The Horror Story

The Marble Hands by Bernard Capes

We left our bicycles by the little lych-gate and entered the old church yard. Heriot had told me
frankly that he did not want to come; but at the last moment, sentiment or curiosity prevailing
with him, he had changed his mind. I knew indefinitely that there was something disagreeable
to him in the place's associations, though he had always referred with affection to the relative
with whom he had stayed here as a boy. Perhaps she lay under one of these greening stones.

We walked round the church, with its squat, shingled spire. It was utterly peaceful, here on the
brow of the little town where the flowering fields began. The bones of the hill were the bones
of the dead, and its flesh was grass. Suddenly Heriot stopped me. We were standing then to the
northwest of the chancel, and a gloom of motionless trees overshadowed us.

'I wish you'd just look in there a moment,' he said, 'and come back and tell me what you see.

He was pointing towards a little bay made by the low boundary wall, the green floor of which
was hidden from our view by the thick branches and a couple of interposing tombs, huge,
coffer-shaped, and shut within rails. His voice sounded odd; there was a 'plunging' look in his
eyes, to use a gambler's phrase. I stared at him a moment, followed the direction of his hand;
then, without a word, stooped under the heavy-brushing boughs, passed round the great
tombs, and came upon a solitary grave.

It lay there quite alone in the hidden bay—a strange thing, fantastic and gruesome. There was
no headstone, but a bevelled marble curb, without name or epitaph, encloscd a graveled space
from which projected two hands. They were of white marble, very faintly touched with green,
and conveyed in that still, lonely spot a most curious sense of reality, as if actually thrust up,
deathly and alluring, from the grave beneath. The impression grew upon me as I looked, until I
could have thought they moved stealthily, consciously, turning in the soil as if to greet me. It
was absurd, but—I turned and went rather hastily back to Heriot.

'All right. I see they are there still,' he said; and that was all. Without another word we left the
place and, remounting, continued our way.

Miles from the spot, lying on a sunny downside, with the sheep about us in hundreds cropping
the hot grass, he told me the story:

'She and her husband were living in the town at the time of my first visit there, when I was a
child of seven. They were known to Aunt Caddie, who disliked the woman. I did not dislike her
at all, because, when we met, she made a favourite of me. She was a little pretty thing, frivolous
and shallow; but truly, I know now, with an abominable side to her.

'She was inordinately vain of her hands; and indeed they were the loveliest things, softer and
shapelier than a child's. She used to have them photographed, in fifty different positions; and
once they were exquisitely done in marble by a sculptor, a friend of hers. Yes, those were the
ones you saw. But they were cruel little hands, for all their beauty. There was something wicked
and unclean about the way in which she regarded them.

'She died while I was there, and she was commemorated by her own explicit desire after the
fashion you saw. The marble hands were to be her sole epitaph, more eloquent than letters.
They should preserve her name and the tradition of her most exquisite feature to remoter ages
than any crumbling inscription could reach. And so it was done.

'That fancy was not popular with the parishioners, but it gave me no childish qualms. The.hands
were really beautifully modelled on the originals, and the originals had often caressed me.

I was never afraid to go and look at them, sprouting like white celery from the ground.

'I left, and two years later was visiting Aunt Caddie a second time. In the course of conversation
I learned that the husband of the woman had married again—a lady belonging to the place—
and that the hands, only quite recently, had been removed. The new wife had objected to them
—for some reason perhaps not difficult to understand—and they had been uprooted by the
husband's order.

'I think I was a little sorry—the hands had always seemed somehow personal to me—and, on
the first occasion that offered, I slipped away by myself to see how the grave looked without
them. It was a close, lowering day, I remember, and the churchyard was very still. Directly,
stooping under the branches, I saw the spot. I understood that Aunt Caddie had spoken
prematurely. The hands had not been removed so far, but were extended in their old place and
attitude, looking as if held out to welcome me. I was glad; and I ran and knelt, and put my own
hands down to touch them. They were soft and cold like dead meat, and they closed caressingly
about mine, as if inviting me to pull—to pull.

'I don't know what happened afterwards. Perhaps I had been sickening all the time for the
fever which overtook me. There was a period of horror, and blankness—of crawling, worm-
threaded immurements and heaving bones—and then at last the blessed daylight.' 
Heriot stopped, and sat plucking at the crisp pasture.

'I never learned,' he said suddenly, 'what other experiences synchronized with mine. But the
place somehow got an uncanny reputation, and the marble hands were put back. Imagination,
to be sure, can play strange tricks with one.'
The Monkey’s Paw by W W Jacops

WITHOUT, the night was cold and wet, but in the small parlour of Laburnam Villa the blinds
were drawn and the fire burned brightly. Father and son were at chess, the former, who
possessed ideas about the game involving radical changes, putting his king into such sharp and
unnecessary perils that it even provoked comment from the white-haired old lady knitting
placidly by the fire.

  "Hark at the wind," said Mr. White, who, having seen a fatal mistake after it was too late, was
amiably desirous of preventing his son from seeing it.

  "I'm listening," said the latter, grimly surveying the board as he stretched out his hand.
"Check."

  "I should hardly think that he'd come to-night," said his father, with his hand poised over the
board.

  "Mate," replied the son.

  "That's the worst of living so far out," bawled Mr. White, with sudden and unlooked-for
violence; "of all the beastly, slushy, out-of-the-way places to live in, this is the worst. Pathway's
a bog, and the road's a torrent. I don't know what people are thinking about. I suppose because
only two houses on the road are let, they think it doesn't matter."

  "Never mind, dear," said his wife soothingly; "perhaps you'll win the next one."

  Mr. White looked up sharply, just in time to intercept a knowing glance between mother and
son. The words died away on his lips, and he hid a guilty grin in his thin grey beard.

  "There he is," said Herbert White, as the gate banged to loudly and heavy footsteps came
toward the door.

  The old man rose with hospitable haste, and opening the door, was heard condoling with the
new arrival. The new arrival also condoled with himself, so that Mrs. White said, "Tut, tut!" and
coughed gently as her husband entered the room, followed by a tall burly man, beady of eye
and rubicund of visage.

  "Sergeant-Major Morris," he said, introducing him.

  The sergeant-major shook hands, and taking the proffered seat by the fire, watched
contentedly while his host got out whisky and tumblers and stood a small copper kettle on the
fire.
  At the third glass his eyes got brighter, and he began to talk, the little family circle regarding
with eager interest this visitor from distant parts, as he squared his broad shoulders in the chair
and spoke of strange scenes and doughty deeds; of wars and plagues and strange peoples.

  "Twenty-one years of it," said Mr. White, nodding at his wife and son. "When he went away he
was a slip of a youth in the warehouse. Now look at him."

  "He don't look to have taken much harm," said Mrs. White, politely.

  "I'd like to go to India myself," said the old man, "just to look round a bit, you know."

  "Better where you are," said the sergeant-major, shaking his head. He put down the empty
glass, and sighing softly, shook it again.

  "I should like to see those old temples and fakirs and jugglers," said the old man. "What was
that you started telling me the other day about a monkey's paw or something, Morris?"

  "Nothing," said the soldier hastily. "Leastways, nothing worth hearing."

  "Monkey's paw?" said Mrs. White curiously.

  "Well, it's just a bit of what you might call magic, perhaps," said the sergeant-major off-
handedly.

  His three listeners leaned forward eagerly. The visitor absentmindedly put his empty glass to
his lips and then set it down again. His host filled it for him.

  "To look at," said the sergeant-major, fumbling in his pocket, "it's just an ordinary little paw,
dried to a mummy."

