The Dower House Mystery Read online

  “He wouldn’t know me,” she said. “I met him years and years ago when I was a girl and he had just stopped being an undergraduate. I believe I thought him a most dreadful bore—superior, you know, and rather by way of thinking that a girl of eighteen was a sort of savage. He certainly wouldn’t remember me.”

  Mr. Berry had no time to make the gallant reply which the occasion demanded. Amabel leant forward, and went on speaking with an eagerness which riveted his attention:

  “I’m not interested in George Forsham; but I’m quite terribly interested in his house. I couldn’t help eavesdropping, Mr. Berry,—I really couldn’t. He pulled the door right open, you know, and then stood there, saying the most exciting things in the most dreadfully dull way, and—oh, please, Mr. Berry, do tell me all about it.”

  “My dear Mrs. Grey, you shock me!” said Mr. Berry with mock severity. “You shock me extremely. What a proposition! A client’s confidence—”

  Amabel laughed.

  “Dreadful, isn’t it?” she said. “But if people will make confidences while they are standing in open doorways,—besides, it wasn’t a confidence, you know it wasn’t; he was asking you to find him a tenant for his house. Mr. Berry, you have found him a tenant.”

  “Stop, stop,” said Mr. Berry. “What’s all this?”

  “I’m going to be the tenant,” said Amabel. She leaned back with an air of finality.

  “But you’ve got a house—and besides—”

  “Oh, I’m going to let mine. Clotilda Lee would take it to-morrow.” She gave him a charming smile, and then said quite seriously, “Mr. Berry, I want that two hundred pounds.”

  Mr. Berry frowned, tapped on the table, shifted some papers.

  “Mrs. Grey, you know Ethan was my oldest friend. If you would let me be of any service to you—”

  The colour sprang into Amabel’s cheeks.

  “You’re the best friend anyone ever had,” she said. “If I could borrow from anyone in the world, it would be from you. But I can’t—I’m just made that way. You see, I could never pay it back, because two hundred a year doesn’t leave me any margin; and I should be thinking about it all the time, and not sleeping at night; and—you do see, don’t you?”

  When Amabel Grey looked at him like that, Mr. Berry invariably felt himself to be trembling upon the edge of a pleasant precipice. He was a bachelor of sixty years’ standing. He had never asked a woman to marry him in his life, and he never meant to; but once a year, when Amabel sat in his office and smiled at him, he experienced some dangerous sensations. The precipice allured him—undoubtedly it allured him. Later in the day he would feel the satisfaction which comes from temptation safely resisted; but for the moment he was certainly being tempted.

  “It is good of you,” said Amabel. “You’re always so good to me. But I want to earn this money. He did say he would give two hundred pounds to anyone who would stay six months in the Dower House, didn’t he?”

  “He did,” said Mr. Berry, “but—”

  She shook her head.

  “There aren’t any buts. From this moment I’m George Forsham’s tenant. Why, do you know, I was coming here to-day to ask you if you could think of any way in which I could earn just that sum of money. You’ll give me a good character, won’t you?”

  Mr. Berry looked grave.

  “No, no, I don’t like it,” he said. “It’s not the sort of thing for you at all.”

  “Why not?”

  “Not at all the sort of thing for you—fishy sort of business—don’t like the idea of it for you at all—silly stories about the house being haunted—tenants leaving one after another in a hurry. There’s a screw loose somewhere.”

  “Well, yes, I suppose there is,” said Amabel soberly. “I didn’t expect to earn two hundred pounds just for nothing; and I don’t suppose George Forsham is offering two hundred pounds just for the pleasure of giving it away.”

  “I don’t like it,” said Mr. Berry again. “The house has a very bad name.”

  “It used not to have,” said Amabel. “I stayed at Forsham with the Berkeleys when I was a girl—their place is next door, you know. The two old Miss Forshams were at the Dower House then—such kind old ladies. Joan Berkeley and I used to run in and out. It was a delightful house, sunny and charming; and the old ladies were dears. What a shame to say it’s haunted. Is there any story about it? Did he tell you?”

  “He says there’s nothing definite. People just leave in a hurry. The village is full of wild tales about mysterious noises and appearances. But there’s no coherent story. By the way, I don’t know how much you heard, but Mr. George Forsham and his brother spent some nights in the house about two years ago without either seeing or hearing anything unusual.”

