In the dim light of the dark winter morning she could not discern whether the occupant were a man or a woman. Above the bed clothes a pair of eyes seemed to glow as a cat’s eyes glow in the dark, and to pierce through to her very brain. It was only with a terrible effort of will that she deposited the tray on the bedside table; then hastily pulling up the blinds, reckless of—indeed, reassured by—the noise she was making, she hurried from the room, not daring to cast another glance at the bed lest she should see—what?—she asked herself wildly as she stood with panting breath and flying pulse in the corridor. But her unspoken question remained unanswered.
As she descended the backstairs, a smell of coffee and frying bacon reached her nostrils; from below came the cheerful clatter of breakfast preparations. She heaved a sigh of relief as she heard the homely sounds.
After breakfast she emptied basins, made beds and dusted rooms, leaving what she in her own mind designated ‘the room’ till the last.
When she entered it her fears seemed absurd. The sun shone through the windows, the bed stood empty, but its late occupant seemed to have spent an uneasy night: the sheets were twisted into ropes, the pillows crushed so that she had to put clean covers on them. Strange, too, the water in the basin was dyed a rusty red and one of the towels was stained with blood. Even as she told herself that the guest must have cut himself shaving, a feeling of indescribable horror crept over Bella, but she put the room to rights and went about her other duties.
The next morning found her, in spite of good resolutions, shaking from top to toe as she stood outside the door and knocked with a trembling hand. As before, no voice answered; again, as she crossed the threshold, a chill seemed to penetrate to her very bones. She had decided that she would on no account look at the bed or its occupant; so, putting the tray hastily down, she crossed to the window and pulled up the blinds, but she felt that the eyes from the bed were watching her and that something worse than a wild animal was crouching to spring. She stumbled from the room in a panic, shutting the door with a bang that reverberated down the corridor. Rushing to the backstairs, she leaned half-fainting against the bannisters.
At breakfast in the servants’ hall she looked round the staff with tragic eyes, seeking someone in whom she could confide; but they were all strangers to her and her courage failed. When she went upstairs again the room door lay open, the room was empty, but as before in confusion, the basin filled with that sinisterly dyed water, the towel again blood-stained. Tremblingly she once more put it to rights.
Monday morning—thank God the house-party would break up today. This was the last time she need enter that ghastly room! She comforted herself with this thought as she knocked at ‘the door’.
Three hours later, Mrs Grieves, the housekeeper, was inspecting the empty bedrooms with Alice, the head housemaid, to see that all was left in order.
‘You needn’t inspect the haunted room,’ Alice said, sarcastically; ‘nobody slept in it. Her Ladyship gave orders nobody was to be put in it again.’
Nevertheless, Mrs Grieves conscientiously opened the door. The furniture was shrouded in linen covers, the hearthrug rolled back, the curtains of the four-poster looped up; but what was that? A figure on the bed. Mrs Grieves and Alice approached, and a cry of horror and dismay burst simultaneously from their lips. Across the bed lay the figure of a girl. One hand clutched the bed curtain, the other arm was thrown up as if to ward off something, and the crooked elbow partially concealed the face. But as they looked down they recognized in the twisted features, the staring eyes, the half-open mouth, Bella, the new housemaid. She was dead.
AN INCIDENT IN THE CITY
A. F. Kidd
A. F. Kidd is an advertising copywriter and freelance artist whose interests include astronomy and campanology. She has written several Jamesian ghost stories, most of which have been published in Ghosts and Scholars along with her own illustrations. One of these tales, ‘Old Hobby Horse’, was later reprinted by Karl Edward Wagner in his Year’s Best Horror Stories series. Her first collection of supernatural tales was published under the title Change and Decay in 1985. In ‘An Incident in the City’, which appeared in the first issue of Ghosts and Scholars, the author makes full use of the knowledge of London which she gained ten years ago while working for a law degree at London University. The small book that plays such an important role in this tale really does exist!
The bookshops which line the Charing Cross Road, with their shelves of dilapidated volumes outside (it is curious how everyone but oneself manages to transform a book into a tattered block of paper), are far from likely these days to yield anything in the nature of a ‘find’ to a bibliophile: their proprietors are far too astute to let anything go at much less than twice its actual value.
It was, therefore, with some degree of surprise that a gentleman of literary tastes—he was a University lecturer—picked up a small volume bound in green cloth from the shelves of one of these emporia, and found its price well within his means. Accordingly he paid the assistant, a pale-faced youth, the sum requested, and made his way with unaccustomed speed to Leicester Square underground station, whence a train took him to within a few minutes’ walk of his home. He gallantly forbore from examining his purchase during the journey, though he permitted himself a smile of self-satisfaction.
In his rooms, however, with hot coffee beside him and, somewhat self-indulgently, a packet of biscuits, he unwrapped the book and set to the thoroughly congenial task of browsing through this newly acquired addition to his library.
The academic—let us call him Sandford—cast aside the crumpled brown paper wrapping (on the floor, it must be admitted: he was not a man of tidy habits. From this the reader will assume correctly that he had no wife), and drew out the small volume.
It measured perhaps five or six inches by four, and its olive green binding (somewhat watermarked on the spine) bore a fanciful design of curlicues, in the centre of which was stamped in gold the Gothic legend London, What to See and How to See it. Further embellishment on the title page, beneath an engraving of a pastoral nature, evinced the information: ‘With numerous illustrations. London: H. G. Clarke & Co., 252, Strand. 1854.’
A quick flick through the pages proved the assertion concerning illustrations to be no idle boast, and Mr Sandford, taking a sip of coffee, addressed himself to the ‘Advertisement’ upon the second page.
Later, having examined with fascinated interest the ‘Brief Account of London’, the ‘Directions to the Principal Lines of Streets’ (with reference to the final chapter, ‘Omnibus Routes in the Metropolis’, where he was delighted to discover that ‘most of them have two charges—threepence for part of the distance, and sixpence for the whole distance’; and that from the ‘Atlas Omnibus’ which started from Camberwell Gate, as it crossed Westminster Bridge, there was a fine view of the ‘new Houses of Parliament’), the ‘Royal Palaces and Mansions of the Nobility’, ‘The Parks’, the ‘Legislative and Legal Establishments’ (Mr Sandford read this more carefully) and ‘The Government Offices’, he was about to commence the chapter entitled ‘Religious Edifices’ when he observed that the light was fast fading and that it might be advisable to turn on his reading lamp.