‘Ask her sometime.’
‘Carol? Yes, I’ll ask her. But why?’
‘I’m interested in old places. You know my interests.’
‘Well, I never heard it was haunted, if that’s what you mean. Don’t you like the chair? I can take it out.’
‘No, leave it where it is. I like old things.’
‘Well, it’s comfy, I can tell you that. I always enjoy sitting in it when I come to see you last thing.’
When she had gone Whiteleaf continued in his diary: ‘Recorded and authenticated ‘‘ possession’’ of small items of furniture is relatively rare and has no reliable weight of testimony behind it such as the ‘‘possession’’ of houses has. The poltergeist one accepts, because one has to accept it. Beyond that there is only reasonable cause to believe and reasonable cause to doubt. In the case of a chair …’ He wrote no more that evening.
The following day he began a new entry. ‘Is this the hallucination of illness or the clearer perception of convalescence? It is certainly a very peculiar shape. That high rounded back. It is a half-way style, reminiscent of one of the old hooded hall chairs of the 18th century. Why does someone or something appear to sit in it every night when I am trying to go to sleep? And am I right in supposing sometimes that I can hear breathing and footsteps? Odd that in all these years of interest and study this should be the first possibly psychic event that has ever happened to me …’
The next evening Agnes said: ‘I saw Carol today. It is a funny story about the Covents. Of course she’s lived here all her life and we’ve only been here ten years. She says it was before her time but her mother often spoke of it.’
‘Spoke of what?’ Whiteleaf asked.
‘Well, it’s not a very nice story. Uncle. It won’t upset you to talk about it?’
‘I’m not made of cotton wool,’ he said impatiently. ‘In any case, how can something that presumably happened years ago have any effect? I’m allowed to read the daily papers, aren’t I?’
‘Yes, well, yes …’ Agnes plucked at her lip. ‘ Well, Carol says they were a young married couple, the Covents, during World War One. He was in the Battle of the Somme and was blown up and hideously disfigured. Apparently spent a couple of years in hospital and they then let him out. I suppose plastic surgery wasn’t much help in those days …’
‘No, it was in an experimental stage.’
‘So they hadn’t done him any good. He was still terrible to look at, and when he came home he never went out of the house but used to sit by the fire all day reading and thinking. His wife used to go out and do all the shopping, etc., Carol’s mother says, and that way she met another man and had an affair with him. Somehow or other Captain Covent discovered this, and it must have turned his brain because she suddenly stopped going shopping and everyone thought they had gone away …’
Whiteleaf felt his heart give a slight excited lurch. ‘Interesting.’
‘After a few weeks someone got suspicious and they broke into the house and there they were, both dead, one on either side of the empty fireplace. Apparently he’d tied her to a chair and then sat down opposite her and watched her starve to death. Then he cut his own throat. That’s what the doctors said. It was a big sensation in the ’twenties.’
‘Very interesting,’ said Whiteleaf.
‘Well, horrible I say. They hadn’t any children so the property came to his eldest sister and she took it over and lived there until last year. I tell you the house would have given me the creeps without any funny stories.’
Silence fell and the door downstairs banged.
‘That’s Roy,’ said Agnes. ‘I’ll get him to shift that chair tonight, just so that it won’t worry you.’
‘Not at all,’ said Whiteleaf. ‘Leave it just where it is.’
Agnes shivered. ‘Don’t tell Roy. He’s superstitious about these things.’
Whiteleaf shifted himself up the bed. ‘D’you realize I remember the First World War?’
‘Do you, Uncle? Yes, I suppose you do. But you’d be very young.’
‘I well remember celebrating the Armistice. I was thirteen at the time. It never occurred to me then that I should have to fight in another war myself.’
When she had gone downstairs to get Roy his tea, Whiteleaf wrote just one sentence in his diary. ‘I wonder if this chair, this basket chair was the one Captain Covent sat in? Or was it hers?’
