The Unknown Ajax Read online

  He smiled, but said: ‘I daresay it would. I haven’t been here many days yet, but I know already that I couldn’t live with his lordship, and I don’t mean to try. And that puts me in mind of something! Who lives in the Dower House?’

  ‘No one, at present. No one but Spurstow, that is. He was Great-aunt Matty’s butler, and when she died Grandpapa said he might remain at the Dower House, to look after it until it should be inhabited again.’

  ‘And who was Great-aunt Matty?’ he enquired.

  ‘Oh, she was Grandpapa’s sister! When Grandpapa was married, she and our great-grandmother removed to the Dower House. Great-grandmama died before I was born, and Aunt Matty continued there until she died – oh, nearly two years ago now! She was very eccentric, and she looked exactly like a witch, and was used to mutter to herself. Richmond and I were terrified of her, when we were children, but fortunately she hated to be visited, so that it was only very occasionally that we were obliged to go to the Dower House. She always sat in one room, and kept the blinds drawn in the others, and had dozens of the most odious cats. It used to be one of Richmond’s worst nightmares, that he was shut up in that dark house, with cats’ eyes staring at him wherever he looked, and poor Jane Darracott’s ghost creeping up behind him!’

  ‘I’d forgotten the ghost. Is that why the house stands empty?’

  ‘Well, yes, in a way it is. My Uncle Granville wished to live there, after Aunt Matty died, but Aunt Anne said that she would as lief do anything in the world as set foot inside the house. She’s very fanciful, suffers nervous disorders – distempered freaks, Grandpapa calls them! But I believe the real cause of the scheme’s coming to nothing was that the house was found to be in shocking repair, and, of course, Grandpapa refused to waste any money on it. When Grandpapa practises economy it is always at the expense of his family, never his own! Are you thinking that you might live there? I warn you, it is rat-ridden, ghost-ridden, and damp into the bargain! Spurstow says the roof leaks in several places.’

  ‘It sounds champion!’ he remarked. ‘Don’t tell me it hasn’t dry rot as well, for I wouldn’t believe you!’

  ‘Very likely, I should think.’ She threw him a mischievous glance. ‘And, to add to your comfort, there is said to be an underground passage, leading from the cellars to the Place, in which (could you but find it) you would discover the bones of several persons who were so unfortunate as to have fallen out with one – or possibly more – of our ancestors.’

  ‘That adds a cosy touch,’ he agreed. ‘Ralph II?’

  ‘No, we were obliged to abandon that notion,’ she said regretfully. ‘It seems to be established that the passage was walled up long before his time. However, the son of the Darracott who came over with the Conqueror we understand to have been a shockingly loose screw, so we are much inclined to think it was he who hid the bodies of his enemies in it.’

  ‘Ay, a passage would be just the place anyone would choose,’ he nodded. ‘And, if you’ve done trying to make an April-gowk out of me, I’d be glad to know why you’re so set on holding me off from the house?’

  She laughed. ‘Oh, I’m not! I merely thought it right to warn you!’

  ‘Eh, that was kind!’ he said appreciatively. ‘Of course, I’d be wasting my time if I tried to find the passage, wouldn’t I?’

  ‘Well, we wasted ours, when we were children,’ she admitted, ‘but if you mean to say that you don’t believe there is a passage I shall take it in very bad part. Its existence is one of our more cherished traditions! There’s a reference to it somewhere in our archives. Unfortunately, no hint of its precise locality is vouchsafed, and when Oliver ventured to suggest to Grandpapa that we might discover it with the aid of a pickaxe or two, the notion, from some cause or another, found no favour with him! He did own that in ancient times there had been a passage, but although we – that is, Oliver, and Caro, and Eliza, and Vincent, and Claud, and I – thought it could be put to excellent use, he quite failed to enter into our sentiments!’

  ‘I’m not so sure that I blame him!’

