Voodoo Tales: The Ghost Stories of Henry S Whitehead (Tales of Mystery & The Supernatural) (11 page)

‘At first it was only boots and shoes. Then other things began to go. The things always disappeared at night. Nothing ever disappeared before midnight, because I’ve sat up and watched many’s the time. Yes, we tried everything: watching, even tying up leather things, traps! Yes, sir – steel traps, baited with a boot! Twice we did that. Both times the boot was gone in the morning, the trap not even sprung. No, sir – no one possibly among the servants. Yet, an “inside” job; it couldn’t have been otherwise. From all over the house, yes. My old riding-boots – two pairs – gone completely; not a trace; right out of my room. That was when I was down in Kent as Mr Snow’s told you, gentlemen. The man who took my place slept in my room, left the door open one night – boots gone in the morning, right under his nose.

‘Seen anything? Well, sir, in a manner, yes – in a manner, no! To be precise, no. I can’t say that I ever saw anything, that is, anybody; no, nor any apparatus as you might say, in a manner of speaking – no hooks no strings, nothing used to take hold of the things – but – ’ Here Billings hesitated, glanced at his employer, looked down at his feet, and his coppery face turned a shade redder.

‘Gentlemen,’ said he, as though coming to a resolution, ‘I can only tell you the God’s truth about it. You may think me barmy – shouldn’t blame you if you did! But – I’m as much interested in this ’ere thing as Mr Snow ’imself, barrin’ that I ’aven’t had to pay the score – make up the value of the things, I mean, as ’e ’as. I’ll tell you – so ’elp me Gawd, gentlemen, it’s a fact – I ’
ave
seen something, absurd as it’ll seem to you. I’ve seen – ’

Billings hesitated once more, dropped his eyes, looked distressed, glanced at all of us in the most shamefaced, deprecating manner imaginable, twiddled his hands together, looked, in short, as though he were about to own up to it that he was, after all, responsible for the mysterious disappearances; then finally said: ‘I’ve seen things disappear – through the air! Now – it’s hout! But it’s a fact, gentlemen all – so ’elp me, it’s the truth. Through the air, just as if someone were carrying them away – someone invisible I mean, in a manner of speaking – bloomin’ pair of boots, swingin’ along through the bloomin’ air – enough to make a man say ’is prayers, for a fact!’

It took considerable assuring on the part of Carruth and myself to convince the man Billings that neither of us regarded him as demented, or, as he pithily expressed it, ‘barmy’. We assured him, while our host sat looking at his servant with a slightly puzzled frown, that, on the contrary, we believed him implicitly, and furthermore that we regarded his statement as distinctly helpful. Mr Snow, obviously convinced that something in his diminutive servitor’s mental works was unhinged, almost demurred to our request that we go, forthwith, and examine the place in the hotel where Billings alleged his marvel to have occurred.

We were conducted up two flights of winding steps to the story which had, in the inn’s older days, plainly been an attic. There, Billings indicated, was the scene of the disappearance of the ‘bloomin’ boot, swingin’ along – unaccompanied – through the bloomin’ air’.

It was a sunny corridor, lighted by the spring sunlight through several quaint, old-fashioned, mullioned windows. Billings showed us where he had sat, on a stool in the corridor, watching; indicated the location of the boots, outside a doorway of one of the less expensive guest-rooms; traced for us the route taken by the disappearing boots.

This route led us around a corner of the corridor, a corner which, the honest ‘boots’ assured us, he had been ‘too frightened’ to negotiate on the dark night of the alleged marvel.

But we went around it, and there, in a small, right-angled hallway, it became at once apparent to us that the boots on that occasion must have gone through one of two doorways, opposite each other at either side, or else vanished into thin air.

Mr Snow, in answer to our remarks on this subject, threw open the door at the right. It led into a small, but sunny and very comfortable-looking bed-chamber, shining with honest cleanliness and decorated tastefully with chintz curtains with valances, and containing several articles of pleasant, antique furniture. This room, as the repository of air-traveling boots, seemed unpromising. We looked in in silence.

‘And what is on the other side of this short corridor?’ I enquired.

‘The “shut room”, ’ replied Mr William Snow.

