A Caribbean Mystery by Agatha Christie
She spoke to a thin, bent old man with stooping shoulders and a delicate mystical face. Mr Winburn did not resemble his daughter; indeed no greater contrast could be imagined than that presented by her resolute practicalness and his dreamy abstraction.
‘Yes,’ he answered with a smile, ‘no one would dream the house was haunted.’
‘Papa, don’t talk nonsense! On our first day too.’
Mr Winburn smiled.
‘Very well, my dear, we will agree that there are no such things as ghosts.’
‘And please,’ continued Mrs Lancaster, ‘don’t say a word before Geoff. He’s so imaginative.’
Geoff was Mrs Lancaster’s little boy. The family consisted of Mr Winburn, his widowed daughter, and Geoffrey.
Rain had begun to beat against the window – pitter-patter, pitter-patter.
‘Listen,’ said Mr Winburn. ‘Is it not like little footsteps?’
‘It is more like rain,’ said Mrs Lancaster, with a smile. ‘But that, that is a footstep,’ cried her father, bending forward to listen. Mrs Lancaster laughed outright.
Mr Winburn was obliged to laugh too. They were having tea in the hall, and he had been sitting with his back to the staircase. He now turned his chair round to face it.
Little Geoffrey was coming down, rather slowly and sedately, with a child’s awe of a strange place. The stairs were of polished oak, uncarpeted. He came across and stood by his mother. Mr Winburn gave a slight start. As the child was crossing the floor, he distincty heard another pair of footsteps on the stairs, as of someone following Geoffrey. Dragging footsteps, curiously painful they were. Then he shrugged his shoulders incredulously. ‘The rain, no doubt,’ he thought.
‘I’m looking at the spongecakes,’ remarked Geoff with the admirably detached air of one who points out an interesting fact.
His mother hastened to comply with the hint. ‘Well, Sonny, how do you like your new home?’ she asked. ‘Lots,’ replied Geoffrey with his mouth generously filled. ‘Pounds and pounds and pounds.’ After this last assertion, which was evidently expressive of the deepest contentment, he relapsed into silence, only anxious to remove the spongecake from the sight of man in the least time possible.
Having bolted the last mouthful, he burst forth into speech. ‘Oh! Mummy, there’s attics here, Jane says; and can I go at once and eggzplore them? And there might be a secret door, Jane says there isn’t, but I think there must be, and, anyhow, I know there’ll be pipes, water pipes (with a face full of ecstasy) and can I play with them, and, oh! can I go and see the Boi-i-ler?’ He spun out the last word with such evident rapture that his grandfather felt ashamed to reflect that this peerless delight of childhood only conjured up to his imagination the picture of hot water that wasn’t hot, and heavy and numerous plumber’s bills.
‘We’ll see about the attics tomorrow, darling,’ said Mrs Lancaster. ‘Suppose you fetch your bricks and build a nice house, or an engine.’
‘Don’t want to build an ’ouse.’
‘House.’
‘House, or h’engine h’either.’
‘Build a boiler,’ suggested his grandfather.
Geoffrey brightened. ‘With pipes?’
‘Yes, lots of pipes.’
Geoffrey ran away happily to fetch his bricks.
The rain was still falling. Mr Winburn listened. Yes, it must have been the rain he had heard; but it did sound like footsteps.
He had a queer dream that night.
He dreamt that he was walking through a town, a great city it seemed to him. But it was a children’s city; there were no grown-up people there, nothing but children, crowds of them. In his dream they all rushed to the stranger crying: ‘Have you brought him?’ It seemed that he understood what they meant and shook his head sadly. When they saw this, the children turned away and began to cry, sobbing bitterly.
The city and the children faded away and he awoke to find himself in bed, but the sobbing was still in his ears. Though wide awake, he heard it distinctly; and he remembered that Geoffrey slept on the floor below, while this sound of a child’s sorrow descended from above. He sat up and struck a match. Instantly the sobbing ceased.