  She gurgled. ‘I wish you might have seen his face when Claud and I said that it was his duty to find the bones of our murdered foes, and give them decent burial! You see, we were the youngest, and we became wholly confused by the tales the others made up! I think the bones were Oliver’s contribution to the legend, and to this day I’m not perfectly sure how much belongs to the original legend, and how much was added by the boys. I must say I wish you may persuade Grandpapa to let you have the Dower House (though I fear you won’t!), so that you might do a little excavation, and confirm our ancient tradition! I’ll take you to see it tomorrow, if you would like it.’

  The Dower House was situated only some four hundred yards to the north-east of Darracott Place, from which it was hidden by a belt of trees, and a tangle of overgrown bushes. A carriage-drive gave access to it from a narrow lane, but Anthea took the Major there by way of a footpath through the wood, and entered the garden at the side of the house. A ditch surmounted by a blackthorn hedge enclosed the grounds, which seemed, at first glance, to consist almost wholly of a shrubbery run riot. Holding open a wicket-gate, which squeaked on its rusty hinges, Hugo glanced round, remarking that it looked a likely place for a ghost. Anthea, disentangling the fringe of her shawl from the encroaching hedge, agreed to this, and at once took him to see what she called the fatal window. It was at the back of the house, and faced south-east, on to what Hugo took to be a wilderness but which was, she assured him, a delightful pleasure-garden. ‘If you look closely, you will see that there are several rose-beds, and a sun-dial,’ she said severely. ‘The lawn, perhaps, needs mowing.’

  ‘It does, doesn’t it?’ said Hugo, eyeing the rank grass with disfavour. ‘Myself, I’d have it ploughed up and re-sown, but I daresay it’s in keeping with the rest as it is.’

  ‘Well, I warned you how it would be. That is the window. The room was originally the best bedchamber, but after the accident – if it wasn’t a murder – none of the subsequent tenants cared to sleep in it, so it was reserved for the accommodation of guests.’

  ‘Ay, it would be. It must go to his lordship’s heart to think he hasn’t a haunted room at the Place: I don’t doubt I’d have found myself in it if there had been one. Is this where the lady walks?’

  ‘Oh, she walks all round the house, and in it, too, according to some! Very few of Aunt Matty’s servants ever stayed for long with her, but I never heard that they saw the ghost. They used to complain that they heard strange noises, but I fancy they wouldn’t have made anything of that if they hadn’t been warned by the villagers. None of them would dream of coming near the house after dark, of course.’

  She led the way, as she spoke, towards the front of the house. Here the trees grew so close to the building that a branch of one giant elm almost brushed the roof, seeing which, Hugo said decidedly: ‘I’d have that down for a start. Eh, but it’s a fine old house!’

  ‘I suppose it is,’ Anthea replied, with a certain lack of enthusiasm. ‘It is older than the Place, I know, and said to be a good example of that style of ancient stone-building, but it has always seemed to me a dreadfully gloomy house.’

  ‘If all that ivy were stripped away, and the bushes uprooted, and some of the trees felled, it wouldn’t be gloomy. I allow there’s no prospect on this side, but there should be as good a one, or better, as there is from the Place, on the garden side, once a clearance was made.’

  ‘Is that what you would do?’

  He nodded. ‘I would, if I meant to live here. I’ve a strong notion that we have only to let in some light and air to lay that ghost of yours.’

  ‘But this is iconoclasm!’ she exclaimed. ‘Lay the Darracott spectre? For shame! Have you no respect for tradition?’

  He looked quizzically down at her. ‘Nay, that’s a matter of upbringing,’ he said. ‘I wasn’t reared to respect Darracott tradition. Come to t
hink of it, I doubt if I’d respect a ghost that scared the servants out of my house, whatever way I’d been reared. Can we go inside?’

  ‘Certainly – unless Spurstow has gone out, and left the doors locked,’ she responded. ‘If he is in, he won’t accord us a very warm welcome, but don’t be dismayed! He has grown to be as eccentric as ever Aunt Matty was, and regards all visitors in the light of hostile invaders, but he won’t repel us with violence! He has lived for thirty years here, so you can’t wonder at it that he should be a trifle crusty.’

  ‘So he’s not afraid of the ghost?’

  ‘Oh, no! He holds poor Jane in great contempt – like you!’