  “I didn’t hear that,” said Amabel rather quickly, “but I heard you ask George Forsham to give a message to his brother. I wanted to ask you about that. Julian Forsham is in Italy, isn’t he?”

  “Don’t you read your Times, my dear lady?” said Mr. Berry.

  “Yes, I do. Mrs. Crampton passes it on to me; I read it in the evenings. They said Julian was in Italy?” Her voice made a question of the last sentence.

  “Yes, yes, in Italy,” said Mr. Berry easily. “In strict confidence—you won’t let it go any further, of course—I believe he came to London for twenty-four hours, and was so harried by reporters that he fled. He doesn’t mean to appear again till after his book comes out next month. You knew him too?”

  “Yes,” said Amabel, and added nothing to the single word. There was a little pause before she spoke again. “I really want to do this, Mr. Berry. I know I can count on your help, can’t I?”

  He pushed his chair back and got up. “I don’t think it’s fit for you, I don’t indeed. I don’t like it.”

  “Mr. Berry”—her tone took on a teasing shade—“you’re not going to tell me that you believe in ghosts!” The dark eyes twinkled.

  “Not in the day-time,” said Mr. Berry briskly. “Not in the day-time, and not in this office, nor in Piccadilly Circus, or The Criterion, or Victoria Station. In all these places, my dear lady, I can count on myself to be a complete and confirmed sceptic. Pooh, I say.” He blew out his cheeks. “Ghosts? Nonsense, humbug, nerves! But”—he wagged an impressive forefinger—“put me at midnight in a lonely country house, with the rain coming down, black panelling on the walls, damp under the floors, and a fine smell of mildew in the air, and I don’t say that I mightn’t see ghosts with the best of ’em. That’s the mischief of it.”

  “But then you’re a town-dweller, a confirmed town-dweller,” said Amabel. “Now, I’m quite inured to dark nights, and pouring rain, and mildew, and things like that. They won’t worry me a bit. I shall enjoy going down there. Can you tell me who is at Forsham Old House?”

  “A Mr. Bronson—one of these new rich, but a very good tenant—got some money, anyhow.”

  “And the Berkeleys? Do you know if they are still at Forsham? Joan Berkeley is in China, married, and it’s years since I heard from her. I’d like to see Edward Berkeley and Lady Susan again; they were awfully nice to me when I stayed there.”

  “Yes, I believe they’re still in the neighbourhood. Mr. Forsham happened to mention them. But, Mrs. Grey, take my advice, don’t go any further with this matter. I can’t advise it, I really can’t.”

  “But then I never take advice,” said Amabel. “Nobody does really. I always think good advice just helps you to make up your mind in the opposite direction.” She got up, came a step nearer, and said, as she put out her hand, “Mr. Berry, my mind is quite made up. It is really. There’s only one thing—I would rather, if you don’t mind, that Mr. Forsham should think of me as quite a stranger. He knew me as Amabel Ferguson, and he has probably forgotten all about it. In the circumstances, I think I’d rather take this on as a stranger. You understand?”

  Mr. Berry found himself admiring the delicacy of feeling which shrank from any suspicion of wishing to trade upon an old acquaintance. He al
so greatly admired the way in which her colour suddenly brightened as she spoke. The edge of the precipice seemed nearer than ever before as he pressed her hand and replied that she could rely on him to carry out her wishes.

  Chapter IV

  “Well, Mr. Berry?” said Amabel Grey. She shook hands with him, and then immediately began to ask him questions, her voice hurried and her colour becomingly heightened. “Have you arranged it? You know, I asked you to wire, and you didn’t. You’re not going to tell me that there’s any difficulty, are you? I’ve been counting on you to settle everything before Mr. Forsham sails. It’s to-morrow he sails, isn’t it?”

  Mr. Berry had kept hold of Amabel’s hand. He patted it now, and she drew it gently away.

  “My dear lady, what a lot of questions! Sit down, and I’ll answer them one at a time.”

  Amabel moved to the fire, and stood there holding her foot to the warmth.

