Dum and I were so thrilled with our Hallowe’en party at Amanda’s that I am now in process of making up my party of ghost-hunters. We shall try Norfolk, as it seems to be positively riddled with ghosts, so we may expect some results, I think, although perhaps not so many as are claimed by the writers of the books I have read, so I shall be rather selective.

  We shall be taking your daughter with us and David da Cunha will come as official photographer. I felt bound to ask Professor Byland and his wife, as they were our fellow guests at Amanda’s and also because she, Mavis Byland, appears to have been psychic in her youth, so may be useful, although I believe these powers often decline in later life. The Bylands have accepted by invitation but on somewhat unsatisfactory grounds. She wants to botanise among the marshes, he to stalk and photograph the river and marshland birds. Still, as we shall be ghost-hunting after dark, their bizarre pursuits should not interfere with the real business of the tour.

  I would like to have had you, as you also appear to be psychic, but, failing that, it would be delightful and most instructive to have Dame Beatrice with us.

  Doctor Carpenter, who told that rather tall story about Roman ghosts in darkest Africa, is too busy, he says, to come, but has offered his daughter, also a Doctor Carpenter (so confusing!). She will take care of the medical side of things, should that prove necessary (and really, with the Bylands spending all day wading about in the marshes, it may prove very necessary), but I would welcome a psychiatrist, if only to make certain there is no question of fraud, a thing one always has to guard against when dealing with the occult.

  Dame Beatrice returned the letter with a note to say that the proposition sounded somewhat esoteric, but was an admirable idea if one wanted to waste time in a pleasant way. She suggested, however, that on such an expedition an exorcist might be of far more use than a psychiatrist.

  Laura gathered from this that Dame Beatrice had turned down the invitation. Mrs Crieff-Tweedle, however, was not so easily put off. She wrote a personal and pleading invitation to Dame Beatrice to take luncheon with the party before it set off and, at any rate, give it her blessing.

  Translating this, correctly, as a plea that she would reconsider her decision, Dame Beatrice, who had no intention of doing anything of the kind, showed the luncheon invitation to Laura who, immediately after Easter, had returned to her duties.

  ‘I shall accept,’ she said.

  The luncheon party was hardly a success. That the Crieff-Tweedles were wealthy Dame Beatrice had been told, but she would have guessed it from the magnificent furnishings of their house, although not from the salary which they were paying Eiladh. However, like ‘dear old Straddles’ who ‘had a mind above food’, Mrs Crieff-Tweedle was a very indifferent caterer. This was clear from the repast which had been provided. Not only were the dishes most inefficiently cooked and uninteresting, but the portions served were so meagre that nobody except the Crieff-Tweedles themselves who, presumably, were accustomed to living mostly on fresh air and Higher Thought, and Dame Beatrice, who had an extremely small appetite, had enough to eat, so possibly it was an advantage that the dishes were so unappetizing.

  Dame Beatrice was seated between her host and a young man who had been introduced as David da Cunha and who confided to her, with understandable gloom after he had inspected the microscopic portion of roast mutton which had been allotted to him, that he was to be the official photographer to the expedition. Having given her this information he was silent. This was excusable since the conversation was dominated by the strident voice of their hostess, who had begun to address the table at large.

  ‘While they’re serving the pud-pud,’ she announced, ‘I’ll tell you a little more about the ghost-hunt. It’s going to be the greatest fun, but, of course, we must all be very serious about it as well. The ghosty-wosties won’t care to be laughed at’

  ‘Who’s laughing?’ muttered Mr da Cunha to the portion of bread and butter pudding which had just been set before him. He ate it in three angry spoonfuls and, under cover of Mrs Crieff-Tweedle’s relentless voice, he said to Eiladh, who was seated on the other side of him, ‘Think there’s a chance of any cheese?’

  ‘No. Be quiet!’ she hissed at him.

  ‘So we shall travel in two cars,’ went on their hostess, ‘although I haven’t quite decided who will go in which.’

  ‘I can help you there, Mrs Crieff-Tweedle,’ said Professor Byland, the ornithologist, cutting in before she could begin her next sentence. ‘It is a matter, surely, of compatibility.’