  ‘Do you believe she haunts the place?’ Hugo asked, walking beside her up the weed-grown drive towards the house.

  She hesitated. ‘N-no. At least – I don’t believe it at this moment, in broad sunlight, but – no, I shouldn’t care to come here at night! It isn’t only the villagers who have seen things: Richmond has, too.’

  ‘Has he, indeed? What did he see?’

  ‘A female form. He couldn’t imagine who it was at first. He says he went towards her, and suddenly she vanished. Ugh!’

  ‘Well, if that’s all she does she’s welcome to haunt the place,’ said the Major prosaically.

  They trod up two worn stone steps into the flagged porch; but as Anthea grasped the rusted iron bell-pull the door was opened by a grizzled man in a frieze coat. He looked the visitors over morosely, bade Anthea a grudging good-morning, and said that he had seen her coming up the drive, and supposed that she must be wanting something.

  ‘Yes, I want to show the house to Major Darracott,’ she replied cheerfully.

  ‘If you’d have sent me word, Miss Anthea, you were coming here this day-morning I’d have had it ready to be shown,’ said Spurstow, with considerable severity. ‘The rooms are all shut up, as well you know. You’ll have to bide while I get my keys.’

  With these quelling words, he admitted them into the hall, and left them there while he went off, grumbling under his breath, to his own quarters. When he presently returned he found that the Major, having opened the shutters covering the windows at the back of the hall, was standing in rapt contemplation of the Cromwellian staircase, while Miss Darracott, holding her flounced skirt gathered in one hand, looked with a wry face at the dusty floor.

  ‘It’s not my blame, miss,’ said Spurstow, forestalling criticism. ‘You shouldn’t ought to have come without you gave me warning.’

  ‘I can see I shouldn’t!’ she retorted. ‘But I have come, and I mean to take Major Darracott over the house, even though it be knee-deep in dust, so you may as well make up your mind to it.’

  This forthright speech appeared rather to please than to exacerbate the retainer. He gave a sour smile, and, with only a passing reference to the troublesome characteristics displayed by Miss Darracott in childhood, unlocked the door leading into the dining-parlour, and opened the shutters.

  It would not have surprised Anthea if the Major’s wish to inspect the Dower House had deserted him long before their tour of the ground-floor had been completed. Dirty panes and encroaching ivy darkened the rooms; there were several patches of damp on the walls; most of the ceilings were ominously blackened above the old-fashioned fireplaces; every room smelled of must; and a final touch of melancholy was added by the furniture, which had been huddled together in the middle of each room, and covered with newspapers, old sheets, and scraps of sackcloth.

  ‘I warned you what it would be like!’ she told Hugo.

  ‘Ay, it’s in bad repair, but it could be put to rights,’ he answered.

  ‘That could be done, but it will always be a dark, gloomy house.’

  ‘Nay, if the ivy were stripped from it, and all those bushes cleared away, you’d never recognize it,’ he said. ‘The best of the rooms face to the south-east, but the sun’s shut out by trees and shrubs.’

  ‘Miss Matty, sir,’ observed Spurstow, in hostile accents, ‘wouldn’t have the sun shining in, and fading the carpets.’

  ‘Maybe she wouldn’t, but she wasn’t reared on the edge of the moors,’ returned Hugo. ‘I’m not used to be shut in: I want room to breathe, and never mind the carpets!’

  A disapproving sniff was the only answer vouchsafed to this. Spurstow then conducted the unwelcome visitors to the upper floor, and volunteered no further remark until Anthea, showing Hugo Jane Darracott’s bedchamber, asked whether her ghost had been seen there. He said repressively that he took no account of ghosts.

  ‘The Major takes no account of them either,’ said Anthea. ‘He thinks I’m telling him a Banbury story, but the house is haunted, isn’t it?’

  ‘Folks say so,’ Spurstow replied. ‘I never did, miss. I’m not one to talk, and I don’t scare easy. I’ve lived here thirty years and more, and it’s done me no harm. I don’t take any notice.’

  Anthea gave an involuntary shiver, but the Major said: ‘Any notice of what?’

