Dial a Ghost

After the agency had been going for a few months Miss Pringle and Mrs Mannering began to specialize. Miss Pringle dealt with the gentle, peaceful ghosts – the sad ladies who had been left at the altar on their wedding days and jumped off cliffs, and the cold, white little children who had fallen off roofs in their boarding schools, and so on. And Mrs Mannering coped with the fierce ones – the ones that were livid and revolting and rattled their chains.

And every evening when they had finished work, the two ladies went to the Dirty Duck and ordered a port and lemon and told each other how their day had gone.

‘I had such a delightful family in just now,’ said Miss Pringle. ‘The Wilkinsons. I just must fix them up with somewhere to go, and quickly.’

‘I think I saw them. Not bloodstained at all, as I recall?’ said Mrs Mannering.

‘No, not at all. You could say ordinary, but in the best sense of the word. They told me such interesting things about the war. Mrs Wilkinson used to queue for three hours just for one banana, and the old lady once held down an enemy parachutist with her umbrella till the police came to take him away. And there is such a dear little girl – she wasn’t born a Wilkinson, they found her lost and abandoned. She could be anyone – a princess even.’

‘It shouldn’t be difficult to find them a home if they’re so nice.’

‘No. Except that there are five of them; I don’t seem to have anyone on my books who’ll take as many as that. They’ve had such trouble in their lives – there was a sister ...’ She told the sad story of Trixie and the flag. ‘And Mrs Wilkinson is so worried about her son. Apparently he was really clever – the top of his class and a patrol leader in the Scouts – and then he got mixed up with this dreadful girl who cadged chewing gum from the American soldiers and sneered at him. It seems to me so wrong, Dorothy, that a family who gave their lives for their country should have to haunt a knicker shop.’ She looked across at her friend and saw that Mrs Mannering was looking very tired. ‘My dear, how selfish of me! You had the Shriekers in, didn’t you? I saw Ted going to hide in the lavatory – and the poor geranium is still completely black.’

‘Yes.’ Mrs Mannering was a big, strong woman but she sat with her shoulders hunched and she had hardly tasted her drink. ‘I really don’t know what to do, Nellie. They’re so rude and noisy and ungrateful. If it wasn’t for the way they carry on about children, I might find them a place – after all they’re nobly born, and people like that.’

‘We can’t have them hurting children, that’s true,’ said Miss Pringle. ‘I wonder what made them the way they are? I gather even the sight of a healthy child drives them quite mad?’

Mrs Mannering nodded. ‘There’s nothing they wouldn’t do to children: slash their faces, strangle them in their bedclothes, set fire to them.’ She sighed. ‘I’m not mealy-mouthed, Nellie, you know that. If someone comes to me with his head under his arm and says “Find me a home”, I’ll say “Fair enough”. I’ve fixed up spooks that played chopsticks with their toe bones; I’ve fixed up moaners and I’ve fixed up dribblers – but I won’t take any risks with children. I really think we’ll have to cross the Shriekers off our books.’

Miss Pringle shuddered. ‘I wouldn’t like to make an enemy of the Shriekers.’

‘No.’ Even Mrs Mannering, tough as she was, didn’t like the idea of that. ‘Well, we’ll give it a bit longer. Perhaps something will turn up.’

The Shriekers were a most appalling set of spooks. They weren’t just violent and cruel and fiendish; they were snobbish as well. Nothing on earth would have made the Shriekers haunt anything as humble as a knicker shop. They lived in a frozen meat store on the other side of the city.

It was a dreadful place, but the Shriekers didn’t mind the strings of sausages that fastened themselves round their throats as they glided about, or the tubs of greasy white lard, or the sides of cut-up animals hanging from hooks in the ceiling. They were so filthy and loathsome themselves that they hardly noticed the stench or the cold or the slime on the floor.

Once it had not been so. When they were alive, the Shriekers had been rather a grand couple. Their names were Sir Pelham and Lady Sabrina de Bone and they lived in a fortified tower beside a lake. Sir Pelham rode to hounds and shot pheasants, and Sabrina wore fine clothes and gave dinner parties and kept a house full of servants. In fact they were so important that Queen Victoria once came to stay with them on her way to Scotland.