Mark Hodder - The curious case of the Clockwork Man

“You've actually seen the ghost, Sir Alfred?” Swinburne asked.

“Three times!”

“The human mind can play very convincing tricks when in a state of high anxiety,” Doctor Jankyn offered.

“I didn't imagine it!” the baronet shouted.

There came a loud clang as one of the maids dropped a serving spoon onto the floor.

“Take care, young lady! Have some discipline!” Colonel Lushington snapped. “An accident, I should think. Never mind. Go and fetch a fresh spoon, there's a good girl.”

“Wait!” Burton interrupted. “What's your name, miss?”

The maid turned beetroot red, curtseyed, and answered: “Christina Flowers, sir.”

“Have you seen the spectre, too, Miss Flowers?”

She swallowed, licked her lips, and looked anxiously at each of the men.

“I-I-”

“You can speak freely,” Lushington advised. “I'm sorry I barked at you that way. Military training. What is it you've seen?”

The girl sniffed and said: “Beggin’ your pardon, sirs, it-it were in the ’allway leading to the kitchen. Two nights past-in the early hours of the mornin’. I couldn't sleep an’ I wanted a drink o’ water. As I came along the ‘all, I ‘eard a knock-knock-knockin’ an’ I thought Mrs. Picklethorpe must be up and about.”

“Mrs. Picklethorpe is the cook,” Lushington explained to Burton and Swinburne. “So it wasn't mice, as I thought. Although I didn't. Think, that is.”

“Aye, sir, the cook. So I goes toward the kitchen to see if anythin’ was amiss and there-there in the ‘allway-there was-was-”

The girl began to tremble violently and put her hands to her face.

“Oooh!” she moaned.

“What was it, Miss Flowers?” Burton asked gently.

She looked up. Her face had gone from red to stark white.

“It were like a mist, sir, but in the shape of a woman. She were a-knockin’ on the walls, then she turned ‘er ‘ead an’ looked straight at me.”

“You could see her eyes?”

“Yes! Oh lor’, terrible they were! Like black pebbles a-floatin’ in the cloud. She stared at me all wicked, then disappeared. Just blew away, she did, like smoke in the wind.”

“Yes!” Sir Alfred cried. “Those eyes! God in heaven, they're frightful!”

“Thank you, Miss-what-was-it?” said Lushington.

“Flowers, sir.”

“Ah yes, very pretty name. Reminds me of-um-um-um-flowers. Well, continue with your duties, please.”

The maid bobbed and ran out of the room.

Swinburne looked at Burton and raised an eyebrow.

Burton gave a slight shrug and turned to Tichborne: “And you, Sir Alfred-you saw the same?”

“Yes! I've been hearing that damnable knocking around the house for nigh on a month, always at night.”

“A month? So it started around the same time as all the clocks stopped?”

“Ah, why yes, that's right. Each time I've heard the noise, I've gone to investigate only to have it fall silent as I approached. I didn't see anything until two weeks ago. It was, I'd guess, about three in the morning, and I was unable to sleep, so I went down to the library, smoked a few cigars, and read awhile. I was in one of the high-backed armchairs facing the fireplace. If you sit there and someone enters, they can't see you, but it works the other way, too, and unknown to me, someone did enter.”

He shivered and wrapped his arms around himself, staring down at the food on his plate. He hadn't yet touched it. His companions weren't paying much attention to their supper either.

“A sudden knocking from the other side of the room made me jump out of my skin. It was the sound of knuckles on the wooden panelling of the far wall. Knock-knock. Knock-knock. Over and over, progressing across the wall. I leaned over the side of my chair, looked back, and saw the ghost.”

“The same as Miss Flowers described?”

“In every respect. She was drifting alongside the wall, with an arm raised, banging on the panels. I watched, and I don't mind admitting that I was paralysed with fear. Perhaps half a minute passed, then something-I don't know what-alerted the phantom to my presence. She suddenly swirled around and a pair of ghastly eyes, blacker than pitch, glared at me with such malevolence that I screamed in terror. The thing then vanished, just as the maid said, as if blown away by a wind.”

Sir Alfred looked up at the portrait of his ancestor.

“It was Lady Mabella,” he whispered.

“What makes you think so?”

“The eyes were hers.”

“But Mabella de Tichborne lived hundreds of years ago, man! How do you know what her eyes were like?”

Tichborne stood. “Wait,” he said. “I'm going to get something.”

He left the room.

“What do you think?” Lushington asked Burton, in a low voice.

“Were it only Sir Alfred who saw the apparition, I might consider him mentally disturbed,” Burton answered. “But we have the girl's account, too. And you yourself have heard the knocking.”

“I haven't heard a thing,” Doctor Jankyn said, “and I'm a light sleeper, what!”

“I shall sit up tonight!” Swinburne declared. “I want to see this mysterious phantom for myself!”

“We can't discount the clocks, either,” Burton added. “They provide empirical evidence that something very peculiar is happening in this house.”

“In that case, you'd better add the gunroom to your list,” said Lushington.

“What? Why?”

“All the guns have jammed. No explanation. In fact, the only shooters on the estate that work are those the groundsman keeps in his lodge.”

“That's extraordinary! Would I be right to suppose that they stopped working at the same time as the clocks?”

“Not sure, but probably, yes.”

The men gave their attention to the meal until, a few minutes later, Sir Alfred returned, holding a sheet of parchment. He sat and said: “Listen to this. It's been in the family for generations. A poem. No one knows what it signifies.”

He began to read: “Hell's bane black, lamenting ‘neath tears,

That weep within My Lady's round,

Under the weight of cursed years,

By her damned charity bound. “One curse here enfolds another,

Vexations in the poor enables,

Consume if thou wouldst uncover

Eye blacker than Lady Mabella's.”

“My Aunt Agatha's blue feather hat!” Swinburne screeched. “But that's awful! Hideous doggerel! Who wrote it? A simpleton?”

Sir Alfred Tichborne cleared his throat and said: “According to family legend, it was written by Roger de Tichborne himself. It was passed to my father by my grandfather, just as it had been passed to him by his.” He handed the parchment to Burton. “As you can see, it clearly suggests that the Lady Mabella had notably black eyes.”

Burton looked at the paper, nodded, and said: “Could I borrow this? I'd like to examine it more closely.”

“Be my guest.”

“I say, Richard!” Swinburne said, excitedly. “That seems rather-”

He stopped, brought up short by a fierce glance from his friend.

Burton turned back to Tichborne. “Your second and third sightings of the ghost-what happened?”

“The second was three nights later. I was woken in the night by the knocking, which was coming from the upper landing at the top of the stairs. I left my bed and went to investigate. Lady Mabella was there, moving-floating, really-from the top of the staircase toward the bottom, rapping on the wall as she went. The instant I saw her, she turned, cut me through with those dreadful eyes, and vanished.

“Two nights ago, I saw her again. This time it was in the corridor that leads from the main drawing room to the billiard room. I'd come down to fetch my cigars. It was about half-past two in the morning.”