  Spurstow looked at him under his brows. ‘Aught I hear,’ he said.

  ‘What do you hear?’ enquired Anthea.

  ‘Nothing, miss. It doesn’t worry me,’ he said. ‘Time was when I’d get up out of my bed, thinking there was someone got into the house, but it was all foolishness: you can search from the cellars to the attics, but you’ll see naught. Leastways, I never did. It’s only footsteps, when all’s said.’

  ‘Oh!’ said Anthea rather faintly. ‘Only footsteps!’

  ‘Now, you don’t want to listen to the silly stories folks tell, Miss Anthea!’ said Spurstow roughly. ‘The rest’s naught but the wind in the trees, or an owl, maybe. There are nights when it sounds like someone was moaning outside here pitiful, but lor’ bless you, miss, the wind can make queer noises! I don’t heed it!’

  Repressing an impulse to glance over her shoulder, Anthea moved rather closer to the Major, unexpectedly grateful for the presence of so large and solid a body. He looked down at her, and smiled reassuringly. ‘That makes another good reason for pushing the woodland back from the house,’ he remarked. ‘As for the footsteps, I’d have in the rat-catcher!’

  His eyes were on Spurstow as he spoke, but that worthy said nothing. There was nothing acquiescent in his silence, however; his expression was that of one who might, had he chose to do so, have made further and more alarming disclosures; and Anthea could only be glad that nothing more remained to be seen of the house than the cellars and the servants’ quarters. The Major obligingly disclaimed any interest in these, so they went downstairs again, followed by Spurstow, who broke his silence to inform them that whenever it rained the roof leaked in a dozen places. If they had gone up into the attics, he said, they would have seen the buckets placed there to catch the drips.

  On this depressing note they departed, Spurstow, slightly mellowed by the douceur bestowed upon him by the Major, holding open the door for them, and even going so far as to say that they would always be welcome.

  ‘If we were welcome, I’d be sorry for anyone that was unwelcome,’ remarked Hugo, as they retraced their steps to the wicket-gate. ‘Did you say he’d been the old lady’s butler?’

  ‘Yes, but he was never trained to be a butler. Aunt took him out of the stables, because none of the butlers she hired from London ever stayed with her above a month. She didn’t care about his manners, and I must own that he was amazingly faithful to her, and, I think, fond of her, in his rough way. She let him do just as he pleased, and, of course, when she took to living in one room he managed everything, and never cheated her out of a groat, what’s more. He was born and bred on the estate, and his father and grandfather before him, but even Grandpapa wouldn’t have wondered at it if he had feathered his nest at Aunt Matty’s expense. She left him an annuity, but only quite a small one, which was why, I suppose, he was willing to stay on alone in the Dower House. I wouldn’t have done so for a fortune! Didn’t he make your
blood run cold when he said it was only footsteps? Just as though that made everything right! I thought it made everything ten times eerier, didn’t you?’

  ‘Ay, he did it very well,’ agreed Hugo.

  She looked quickly up at him. ‘Did it very well? Do you mean he was trying to frighten us? It didn’t seem so to me. He made so little of it! He even said the wind was to blame for the moaning noise.’

  Hugo chuckled. ‘So he did! If you could have seen your own face, lass! Not that I think it was you he was trying to scare away. What I did think was that as soon as he suspected I’d a notion of living in the Dower House myself he did all he could to set me against it.’

  She knit her brows. ‘Yes, I suppose that’s possible,’ she said, after considering for a minute or two. ‘Unless you hired him with the house, which is not very likely, he would be obliged to leave, and I daresay– No, it can’t be that! The house was known to be haunted long before he came to it!’

  ‘If it was half as badly haunted as he’d have us believe, our great-grandmother wouldn’t have gone to live there in the first place, let alone have stayed there till she died!’ replied Hugo. ‘Nay, lass! Spurstow wants to keep people away from it. That might be because he’s afraid of being turned out: I’m not saying it isn’t, but what I suspect is that he’s got some other reason – and a havey-cavey one at that! – for scaring the people roundabout here with his talk of footsteps and pitiful moanings!’