THREE
That night, although he was still not sure about the breathing, he was quite certain about the footsteps. The creaking of the chair as someone sat in it began about ten minutes or so after he was left alone and went on for a little while with faint furtive creaks. They were very faint but very distinct as someone stirred in the chair. Then also quite distinctly there was the soft pad of footsteps, about six or seven, moving away from the chair towards the door. They did not reach the door. They stopped half-way and were heard no more. Presently the creaking died away.
It is surprising what tension is generated by the supernatural. One can write about it. One can attend spiritualist séances. One can even visit haunted houses and still remain detached, scientific, aloof. But in a silent bedroom, entirely alone, with only this wayward wandering spirit for company, Julian Whiteleaf felt himself screwing up to meet some crisis that he greatly feared but could not imagine. It was clearly not doing his health much good or aiding his recovery. The whole thing was strikingly interesting; but he would have to take care, to take great care, to find some means of rationalizing this experience so that he could regain his detachment. Only his diary helped.
‘Supposing,’ he wrote, ‘that I am not the victim of a sick man’s hallucination and that for some reason I have become clairaudient. (The ‘‘some reason’’ could well be the rare combination of my hypersensitive perceptions during convalescence and the presence of a chair with such an evil aura, amounting to ‘‘possession’’.) Supposing that, then is there any resolution or solution of the situation in which I find myself? Is there any progress in this nightly occurrence? Is there a likelihood that I may become clairvoyant too? (And in the circumstances would I wish to be? Hardly!) Why are there only six or seven steps, and why do they always move towards the door?’
That night there were exactly the same number of steps but they were quite audible now, a soft firm footfall, measured but fading at the usual spot.
Whiteleaf never kept his light on, but Agnes had lent him her electric clock, which had an illuminated face, so that when one’s eyes were accustomed to the dark one could just see about the room. And tonight a pale blue flame was flickering in the fire, so this helped. But sitting up in bed, Whiteleaf wished there had been no such fire, for the flames conjured up movements about the old chair. He thought: insanity is not evil, yet it so often wears the same guise. Covent must have been insane, driven insane by his own mutilated face rather than by jealousy of his wife. Only an insane man could tie a woman to a chair and watch her starve to death. I must examine that chair more closely. There may even be signs of where the rope has frayed the frame.
It was four o’clock in the morning before he fell asleep.
FOUR
Dr Abrahams said to Agnes: ‘Your uncle is not making the progress that I’d hoped for. His blood pressure is up a little and his breathing is not too satisfactory. If this goes on we’ll get him back in hospital.’
‘It’s just as you like,’ said Agnes. ‘I always help him when he gets out of bed, and we’re careful he doesn’t overdo it. I keep the fire going all day and night to help his asthma.’
‘Of course he uses that inhaler too much: I’ve told him to go easy on it, but it would be unwise to take it away; he has come to depend on it. One is between the devil and the deep sea.’
‘I’ll watch him,’ said Agnes. ‘But he is difficult. Strong-minded. He’d fight before he went back to hospital.’
‘That’s what I’m afraid of,’ said Abrahams.
While they were downstairs talking, Whiteleaf was up
and examining the chair, as he had done once before when left to himself. As Roy had said, it was a strangely heavy chair for one made principally of cane. The framework was of a thin rounded wood like bamboo but enormously hard. You couldn’t make any indentation in it with a fruit knife. There was a number of stains on the seat under the cushion: they could have been bloodstains: impossible without forensic equipment to tell. Whiteleaf had never sat in the chair and did not want to do so now. He felt he might have been sitting on something that should not be there. Only Agnes sat on it, in the evenings, and he had been tempted more than once to ask her not to.
He hastily climbed back into bed as he heard her feet on the stairs.