Carruth and I looked at each other.

‘Explain, please,’ said Carruth.

‘It is merely a room which has been kept shut, except for an occasional cleaning,’ replied our host, readily, ‘for more than a century. There was, as a matter of fact, a murder committed in it in the year 1818, and it was, thereafter, disused. When I purchased the inn, I kept it shut, partly, I dare say, for sentimental reasons; partly, perhaps, because it seemed to me a kind of asset for an ancient hostelry. It has been known as “the shut room” for more than a hundred years. There was, otherwise, no reason why I should not have put the room in use. I am not in the least superstitious.’

‘When was the room last opened?’ I enquired.

‘It was cleaned about ten days ago, I believe,’ answered Mr Snow.

‘May we examine it?’ asked Carruth.

‘Certainly,’ agreed Snow, and forthwith sent Billings after the key.

‘And may we hear the story – if you know the details – of the murder to which you referred?’ Carruth asked.

‘Certainly,’ said Snow, again. ‘But it is a long and rather complicated story. Perhaps it would do better during dinner.’

In this decision we acquiesced, and, Billings returning with the key, Snow unlocked the door and we looked into ‘the shut room’. It was quite empty, and the blinds were drawn down over the two windows. Carruth raised these, letting in a flood of sunlight. The room was utterly characterless to all appearance, but – I confess to a certain ‘sensitivity’ in such matters – I ‘felt’ something like a faint, ominous chill. It was not, as the word I have used suggests, anything like physical cold. It was, so to express it, mentally cold. I despair of expressing what I mean more clearly. We looked over the entire room, an easy task as there was absolutely nothing to attract the eye. Both windows were in the wall at our right hand as we entered, and, save for the entrance door through which we had just come, the other three walls were quite blank.

Carruth stepped half-way out through the doorway and looked at the width of the wall in which the door was set. It was, perhaps, ten inches thick. He came back into the room, measured with his glance the distance from window-wall to the blank wall opposite the windows, again stepped outside, into the passageway this time, and along it until he came to the place where the short passage turned into the longer corridor from which we had entered it. He turned to his right this time, I following him curiously, that is, in the direction opposite that from which we had walked along the corridor, and tapped lightly on the wall there.

‘About the same thickness, what?’ he enquired of Snow.

‘I believe so,’ came the answer. ‘We can easily measure it.’

‘No, it will not be necessary, I think. We know that it is approximately the same.’ Carruth ceased speaking and we followed him back into the room once more. He walked straight across it, rapped on the wall opposite the doorway.

‘And how thick is this wall?’ he enquired.

‘It is impossible to say,’ replied Snow, looking slightly mystified. ‘You see, there are no rooms on that side, only the outer wall, and no window through which we could easily estimate the thickness. I suppose it is the same as the others, about ten inches I’d imagine.’

Carruth nodded, and led the way out into the hallway once more. Snow looked enquiringly at Carruth, then at me.

‘It may as well be locked again,’ offered Carruth, ‘but – I’d be grateful if you’d allow me to keep the key until tomorrow.’

Snow handed him the key without comment, but a slight look of puzzlement was on his face as he did so. Carruth offered no comment, and I thought it wise to defer the question which was on my lips until later when we were alone. We started down the long corridor toward the staircase, Billings touching his forehead and stepping on ahead of us and disappearing rapidly down the stairs, doubtless to his interrupted duties in the scullery.

‘It is time to think of which rooms you would prefer,’ suggested our pleasant-voiced host as we neared the stairs. ‘Suppose I show you some which are not occupied, and you may, of course, choose what suit you best.’

‘On this floor, if you please,’ said Carruth, positively.

‘As you wish, of course,’ agreed Snow, ‘but, the better rooms are on the floor below. Would you not, perhaps, prefer – ’

‘Thank you no,’ answered Carruth. ‘We shall prefer to be up here if we may, and – if convenient – a large room with two beds.’

‘That can be managed very easily,’ agreed Snow. He stepped back a few paces along the corridor, and opened a door. A handsome, large room, very comfortably and well furnished, came to our view. Its excellence spoke well for the management of The Coach and Horses. The ‘better’ rooms must indeed be palatial if this were a fair sample of those somewhat less desirable.