Mr Winburn did not tell his daughter of the dream or its sequel. That it was no trick of his imagination, he was convinced; indeed soon afterwards he heard it again in the day time. The wind was howling in the chimney but this was a separate sound – distinct, unmistakable; pitiful little heartbroken sobs.
He found out too, that he was not the only one to hear them. He overheard the housemaid saying to the parlour maid that she ‘didn’t think as that there nurse was kind to Master Geoffrey, she’d ’eard ’im crying ’is little ’eart out only that morning.’ Geoffrey had come down to breakfast and lunch beaming with health and happiness; and Mr Winburn knew that it was not Geoff who had been crying, but that other child whose dragging footsteps had startled him more than once.
Mrs Lancaster alone never heard anything. Her ears were not perhaps attuned to catch sounds from another world.
Yet one day she also received a shock. ‘Mummy,’ said Geoff plaintively. ‘I wish you’d let me play with that little boy.’
Mrs Lancaster looked up from her writing-table with a smile. ‘What little boy, dear?’
‘I don’t know his name. He was in a attic, sitting on the floor crying, but he ran away when he saw me. I suppose he was shy (with slight contempt), not like a big boy, and then, when I was in the nursery building, I saw him standing in the door watching me build, and he looked so awful lonely and as though he wanted to play wiv me. I said: “Come and build a h’engine,” but he didn’t say nothing, just looked as – as though he saw a lot of chocolates, and his Mummy had told him not to touch them.’ Geoff sighed, sad personal reminiscences evidently recurring to him. ‘But when I asked Jane who he was and told her I wanted to play wiv him, she said there wasn’t no little boy in the ’ouse and not to tell naughty stories. I don’t love Jane at all.’
Mrs Lancaster got up. ‘Jane was right. There was no little boy.’
‘But I saw him. Oh! Mummy, do let me play wiv him, he did look so awful lonely and unhappy. I do want to do something to “make him better”.’
Mrs Lancaster was about to speak again, but her father shook his head.
‘Geoff,’ he said very gently, ‘that poor little boy is lonely, and perhaps you may do something to comfort him; but you must find out how by yourself – like a puzzle – do you see?’
‘Is it because I am getting big I must do it all my lone?’
‘Yes, because you are getting big.’
As the boy left the room, Mrs Lancaster turned to her father impatiently.
‘Papa, this is absurd. To encourage the boy to believe the servants’ idle tales!’
‘No servant has told the child anything,’ said the old man gently. ‘He’s seen – what I hear, what I could see perhaps if I were his age.’
‘But it’s such nonsense! Why don’t I see it or hear it?’
Mr Winburn smiled, a curiously tired smile, but did not reply. ‘Why?’ repeated his daughter. ‘And why did you tell him he could help the – the – thing. It’s – it’s all so impossible.’
The old man looked at her with his thoughtful glance. ‘Why not?’ he said. ‘Do you remember these words:
“What Lamp has Destiny to guide
Her little Children stumbling in the Dark?
‘A Blind Understanding,’ Heaven replied.”
‘Geoffrey has that – a blind understanding. All children possess it. It is only as we grow older that we lose it, that we cast it away from us. Sometimes, when we are quite old, a faint gleam comes back to us, but the Lamp burns brightest in childhood. That is why I think Geoffrey may help.’
‘I don’t understand,’ murmured Mrs Lancaster feebly. ‘No more do I. That – that child is in trouble and wants – to be set free. But how? I do not know, but – it’s awful to think of it – sobbing its heart out – a child.’
‘There has been serious lung trouble for a long time.’
It was when nursing Geoff that Mrs Lancaster became aware of that – other child. At first the sobs were an indistinguishable part of the wind, but gradually they became more distinct, more unmistakable. Finally she heard them in moments of dead calm: a child’s sobs – dull, hopeless, heartbroken.
Geoff grew steadily worse and in his delirium he spoke of the ‘little boy’ again and again. ‘I do want to help him get away, I do!’ he cried.