  He took something out of his pocket and proffered it. Mrs. White drew back with a grimace,
but her son, taking it, examined it curiously.

  "And what is there special about it?" inquired Mr. White, as he took it from his son and, having
examined it, placed it upon the table.

  "It had a spell put on it by an old fakir," said the sergeant-major, "a very holy man. He wanted
to show that fate ruled people's lives, and that those who interfered with it did so to their
sorrow. He put a spell on it so that three separate men could each have three wishes from it."

  His manner was so impressive that his hearers were conscious that their light laughter jarred
somewhat.

  "Well, why don't you have three, sir?" said Herbert White cleverly.

  The soldier regarded him in the way that middle age is wont to regard presumptuous youth. "I
have," he said quietly, and his blotchy face whitened.
  "And did you really have the three wishes granted?" asked Mrs. White.

  "I did," said the sergeant-major, and his glass tapped against his strong teeth.

  "And has anybody else wished?" inquired the old lady.

  "The first man had his three wishes, yes," was the reply. "I don't know what the first two were,
but the third was for death. That's how I got the paw."

  His tones were so grave that a hush fell upon the group.

  "If you've had your three wishes, it's no good to you now, then, Morris," said the old man at
last. "What do you keep it for?"

  The soldier shook his head. "Fancy, I suppose," he said slowly.

  "If you could have another three wishes," said the old man, eyeing him keenly, "would you
have them?"

  "I don't know," said the other. "I don't know."

  He took the paw, and dangling it between his front finger and thumb, suddenly threw it upon
the fire. White, with a slight cry, stooped down and snatched it off.

  "Better let it burn," said the soldier solemnly.

  "If you don't want it, Morris," said the old man, "give it to me."

  "I won't," said his friend doggedly. "I threw it on the fire. If you keep it, don't blame me for
what happens. Pitch it on the fire again, like a sensible man."

  The other shook his head and examined his new possession closely. "How do you do it?" he
inquired.

  "Hold it up in your right hand and wish aloud,' said the sergeant-major, "but I warn you of the
consequences."

  "Sounds like the Arabian Nights," said Mrs White, as she rose and began to set the supper.
"Don't you think you might wish for four pairs of hands for me?"

  Her husband drew the talisman from his pocket and then all three burst into laughter as the
sergeant-major, with a look of alarm on his face, caught him by the arm.

  "If you must wish," he said gruffly, "wish for something sensible."
  Mr. White dropped it back into his pocket, and placing chairs, motioned his friend to the table.
In the business of supper the talisman was partly forgotten, and afterward the three sat
listening in an enthralled fashion to a second instalment of the soldier's adventures in India.

  "If the tale about the monkey paw is not more truthful than those he has been telling us," said
Herbert, as the door closed behind their guest, just in time for him to catch the last train, "we
shan't make much out of it."

  "Did you give him anything for it, father?" inquired Mrs. White, regarding her husband closely.

  "A trifle," said he, colouring slightly. "He didn't want it, but I made him take it. And he pressed
me again to throw it away."

  "Likely," said Herbert, with pretended horror. "Why, we're going to be rich, and famous, and
happy. Wish to be an emperor, father, to begin with; then you can't be henpecked."

  He darted round the table, pursued by the maligned Mrs. White armed with an antimacassar.

  Mr. White took the paw from his pocket and eyed it dubiously. "I don't know what to wish for,
and that's a fact," he said slowly. "It seems to me I've got all I want."

  "If you only cleared the house, you'd be quite happy, wouldn't you?" said Herbert, with his
hand on his shoulder. "Well, wish for two hundred pounds, then; that'll just do it."

  His father, smiling shamefacedly at his own credulity, held up the talisman, as his son, with a
solemn face somewhat marred by a wink at his mother, sat down at the piano and struck a few
impressive chords.

  "I wish for two hundred pounds," said the old man distinctly.

  A fine crash from the piano greeted the words, interrupted by a shuddering cry from the old
man. His wife and son ran toward him.

  "It moved, he cried, with a glance of disgust at the object as it lay on the floor. "As I wished it
twisted in my hands like a snake."

  "Well, I don't see the money," said his son, as he picked it up and placed it on the table, "and I
bet I never shall."

  "It must have been your fancy, father," said his wife, regarding him anxiously.

  He shook his head. "Never mind, though; there's no harm done, but it gave me a shock all the
same."

  They sat down by the fire again while the two men finished their pipes. Outside, the wind was
higher than ever, and the old man started nervously at the sound of a door banging upstairs. A
silence unusual and depressing settled upon all three, which lasted until the old couple rose to
retire for the night.

  "I expect you'll find the cash tied up in a big bag in the middle of your bed," said Herbert, as he
bade them good-night, "and something horrible squatting up on top of the wardrobe watching
you as you pocket your ill-gotten gains."

  He sat alone in the darkness, gazing at the dying fire, and seeing faces in it. The last face was
so horrible and so simian that he gazed at it in amazement. It got so vivid that, with a little
uneasy laugh, he felt on the table for a glass containing a little water to throw over it. His hand
grasped the monkey's paw, and with a little shiver he wiped his hand on his coat and went up to
bed.

II.

IN the brightness of the wintry sun next morning as it streamed over the breakfast table
Herbert laughed at his fears. There was an air of prosaic wholesomeness about the room which
it had lacked on the previous night, and the dirty, shrivelled little paw was pitched on the
sideboard with a carelessness which betokened no great belief in its virtues.

  "I suppose all old soldiers are the same," said Mrs White. "The idea of our listening to such
nonsense! How could wishes be granted in these days? And if they could, how could two
hundred pounds hurt you, father?"

  "Might drop on his head from the sky," said the frivolous Herbert.

  "Morris said the things happened so naturally," said his father, "that you might if you so
wished attribute it to coincidence."

  "Well, don't break into the money before I come back," said Herbert, as he rose from the
table. "I'm afraid it'll turn you into a mean, avaricious man, and we shall have to disown you."

  His mother laughed, and following him to the door, watched him down the road, and returning
to the breakfast table, was very happy at the expense of her husband's credulity. All of which
did not prevent her from scurrying to the door at the postman's knock, nor prevent her from
referring somewhat shortly to retired sergeant-majors of bibulous habits when she found that
the post brought a tailor's bill.

  "Herbert will have some more of his funny remarks, I expect, when he comes home," she said,
as they sat at dinner.

  "I dare say," said Mr. White, pouring himself out some beer; "but for all that, the thing moved
in my hand; that I'll swear to."
  "You thought it did," said the old lady soothingly.

  "I say it did," replied the other. "There was no thought about it; I had just----What's the
matter?"

  His wife made no reply. She was watching the mysterious movements of a man outside, who,
peering in an undecided fashion at the house, appeared to be trying to make up his mind to
enter. In mental connection with the two hundred pounds, she noticed that the stranger was
well dressed and wore a silk hat of glossy newness. Three times he paused at the gate, and then
walked on again. The fourth time he stood with his hand upon it, and then with sudden
resolution flung it open and walked up the path. Mrs. White at the same moment placed her
hands behind her, and hurriedly unfastening the strings of her apron, put that useful article of
apparel beneath the cushion of her chair.

  She brought the stranger, who seemed ill at ease, into the room. He gazed at her furtively, and
listened in a preoccupied fashion as the old lady apologized for the appearance of the room,
and her husband's coat, a garment which he usually reserved for the garden. She then waited
as patiently as her sex would permit, for him to broach his business, but he was at first
strangely silent.

  "I--was asked to call," he said at last, and stooped and picked a piece of cotton from his
trousers. "I come from Maw and Meggins."