  ‘Oh, but I hope we shall all be compatible,’ said his wife, seeing the expression of wounded dignity, not to say acute annoyance, on her hostess’s face at the realisation that she had been up-staged by a man whom she had supposed, apart from her own husband, to be the meekest and most malleable of his sex.

  ‘Of course,’ said the professor, ‘but as, before lunch, I learned that Dame Beatrice’— he sketched her a little bow from across the table —‘will not, unfortunately, be able to join the party, surely we fall into two clearly defined age-groups.’

  ‘I fail to see the relevance of that,’ said Crieff-Tweedle, answering a glance from his spouse.

  ‘Your charming wife and mine, you and I, must be in our car, and Doctor Carpenter, Miss Gavin and David in the second car. This, I think, will be an ideal arrangement,’ said the professor smoothly.

  ‘It may not be as ideal as you suggest, Professor,’ said Dee Crieff-Tweedle with a dangerous glint in her eye. ‘As our employee, Eiladh, must travel in the same car as my husband and myself, and naturally she will like to have Doctor Carpenter with her, and so shall we. That leaves the second car for you and Mavis, with David.’

  ‘Oh, well, just as you please, dear lady, but there is just one small point—’

  ‘Well, the cars being settled, perhaps we can all go into the drawing-room for coffee, and I will finish telling you the arrangements in there,’ stated Mrs Crieff-Tweedle stridently.

  There is just one other small point,’ persisted Byland, before anybody but the hostess had made a move to leave the table. ‘Neither my wife nor I can drive a car and young David, the reckless fellow, has had his licence taken away for the rest of the year. He was telling me about it as we came down by train this morning.’

  ‘Oh!’ said Mrs Crieff-Tweedle, pausing with her hand on the back of the chair from which she had risen. She decided to make the best of the situation. ‘Naughty, naughty David! Really, Mr da Cunha, I’m quite ashamed of you!’

  ‘It’s the gypsy in me,’ said David da Cunha, smiling brilliantly at her. The company repaired to the drawing-room and, as she walked along to it, Eiladh said to David da Cunha: ‘How did you come to lose your licence?’

  ‘Hush!’ he said. ‘Young girls, even pretty ones, shouldn’t believe all they hear. Tell you what, though! I may not be allowed to drive, but I’m a marvellous navigator.’

  ‘I bet you are!’ she said.

  Mrs Crieff-Tweedle kept them a long time over their coffee. She finished telling them about the arrangements she had made, returning to what Eiladh later referred to as ‘her pud-pud manner’, and then she told the company of what she called ‘my secret weapons’.

  ‘As I knew beforehand that Dame Beatrice, owing to pressure of work, might be unable to accompany us,’ she said, ‘and as I have been unable to persuade her to change her mind, just before lunch I telephoned a famous medium, Madame Arcati.’

  ‘Infringement of copyright!’ hissed David da Cunha to Eiladh, whom he had sat beside again. In happy memory of Miss Margaret Rutherford, Eiladh laughed. She found Dee Crieff-Tweedle’s disapproving eye on her. ‘But you don’t know the cream of the joke,’ David continued, sotto voce.

  ‘So perhaps the re-arrangement of the car seating will be all for the best,’ Dee continued. ‘Madame Arcati will have to sit in the back seat of the second car. I hope, David, that you will enjoy her companionship. I shall now arrange for Doctor Carpenter and Eiladh to drive the second car. Professor and Mrs Byland will travel with Dum and me.’

  ‘As I suggested in the first place,’ said Professor Byland, ‘But are you wise to include a professional female medium?’

  At this, David da Cunha gave a snort of laughter and, to cover it up, he said, ‘So all we need now is a priest to keep the good lady in order.’

  ‘There was that very agreeable cleric at the Croftons,’ said Dum Crieff-Tweedle.

  ‘Father Melrose,’ said his wife. ‘I thought of him right at the beginning, but does anybody know how to get hold of him?’

  ‘Of course, he did gate-crash the party,’ went on Dum in a reflective tone. ‘That wasn’t very agreeable of him.’

  ‘He must live somewhere near the Croftons, of course,’ said Dee, ignoring her husband as usual. ‘I wrote to Amanda Crofton, but she knew nothing about him except that he had attended her Hallowe’en party by mistake.’

  ‘Gate-crashed it,’ repeated Dum.