Later he wrote: ‘ I get the feeling that someone or something is trying to escape. To escape from the bondage of the chair. (Not surprising, perhaps, in view of its history!) But something more than just that – otherwise why the steps? It’s as if the body rotted away long ago but the spirit is still attached to the scene of its suffering and still striving to get away. The footsteps always move towards the door. If they ever reached the door, would something go out? This I could accept more readily were this the actual room in which the tragedy took place. Yet perhaps in the room in which this did happen, there were only eight steps from the chair to door. Perhaps after the tragedy the chair was not moved for years and this ‘‘possession’’, this spirit, became bound for ever to a routine of ‘‘escape’’ each night. Even so it does not escape: it repeats for ever the ghastly ritual. Could it now in this new situation really escape for ever if the footsteps could reach this door? How to encourage them?’
It was the following day that he had the idea. Agnes, with her passion for cleanliness, was scouring his room as she did every day, and when she moved the basket chair to vacuum under it he suddenly called to her not to put it back.
Frowning she switched off the vacuum and listened.
‘Don’t put the chair back there. Put it – put it just by the dressing-table, just to the left of the dressing-table. I think I fancy it over there.’
She did not move. ‘What’s the matter. Uncle? Doesn’t the furniture suit you? I do my best, you know.’
‘You do very well,’ he said. ‘I’m not complaining, but if you move the chair by the dressing-table it will give me a better view of the fire.’
She stared. ‘ I don’t see how it can. The fire …’ She stopped and shrugged. ‘Oh, well, it makes no difference to me. If that’s your fancy. Where d’you want it?’
‘Over there. A bit farther. That’s a good place for it there, I think.’
‘D’you want me to move this other chair over? Make more room for the commode.’
‘Er – no. No, just leave that. Thank you, Agnes.’ He began to say something more but she had switched on the vacuum again.
He didn’t really mind because he was counting the steps. At the most the chair was now seven from the door.
‘An experiment,’ he wrote in his diary. Possibly nothing will come of it. Possibly I shall have interfered with the ‘‘possession’’ altogether. Or possibly the footsteps will reach the door and something will go out.’
He spent the rest of the day quietly reading an old book on the Great Western Railway which Roy had brought him. This, he thought, was one of the sagas of our time. The wonderful Castle locomotives that set up records seventy years ago which have never been broken. The 4-4-0’s that preceded them. The Cities and the Kings … He wished he could concentrate. He wished, perhaps, that he had agreed to pay the expense of having that old film over, even though it dealt with French railways and French engines. They were indeed majestic in their own right. The great snorting locomotives of the Train Bleu, of the Orient Express, with their strange pulsating beat even when they are at rest … He wished he could concentrate.
Roy was out that evening at a social affair, Masonic or Rotary or something, so he did not see him. Agnes came up as usual, and, in spite of its uncustomary position, she sat in the basket chair. It was on the tip of his tongue to ask her not to; but again he refrained, partly because he was afraid of her uncomprehending stare, with its half implication that Uncle must be going a bit peculiar, and partly because her having been in the chair had not affected the manifestation on earlier nights.
She stayed longer than normal, talking about some work she was doing for refugees, and he listened impatiently, longing for her to be gone. She stayed in fact until Roy came in, by which time it was nearly midnight; then she gave the fire an unsympathetic poke, thumped his pillow, saw that he had enough water for the night, gave him her perfunctory kiss and was gone.
Roy had come straight upstairs, and the house soon settled. Whiteleaf’s heart was thumping. To try to ease it, he began to compose the article he would write for one of the psychic papers on his experiences with a basket chair. One of the psychic papers? But possibly The Guardian would print it, or even The Times. It all depended upon the end, upon the resolution. It all depended on what happened tonight. In a way it was a triumph, that a man so involved as he had been all his life in paranormal phenomena, should at this late stage experience it in the most personal way. To steady himself, he tried to look on it as if it had already happened. He was recounting the most exciting moment of his life. The trouble was it wasn’t over yet; he was in the middle of it; and the final experience, if there was one, was yet to come.