  The old lady started. "Is anything the matter?" she asked breathlessly. "Has anything
happened to Herbert? What is it? What is it?"

  Her husband interposed. "There, there, mother," he said hastily. "Sit down, and don't jump to
conclusions. You've not brought bad news, I'm sure, sir" and he eyed the other wistfully.

  "I'm sorry----" began the visitor.

  "Is he hurt?" demanded the mother.

  The visitor bowed in assent. "Badly hurt," he said quietly, "but he is not in any pain."

  "Oh, thank God!" said the old woman, clasping her hands. "Thank God for that! Thank----"

  She broke off suddenly as the sinister meaning of the assurance dawned upon her and she saw
the awful confirmation of her fears in the other's averted face. She caught her breath, and
turning to her slower-witted husband, laid her trembling old hand upon his. There was a long
silence.

  "He was caught in the machinery," said the visitor at length, in a low voice.

  "Caught in the machinery," repeated Mr. White, in a dazed fashion, "yes."

  He sat staring blankly out at the window, and taking his wife's hand between his own, pressed
it as he had been wont to do in their old courting days nearly forty years before.

  "He was the only one left to us," he said, turning gently to the visitor. "It is hard."

  The other coughed, and rising, walked slowly to the window. "The firm wished me to convey
their sincere sympathy with you in your great loss," he said, without looking round. "I beg that
you will understand I am only their servant and merely obeying orders."

  There was no reply; the old woman's face was white, her eyes staring, and her breath
inaudible; on the husband's face was a look such as his friend the sergeant might have carried
into his first action.

  "I was to say that Maw and Meggins disclaim all responsibility," continued the other. "They
admit no liability at all, but in consideration of your son's services they wish to present you with
a certain sum as compensation."

  Mr. White dropped his wife's hand, and rising to his feet, gazed with a look of horror at his
visitor. His dry lips shaped the words, "How much?"

  "Two hundred pounds," was the answer.

  Unconscious of his wife's shriek, the old man smiled faintly, put out his hands like a sightless
man, and dropped, a senseless heap, to the floor.

III.

  IN the huge new cemetery, some two miles distant, the old people buried their dead, and
came back to a house steeped in shadow and silence. It was all over so quickly that at first they
could hardly realize it, and remained in a state of expectation as though of something else to
happen--something else which was to lighten this load, too heavy for old hearts to bear.

  But the days passed, and expectation gave place to resignation--the hopeless resignation of
the old, sometimes miscalled, apathy. Sometimes they hardly exchanged a word, for now they
had nothing to talk about, and their days were long to weariness.

  It was about a week after that that the old man, waking suddenly in the night, stretched out
his hand and found himself alone. The room was in darkness, and the sound of subdued
weeping came from the window. He raised himself in bed and listened.

  "Come back," he said tenderly. "You will be cold."

  "It is colder for my son," said the old woman, and wept afresh.
  The sound of her sobs died away on his ears. The bed was warm, and his eyes heavy with
sleep. He dozed fitfully, and then slept until a sudden wild cry from his wife awoke him with a
start.

  "The paw!" she cried wildly. "The monkey's paw!"

  He started up in alarm. "Where? Where is it? What's the matter?"

  She came stumbling across the room toward him. "I want it," she said quietly. "You've not
destroyed it?"

  "It's in the parlour, on the bracket," he replied, marvelling. "Why?"

  She cried and laughed together, and bending over, kissed his cheek.

  "I only just thought of it," she said hysterically. "Why didn't I think of it before? Why
didn't you think of it?"

  "Think of what?" he questioned.

  "The other two wishes," she replied rapidly. "We've only had one."

  "Was not that enough?" he demanded fiercely.

  "No," she cried, triumphantly; "we'll have one more. Go down and get it quickly, and wish our
boy alive again."

  The man sat up in bed and flung the bedclothes from his quaking limbs. "Good God, you are
mad!" he cried aghast.

  "Get it," she panted; "get it quickly, and wish---- Oh, my boy, my boy!"

  Her husband struck a match and lit the candle. "Get back to bed," he said, unsteadily. "You
don't know what you are saying."

  "We had the first wish granted," said the old woman, feverishly; "why not the second."

  "A coincidence," stammered the old man.

  "Go and get it and wish," cried the old woman, quivering with excitement.

  The old man turned and regarded her, and his voice shook. "He has been dead ten days, and
besides he--I would not tell you else, but--I could only recognize him by his clothing. If he was
too terrible for you to see then, how now?"

  "Bring him back," cried the old woman, and dragged him toward the door. "Do you think I fear
the child I have nursed?"
  He went down in the darkness, and felt his way to the parlour, and then to the mantelpiece.
The talisman was in its place, and a horrible fear that the unspoken wish might bring his
mutilated son before him ere he could escape from the room seized upon him, and he caught
his breath as he found that he had lost the direction of the door. His brow cold with sweat, he
felt his way round the table, and groped along the wall until he found himself in the small
passage with the unwholesome thing in his hand.

  Even his wife's face seemed changed as he entered the room. It was white and expectant, and
to his fears seemed to have an unnatural look upon it. He was afraid of her.

  "Wish!" she cried, in a strong voice.

  "It is foolish and wicked," he faltered.

  "Wish!" repeated his wife.

  He raised his hand. "I wish my son alive again."

  The talisman fell to the floor, and he regarded it fearfully. Then he sank trembling into a chair
as the old woman, with burning eyes, walked to the window and raised the blind.

  He sat until he was chilled with the cold, glancing occasionally at the figure of the old woman
peering through the window. The candle end, which had burnt below the rim of the china
candlestick, was throwing pulsating shadows on the ceiling and walls, until, with a flicker larger
than the rest, it expired. The old man, with an unspeakable sense of relief at the failure of the
talisman, crept back to his bed, and a minute or two afterward the old woman came silently and
apathetically beside him.

  Neither spoke, but both lay silently listening to the ticking of the clock. A stair creaked, and a
squeaky mouse scurried noisily through the wall. The darkness was oppressive, and after lying
for some time screwing up his courage, the husband took the box of matches, and striking one,
went downstairs for a candle.

  At the foot of the stairs the match went out, and he paused to strike another, and at the same
moment a knock, so quiet and stealthy as to be scarcely audible, sounded on the front door.

  The matches fell from his hand. He stood motionless, his breath suspended until the knock was
repeated. Then he turned and fled swiftly back to his room, and closed the door behind him. A
third knock sounded through the house.

  "What's that?" cried the old woman, starting up.

  "A rat," said the old man, in shaking tones--"a rat. It passed me on the stairs."

  His wife sat up in bed listening. A loud knock resounded through the house.
  "It's Herbert!" she screamed. "It's Herbert!"

  She ran to the door, but her husband was before her, and catching her by the arm, held her
tightly.

  "What are you going to do?" he whispered hoarsely.

  "It's my boy; it's Herbert!" she cried, struggling mechanically. "I forgot it was two miles away.
What are you holding me for? Let go. I must open the door."

  "For God's sake, don't let it in," cried the old man trembling.

  "You're afraid of your own son," she cried, struggling. "Let me go. I'm coming, Herbert; I'm
coming."

  There was another knock, and another. The old woman with a sudden wrench broke free and
ran from the room. Her husband followed to the landing, and called after her appealingly as she
hurried downstairs. He heard the chain rattle back and the bottom bolt drawn slowly and stiffly
from the socket. Then the old woman's voice, strained and panting.

  "The bolt," she cried loudly. "Come down. I can't reach it."