  “I don’t want to sit; I want to hear what’s been happening since I saw you. The country week-end is like a desert island, you know; one is simply marooned until Monday. And when there was no wire from you this morning”—she began to warm the other foot—“well, I just had to come up. Is it settled? Will he have me?”

  “Gently, gently,” said Mr. Berry. He sat down, turned over some papers, and picked up a typewritten sheet. Then, swinging round with it in his hand, he smiled benignantly, and said, “There’s no need to look anxious—no need at all. I saw Mr. Forsham on Saturday, and the tenancy is yours if you will subscribe to his conditions.”

  “Oh, Mr. Berry, you don’t know how pleased I am.”

  Mr. Berry tapped the paper in his hand.

  “Don’t be pleased until you have heard the conditions. Frankly, my dear lady, I don’t like them, and I can’t advise you to accept them. I am speaking, you understand, in a double capacity, as your friend as well as your lawyer.”

  “What are the conditions?”

  It was so like George Forsham to set up a neat, typewritten list of them. How little people changed. How little or how much had Julian changed? She crossed the room, and sat down in the armchair beside Mr. Berry’s table. “What are these dreadful conditions?” she said, and smiled a little.

  “Well, I don’t like them, and I’ve had no hand in them. Mr. Forsham sat down and typed them out himself, without so much as asking my opinion of them. That’s what I call taking the bread out of an honest lawyer’s mouth, eh?”

  “But the conditions—what are they?”

  “I’m coming to them. I just wanted you to know that I had no hand in them. Now, let’s see, here’s the first,—only you’ll understand, please, that I’m giving you the sense of it in my own words. I really can’t get my tongue round the fellow’s quasi-legal twaddle. Defend me from the law of the layman! This is what it comes to in plain English:

  “One. You’re to stay in the house for six months, unless he changes his mind and wants you to go sooner.

  “Two. During the six months you’re not to be away from the house for more than forty-eight hours at a stretch.

  “Three. You’re to get two hundred pounds down—and a fine struggle I had with him over that. I wouldn’t give way because I knew you wanted the money. But I put it to him at last that it was that or nothing, and that if he wouldn’t take my personal guarantee, I’d just throw up the whole business and leave him to manage his own haunted houses. He was stuffy, very stuffy; but he gave way.”

  Amabel nodded and smiled. There was comedy in this reversal of the ordinary procedure—the lawyer translating his client’s legal verbosities into plain English. Mr. Berry gave a chuckle, turned a leaf and proceeded to number four:

  “Four. You’ll have to give an undertaking to return the whole of the money if you fail to stay the full six months, and,

  “Five. Mrs. Brown and her daughter are to remain in undisturbed possession of the rooms allotted to them upon the ground floor of the Dower House.”

  “And who,” said Amabel, “is Mrs. Brown?”

  “Well, between you and me,” said Mr. Berry, “and as a matter of complete confidence, it wouldn’t at all surprise me to discover that Mrs. Brown was the ghost—Mrs. Brown or the daughter,” he added.

  “Dear Mr. Berry, you’re being most dreadfully cryptic. Who on earth is Mrs. Brown?”

  “Mr. Forsham’s old nurse,” said Mr. Berry. “A treasured family retainer, now bed-ridden. She and her daughter occupy two rooms in the kitchen wing. They have free lodging, free fuel, free light. They have any fruit and vegetables they like to take from the garden. And in my opinion, my dear, we needn’t look very much further for the ghost—it’s so very plainly to their interest that the house should not be let.”

  “Yes—it is—and yet—” She hesitated, and then said, “It’s so obvious, that it must have occurred to the Forshams.”

  “Well, I put it pretty plainly to Mr. George Forsham,” said Mr. Berry. “I don’t know whether it had occurred to him before or not, but I may say that I put it to him with some plainness.”

  “And what did he say?”

  “He froze,” said Mr. Berry. “He put on a came-over-with-the-Conqueror sort of air, and froze—wouldn’t hear a word or believe a syllable, but just froze.”

  “Yes, that’s like George,” said Amabel.

  “And now we come to number six,” said Mr. Berry. “That’s the worst of the lot:

  “Six. You are not in any circumstances to employ detectives or to send for the police. The whole of the two hundred pounds shall be forfeited if you break this condition; and you must undertake to observe it strictly and honourably, both as to the letter and the spirit.”

