The Mammoth Book of Modern Ghost Stories

I could not talk much with him but I could see that he had some understanding of the case. He asked me no questions, but he told me a few details. He said that they had decided at the inquest that he had fallen from the terrace. But the doctor, who was attending me, seems to have said to Mr Vyvyan that a fall it must have been, but a fall of an almost inconceivable character. “And what is more,” the old doctor had added, “the man was neither in pain nor agitation of mind when he died.” The face was absolutely peaceful and tranquil; and the doctor’s theory was that he had died from some sudden seizure before the fall.

And so I held my tongue. One thing I did: it was to have a little slab put over the body of my friend – a simple slab with name and date – and I ventured to add one line, because I have no doubt in my own mind that Basil was suddenly delivered, though not from death. He had, I supposed, gone too far upon the dark path, and he could not, I think, have freed himself from the spell; and so the cord was loosed, but loosed in mercy – and so I made them add the words:

“And in their hands they shall bear thee up.”

I must add one further word. About a year after the events above recorded I received a letter from Mr Vyvyan, which I give without further comment.

ST SIBBY, Dec, 18, 189–.

“DEAR MR WARD,

“I wish to tell you that our friend Mrs Hall died a few days ago. She was a very good woman, one of the few that are chosen. I was much with her in her last days, and she told me a strange thing, which I cannot bring myself to repeat to you. But she sent you a message which she repeated several times, which she said you would understand. It is simply this: ‘Tell Mr Ward I have prevailed.’ I may add that I have no doubt of the truth of her words, and you will know to what I am alluding.

“The day after she died there was a fire at Treheale: Mr Hall was absolutely distracted with grief at the loss of his wife, and I do not know quite what happened. But it was impossible to save the house; all that is left of it is a mass of charred ruins, with a few walls standing up. Nothing was saved, not even a picture. There is a wholly inadequate insurance, and I believe it is not intended to rebuild the house.

“I hope you will bear us in mind; though I know you so little, I shall always feel that we have a common experience which will hold us together. You will try and visit us some day when the memory of what took place is less painful to you. The grass is now green on your poor friend’s grave; and I will only add that you will have a warm welcome here. I am just moving into the Rectory, as my old Rector died a fortnight ago, and I have accepted the living. God bless you, dear Mr Ward.

“Yours very sincerely,

“JAMES VYVYAN.”

The Richpins

E. G. Swain

Location:  Stoneground, East Anglia.

Time:  December, 1912.

Eyewitness Description:  “Her information was precise and her story perfectly coherent. She preserved a maidenly reticence about his trousers, if she had noticed them; but added a new fact, and a terrible one, in her description of the eyeless sockets. No wonder she had screamed . . .”

Author:  Edmund Gill Swain (1861–1938) was Chaplain at King’s College, Cambridge and like M. R. James drawn to the rich vein of antiquarian and supernatural lore in East Anglia. In his capacity as Reverend Canon and proctor at the University, he had ample opportunity to study the ghostly tradition of the eerie wastes of The Fens where several of his best stories are located. “The Richpins” is set near Yarmouth and there are strong similarities between this tale with its Napoleonic echoes and my own “Peyton House Ghost,” set in nearby Suffolk, which I wrote about in the companion volume, Haunted House Stories (2005). Swain read this gruesome little yarn at one of the Christmas gatherings just before the outbreak of the First World War and he dedicated his only collection of supernatural tales, Stoneground Ghost Stories (1912), subtitled “From the recollections of the Reverend Roland Batchel” to M. R. James, “For Twenty Pleasant Years Mr Batchel’s Friend and the Indulgent Parent of Such Tastes as these Pages Indicate.”