  But her husband was on his hands and knees groping wildly on the floor in search of the paw.
If he could only find it before the thing outside got in. A perfect fusillade of knocks
reverberated through the house, and he heard the scraping of a chair as his wife put it down in
the passage against the door. He heard the creaking of the bolt as it came slowly back, and at
the same moment he found the monkey's paw, and frantically breathed his third and last wish.

  The knocking ceased suddenly, although the echoes of it were still in the house. He heard the
chair drawn back and the door opened. A cold wind rushed up the staircase, and a long loud
wail of disappointment and misery from his wife gave him courage to run down to her side, and
then to the gate beyond. The street lamp flickering opposite shone on a quiet and deserted
road.

The Ghost Story

The Rivals by Vivien Alcock

 JOHN PEARCE was a clever boy. Every Speech Day would find him, blinking modestly behind
his trick spectacles, trotting up to the platform to receive prize after prize into his thin, eager
hands. Everyone said he would go far, -through probably not on his feet, which were flat as a
Dover soles, and inclined to smell fishy in hot weather. His English teacher, sounding tyhe only
sharp note in a chorus of praise, said he had no imagination, but this was not quite fair. John
believed in many things he had not seen: atoms and molecules, microbes and magnetic fields.
He did not however believe in ghosts.

So when the milkman told them the morning asfter he and his parents had moved into their
new home, that the house next door was haunted, he laughed and said,

‘What rot! I don’t believe i.n ghost.’

‘John is so sensible,’ her mother said. She stepped outside and peered at the houses on either
side. ‘Which one?’ she asked , with an enjoyable shiver.

It was of course, the one on the left, the sinister side: a dark house, the coloured dried cat’s
meat, it’s sly, gothic windows masked with heavy Nothingam lace. No clear light of day or
reason could penetrate those dingy cotton flowers and flourishes into the hidden rooms
behind. Put in some picturewindows, and white nylon net, John thought, and there’d be no
more talk of the haunting.

The house had changed hands six times in the last three tears,the milkman told them, handing
over two bottles, white as ghosts. No one couls stand it any longer. All that screaming and
wailing, footsteps and icy draughts of air. Cost a fortune just trying to keep it warm! The
present owners had been there only five weeks. ‘Got it dirt cheap,’ he said. ‘Thought they were
getiing a bargain poor devils. I give them six months.’

After breakfast, Mrs Pearce shooed John out into the garden, saying saying she could manage
better on her own. No, he was not to go up to his room and stick hisnose in to a book. He
worked too hard at his studies. The sunlight and fresh air would do him good. He was looking
pale.

John wandered down the neat concrete path, examined the aphids on the roses with a critical
eye, murmured the Latin names of all the plants he recognized, and made anote to look up
those he did not. Then, with nothing left to do, he climbed onto a tree stump and looked over
the high wall into the garden next door.

On a neglected lawn, ankle-deep indaisies and dandelions, a young girl was standing, bouncing
a ball against the thick trunk of a chestnuttree. A pretty girl, with a face like a flower and long
dark curling hair.

His heart sank a little: hecould havewished she were plain. It was not that he liked pretty girls,
far from it, but he knew from experience that they did not like him. His learning did not impress
them. Hisclever remarks his carefully prepared jokes, fell flat. They giggled behind their hands,
called him Four Eyes and yawned in his face when he tried to share his knowledge. All the time
he nwas speaking to them, he could see their eyes skitteringacross the classroom to some
good-looking thickhead on the other side. Pretty girls, he thought gluml-y, were always stupid.

Yet hewas so lonely. He would have liked a friend. Perhaps she had brothers? He thought
hopefully of a quiet ,studious boy, like himself. They could go round the Science Museum
together, not just rushing around pressing buttons to make things light up, but slowly and
seriously. They could collect pondlife in jam jars and study it under his microscope. They could
have picnics in his room, discussing the theories of Pythagoras by candlelight. If only she had
such a brother.

‘Hallo,’ he called.

The girl started to and dropped her ball, which vanished in the long grass. Then she smiled and
came towards him. ‘Hallo,’ she said.

‘I’m John Pierce. We’ve just moved in.’

‘Yes, I know.’

‘What’s your name?’

‘Lucy Wilkins.’

There was a little silence. She seemed shy. He studied her. Her eyes were remarkable: a pale
sparkling blue, cool as water, and fringed with long black lashes. Her voice was clear and sweet,
and rather posh. Perhaps she went to a boarding school and was lonely in the holidays. Perhaps
she too would be glad of a friend. It was pity she was pretty, and QED, bound to be stupid.

He asked her if she had sny brothers or sisters, and was disappointed when she shook her
head.

‘I’m an only child too,’ he said. And for a moment, because she was so pretty, he hoped
(foolishly he knew) that she would say ‘Let’s be friends . I have always wanted a brother. It’s
lonely on your own.’ But she did not, of course. She simply smiled and said nothing. Already she
was looking bored and her eyes were sliding away from him, glancing back at the dark house as
if even its gloomy privacywould be better than his company. Any moment she would make an
excuse -she had to help with the dishes or the dusting or wash her hair. He wished he could
think of something to say to keep her there...

‘have you seen any good ghosts recently?’ he asked humorously.

‘Oh you’ve heard already!’ she said crossly. ‘Who told you that?’
 ‘That your house was supposed to be haunted? The milkman. Icy draughts, strange wailings,
footsteps in the night; all the usual old rubbish... You don’t mean you believe in it, do you?’ he
asked.

She stared back at the dark house and shivered. ‘Yes.’

Poor silly girl, he thought. He explained to her kindly that there were no such things as ghosts.
Icy draughts in an old house were only to be expected ‘You should buy some plastic filler and
seal up the cracks.’

She looked sulky and mumbled. You don’t know what it is like.’

She sniffed and stuck out her lower lip.

And the wailing, he said that would be wind in the chimneys.

It was funny. You would think people would be glad to have their fears and worried explained
away in a rational manner, but they never were. He was not surprised when, instead of looking
grateful, she merely scowled.

‘ıt’s haunted! It is. I know it is.’ She said stubbornly.

He laughed. ‘Have you ever seen a ghost. Actually seen one?’

‘Yes.’

The little liar! ‘What did it look like?’

She hesitated.

Caught her there. She got no more imagination than I have, John thought with satisfaction.

‘Oh, horrible, horrible,’ she muttered at last, obviously unable to think of anything better.
‘Wicked!’ ‘and it’s me it’s after I know it is. It wants to drive me out... Oh, it’S easy for you to
laugh. You’re safe next door.

’I suppose it walks when the moon is full?’

She nodded. ‘In that room,’ she said, pointing to a top window overlooking the garden. ‘At
midnight , that’S when it comes. Searching looking for me!’

‘Why don’t you just lock the doot and shut it in?’

‘There is no key,’ she said, and her voice trembled, ‘for a door like that.’

Poor silly, pretty little fool. She really was frightened, he thought, and his heart filled with a
warm protective love that he had only felt once before, when he had seen a little white mouse
in his mother’s laboratory. Wanting to comfort her, he wanted to stay all the night in the
haunted room.

‘I’m not afraid,’ he said, and she looked at him with huge eyes, as if unable to believe anyone
could be so brave. Or so foolish.

‘The moon is full tonight,’ she whispered.

They decided not to tell their parents. Parents, John informed her, could never be relied on not
to produce objections to the most innocent and harmless schemes.

...

At ten to midnight, John knocked softly on the side door of the haunted house. It opened
immediately. She must have been waiting behind it. Her face was as pale as a lily in the
shadows. ‘come,’ she whispered and led the way upstairs. Softly though he trod, the
stairboards creaked and groaned beneath his feet. If anyone hears, John thought, they’ll take
us for ghosts. But he didn’t want to be caught. It might be difficult to explain...

