Dial a Ghost

So he dialled the Helton number and after a very long time Miss Match’s voice could be heard at the other end. She had forgotten her hearing aid and her voice sounded croaky and cross.

‘Helton Hall.’

‘Ah, Miss Match. It’s Fulton Snodde-Brittle here. I’m just ringing up to find out how Oliver is. How has he been?’

There was a pause at the other end. Then: ‘I’ve never given him any beans. It’s the wrong time of year for beans. Beans come later.’

Fulton tried again.

‘No, not beans to eat. I want to know how he’s getting on. Have you any news?’

‘No, of course I haven’t got any newts. Can’t abide the things – slimy little nasties.’

Frieda reached for the phone. ‘Let me try,’ she said. ‘I’ve got a more carrying voice.’ She put the mouthpiece to her lips. ‘We want to know how Oliver is,’ she shrieked. ‘How is he in himself?’

There was another pause. Then Miss Match said, ‘Barmy. Off his head.’

A great smile spread over Frieda’s face.

‘Barmy?’ she repeated. ‘You mean mad?’

‘Mad as a hatter,’ said the housekeeper. ‘Talks to himself, runs about waving his arms, won’t come in for meals.’

‘Oh that’s wonderful – I mean that’s terrible. But don’t worry, Miss Match. We’ll be back soon to take him off your hands.’

She put the phone down and the Snodde-Brittles stood and grinned at each other. ‘It’s worked,’ said Fulton. ‘Oh glory – think of it. Helton Hall is ours! We’ll give him another three or four days to go off the deep end completely, and then we’ll get a doctor and have him put away.’

Frieda flopped down in the armchair. The thought of owning Helton was so marvellous that she almost thought of telling the cook to leave the second fish finger on the children’s plates. But in the end she decided against it. Happiness didn’t have to make you stupid.

Chapter Fourteen

When the Wilkinsons had been with Oliver for a week, they called up the ghost of the farmer from the lake.

Oliver had been worried about this, but it turned out to be a very good thing to do. They called him up the way they called Trixie, telling him he was wanted and needed and that he should not wander alone in the Land of the Shades, and gradually there was a sort of heaving on the lake, and then a kind of juddering, and slowly the spirit of Benjamin Jenkins, who had run the Home Farm at Helton a hundred years ago, floated up and out of the water.

He couldn’t have been nicer. He was simply dressed, in breeches and a checked shirt, and carried a gun over his shoulder because he had meant to shoot himself if the drowning didn’t work, and the first thing he did in his pleasant country voice was to thank them for calling him up.

‘I was getting a bit bogged down in there,’ he said, ‘but I couldn’t make up my mind about coming out.’

Eric and Mr Jenkins took to each other at once, and in no time at all they were telling each other how badly they had been treated by the women they loved.

‘Her name was Fredrica Snodde-Brittle,’ said the farmer. ‘She used to ride through my fields every morning on a huge horse and I was always there, holding open the gate for her. I was so sure she’d come to care for me.’

‘That’s what I thought about Cynthia Harbottle. I used to carry her satchel all the way to the bus stop.’

The farmer sighed. ‘She was so haughty. She said no Snodde-Brittle could marry a common farmer.’

Eric nodded understandingly. ‘Cynthia was haughty too. She used to blow bubble gum in my face.’

Fredrica hadn’t done that because bubble gum wasn’t invented in those days and anyway the Snodde-Brittles were too haughty to chew, but she had done other things, and soon Eric and Mr Jenkins took to wandering away into the woods, feeling very much comforted to know that they were not alone.

With Eric so much more cheerful, his parents could settle down to enjoy themselves. Uncle Henry went fishing, borrowing a rod from the lumber room and sitting peacefully by the river for hours on end. He didn’t catch any fish – he didn’t want to – he just liked to sit and be quiet and forget all those years when people had opened their mouths and showed him their teeth even on a Monday morning. And if anyone came and saw a rod stretched by itself over the water, they probably thought it was the branch of a tree.

Aunt Maud, meanwhile, took up her dancing again, hitching up her long tweed skirt and twirling and swirling on the rim of the fountain, and Grandma did housework. Miss Match never came upstairs, so that no one noticed a hoover snaking along the floor by itself or a feather duster shaking itself out. Even the budgie became a useful bird, helping the swallows build their nests and hardly saying anything silly at all.

There was only one thing which puzzled the ghosts. Why had Miss Pringle not told them that they were going to Helton instead of the nuns? And who was it that had offered to have the ghosts at Helton in the first place? Who had gone to the agency and offered them a home?