Walter Satterthwait - Escapade

Maplewhite actually is haunted, Evy; there is at least one ghost in residence. Isn’t that wonderful?

It was at dinner that I first learned of the ghost. We were all of us sitting round the table, Lady Purleigh at one end and Lord Robert at the other. It was the Allardyce who brought up the subject, between the turbot and the brandied chicken. ‘Now, Alice,’ she said, and even a blind man could have perceived how very much she relished this familiarity with the lady of the manor: the pleasure in her voice was so thick it had clotted, like Devon cream. ‘You really must tell us all about this ghost of yours. Rebecca de Winter mentioned a few things, but she was very vague about the details.’

Lady Purleigh smiled. She has a lovely smile. She is, as I said, a lovely woman. (She was wearing a dress of black silk crepe de chine, cut on the bias; there are desperate women, I expect, who would kill to obtain this dress.) ‘But I’ve never really seen it,’ she said. ‘I’ve heard it, of course.’

‘What does he say?’ asked the Allardyce.

‘He doesn’t say anything, actually. He only moans and groans. And only sometimes, late at night.’ She seemed very nearly apologetic. That she is in any way related to the Allardyce will forever remain one of life’s great mysteries. ‘He’s not an awfully interesting ghost, I’m afraid.’

‘But that’s only one of them, Mother.’

This came from the Honourable Cecily, the daughter. The paragon. (Who was wearing a lovely sleeveless little thing in grey silk, scooped at the neck to flaunt her aristocratic throat.)

‘There are more? ’ said the Allardyce, turning to her.

‘There are three of them,’ said the Honourable Cecily in that plummy voice of hers. ‘There’s Lord Reggie and there are the other two. One’s a woman and the other is a young boy.’

‘Cecily’s been listening to MacGregor again.’ This was from Lord Robert, who was smiling at his daughter with a kind of impatient fondness. She sat to his right.

‘And who is MacGregor?’ asked the Allardyce.

‘The gamekeeper,’ said Lord Robert. ‘Soundest chap you could ever find at minding deer. But a trifle over-imaginative. A Scot,’ he added, as though this explained everything.

‘But he’s seen them, Daddy,’ said the Honourable Cecily. ‘At the pond, down by the old mill. Beneath the willow tree. A woman in a long white dress, holding the hand of a young boy.

MacGregor says the boy is ten or twelve years old. The two of them stand there, MacGregor says, staring out over the water. Whenever you approach them, they simply vanish.’

‘Rubbish,’ said Lord Robert. He turned to the Allardyce. ‘Before MacGregor, no one ever said a word about ghosts down by the pond. Only ghost story here at Maplewhite was the story of the ghost in the East Wing. Been there for centuries, so the story goes. Supposed to be an ancestor. Reginald Fitzwilliam, the third Earl. Exploitive old swine. Worst relic of the feudal system. Got half the girls in the district in the family way. One of the tenants killed him in the end. Enraged father. Jumped out of a tree while Reggie was out riding, landed on Reggie’s neck and snapped it. Snapped his own ankle, as well. He was hanged, of course, poor devil.’

‘When was this?’ asked Mrs Corneille.

‘It must have been in the autumn,’ said Sir David Merridale, ‘if the tenants were falling from the trees.’

Sir David fancies himself a wit. He is clever, in a jaded way, and also handsome, in a jaded way; but neither so witty nor so handsome as he believes. I confess that I dislike him. Whenever he says something mildly clever, he glances at me significantly, as though he expected me to hurl myself, simpering, at his aristocratic feet.

But even more irritating are his un-significant glances. Have you noticed the way that certain men, when they believe themselves unobserved, observe women? They examine them as though the women were offerings, and as though they, the men, were coolly trying to decide whether to accept or reject them. Sir David is one of those.

Lord Robert answered her, ‘In 1670. Under the Stuarts.

Charles the Second.’

Cecily said to her father, ‘But I thought you didn’t believe in ghosts, Daddy.’ Listening closely, one might possibly have imagined that one detected a faint feline purr in Cecily’s aristocratic voice.

‘I don’t,’ he said gruffly. ‘A lot of bourgeois rubbish, ghosts. But it’s the ghost in the East Wing I don’t believe in. That's the ghost people have been talking about for ages.’

‘Has anyone ever seen him?’ said Mrs Corneille. She’s a widow, stunning and slender and almost unbearably chic.

Lady Alice smiled at her. ‘He’s quite harmless, Vanessa.’

‘He wasn’t always, though,’ said Sir David. ‘According to the stories, no virgin was safe anywhere in the East Wing.’ He glanced at me and faintly smiled.

‘Rubbish,’ said Lord Purleigh. ‘Bourgeois fairy tales.’

Talk of ghosts dwindled along with the chicken, but it was picked up later, and once again by the Allardyce. We were all sitting in the drawing room, where every wall is hung with the most beautiful and probably priceless Belgian tapestries, each depicting scenes from the Rape of the Sabine Women. (You do remember the Sabine Women? That afternoon in the garden of Mrs. Applewhite’s Academy for Young Ladies? I seem to recall a rather forceful performance, by yourself, as a Roman.)

Another guest had arrived after dinner: a Dr Erich Auerbach, an Austrian psychologist. (Not a very interesting man, I think; and short; several inches shorter than I.) He was sitting at the other end of the vast room with the Merridales and Mrs Corneille. When Lord Robert-out of sheer kindness, I suspect-sat down with the Allardyce and me, she said to him, ‘Do tell us, Robert. This dreadful ghost of yours. What does he look like?’

‘Never saw him, Marjorie. Told you, I don’t credit all that nonsense.’

‘Rebecca said that he’s in his seventies. And that he has this terrible long white hair and a long white beard. He holds his head at a peculiar sort of angle.’

‘Rubbish.’ Here he turned to me and smiled. ‘Not to worry, Miss Turner. Hundreds of women have stayed in the East Wing, thousands of’em. And a fair share of virgins among ’em, I dare say. And not a one of ’em’s been bothered by a ghost.’

We were interrupted then by one of the footmen, who was escorting the two newest arrivals, one of whom was the famous American magician, Harry Houdini. He’s much shorter than I should have imagined, but very exotic looking and very energetic. And talented, as well: he ‘found’ a five-pound note in the Allardyce’s teapot (a lovely piece of rococo silver, flower-chased, that one of the footmen provided for her when she explained that she simply couldn’t drink coffee). Mr Houdini made her a present of the banknote, which thrilled her, needless to say. She would have been thrilled by a ha’penny, but of course he wasn’t to know that.

The other arrival was Mr Houdini’s secretary, a tall, swarthy American named Beaumont who seems to spend most of his time smirking. Obviously, and for no reason that I can determine, he is extremely taken with himself. Like Sir David, but without even his feeble wit.

Enough. I really ought to try to sleep, Evy. There is, in any event, scarcely anything else of note to recount.

So I shall tiptoe past the snorting form of the Allardyce and post this in the hallway, and then tiptoe back to my comfy nest. And perhaps during the dark hours I shall be visited by a ghost!

All my love,

Jane

I knocked.

“Who is it?” The Great Man’s voice, sounding flimsy through the thick oak door.