  ‘I don’t suppose he’ll come,’ said Eiladh. ‘Don’t they have a parish to look after?’

  ‘A chap who gate-crashes private houses is not going to pass up on a free holiday,’ said David. ‘I suppose it is going to be a free holiday?’ he added outrageously, looking with simulated anxiety at Dee. Eiladh kicked him, surreptitiously but hard. Dee answered graciously that of course the expenses of the ghost-hunt would fall entirely upon her husband and herself.

  ‘So the lot fell on Jonah,’ muttered David, massaging his assaulted ankle, ‘as the chap read out after somebody in the Bible was sick and the chap turned over two pages by mistake. Poor old Jonah!’ Aloud he said: ‘So you’ll need three cars.’

  ‘Three cars?’ enquired Dee.

  ‘Yes. You see, thinking that Dame Beatrice wasn’t joining us, I wondered whether you’d like to have an actor friend of mine, Salathiel Pavy, with us. I mentioned it to him. He’s “resting” at present and would be glad to come. He happens to be a first-class medium.’

  ‘Well, really, David!’

  ‘Not to panic, Dee darling. I told him I’d have to ask you first. As you don’t want him, I’ll just give him the bird and tell him he’s got to go on starving in his garret. I’m sorry, because he really has a most uncanny gift of raising the spooks. Never a dull moment!’

  ‘Of course he must come if you’ve invited him.’

  ‘Thanks a lot, then. He’ll be most awfully bucked, and so will you, I assure you. A very talented chap.’

  ‘Well, it seems we are to have a preponderance of young men,’ said Dee, not displeased. ‘Does your friend drive?’

  Before da Cunha could reply, there was the sound of a backfiring motorcycle engine followed by a loud, masculine yell. Dee Crieff-Tweedle got to the french windows in time to see the rider of the motorcycle crawling out of the bushes into which his vehicle had flung him. The butler admitted him. He was a cheerful-looking youth in his early twenties. He had a Roman nose, a sensual, full-lipped mouth, very large brown eyes and unusually close-cropped, dark-brown hair. ‘Accustomed to wearing a wig,’ thought Dame Beatrice. ‘I wonder why?’

  ‘Hullo, David,’ he said to da Cunha. ‘I’ve come to the right shop, then?’ He looked with shrewd interest at the assembly. David did the honours.

  ‘Hullo, you old Witch of Endor,’ he said. ‘Darling Dee and everybody, meet Madame Arcati.’

  * * *

  Chapter Three

  Rearrangements

  ‘It also gave me pleasure to attend at it, and would have given more to all parties if Mrs Davy had not been so full of strange Vagaries expecting so much Court and Attention from everyone. There was not one of the Party pleased with her.’

  The Rev. James Woodforde—Diary of a Country Parson

  « ^ »

  To say that Mrs Crieff-Tweedle was taken aback when her spirit-medium was introduced to her would be more than a mere understatement.

  ‘But—but—Madame Arcati?’ she stammered. The young man raised her hand to his lips with an exaggerated gesture of homage, bending over it as one who pays tribute to royalty.

  ‘Merely a trade name,’ he murmured.

  ‘Well, I don’t like it,’ said Dee, recovering her poise. ‘Young men have no right to masquerade as women. You fell. Have you hurt yourself?’

  ‘No, no. I always fall on my feet.’

  ‘Ha! Ha!’ ejaculated Dum, amused until he caught his wife’s eye. She turned angrily and unfairly on Eiladh.

  ‘Well,’ she said, ‘I appear to have admitted one cuckoo to the nest and, in the person of Mr Salathiel Pavy, whose name, I assume, is not the one by which he was baptised, David has added another. In fairness, Eiladh, I feel I should enquire whether you, too, would care to suggest any additions to our party.’

  ‘I wonder whether I might make a suggestion?’ said Dame Beatrice. Dee turned graciously towards her. ‘As you are including Doctor Liz Carpenter in your party, I wonder whether you would also take her brother, Tom? He would like to study the use of flint as a building material. Norfolk would be splendid for his purpose and of course he would pay all his own expenses.’

  ‘Mrs Crieff-Tweedle’s original list of ghost-hunters is gradually being augmented,’ said Dame Beatrice, when she returned to the Stone House.

  ‘So how many people now are going on this crazy trip?’