Succeeding the delirium there came a state of lethargy. Geoffrey lay very still, hardly breathing, sunk in oblivion. There was nothing to do but wait and watch. Then there came a still night, clear and calm, without one breath of wind.
Suddenly the child stirred. His eyes opened. He looked past his mother toward the open door. He tried to speak and she bent down to catch the half breathed words.
‘All right, I’m comin’,’ he whispered; then he sank back.
The mother felt suddenly terrified, she crossed the room to her father. Somewhere near them the other child was laughing. Joyful, contented, triumphant and silvery laughter echoed through the room.
‘I’m frightened; I’m frightened,’ she moaned.
He put his arm round her protectingly. A sudden gust of wind made them both start, but it passed swiftly and left the air quiet as before.
The laughter had ceased and there crept to them a faint sound, so faint as hardly to be heard, but growing louder till they could distinguish it. Footsteps – light footsteps, swiftly departing.
Pitter-patter, pitter-patter, they ran – those well-known halting little feet. Yet – surely – now other footsteps suddenly mingled with them, moving with a quicker and a lighter tread.
With one accord they hastened to the door.
Down, down, down, past the door, close to them, pitter-patter, pitter-patter, went the unseen feet of the little children together.
Mrs Lancaster looked up wildly. ‘There are two of them – two!’
Grey with sudden fear, she turned towards the cot in the corner, but her father restrained her gently, and pointed away.
‘There,’ he said simply.
Pitter-patter, pitter-patter – fainter and fainter. And then – silence.
Chapter 45
The Strange Case of Sir Arthur Carmichael
‘The Strange Case of Sir Arthur Carmichael’ was first published in the hardback The Hound of Death and Other Stories (Odhams Press, 1933). No previous appearances have been found.
(Taken from the notes of the late Dr Edward Carstairs, M.D. the eminent psychologist.)
I am perfectly aware that there are two distinct ways of looking at the strange and tragic events which I have set down here. My own opinion has never wavered. I have been persuaded to write the story out in full, and indeed I believe it to be due to science that such strange and inexplicable facts should not be buried in oblivion.
It was a wire from my friend, Dr Settle, that first introduced me to the matter. Beyond mentioning the name Carmichael, the wire was not explicit, but in obedience to it I took the 12.20 train from Paddington to Wolden, in Hertfordshire.
The name of Carmichael was not unfamiliar to me. I had been slightly acquainted with the late Sir William Carmichael of Wolden, though I had seen nothing of him for the last eleven years. He had, I knew, one son, the present baronet, who must now be a young man of about twenty-three. I remembered vaguely having heard some rumours about Sir William’s second marriage, but could recall nothing definite unless it were a vague impression detrimental to the second Lady Carmichael.
Settle met me at the station. ‘Good of you to come,’ he said as he wrung my hand. ‘Not at all. I understand this is something in my line?’
‘Very much so.’
‘A mental case, then?’ I hazarded. ‘Possessing some unusual features?’
We had collected my luggage by this time and were seated in a dogcart driving away from the station in the direction of Wolden, which lay about three miles away. Settle did not answer for a minute or two. Then he burst out suddenly.
‘The whole thing’s incomprehensible! Here is a young man, twenty-three years of age, thoroughly normal in every respect. A pleasant amiable boy, with no more than his fair share of conceit, not brilliant intellectually perhaps, but an excellent type of the ordinary upperclass young Englishman. Goes to bed in his usual health one evening, and is found the next morning wandering about the village in a semi-idiotic condition, incapable of recognizing his nearest and dearest.’
‘Ah!’ I said, stimulated. This case promised to be interesting. ‘Complete loss of memory? And this occurred –?’
‘Yesterday morning. The 9th of August.’
‘And there has been nothing – no shock that you know of – to account for this state?’
‘Nothing.’
I had a sudden suspicion. ‘Are you keeping anything back?’
‘N – no.’
His hesitation confirmed my suspicion. ‘I must know everything.’
‘It’s nothing to do with Arthur. It’s to do with – with the house.’
