“I should rather like to hear what you would say if such an experience happened to you,” Mrs Janey challenged him; “whether you use the ancient terms of ‘ghost’, ‘witches’, ‘black magic’, and so on, or whether you speak in modern terms like ‘medium’, ‘clairvoyance’, ‘psychic contacts’, and all the rest of it; well, it seems one is in a bit of a tangle, anyhow, and if any queer thing ever happens to you—”
Dr Dilke broke in pleasantly: “Well, if it ever does I will let you all know about it, and I dare say I shall have an explanation to add at the end of the tale.”
When we all met again the next morning we rather hoped that Dr Dilke would have something to tell us – some odd experience that might have befallen him in the night, new as the house was and banal as was his bedroom. He told us, of course, that he had passed a perfectly good night.
We most of us went to the morning service in the small church that had once been the chapel belonging to the demolished mansion, and which had some rather curious monuments inside and in the churchyard. As I went in I noticed a mortuary chapel with niches for the coffins to be stood upright, now whitewashed and used as a sacristy. The monuments and mural tablets were mostly to the memory of members of the family of Verrall – the Verralls of Verrall Hall, who appeared to have been people of little interest or distinction. Dr Dilke sat beside me, and I, having nothing better to do through the more familiar and monotonous portions of the service, found myself idly looking at the mural tablet beyond him. This was a large slab of black marble deeply cut with a very worn Latin inscription which I found, unconsciously, I was spelling out. The stone, it seemed, commemorated a woman who had been, of course, the possessor of all the virtues; her name was Philadelphia Carwithen, and I rather pleasantly sampled the flavour of that ancient name – Philadelphia. Then I noticed a smaller inscription at the bottom of the slab, which indicated that the lady’s husband also rested in the vault; he had died suddenly about six months after her – of grief at her loss, no doubt, I thought, scenting out a pretty romance.
As we walked home across the frost-bitten fields and icy lanes Dr Dilke, who walked beside me, as he had sat beside me in church, began to complain of cold; he said he believed that he had caught a chill. I was rather amused to hear this old-womanish expression on the lips of a successful physician, and I told him that I had been taught in my more enlightened days that there was no such thing as “catching a chill”. To my surprise he did not laugh at this, but said:
“Oh, yes, there is, and I believe I’ve got it – I keep on shivering; I think it was that slab of black stone I was sitting next. It was as cold as ice, for I touched it, and it seemed to me exuding moisture – some of that old stone does, you know; it’s always, as it were, sweating; and I felt exactly as if I were sitting next a slab of ice from which a cold wind was blowing; it was really as if it penetrated my flesh.”
He looked pale, and I thought how disagreeable it would be for us all, and particularly for Mrs Janey, if the good man was to be taken ill in the midst of her already not too successful Christmas party. Dr Dilke seemed, too, in that ill-humour which so often presages an illness; he was quite peevish about the church and the service, and the fact that he had been asked to go there.
“These places are nothing but charnel-houses after all,” he said fretfully; “one sits there among all those rotting bones, with that damp marble at one’s side. . . .”
“It is supposed to give you ‘atmosphere’,” I said. “The atmosphere of an old-fashioned Christmas . . . Did you notice who your black stone was erected ‘to the memory of?’” I asked, and the doctor replied that he had not.
“It was to a woman – a young woman, I took it, and her husband: ‘Philadelphia Carwithen’, I noticed that, and of course there was a long eulogy of her virtues, and then underneath it just said that he had died a few months afterwards. As far as I could see it was the only example of that name in the church – all the rest were Verralls. I suppose they were strangers here.”
“What was the date?” asked the doctor, and I replied that really I had not been able to make it out, for where the Roman figures came the stone had been very worn.
The day ambled along somehow, with games, diversions, and plenty of good food and drink, and towards the evening we began to feel a little more satisfied with each other and our hostess. Only Dr Dilke remained a little peevish and apart, and this was remarkable in one who was obviously of a robust temperament and an even temper. He still continued to talk of a “chill”, and I did notice that he shuddered once or twice, and continually sat near the large fire which Mrs Janey had rather laboriously arranged in imitation of what she would call “the good old times.”
That evening, the evening of Christmas Day, there was no talk whatever of ghosts or psychic matters; our discussions were entirely topical and of mundane affairs, in which Dr Dilke, who seemed to have recovered his spirits, took his part with ability and agreeableness. When it was time to break up I asked him, half in jest, about his mysterious chill, and he looked at me with some surprise and appeared to have forgotten that he had ever said he had got such a thing; the impression, whatever it was, which he had received in the church had evidently been effaced from his mind. I wish to make that quite clear.
The next morning Dr Dilke appeared very late at the breakfast table, and when he did so his looks were matter for hints and comment; he was pale, distracted, troubled, untidy in his dress, absent in his manner, and I, at least, instantly recalled what he had said yesterday, and feared he was sickening for some illness.
On Mrs Janey putting to him some direct question as to his looks and manner, so strange and so troubled, he replied rather sharply: “Well, I don’t know what you can expect from a fellow who’s been up all night. I thought I came down here for a rest.”
We all looked at him as he dropped into his place and began to drink his coffee with eager gusto; I noticed that he continually shivered. There was something about this astounding statement and his curious appearance which held us all discreetly silent. We waited for further developments before committing ourselves; even Mrs Janey, whom I had never thought of as tactful, contrived to say casually:
“Up all night, doctor. Couldn’t you sleep then? I’m so sorry if your bed wasn’t comfortable.”
“The bed was all right,” he answered, “that made me the more sorry to leave it. Haven’t you got a local doctor who can take the local cases?” he added.
“Why, of course we have; there’s Dr Armstrong and Dr Fraser – I made sure about that before I came here.”
“Well, then,” demanded Dr Dilke angrily, “why on earth couldn’t one of them have gone last night?”
Mrs Janey looked at me helplessly, and I, obeying her glance, took up the matter.
“What do you mean, doctor? Do you mean that you were called out of your bed last night to attend a case?” I asked deliberately.
“Of course I was – I only got back with the dawn.”
Here Mrs Janey could not forbear breaking in.
“But, whoever could it have been? I know nobody about here yet, at least, only one or two people by name, and they would not be aware that you were here. And how did you get out of the house? It’s locked every night.”
Then the doctor gave his story in rather, I must confess, a confused fashion, and yet with an earnest conviction that he was speaking the simple truth. It was broken up a good deal by ejaculations and comments from the rest of us, but I give it you here shorn of all that and exactly as I put it down in my note-book afterwards: