair and was by his side in a few seconds, and he felt at once the steely strength of her fingers as she gripped his forearm in alarm. No wonder, he thought with a wince, Val’s forehand on the tennis court was such a winner.
‘Arbie, did you hear that?’ she hissed, excitement and fear battling it out for supremacy in her tone.
‘Oh yes, I heard it a few minutes ago,’ he said, nonchalantly. ‘Naturally, my first thought was to check on Mrs Brockhurst.’
‘Was it?’ Val asked, sounding far too sceptical for Arbie’s liking.
‘Naturally. Since you were sitting in the chair snoring your head off, and she was the only other person in the house, it had to be her ringing that blasted bell.’ But as he spoke, that annoying little voice in his head insisted once again that he was forgetting something. Or was it someone?
‘I don’t snore!’ Val’s accusing hiss cut across his speculations. ‘And was it?’
‘Was it what?’ Arbie asked, confused.
‘Was it Mrs Brockhurst ringing the bell?’
As if in response to being mentioned, the bell sounded again. And was it his imagination, he thought frantically, or was it just a little bit louder than before? He cast the front door another adoring glance.
‘Hmm? Oh, no. She was in bed, snoring too,’ he said distractedly.
‘I don’t snore!’ Val insisted angrily, then her fingers dug even more painfully into his arm as the bell sounded again. ‘Arbie, isn’t it getting louder?’ she whispered.
‘Oh yes, I think so,’ Arbie said, determined to sound casual. In fact, he was having so much trouble controlling his breathing and heart rate, that he didn’t have it in him to be more animated. He eyed again the front door, mentally mapping the distance, and estimating that he could be through it within six or so strides. And then he wondered what the chances were that he could persuade Val to bolt for it with him.
‘Well, shouldn’t we track it down?’ Val demanded. Her voice, too, sounded suspiciously wavering, but if she had the horrors as badly as he did, experience told him that she’d never acknowledge as much in a thousand years. A more stubborn specimen of womanhood than Valentina Coulton-James probably never existed, he thought gloomily.
‘It’s etiquette to let the ghost come to you,’ he tried. He knew that this was not at all true – and that every famous ghost-hunter had their own methods – most actively pursuing ‘phenomenon’ wherever they found it. But since Val hadn’t read his book, no matter how much she protested that she had, she was unlikely to know this, not having read his short and potted history of the subject that prefaced The Gentleman’s Guide.
The bell sounded insistently again, as if getting annoyed at being ignored.
‘Well, that might be just as well, because it’s definitely getting louder,’ Val gulped. ‘Which means it’s coming our way.’
Beginning to feel light-headed, Arbie took a deep breath and thrust his trembling hands into the pockets of his Oxford bags so that Val wouldn’t notice them. ‘Yes, it is. Pity I haven’t got a camera set up. It would be just my luck to have a fantastic phantom appear and not get a photograph of it. I’ll be drummed out of the whatchamacallit society. I can see the chairman now—’
‘Arbie, you’re waffling,’ Val cut across him ruthlessly. ‘You always waffle when you’re terrified. You were the same at school, when Mr Bunce called you up to his desk.’
‘Everyone was terrified of Bunce,’ Arbie protested.
‘I wasn’t,’ Val lied.
‘Oh, come off it, Val, even you …’
TINKLE, TINKLE.
Arbie and Val both spun around, staring in petrified fascination at the stairs. For the sound of the bell was now so close it could only be coming from the landing above them. ‘Arbie, the ghost is coming,’ Val whispered. ‘What do we do?’
Run, Arbie thought. What else did any sensible person do? He looked again at the front door, and Val, catching the movement of his head, dug her fingers even harder into his forearm.
‘Ouch, Val, that hurts!’ he complained, freeing his hands from his pockets. ‘Let go.’
‘No. I want to see what happens,’ Val said, her voice now distinctly on the edge of hysteria.
And she probably did, too, Arbie’s feverish mind informed him bitterly. Trust Val to be stubborn, even in the face of her own fear and the spectre of a ghostly blacksmith with a bell on his toe!
‘It’s coming down the first set of stairs,’ Arbie whispered, now unable to move at all. His feet felt as if someone had glued them to the tiles on the hall floor, whilst his eyes seemed similarly glued to watching the stairs. But with the aid of the moonlight, he should be able to see whoever – or whatever – was coming down the stairs but he could see no movement at all.
And then he knew what it was he had forgotten.
Cora Delaney! Petite Cora Delaney. The unobtrusive house guest and lifelong friend of Amy Phelps was also resident in the house. She was so self-effacing that she had totally slipped his mind. So it could be she who was now playing tricks on them, for some unfathomable reason.