‘With the house,’ I repeated, astonished. ‘You’ve had a great deal to do with that sort of thing, haven’t you, Carstairs? You’ve “tested” so-called haunted houses. What’s your opinion of the whole thing?’
‘In nine cases out of ten, fraud,’ I replied. ‘But the tenth – well, I have come across phenomena that are absolutely unexplainable from the ordinary materialistic standpoint. I am a believer in the occult.’
Settle nodded. We were just turning in at the Park gates. He pointed with his whip at a low-lying white mansion on the side of a hill.
‘That’s the house,’ he said. ‘And – there’s something in that house, something uncanny – horrible. We all feel it . . . And I’m not a superstitious man . . .’
‘What form does it take?’ I asked.
He looked straight in front of him. ‘I’d rather you knew nothing. You see, if you – coming here unbiased – knowing nothing about it – see it too – well –’
‘Yes,’ I said, ‘it’s better so. But I should be glad if you will tell me a little more about the family.’
‘Sir William,’ said Settle, ‘was twice married. Arthur is the child of his first wife. Nine years ago he married again, and the present Lady Carmichael is something of a mystery. She is only half English, and, I suspect, has Asiatic blood in her veins.’
He paused. ‘Settle,’ I said, ‘you don’t like Lady Carmichael.’
He admitted it frankly. ‘No, I don’t. There has always seemed to be something sinister about her. Well, to continue, by his second wife Sir William had another child, also a boy, who is now eight years old. Sir William died three years ago, and Arthur came into the title and place. His stepmother and half brother continued to live with him at Wolden. The estate, I must tell you, is very much impoverished. Nearly the whole of Sir Arthur’s income goes to keeping it up. A few hundreds a year was all Sir William could leave his wife, but fortunately Arthur has always got on splendidly with his stepmother, and has been only too delighted to have her live with him. Now –’
‘Yes?’
‘Two months ago Arthur became engaged to a charming girl, a Miss Phyllis Patterson.’ He added, lowering his voice with a touch of emotion: ‘They were to have been married next month. She is staying here now. You can imagine her distress –’
I bowed my head silently.
We were driving up close to the house now. On our right the green lawn sloped gently away. And suddenly I saw a most charming picture. A young girl was coming slowly across the lawn to the house. She wore no hat, and the sunlight
I looked at Settle interrogatively. ‘That is Miss Patterson,’ he said. ‘Poor girl,’ I said, ‘poor girl. What a picture she makes with the roses and her grey cat.’
I heard a faint sound and looked quickly round at my friend. The reins had slipped out of his fingers, and his face was quite white.
‘What’s the matter?’ I exclaimed.
He recovered himself with an effort.
In a few moments more we had arrived, and I was following him into the green drawing-room, where tea was laid out.
A middle-aged but still beautiful woman rose as we entered and came forward with an outstretched hand.
‘This is my friend, Dr Carstairs, Lady Carmichael.’
I cannot explain the instinctive wave of repulsion that swept over me as I took the proffered hand of this charming and stately woman who moved with the dark and languorous grace that recalled Settle’s surmise of Oriental blood.
‘It is very good of you to come, Dr Carstairs,’ she said in a low musical voice, ‘and to try and help us in our great trouble.’
I made some trivial reply and she handed me my tea.
In a few minutes the girl I had seen on the lawn outside entered the room. The cat was no longer with her, but she still carried the basket of roses in her hand. Settle introduced me and she came forward impulsively.
‘Oh! Dr Carstairs, Dr Settle has told us so much about you. I have a feeling that you will be able to do something for poor Arthur.’
Miss Patterson was certainly a very lovely girl, though her cheeks were pale, and her frank eyes were outlined with dark circles.
‘My dear young lady,’ I said reassuringly, ‘indeed you must not despair. These cases of lost memory, or secondary personality, are often of very short duration. At any minute the patient may return to his full powers.’
She shook her head. ‘I can’t believe in this being a second personality,’ she said. ‘This isn’t Arthur at all. It is no personality of his. It isn’t him. I –’