‘Have your parents gone to bed yet?’ he whispered.

‘Yes, a long time ago..’

They went up two flights of stairs, along a narrow passage, and then Lucy opened a door. It
creaked. The hinges need oiling, he thought.

Now they were in a large room. Bright moonlight struggled through the thick lace curtains,
patterning the floorwith wriggling little worms of light. John tiptoed across to the window and
published them back.

‘That’s better,’ he said, and looked round. There was no furniture, and the floor was carpeted
only with dust. The wallpaper was dark. Opposite the window, a large mottled mirror, in a
heavy frame, gleamed dully in the moonlight. On the left, there was a pale marble fireplace, an
empty grate, and two cupboards in the alcoves on either side. He opened each door in turn and
shone his torch inside. Empty. Dirty. Dusty.

‘No wonder your ghost only visits once a month,’ he whispered, grinning, ‘if this is the room
you give it.’

Lucy did not answer. She was sistting in a corner, with her arms wrapped nervously from the
door to the window and back again.

In the garden, an owl hooted. It was very cold. Strangely cold for a summer night.
 ‘That’s because it’s a corner house,’ John explained. It catches the wind both ways. Draughty.’
And he told her about air currents and wind velocity. He did not know if she was listening. Her
eyes still moved from the door to the window and back again.

A clock began to strike twelve. The curtains flared wildly at the window. The house creaked
and shuddered. There was a thin wailing from the garden below.

‘The wind is coming up,’ John said. ‘They said on the radio the weather was going to change.’

Now there were screams, wild, despairing, unearthly.

‘Cats,’ John said, and began to tell Luzy about the mating habits and aggressive displays of
cats.

‘Look!’ she whispered.

The door was opening, slowly, slowly. A figure appeared. Thin as a candle, it flickered into the
moonlight. Its face was gray and gaunt, its white gown all apattered and splashed with blood.

‘how d’you do?’John said, getting to his fet and blinking at it short sightedly. ‘Are you Lucy’s
mother?’

It drifted towards him, moaning, and eringing its hands. Its eyes were burning like coals in its
ashen face.

‘Aren’t you feeling well?’ john asked, uneasily. He took off his glasses and wiped them on his
handkerchief. But when he put them on again, there was no improvement. The lady (for it
appeared to be female) looked dreadful. ‘Can we get you anything? An aspirin*’ He looked
towards Lucy for help, but she was cowering in her dark corner, and did not move.

‘Oh I am murdered murdered!’ the lady wailed. ‘Murdered in my bed!’

A joke! A practical joke. They had planned it together to make a fool of him.

‘Ha ha ha, very funny,’ he said, furious that they should have thought him so gullible. ‘But I m
sorry. It’s wasted on me . I don’t believe in ghosts. And I’m afraid its time I was getting back. I
promised to help Mum in the morning.’

‘Murdered’ the lady repeated, staring at him with hollow eyes, ‘Murdered in my bed, the
wicked devils.’

He stared back at her stolidly, refusing to be frightened, and a look of impatience came into
her ravaged face. ‘Murdered,’ she repeated slowly, as if to a backward child. ‘October the
second, it was, in the year of disgrace, 1872’
 ‘That’S a lomng time ago. I should forget it if I were you,’ John said stoutly, and was surprised
how high his voice sounded, almost like a scream. It seemed a long way to take a practical joke.
It occurred to him that perhaps the lady was mad.

‘Don’t you believe me?’ the apparition asked, her icy breath chilling his cheek.

‘No, he said. His pulse was racing noe. He was burning and shivering. It wasn’t fear, he told
himself. He must be sickening for something.

‘Look at me!’ she came nearer and John backed aay until he was against the wall.

He did not eant to look at her. His glasses must be misting up in the freezng air, and that was
why her face seemed to be melting, dripping from her bones like candle wax.

‘Oh, please! You must believe in me, you must.’ The lady moaned. ‘Even the gods die for want
of faith. I need your fear. I can only exist in your mind. Oh pelase believe in me, or I am lost.’

‘ I am sorry,’ John said stubbornly, his teeth chattering. ‘I don’t believe in ghosts. I don’t I
won’t.’

The figure seemed to dwindle, fading away like smoke.

‘please,’ it wailed faintly. ‘Oh , please believe in me!’

John was shaking all over now, but he managed to say ‘No.’

‘Oh I am murdered murdered!’ sighed the ghost, its voice failing. Then it was gone.

The boy, his back to the wall, slid slowly down till he was sitting on the floor. His face was
white, fixed, terrified.

‘She’S gone! She’S gone. You did it.’ The girl cired,smiling and clapping her hands together.

‘It –it was a trick!’ he babbled. ‘I know it was! You had a hissen projector. A video tape! It’s just
a trick. TYou had something up your sleeve!’

The girl was dancing on the floor. Her feet made no sound on the bare boards. TRhey left no
prints in the dust. Now she danced in front of mirror and there was no reflection. Her eyes were
shining, literally shining like twin lamps. As john watched her in terror, she cried gloatingly, ‘It’s
mine, all mine now, the whole house! She’s gone that horrible creature. All mine now. The
whole house. Always scolding, always criticizing. Saying I shouldn’t walk in the sun. Saying I
didn’t know how to haunt properly , just because she s been dead longer than I have. Why
should I care for her silly rules? I’ll show her! Oh, I will be ghastly!’

She came dancing towards him and she was all moonlight.

‘Thank you, thank you’ she whispered. ‘I love you.’

And she vanished.

As he sat straring at the empty room, he felt an icy touch on his lips as soft and wet as a
snowflake.

He never saw her again. The two houses were sold within the year, and a block of flats built
where they had stood. John and his parents moved to the other side of the town. He grew up,
won more prizes and became rich and famous, and happy enough. But he never married.
Sometimes, on a summer night he would stand by his window and sniff the sweet smell of night
scented stocks, and see the pale roses glimmering in the moonlight. Then he would smile and
say,

‘A pretty girl once loved me.’

The Crime Story

A Glowing Future by Ruth Rendell

Six should be enough,' he said. `We'll say six tea chests, then, and one trunk. If you'll deliver
them tomorrow, I'll get the stuff all packed and maybe your people could pick them up
Wednesday.' He made a note on a bit of paper. `Fine,' he said.

`Round about lunchtime tomorrow.'

She hadn't moved. She was still sitting in the big oak-armed chair at the far

end of the room. He made himself look at her and he managed a kind of grin,

pretending all was well.

`No trouble,' he said. `They're very efficient.'

`I couldn't believe,' she said, `that you'd really do it. Not until I heard you on
the phone. I wouldn't have thought it possible. You'll really pack up all those things

and have them sent off to her.'

They were going to have to go over it all again. Of course they were. It

wouldn't stop until he'd got the things out and himself out, away from London and her

for good. And he wasn't going to argue or make long defensive speeches. He lit a

cigarette and waited for her to begin, thinking that the pubs would be opening in an

hour's time and he could go out then and get a drink.

`I don't understand why you came here at all,' she said.

He didn't answer. He was still holding the cigarette box, and now he closed its

lid, feeling the coolness of the onyx on his fingertips.

She had gone white. `Just to get your things? Maurice, did you come back just

for that?

'They are my things,' he said evenly.

`You could have sent someone else. Even if you'd written to me and asked me

to do it-

`I never write letters,' he said.

She moved then. She made a little fluttering with her hand in front of her

mouth. `As if I didn't know!' She gasped, and making a great effort she steadied her

voice. `You were in Australia for a year, a whole year, and you never wrote to me

once.'