But if so, despite her small posture, she must be crouched down almost double behind the concealing banisters, and somehow the thought of that dignified lady duck-walking down the stairs whilst gleefully ringing a tiny bell just wouldn’t form in his mind’s eye.
Beside him, Val swallowed noisily. Arbie was right – her ears could follow the now almost continuous tinkling noise as it approached the bend in the half landing, and she’d never felt so frightened in all her life.
Together they stood in the hall, clinging to one another like petrified children, their eyes fixed on the level of the stairs where a human figure would naturally be as it walked down. Yet the moonlight, coming in through the high windows, illuminated the top half of the walls, ruthlessly confirming that no such human figure was there.
Now the bell sounded with an almost merry twinkle at the top of the first set of stairs, right in front of their eyeline, as they stared up, transfixed.
Nothing appeared.
But the bell kept on tinkling away merrily, as if mocking them.
‘I don’t believe it,’ Arbie breathed. He was now, right this instant, experiencing his first, genuine ghostly goings-on! Oh, there was no actual ghost to be seen, but the sound of the bell was undeniably coming down the stairs towards them! ‘It’s not manifesting!’ he whispered in awe. ‘It’s more like the cases where ghostly footsteps are heard, but the ghost is never seen.’
Val gave a little whimper.
And it was then that Arbie finally saw it. Perhaps his experience of ghost-hunting had given him better night vision, or perhaps, during his writing of The Gentleman’s Guide he had simply become more used to processing shapes and things in half-light, but he spotted the culprit about halfway up the stairs in the darker bottom half of the illuminated area.
Instantly, the terror drained away and he felt almost giddy with relief. But in the next second, he recovered and acted quickly. He was not his uncle’s nephew for nothing! And if there was one thing his disreputable relative had taught him, it was to think quickly on your feet, and where possible, turn any situation to your advantage.
‘Here, Val, get behind me,’ he said manfully, taking the excuse to prise her painful grip from his arm once and for all, and thrusting her gallantly behind him. ‘I’m going to go forward and see if I can communicate with it. But if I say run, then, Val, I want you to run out the front door as fast as you can, and don’t come back. Not for anything. Do you understand?’
‘What?’ Val said dazed, and watched, open-mouthed, as Arbie Swift moved bravely forward.
‘I can’t see anything yet,’ Arbie said, trying his best to hide his relief and glee behind a solemn tone. ‘There’s no evidence of ectoplasm or luminescence. The temperature isn’t dropping yet either … Val, I need you to remember what I’m saying, in case you need to repeat it later.’ He wondered how much longer he could go on before Val, too, spotted the source of the tinkling bell, and decided, regretfully, that it wouldn’t be for much longer. Still, he’d done enough, he hoped, to give her pause for thought.
The next time she looked at him with that withering gaze of hers, he could jolly well remind her of this night, when he’d taken his life in his hands and …
‘Is that a cat?’ Val asked.
‘What? Oh …’ Arbie crouched down and peered. ‘By Jove, Val, well-spotted! Yes. It’s Reggie’s precious Empress Maud. Here, puss puss.’ He made a squeaking noise through his lips and rubbed his thumb and fingers together in invitation. The friendly feline, needing no further encouragement, quickened its pace and ran to him, setting the little bell on its collar ringing out musically.
‘She must have got in somehow, and has been busy mousing,’ Arbie said, reaching down to pick up the cat and bury his face thankfully in her lush fur.
He became aware of Val by his side and removed his face from the purring feline’s ribs. ‘Well, that’s one mystery solved. If I’d known the silly cat had one of these bird-scaring thingummyjigs on her collar,’ he tinkled the bell deliberately as the cat pushed her furry cheeks against his face and purred loudly, ‘we wouldn’t have been fooled.’ Or nearly been given a heart attack! But the only time he’d been introduced to the cat was when they’d first come to the house for tea, and then the feline had been mostly stationary on Reggie’s lap.
‘Arbie, did you know it was the cat all along?’ Val accused, watching him with blue-eyed suspicion.
‘What? No, of course I didn’t,’ he said huffily and feeling mortally offended. ‘Did you think of the blasted cat yourself?’ he challenged her flatly.
And at this, Val was forced to admit – very grudgingly – that no, she hadn’t.
After that, neither one of them fell asleep in their chair, and when dawn finally came, Arbie opened the front door and Empress Maud sped off with her tail flickering in the air, in search of her master and breakfast.
Which, Arbie thought, was a jolly good idea. He could eat the odd kipper or two himself. Nothing like a good fright, overcome, to give a fellow a hearty appetite!