  ‘So far there appear to be eleven, including the Crieff-Tweedles themselves. Concluding that I would decline to take part, Mrs Crieff-Tweedle telephoned to a professional medium.’

  ‘Well, you’ve investigated some of their fraudulent claims. Which of your victims would this be?’

  ‘Not one that we know. This is a young man who calls himself Madame Arcati.’

  ‘Shades of Blithe Spirit protect us!’

  ‘Yes, indeed.’

  ‘Himself! A young man?’

  ‘Even so.’

  ‘It must be a joke of some kind.’

  ‘So Mr da Cunha appeared to think when he made the introduction.’

  ‘What did Dee Crieff-Tweedle do?’

  ‘She remarked that there were to be cuckoos in the nest and turned on Eiladh.’

  ‘The hell she did!’

  ‘Your daughter was equal to the occasion and declined to reply to Mrs Crieff-Tweedle’s satirical question, so I replied that I would like to add to Hamish’s friend, Liz Carpenter, Mr Tom Carpenter her brother. My enquiries have established that Mr Tom would welcome a visit to Norfolk in order to study the use of flint in the construction of churches and other buildings.’

  ‘Didn’t anybody suggest including the ghost-dog fancier?’

  ‘The—’

  ‘That phoney priest who gate-crashed the Croftons’ party and came back in the rain to say he’d been set upon by a ghost-dog.’

  ‘Ah, yes. Mrs Crieff-Tweedle would like to include him, but does not know how to get in contact with him.’

  ‘What’s the matter with an R.C. directory? Anyway, let me get this straight. The party is to consist of the Crieff-Tweedles and the Bylands, Liz Carpenter and her brother, my daughter Eiladh, a young buffoon called da Cunha and a male medium who calls himself Madame Arcati.’

  ‘And one person I do not appear to have mentioned. He is an unemployed actor whom I have not met. His stage name (borrowed, one assumes, from Ben Jonson’s nostalgic little tribute to a child of Queen Elizabeth’s chapel), is Salathiel Pavy.’

  ‘How long do they expect to be scouring Norfolk on this idiotic quest, I wonder?’

  ‘Nobody thought fit to ask. The servants have been given a fortnight’s holiday, I believe, so that would appear to fix the time allowed.’

  ‘Is it settled who’s going to travel with whom, or is there going to be a sort of general post each day?’

  ‘Barring quarrels or objections, the seating in the cars is settled.’

  ‘By Dee Crieff-Tweedle I suppose.’

  ‘No. Showing great courage, Professor Byland settled one party. This is to consist of the Crieff-Tweedles, himself and his wife. Doctor Carpenter has opted to travel with her brother and Eiladh, so this leaves the actor, the medium, the photographer and, if he joins the expedition, the priest, to occupy the third car, unless Father Melrose elects to accompany Doctor Carpenter’s little party.’

  ‘As well he may, I should imagine, if the alternative is those three fishy young men.’

  ‘We shall see. The chances are that he will not choose to go at all.’

  As it turned out, the business of tracking down Father Melrose proved simple. Mrs Crieff-Tweedle, in further correspondence with her hostess of October 31st, was told that Father Melrose had written in answer to Dee’s advertisement which had appeared in a local paper. He apologised to the Croftons for attending the wrong party, said how much he had enjoyed it, begged to be put in direct touch with Dee Crieff-Tweedle who had given a box number in the advertisement and, naturally, he had put his address at the top of his letter.

  In reply to a personal letter from an enthusiastic Dee Crieff-Tweedle, he accepted her invitation not only to join the ghost-hunters, but to stay at the Crieff-Tweedle residence for a day or two before they set out on their expedition.

  ‘Everybody is to be collected up,’ Dee explained, ‘so that I may give a little series of talks about the nature of the task before us and the necessity for a serious and scientific approach to it.’

  The information that the party was to be augmented, that neither Professor Byland nor his wife was able to drive a car and that David da Cunha’s licence had been suspended, had caused Dee Crieff-Tweedle to alter some of her arrangements almost at the last minute.

  As for her plans to house the ghost-hunters during their stay in Norfolk, these had been turned upside-down by the discovery that Madame Arcati was a young man and that the party was to receive additions in the persons of Salathiel Pavy and Liz Carpenter’s brother, Tom.

 

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