The fire was burning a little brighter tonight; Agnes had forgotten to bring up as much slack as usual, and this, with the help of the clock, gave adequate light – though dim. He could see all but the corners of the room. The chair in its new position was not so clearly outlined as it had been by the fire: it looked taller, still more hump-backed, like a man without a head. It cast a faint shadow on the wall behind that did not look quite its own.
The creaking was late coming tonight. He had thought it might not come at all. Always it began with a fairly definite over-all creaking such as would occur when Mrs Covent first sat in it. Then it would be silent except for the faint creaks that broke out whenever she moved. There was no sign of her struggling, as she must have struggled before she became too weak. Perhaps it was her dying that one heard. And the footsteps were the release of her spirit, moving away.
Yet always towards the door. Now they would reach the door. Perhaps – who knew – he would see something go out.
They began. They were slower and heavier tonight. Every step was distinct, seemed to shake the room, measured itself with a thumping of his heart. He sat up sharply in bed, straining to the darker side of the room to see if he could see anything. A flickering flame from the fire, just like that other night, brought shadows to life in the silent room.
The footsteps reached five, reached six and appeared to hesitate. They were at the door. A seventh and then the fire did play tricks, for he saw the door quiver and begin to open. He screwed up his eyes, one hand pulling at the skinny flesh around his throat.
But there was no mistake. He was seeing something. The door was literally opening to allow something to go out. He could feel the difference in the air. The door was wide and something must be going out.
Then he twisted round in the bed, clutching at the rail behind him, trying to get up, to move away, to get out of bed and scream. Because round the door a hideous deformed face was appearing, with one eye, and the flesh drawn up and scarred, and a gash where the mouth should have been, and no recognizable nose.
It was clear then – quite clear – that moving the chair was not enabling Mrs Covent to go out. Captain Covent was coming in.
FIVE
‘It was always a possibility, of course,’ said Dr Abrahams. ‘The pulmonary oedema was an added complication. But I’m disappointed. He gave one the impression of great tenacity – great physical tenacity, I mean; such men can often endure more than ordinary people and yet recover and live to a great age.’
‘Well, I can tell you it gave me the shock of my life,’ said Agnes, drying her eyes. ‘I came in at half past seven
as usual, and there he was half out of bed and clutching his throat. He seemed all right when I left him. We were a bit later than usual – about twelve it would be. I never heard a thing in the night. But he’d such an expression on his face.’
‘He’s been dead some hours. He probably died soon after you left him. I think the expression is due to the nature of the complaint: a sudden great pain, shortness of breath, no doubt he was trying to call you.’
‘He had a bell there,’ said Roy. ‘It was on the table. Just there on the table. I’d have heard if he’d rung. I always sleep light.’
‘Yes, well, there it is, there it is. His condition had been vaguely unsatisfactory all this last week, without there being anything one could necessarily pick on. I take it you’re his nearest relatives?’
‘His only relatives,’ said Agnes. ‘But he was well known in his circle. I think there will be a fair number of people at the funeral.’
SIX
There was a fair number of people at the funeral. Representatives of societies with long names and short membership lists, club friends who had known Whiteleaf for a long time, one or two newspaper men, nominees from charities which had benefited in the past, some of Agnes’s friends. It was a fine day, and the ceremony passed off well. After it, after a discreet interval, after a quiet period of mourning, Agnes and Roy burned the diary which had first put the idea into their heads. By discreetly opening it each afternoon while Uncle Julian was asleep, Agnes had been able to keep in touch with the progression of his thoughts.
At the same time they burned a rubber mask of humorously unpleasant appearance which Roy had bought in the toy department of a big store and painted and altered to look more hideous. There seemed no particular reason to burn the mop with which Agnes had bumped nightly on the ceiling beneath Uncle Julian’s bedroom. Nor did they bother to burn the basket chair which Agnes had bought in a jumble sale and whose cane had the peculiarity of reacting with creaks and clicks about fifteen minutes after a person had been sitting in it, a peculiarity they had not noticed until Uncle Julian had drawn attention to it in his diary. It seemed a pity, Agnes said, to destroy a useful chair.