‘This will answer admirably,’ said Carruth, directing an eyebrow at me. I nodded hastily. I was eager to acquiesce in anything he might have in mind.

‘Then we shall call it settled,’ remarked Snow. ‘I shall have your things brought up at once. Perhaps you would like to remain here now?’

‘Thank you,’ said Carruth. ‘What time do we dine?’

‘At seven, if you please, or later if you prefer. I am having a private room for the three of us.’

‘That will answer splendidly,’ agreed Carruth, and I added a word of agreement. Mr Snow hurried off to attend to the sending up of our small luggage, and Carruth drew me at once into the room.

‘I am a little more than anxious,’ he began, ‘to hear that tale of the murder. It is an extraordinary step forward – do you not agree with me? – that Billings’s account of the disappearing boots – “through the air” – should fit so neatly and unexpectedly into their going around that corner of the corridor where “the shut room” is. It sets us forward, I imagine. What is your impression, Mr Canevin?’

‘I agree with you heartily,’ said I. ‘The only point on which I am not clear is the matter of the thickness of the walls. Is there anything in that?’

‘If you will allow me, I’ll defer that explanation until we have had the account of the murder at dinner,’ said Carruth, and, our things arriving at that moment, we set about preparing for dinner.

Dinner, in a small and beautifully furnished private room, did more, if anything more were needed, to convince me that Mr William Snow’s reputation as a successful modern innkeeper had been well earned. It was a thoroughly delightful meal in all respects, but that, in a general way, is really all that I remember about it because my attention was wholly occupied in taking in every detail of the strange story which our host unfolded to us beginning with the fish course – I think it was a fried sole – and which ended only when we were sipping the best coffee I had tasted since my arrival in England from our United States.

‘In the year 1818,’ said Mr Snow, ‘near the end of the long reign of King George III – the king, you will remember, Mr Canevin, who gave you Americans your Fourth of July – this house was kept by one James Titmarsh. Titmarsh was a very old man. It was his boast that he had taken over the landlordship in the year that His Most Gracious Majesty, George III, had come to the throne, and that he would last as long as the king reigned! That was in the year 1760, and George III had been reigning for fifty-eight years. Old Titmarsh, you see, must have been somewhere in the neighborhood of eighty, himself.

‘Titmarsh was something of a “character”. For some years the actual management of the inn had devolved upon his nephew, Oliver Titmarsh, who was middle-aged, and none too respectable, though, apparently, an able taverner. Old Titmarsh if tradition is to be believed, had many a row with his deputy, but, being himself childless, he was more or less dependent upon Oliver, who consorted with low company for choice, and did not bear the best of reputations in the community. Old Titmarsh’s chief bugbear, in connection with Oliver, was the latter’s friendship with Simon Forrester. Forrester lacked only a bard to be immortal. But – there was no Cowper to his John Gilpin, so to speak. No writer of the period, nor indeed since, has chosen to set forth Forrester’s exploits. Nevertheless, these were highly notable. Forrester was the very king-pin of the highwaymen, operating with extraordinary success and daring along the much-traveled Brighton Road.

‘Probably Old Titmarsh was philosopher enough to ignore his nephew’s associations and acts so long as he attended to the business of the inn. The difficulty, in connection with Forrester, was that Forrester, an extraordinarily bold fellow, whose long immunity from the gallows had caused him to believe himself possessed of a kind of charmed life, constantly resorted to The Coach and Horses, which, partly because of its convenient location, and partly because of its good cheer, he made his house-of-call.

‘During the evening of the first of June, in the year 1818, a Royal Courier paused at The Coach and Horses for some refreshment and a fresh mount. This gentleman carried one of the old king’s peremptory messages to the Prince of Wales, then sojourning at Brighton, and who, under his sobriquet of “First Gentleman of Europe”, was addicted to a life which sadly irked his royal parent at Whitehall. It was an open secret that only Prince George’s importance to the realm as heir apparent to the throne prevented some very drastic action being taken against him for his innumerable follies and extravagances, on the part of king and parliament. This you will recall, was two years before the old king died and “The First Gentleman” came to the throne as George IV.