`I phoned.'

`Yes, twice. The first time to say you loved me and missed me and were

longing to come back to me and would I wait for you and there wasn't anyone else

was there? And the second time, a week ago, to say you'd be here by Saturday and
could I - could I put you up. My God, I'd lived with you for two years, we were

practically married, and then you phone and ask if I could put you up!'

`Words,' he said. `How would you have put it?'

`For one thing, I'd have mentioned Patricia. Oh, yes, I'd have mentioned her.

I'd have had the decency, the common humanity, for that. Dye know what I thought

when you said you were coming? I ought to know by now how peculiar he is, I

thought, how detached, not writing or phoning or anything. But that's Maurice, that's

the man I love, and he's coming back to me and we'll get married and I'm so happy!'

`I did tell you about Patricia.'

`Not until after you'd made love to me first.'

He winced. It had been a mistake, that. Of course he hadn't meant to touch her

beyond the requisite greeting kiss. But she was very attractive and he was used to her

and she seemed to expect it - and oh, what the hell. Women never could understand

about men and sex. And there was only one bed, wasn't there? A hell of a scene

there'd have been that first night if he'd suggested sleeping on the sofa in here.

`You made love to me,' she said. `You were so passionate, it was just like it

used to be, and then the next morning you told me. You'd got a resident's permit to

stay in Australia, you'd got a job all fixed up, you'd met a girl you wanted to marry.

Just like that you told me, over breakfast. Have you ever been smashed in the face,

Maurice? Have you ever had your dreams trodden on?'

`Would you rather I'd waited longer? As for being smashed in the face = he

rubbed his cheekbone `- that's quite a punch you pack.'

She shuddered. She got up and began slowly and stiffly to pace the room. `I
hardly touched you. I wish I'd killed you!' By a small table she stopped. There was a

china figurine on it, a bronze paperknife, an onyx pen jar that matched the ashtray.

`All those things,' she said. `I looked after them for you. I treasured them. And now

you're going to have them all shipped out to her. The things we lived with. I used to

look at them and think, Maurice bought that when we went to - oh God, I can't believe

it. Sent to her!'

He nodded, staring at her. `You can keep the big stuff,' he said. `You're

specially welcome to the sofa. I've tried sleeping on it for two nights and I never want

to see the bloody thing again.'

She picked up the china figurine and hurled it at him. It didn't hit him because

he ducked and let it smash against the wall, just missing a framed drawing. `Mind the

Lowry,' he said laconically, `I paid a lot of money for that.'

She flung herself onto the sofa and burst into sobs. She thrashed about,

hammering the cushions with her fists. He wasn't going to be moved by that - he

wasn't going to be moved at all. Once he'd packed those things, he'd be off to spend

the next three months touring Europe. A free man, free for the sights and the fun and

the girls, for a last fling of wild oats*. After that, back to Patricia and a home and a

job and responsibility. It was a glowing future which this hysterical woman wasn't

going to mess up.

`Shut up, Betsy, for God's sake,' he said. He shook her roughly by the

shoulder, and then he went out because it was now eleven and he could get a drink.

Betsy made herself some coffee and washed her swollen eyes. She walked

about, looking at the ornaments and the books, the glasses and vases and lamps,

which he would take from her tomorrow. It wasn't that she much minded losing them,
the things themselves, but the barrenness which would be left, and the knowing that

they would all be Patricia's.

In the night she had got up, found his wallet, taken out the photographs of

Patricia, and torn them up. But she remembered the face, pretty and hard and greedy,

and she thought of those bright eyes widening as Patricia unpacked the tea chests, the

predatory hands scrabbling for more treasures in the trunk. Doing it all perhaps before

Maurice himself got there, arranging the lamps and the glasses and the ornaments in

their home for his delight when at last he came.

He would marry her, of course. I suppose she thinks he's faithful to her, Betsy

thought, the way I once thought he was faithful to me. I know better now. Poor stupid

fool, she doesn't know what he did the first moment he was alone with her, or what he

would do in France and Italy. That would be a nice wedding present to give her,

wouldn't it, along with all the pretty bric-a-brac in the trunk?

Well, why not? Why not rock their marriage before it had even begun? A letter.

A letter to be concealed in, say, that blue-and-white ginger jar. She sat down to write.

Dear Patricia what a stupid way to begin, the way you had to begin a letter even to

your enemy.

Dear Patricia: I don't know what Maurice has told you about me, but we have

been living here as lovers ever since he arrived. To be more explicit, I mean we have

made love, have slept together. Maurice is incapable of being faithful to anyone. If you

don't believe me, ask yourself why, if he didn't want me, he didn't stay in a hotel.

That's all. Yours - and she signed her name and felt a little better, well enough and

steady enough to take a bath and get herself some lunch.

Six tea chests and a trunk arrived on the following day. The chests smelled of

tea and had drifts of tea leaves lying in the bottom of them. The trunk was made of

silver-coloured metal and had clasps of gold-coloured metal. It was rather a beautiful

object, five feet long, three feet high, two feet wide, and the lid fitted so securely it

seemed a hermetic sealing.

Maurice began to pack at two o'clock. He used tissue paper and newspapers.

He filled the tea chests with kitchen equipment and cups and plates and cutlery, with

books, with those clothes of his he had left behind him a year before. Studiously, and

with a certain grim pleasure, he avoided everything Betsy might have insisted was

hers - the poor cheap things, the stainless steel spoons and forks, the Woolworth

pottery, the awful coloured sheets, red and orange and olive, that he had always

loathed. He and Patricia would sleep in white linen.

Betsy didn't help him. She watched, chain-smoking. He nailed the lids on the

chests and on each lid he wrote in white paint his address in Australia. But he didn't

paint in the letters of his own name. He painted Patricia's. This wasn't done to need1e

Betsy but he was glad to see it was needling her.

He hadn't come back to the flat till one that morning, and of course he didn't

have a key. Betsy had refused to let him in, had left him down there in the street, and

he had to sit in the car he'd hired till seven. She looked as if she hadn't slept either.

Miss Patricia Gordon, he wrote, painting fast and skilfully.

`Don't forget your ginger jar,' said Betsy. `I don't want it.'

`That's for the trunk.' Miss Patricia Gordon, 23 Burwood Park Avenue, Kew,

Victoria, Australia 3101. `All the pretty things are going in the trunk. I intend it as a

special present for Patricia.'

The Lowry came down and was carefully padded and wrapped.

He wrapped the onyx ashtray and the pen jar, the alabaster bowl, the bronze

paperknife, the tiny Chinese cups, the tall hock glasses. The china figurine, alas . . .

he opened the lid of the trunk.

`I hope the customs open it!' Betsy shouted at him. `I hope they confiscate

things and break things! I'll pray every night for it to go to the bottom of the sea

before it gets there!

'The sea,' he said, `is a risk I must take. As for the customs -' He smiled.

`Patricia works for them, she's a customs officer didn't I tell you? I very much doubt if

they'll even glance inside.' He wrote a label and pasted it on the side of the trunk. Miss

Patricia Gordon, 23 Burwood Park Avenue, Kew . . . `And now I'll have to go out and

get a padlock. Keys, please. If you try to keep me out this time, I'll call the police. I'm

still the legal tenant of this flat remember.'

She gave him the keys. When he had gone she put her letter in the ginger jar.

She hoped he would close the trunk at once, but he didn't. He left it open, the lid

thrown back, the new padlock dangling from the gold-coloured clasp.

`Is there anything to eat?' he said.

