The Mammoth Book of Modern Ghost Stories

“The foundations are almost certainly thirteenth century. It was a priory, you know. There’s a curious tale, by the way, about the man Henry gave it to when he smashed up the monasteries. There was a curse; there seems always to have been a curse—”

The gentle, pleasant, high-bred voice went on. Desmond thought he was listening, but presently he roused himself and dragged his attention back to the words that were being spoken.

“– that made the fifth death . . . There is one every hundred years, and always in the same mysterious way.”

Then he found himself on his feet, incredibly sleepy, and heard himself say: “These old stories are tremendously interesting. Thank you very much. I hope you won’t think me very uncivil, but I think I’d rather like to turn in; I feel a bit tired, somehow.”

“But of course, my dear chap.”

Mr Prior saw Desmond to his room.

“Got everything you want? Right. Lock the door if you should feel nervous. Of course, a lock can’t keep ghosts out, but I always feel as if it could,” and with another of those pleasant, friendly laughs he was gone.

William Desmond went to bed a strong young man, sleepy indeed beyond his experience of sleepiness, but well and comfortable. He awoke faint and trembling, lying deep in the billows of the feather bed; and lukewarm waves of exhaustion swept through him. Where was he? What had happened? His brain, dizzy and weak at first, refused him any answer. When he remembered, the abrupt spasm of repulsion which he had felt so suddenly and unreasonably the night before came back to him in a hot, breathless flush. He had been drugged, he had been poisoned!

“I must get out of this,” he told himself, and blundered out of bed towards the silken bell-pull that he had noticed the night before hanging near the door.

As he pulled it, the bed and the wardrobe and the room rose up round him and fell on him, and he fainted.

When he next knew anything someone was putting brandy to his lips. He saw Prior, the kindest concern in his face. The assistant, pale and watery-eyed. The swarthy manservant, stolid, silent, and expressionless. He heard Verney say to Prior: “You see it was too much – I told you—”

“Hush,” said Prior, “he’s coming to.”

Four days later Desmond, lying on a wicker chair on the lawn, was a little disinclined for exertion, but no longer ill. Nourishing foods and drinks, beef-tea, stimulants, and constant care – these had brought him back to something like his normal state. He wondered at the vague suspicions, vaguely remembered, of that first night; they had all been proved absurd by the unwavering care and kindness of everyone in the Haunted House.

“But what caused it?” he asked his host, for the fiftieth time. “What made me make such a fool of myself?” And this time Mr Prior did not put him off, as he had always done before by begging him to wait till he was stronger.

“I am afraid, you know,” he said, “that the ghost really did come to you. I am inclined to revise my opinion of the ghost.”

“But why didn’t it come again?”

“I have been with you every night, you know,” his host reminded him. And, indeed, the sufferer had never been left alone since the ringing of his bell on that terrible first morning.

“And now,” Mr Prior went on, “if you will not think me inhospitable, I think you will be better away from here. You ought to go to the seaside.”

“There haven’t been any letters for me, I suppose?” Desmond said, a little wistfully.

“Not one. I suppose you gave the right address? Ormehurst Rectory, Crittenden, Kent?”

“I don’t think I put Crittenden,” said Desmond. “I copied the address from your telegram.” He pulled the pink paper from his pocket.

“Ah, that would account,” said the other.

“You’ve been most awfully kind all through,” said Desmond, abruptly.

“Nonsense, my boy,” said the elder man, benevolently. “I only wish Willie had been able to come. He’s never written, the rascal! Nothing but the telegram to say he could not come and was writing.”

“I suppose he’s having a jolly time somewhere,” said Desmond, enviously; “but look here – do tell me about the ghost, if there’s anything to tell. I’m almost quite well now, and I should like to know what it was that made a fool of me like that.”

“Well” – Mr Prior looked round him at the gold and red of dahlias and sunflowers, gay in the September sunshine – “here, and now, I don’t know that it could do any harm. You remember that story of the man who got this place from Henry VIII and the curse? That man’s wife is buried in a vault under the church. Well, there were legends, and I confess I was curious to see her tomb. There are iron gates to the vault. Locked, they were. I opened them with an old key – and I couldn’t get them to shut again.”

“Yes?” Desmond said.