The Mammoth Book of Modern Ghost Stories

“Do you believe that she made away with herself?”

“No, thank God! Never have! And after what happened to Mary last night, I see perfectly what happened to poor Aggie. She had the family throat too. By the way, Mary thinks you are a doctor. Otherwise she wouldn’t like your having been in her room.”

“Very good. Is she convinced now about her sister’s death?”

“She’d give anything to be able to believe it, but she’s a hard woman, and brooding along certain lines makes one groovy. I have sometimes been afraid for her reason – on the religious side, don’t you know. Elizabeth doesn’t matter. Brain of a hen. Always had.”

Here Arthurs summoned me to the bath-chair and the ravaged face, beneath its knitted Shetland wool hood, of Miss Mary Moultrie.

“I need not remind you, I hope, of the seal of secrecy – absolute secrecy – in your profession,” she began. “Thanks to my cousin’s and my sister’s stupidity, you have found out –” she blew her nose.

“Please don’t excite her, sir,” said Arthurs at the back.

“But, my dear Miss Moultrie, I only know what I’ve seen, of course, but it seems to me that what you thought was a tragedy in your sister’s case, turns out, on your own evidence, so to speak, to have been an accident – a dreadfully sad one – but absolutely an accident.”

“Do you believe that too?” she cried. “Or are you only saying it to comfort me?”

“I believe it from the bottom of my heart. Come down to Holmescroft for an hour – for half an hour – and satisfy yourself.”

“Of what? You don’t understand. I see the house every day – every night. I am always there in spirit – waking or sleeping. I couldn’t face it in reality.”

“But you must,” I said. “If you go there in the spirit the greater need for you to go there in the flesh. Go to your sister’s room once more, and see the window – I nearly fell out of it myself. It’s – it’s awfully low and dangerous. That would convince you,” I pleaded.

“Yet Aggie had slept in that room for years,” she interrupted.

“You’ve slept in your room here for a long time, haven’t you? But you nearly fell out of the window when you were choking.”

“That is true. That is one thing true,” she nodded. “And I might have been killed as – perhaps – Aggie was killed.”

“In that case your own sister and cousin and maid would have said you had committed suicide, Miss Moultrie. Come down to Holmescroft, and go over the place just once.”

“You are lying,” she said quite quietly. “You don’t want me to come down to see a window. It is something else. I warn you we are Evangelicals. We don’t believe in prayers for the dead. “As the tree falls –’ ”

“Yes. I daresay. But you persist in thinking that your sister committed suicide –”

“No! No! I have always prayed that I might have misjudged her.”

Arthurs at the bath-chair spoke up: “Oh, Miss Mary! you would ’ave it from the first that poor Miss Aggie ’ad made away with herself; an’, of course, Miss Bessie took the notion from you. Only Master – Mister John stood out, and – and I’d ’ave taken my Bible oath you was making away with yourself last night.”

Miss Mary leaned towards me, one finger on my sleeve.

“If going to Holmescroft kills me,” she said, “you will have the murder of a fellow-creature on your conscience for all eternity.”

“I’ll risk it,” I answered. Remembering what torment the mere reflection of her torments had cast on Holmescroft, and remembering, above all, the dumb Thing that filled the house with its desire to speak, I felt that there might be worse things.

Baxter was amazed at the proposed visit, but at a nod from that terrible woman went off to make arrangements. Then I sent a telegram to M’Leod bidding him and his vacate Holmescroft for that afternoon. Miss Mary should be alone with her dead, as I had been alone.

I expected untold trouble in transporting her, but to do her justice, the promise given for the journey, she underwent it without murmur, spasm, or unnecessary word. Miss Bessie, pressed in a corner by the window, wept behind her veil, and from time to time tried to take hold of her sister’s hand. Baxter wrapped himself in his newly-found happiness as selfishly as a bridegroom, for he sat still and smiled.

“So long as I know that Aggie didn’t make away with herself,” he explained, “I tell you frankly I don’t care what happened. She’s as hard as a rock – Mary. Always was. She won’t die.”

We led her out on to the platform like a blind woman, and so got her into the fly. The half-hour crawl to Holmescroft was the most racking experience of the day. M’Leod had obeyed my instructions. There was no one visible in the house or the gardens; and the front door stood open.

Miss Mary rose from beside her sister, stepped forth first, and entered the hall.

“Come, Bessie,” she cried.

“I daren’t. Oh, I daren’t.”

“Come!” Her voice had altered. I felt Baxter start. “There’s nothing to be afraid of.”

“Good heavens!” said Baxter. “She’s running up the stairs. We’d better follow.”

“Let’s wait below. She’s going to the room.”