back of the house), but Elysee, on her days at home, never drove it because, on those occasions, Billie used it to get to her newspaper office. When Elysee had to go up to Town, she drove to the nearest station, nearly ten miles away, and left the car there against her return, while Billie took herself to work on her moped. It was on these occasions, I suppose, that Elysee dropped Miss Minnie in the town.
Because in some respects their occupations were complementary, Billie’s as a crime reporter, Latimer’s as a re-hasher of past crimes, he was the only male friend of Elysee’s upon whom Billie did not look with a jealous and jaundiced eye. His work entailed a great deal of research, so he was often out of the house, but when he was at home he and Elysee were usually in one another’s company. I suppose she showed him her sketches and he, no doubt, regaled her with an account of his often gruesome discoveries. Anyway, they liked to be together, although Elysee never pushed her luck to the extent of neglecting Billie in favour of Latimer Targe, neither do I think he would have wanted her to do so.
‘I’ve stayed out of woman trouble ever since my wife died, old boy,’ he said to me when we were having a drink together one evening. ‘It’s not that I don’t like women, but once bitten twice shy, and one thing about these two girls, they’re
I am sorry if this seems to be a digression, Dame Beatrice, but I think perhaps what follows will explain it. I know that the impudent joke about the name of the house and this friendship between Targe and Elysee seem unimportant, and I suppose they
The first inkling I had that the jest was not as innocent as I had supposed came from Latimer Targe himself. As I have mentioned, he made a living by re-hashing true stories of murder. He was, I would have thought, far too hardboiled a type to busy himself with the occult. The thing did not begin in that way, however.
He joined me as I was strolling beside the lake in the grounds one morning and his silence gave me the impression that he had something on his mind. We paced along side by side for a bit and then he unburdened himself.
‘I say, old man, I’ve been looking up the records,’ he said. ‘I mean the records of this place, you know, this nest of vipers.’
‘Oh, look here,’ I said, ‘surely that joke has grown whiskers by now!’
‘Sorry, old man. Didn’t mean to rib you. There was murder done here, you know. I looked it all up in the county library. Year of 1786. Owner got one of the maids into trouble and when her father – one of the tenants – came up to make a fuss about it, the squire shot him dead.’
‘So what happened?’ I asked. ‘Even in 1786 landowners couldn’t murder their tenants with impunity.’
‘Oh, the squire got off. His bailiff swore that the farmer, or whatever he was, had come armed with a dirty great knife and that the shooting had been done in self-defence.’
‘And the court accepted that?’
‘They did. The person who got hanged was the girl. She lay in wait for the squire, persuaded him to dismount from his horse, enticed him into the cottage she had shared with her father and as she followed him into the bedroom she hit him over the head with an axe.’
‘Couldn’t
‘Well, that’s the story as I unearthed it, old boy, but mark the sequel, as they say. This house is haunted.’
‘By the murdered eighteenth-century owner?’
‘Don’t laugh, old boy. No, by the killer herself. Been seen about the rooms looking for the squire all over again.’
‘Your readers are not likely to swallow that one. I thought your stories were strictly factual,’ I said.
‘I suppose a ghost is a fact like any other. Anyway, don’t you be so sceptical. The woman’s been seen, I tell you.’
‘Ah, and, as the priest said to the man who confessed to murder, how many times?’
‘Three in all.’ He repeated it. ‘Three times in all.’
‘By whom?’ I dropped my jocose attitude. A house like mine might well offer a temptation to burglars.
‘Twice by those two girls – they share a bedroom, you know – and once by your partner.’
‘By Niobe? Nonsense! She would have told me.’
‘She thought she’d been dreaming until she got together with Miss Barnes and they swapped stories,’ said Targe. ‘It was Miss B. who told me all about it. I advised her to complain. I was joking, of course, but then Niobe agreed she’d seen it, too.’
I tackled Niobe forthwith. She was in what had been the housekeeper’s dayroom. She had furnished it at small expense but with taste and had retained its cupboards with their ornate, beautifully-wrought brass handles which she saw to it were kept equally beautifully polished by the char who ‘did’ for most of the tenants, according them a day or a halfday a week, as their wishes and, I suppose, their incomes dictated. She was what people who employ charwomen call a superior type, came in her own mini and charged the earth, but she was a splendidly conscientious worker and I am sure earned her princely pay. Anyway, in our out of the way spot, I was glad to get anybody so good and those tenants who queried her prices were soon told to take her services or leave them, and that was that. She and Niobe, for some reason, got on particularly well together.
‘Look here, Niobe,’ I said, as soon as Mrs Smith’s mini was churning up the gravel on its departure, ‘what’s this story about the ghost of a murderess?’
‘It isn’t a ghost,’ she said, ‘and I think you had better have anti-burglar devices put on all the downstair windows because that’s the way she is managing to get inside this place, I’m sure.’
‘She?’ (But, of course, there was only one person she could mean.)
‘Miss Minnie. She’s got this bee in her bonnet about a will of a later date than the one which made the property over to you. I think she’s begun creeping about trying to find it. You would do well to get rid of her, Chelion. I don’t