  “Why?” said Amabel.

  Mr. Berry spread out his hands. “He insists,” he said. “Mr. George Forsham’s house is Mr. George Forsham’s house. He’d rather have the worst ghost that ever walked than a single vulgar, note-taking, scare-mongering detective, or a blundering oaf of a policeman with muddy boots and a skull like an ox. These, I think, were his very moderate expressions. There were probably others which have slipped my memory—he became very angry, you know, in his stiff sort of way—he even swore once or twice. But the upshot was, and is, that he won’t accept any tenant who does not accept this, to my mind, preposterous condition. Now, if you’ll take my advice,” Mr. Berry put down his papers and leaned forward, “if you’ll take my serious advice—”

  “It’s too expensive, Mr. Berry,” said Amabel.

  “Expensive? How?”

  “Dear Mr. Berry! You’re going to say, ‘Don’t take the Dower House.’ Well, if I take your advice, and don’t take the Dower House, it will cost me just two hundred pounds.” She laughed, and got up. “It really is too expensive, I’m afraid.”

  Ten minutes later, when she left the office with Mr. Berry’s cheque for two hundred pounds in her pocket, she had the strangest feeling of excitement, anticipation. She walked down the short flight of stone steps with her head held high and her eyes bright. Just at the turn of the stair, she brushed against a man who was coming up, brushed against him and passed on. Neither looked at the other, or was aware of anything but that momentary contact with a stranger.

  Amabel Grey passed out into the darkening street at the moment that Julian Forsham rang the bell of Mr. Berry’s office.

  “So you’re not in Italy?” Mr. Berry beamed as he spoke.

  “Italy!” said Mr. Julian Forsham. “Good Lord, Berry, why should I be in Italy?”

  “Oh, the Times said you were; and I rather thought that Mr. George Forsham implied as much, if he did not actually say so.”

  “George is a perfect marvel at implying things,” said George’s brother with a dry laugh. “I’m being harried to death by reporters and all the people whose business it is to stick their noses into other people’s business. I’ve told some of ’em I’m going to Jericho, and some of ’em that I’m going to Timbuctoo. Some bright soul has struck a happy mean and made it Italy. I’m really going down to Forsham to vegetate. Tha
t’s why I’m here. What’s all this nonsense about George having let the Dower House?”

  “Haven’t you seen your brother?”

  “Not for two days until this afternoon, when he dashed in, bade me a fond farewell, and with his parting breath remarked that he’d let the Dower House, and that you wanted to see me. Is it really let? If it is, it’s too bad of George.”

  “Yes, it’s let,” said Mr. Berry,—“to a Mrs. Grey, the widow of an old friend of mine.”

  “Unfortunate old lady!” said Julian with a grimace. “What’s she done to offend you, Berry? Have you broken it to her that she won’t be able to get a servant for love or money?”

  “Mrs. Grey,” said Mr. Berry, “is—er, prepared for certain difficulties. As to the servant question—she has, I believe, a devoted maid who has been with her for years; and I understand that Jenny Brown, your old nurse’s daughter, is prepared to give help in the house—that, I think, is the technical expression.”

  Julian shrugged his shoulders. He bore no resemblance to his brother George. His lean face, and quick movements; the sensitive lines of lip and nostril; the humour not untinged with sarcasm which woke suddenly in the dark eyes, transforming their melancholy—these betokened a nature and personality interesting and interested, compelling and very much alive. He shrugged his shoulders, and threw out a protesting hand.

  “Oh, bother the woman!” he said. “I was going to have a peaceful ghost hunt myself. Well, I don’t suppose she’ll stay any longer than the others did. I shall go down to the cottage and await events. George hasn’t let the cottage by any chance?”

  “Not that I know of. But, Mr. Julian—”

  “But, Mr. Berry—”

  “The Dower House being let—”

  “She’ll think I’m the gardener,” said Julian. “I shall wear clothes which no self-respecting gardener would be seen dead in. I shall pull my forelock and babble about asters, and antirrhinums, and salpiglossis. The old lady will only think what nice manners I’ve got, and what a pity I can’t afford a better coat. It will be very reposeful.”