`Go and find your own bloody food! Go and find some other woman to feed

you!'

He liked her to be angry and fierce; it was her love he feared. He came back at

midnight to find the flat in darkness, and he lay down on the sofa with the tea chests

standing about him like defences, like barricades, the white paint showing faintly in

the dark. Miss Patricia Gordon . . .

Presently Betsy came in. She didn't put on the light. She wound her way

between the chests, carrying a candle in a saucer which she set down on the trunk. In

the candlelight, wearing a long white nightgown, she looked like a ghost, like some

wandering madwoman, a Mrs Rochester", a Woman in White*.

`Maurice.'

`Go away, Betsy, I'm tired.'

`Maurice, please. I'm sorry I said all those things. I'm sorry I locked you out.'

`OK, I'm sorry too. It's a mess, and maybe I shouldn't have done it the way I

did. But the best way is for me just to go and my things to go and make a clean split.

Right? And now will you please be a good girl and go away and let me get some

sleep?'

What happened next he hadn't bargained for. It hadn't crossed his mind. Men

don't understand about women and sex. She threw herself on him, clumsily, hungrily.

She pulled his shirt open and began kissing his neck and his chest, holding his head,

crushing her mouth to his mouth, lying on top of him and gripping his legs with her

knees.

He gave her a savage push. He kicked her away, and she fell and struck her

head on the side of the trunk. The candle fell off, flared and died in a pool of wax. In

the darkness he cursed floridly. He put on the light and she got up, holding her head

where there was a little blood.

`Oh, get out, for God's sake,' he said, and he manhandled her out, slamming

the door after her.

In the morning, when she came into the room, a blue bruise on her forehead,

he was asleep, fully clothed, spread-eagled on his back. She shuddered at the sight of
him. She began to get breakfast but she couldn't eat anything. The coffee made her

gag and a great nauseous shiver went through her. When she went back to him he

was sitting up on the sofa, looking at his plane ticket to Paris.

`The men are coming for the stuff at ten,' he said as if nothing had happened,

`and they'd better not be late. I have to be at the airport at noon.'

She shrugged. She had been to the depths and she thought he couldn't hurt her any more.

`You'd better close the trunk,' she said absent-mindedly.

`All in good time.' His eyes gleamed. `I've got a letter to put in yet.'

Her head bowed, the place where it was bruised sore and swollen, she looked

loweringly at him. `You never write letters.'

`Just a note. One can't send a present without a note to accompany it, can

one?'

He pulled the ginger jar out of the trunk, screwed up her letter without even

glancing at it, and threw it on the floor. Rapidly yet ostentatiously and making sure

that Betsy could see, he scrawled across a sheet of paper: All this is for you, darling

Patricia, for ever and ever.

`How I hate you,' she said.

`You could have fooled me.' He took a large angle lamp out of the trunk and

set it on the floor. He slipped the note into the ginger jar, rewrapped it, tucked the jar

in between the towels and cushions which padded the fragile objects. `Hatred isn't the

word I'd use to describe the way you came after me last night.'

She made no answer. Perhaps he should have put a heavy object like that lamp

in one of the chests, perhaps he should open up one of the chests now. He turned
round for the lamp. It wasn't there. She was holding it in both hands.

`I want that, please.'

`Have you ever been smashed in the face, Maurice?' she said breathlessly, and

she raised the lamp and struck him with it full on the forehead. He staggered and she

struck him again, and again and again, raining blows on his face and his head. He

screamed. He sagged, covering his face with bloody hands. Then with all her strength

she gave him a great swinging blow and he fell to his knees, rolled over and at last

was stilled and silenced.

There was quite a lot of blood, though it quickly stopped flowing. She stood

there looking at him and she was sobbing. Had she been sobbing all the time? She

was covered with blood. She tore off her clothes and dropped them in a heap around

her. For a moment she knelt beside him, naked and weeping, rocking backwards and

forwards, speaking his name, biting her fingers that were sticky with his blood..

But self-preservation is the primal instinct, more powerful than love or sorrow,

hatred or regret. The time was nine o'clock, and in an hour those men would come.

Betsy fetched water in a bucket, detergent, cloths and a sponge. The hard work, the

great cleansing, stopped her tears, quieted her heart and dulled her thoughts. She

thought of nothing, working frenziedly, her mind a blank.

When bucket after bucket of reddish water had been poured down the sink and

the carpet was soaked but clean, the lamp washed and dried and polished, she threw

her clothes into the basket in the bathroom and had a bath. She dressed carefully and

brushed her hair. Eight minutes to ten. Everything was clean and she had opened the

window, but the dead thing still lay there on a pile of reddened newspapers.

`I loved him,' she said aloud, and she clenched her fists. `I hated him.'
The men were punctual. They came at ten sharp. They carried the six tea

chests and the silver-coloured trunk with the gold-coloured clasps downstairs.

When they had gone and their van had driven away, Betsy sat down on the

sofa. She looked at the angle lamp, the onyx pen jar and ashtray, the ginger jar, the

alabaster bowls, the hock glasses, the bronze paperknife, the little Chinese cups, and

the Lowry that was back on the wall. She was quite calm now and she didn't really

need the brandy she had poured for herself.

Of the past she thought not at all and the present seemed to exist only as a

palpable nothingness, a thick silence that lay around her. She thought of the future, of

three months hence, and into the silence she let forth a steady, rather toneless peal of

laughter. Miss Patricia Gordon, 23 Burwood Park Avenue, Kew, Victoria, Australia

3101. The pretty, greedy, hard face, the hands so eager to undo that padlock and

prise open those golden clasps to find the treasure within . . .

And how interesting that treasure would be in three months' time, like nothing

Miss Patricia Gordon had seen in all her life! It was as well, so that she would

recognize it, that it carried on top of it a note in a familiar hand: All this is for you,

darling Patricia, for ever and ever.

Three is a Lucky Number by Margery Allingham

At five o’clock on a September afternoon Ronald Torbay was making preparations for his third
murder. He was being very careful. He realized that murdering people becomes more
dangerous if you do it often.
He was in the bathroom of the house that he had recently rented. For a moment he paused to
look in the mirror. The face that looked back at him was thin, middle-aged and pale. Dark hair, a
high forehead and well-shaped blue eyes. Only the mouth was unusual – narrow and quite
straight. Even Ronald Torbay did not like his own mouth.

A sound in the kitchen below worried him. Was Edyth coming up to have her bath before he
had prepared it for her? No, it was all right: she was going out of the back door. From the
window he saw her disappearing round the side of the house into the small square garden. It
was exactly like all the other gardens in the long street. He didn’t like her to be alone there. She
was a shy person, but now new people had moved into the house next door, and there was a
danger of some silly woman making friends with her. He didn’t want that just now.

Each of his three marriages had followed the same pattern. Using a false name, he had gone on
holiday to a place where no one knew him. There he had found a middle-aged, unattractive
woman, with some money of her own and no family. He had talked her into marrying him, and
she had then agreed to make a will which left him all her money. Both his other wives had been
shy too. He was very careful to choose the right type of woman: someone who would not make
friends quickly in a new place.

Mary, the first of them, had had her deadly ‘accident’ almost unnoticed, in the bathroom of the
house he had rented – a house very like this one, but in the north of England instead of the
south. The police had not found anything wrong. The only person who was interested was a
young reporter on the local newspaper. He had written something about death in the middle of
happiness, and had printed photographs of Mary’s wedding and her funeral, which took place
only three weeks after the wedding.
Dorothy had given him a little more trouble. It was not true that she was completely alone in
the world, as she had told him. Her brother had appeared at the funeral, and asked difficult
questions about her money. There had been a court case, but Ronald had won it, and the
insurance company had paid him the money.

All that was four years ago. Now, with a new name, a newly invented background, and a
different area to work in, he felt quite safe.
From the moment he saw Edyth, sitting alone at a little table in the restaurant of a seaside
hotel, he knew she was his next ‘subject’. He could see from her face that she was not happy.
And he could also see that she was wearing a valuable ring.

After dinner he spoke to her. She did not want to talk at first, but in the end he managed to
start a conversation. After that, everything went as he expected. His methods were old-
fashioned and romantic, and by the end of a week she was in love with him.

Her background was very suitable for Ronald’s purpose. After teaching at a girls’ school for ten
years, she had gone home to look after her sick father and had stayed with him until he died.
Now, aged forty-three, she was alone, with a lot of money, and she didn’t know what to do with
herself.
Five weeks after they met, Ronald married her, in the town where they were both strangers.
The same afternoon they both
made a will leaving all their property to each other. Then they moved into the house which he
had rented cheaply because the holiday season was at an end. It was the most pleasant of his
marriages. He found Edyth a cheerful person, and even quite sensible – except that it was
stupid of her to believe that a man would fall in love with her at first sight. Ronald knew he
must not make the mistake of feeling sorry for her. He began to make plans for ‘her future’, as
he called it.

Two things made him do this earlier than he intended. One was the way she refused to talk
about her money. She kept all her business papers locked in a desk drawer, and refused to
discuss them. His other worry was her unnecessary interest in his job. Ronald had told Edyth
that he was a partner in an engineering company, which was giving him a long period of
absence. Edyth accepted the story, but she asked a lot of questions and wanted to visit his
office and the factory.

So Ronald had decided that it was time to act.

He turned from the window; and began to run water into the bath. His heart was beating loudly
he noticed. He didn't like that. He needed to keep very calm.

The bathroom was the only room they had painted. He had done it himself soon after they
arrived. He had also put up the little shelf over the bath which held their bottles and creams and
a small electric heater. It was a cheap one, with two bars, and it was white, like the walls, and
not too noticeable. There was no electric point in the bathroom, but he was able to connect the
heater to a point just outside the door.

He turned on the heater now, and watched the bars become red and hot. Then he went out of
the room. The controls for all the electricity in the house were inside a cupboard at the top of
the stairs. Ronald opened the door carefully and pulled up the handle which turned off the
electricity. (He had a cloth over his hand, so that he would not leave fingerprints.)
Back in the bathroom the bars of the heater were turning black again. Still using the
cloth, he lifted the heater from the shelf and put it into the bath water, at the bottom end
of the bath. Of course, you could still see it. It looked as if it had fallen off the shelf by
accident.

Edyth was coming back from the garden: he could hear her moving something outside
the kitchen door. He pulled a small plastic bottle out of his pocket and began to read
again the directions on the back.
A small sound behind him made him turn suddenly. There was Edyth’s head, only two
metres away, appearing above the flat roof of the kitchen which was below the
bathroom window. She was clearing the dead leaves from the edge of the roof She must
be standing on the ladder which was kept outside the kitchen door.
He stayed calm. ‘What are you doing there, dear?’
Edyth was so surprised that she nearly fell off the ladder. ‘Oh, you frightened me! I
thought I’d just do this little job before I came to get ready.’
‘But I’m preparing your beauty bath for you.’
‘It’s kind of you to take all this trouble, Ronald.’
‘Not at all. I’m taking you out tonight andI want you to look as nice as – er – possible.
Hurry up, dear. The bubbles don’t last very long, and like all these beauty treatments, this
one’s expensive. Go and undress now, and come straight here.’
‘Very well, dear.’ She began to climb down the ladder.
Ronald opened the little bottle, and poured the liquid into the bath. He turned on the
water again, and in a moment the bath was full of bubbles, smelling strongly of roses.
They covered the little heater completely; they even covered the sides of the bath.
Edyth was at; the door. ‘Oh Ronald! It’s all over everything – even on the floor!’
That doesn’t matter. You get in quickly before it loses its strength. I’ll go and change now.
Get straight in and lie down. It will give your skin a bit of colour!’
He went out and paused, listening. She locked the door, as he expected. He walked
slowly to the electricity box, and forced himself to wait another minute.
‘How is it?’ he shouted.
‘I don’t know yet. I’ve only just got into the bath. It smells nice.’
His hand, covered with the cloth, was on the controls.
‘One, two . . . three,’ he said, and pulled the handle down. A small explosion from the
electric point behind him told him that the electricity had gone off. Then everything was
silent.
After a time he went and knocked on the bathroom door.
‘Edyth?’
There was no answer, no sound, nothing.
Now he had to prepare the second stage. As he knew well, this was the difficult bit. The
discovery of the body must be made, but not too soon. He had made that mistake with
Dorothy’s ‘accident’, and the police had asked him why he had got worried so soon. This
time he decided to wait half an hour before he began to knock loudly on the bathroom
door, then to shout for a neighbour and finally to force the lock.
There was something he wanted to do now. Edyth’s leather writing-case, which
contained all her private papers, was in the drawer where she kept her blouses. He had
discovered it some time ago, but he had not forced the lock open because that would
frighten her. Now there was nothing to stop him.
He went softly into the bedroom and opened the drawer. The case was there. The lock
was more difficult than he expected, but he finally managed to open the case. Inside
there were some financial documents, one or two thick envelopes and, on top of these,
her Post Office Savings book.
He opened it with shaking fingers, and began reading the figures – £17,000 . . . £18,600 . . .
£21,940 . . . He turned over a
th
page, and his heart jumped wildly. On 4 September she had taken almost all the money
out of her savings account!
Perhaps it was here, in these thick envelopes? He opened one of them; papers, letters,
documents fell on the floor.
Suddenly he saw an envelope with his own name on it, in Edyth’s writing. He pulled it
open, and saw in surprise that the date on the letter was only two days ago.

Dear Ronald,
If you ever read this, I am afraid it will be a terrible shock to you. I hoped it would not be
necessary to write it, but now your behaviour has forced me to face some very unpleasant
possibilities.
Did you not realize, Ronald, that any middle-aged woman who has been rushed into
marriage to a stranger will ask herself about her husband’s reason for marrying her?
At first I thought I was in love with you, but when you asked me to make my will on our
wedding day, I began to worry. And then, when you started making changes to the
bathroom in this house, I decided to act quickly. So I went to the police.
Have you noticed that the people who have moved into the house next door have never
spoken to you? Well, they are not a husband and wife, but a police inspector and a
policewoman. The policewoman showed me two pieces from old newspapers, both about
women who had died from accidents in their baths soon after their marriages. Both pieces
included a photograph of the husband at the funeral. They were not very clear, but I was
able to recognize you. So I realized that it was my duty to agree to do what the Inspector
asked me to do. (The police have been looking for the man since the photographs were
given to them by your second wife’s brother.) The Inspector said the police needed to be
sure that you were guilty: you must be given the opportunity to try the crime again. That’s
why I am forcing myself to be brave, and to play my part.
I want to tell you something, Ronald. If one day you lose me, out of the bathroom, I mean,
you will find that I have gone but over the kitchen roof, and am sitting in the kitchen next
door. I was stupid to marry you, but not quite as stupid as you thought,
Yours,
EDYTH.

Ronald’s mouth was uglier than ever when he finished reading the letter. The house was
still quiet. But in the silence he heard the back door open suddenly, and heavy footsteps
rushed up the stairs towards him.
The Humorous Story

Shock Tactics by Saki

(To be continued...)