The Two Hundred Ghost Read online

  ‘Will he be all right?’ asked Sally.

  ‘I think so. He hasn’t the look of a man who’s going off the deep end. But please tell me exactly what did happen.’

  Johnny was junior partner. But he was on excellent terms with the staff, and he wasn’t much older than Sally. And in any case, he would probably get the story from Fred tomorrow morning, or as much of it as Fred knew. Besides, Johnny was like Father William in more ways than one. When he asked questions, he got the answers.

  Sally glossed over the first part of the story — probably to no purpose at all. But she repeated the exchange between Butcher and Fred and herself. ‘I was damned rude to him,’ she said, ‘and I’m damned glad I was.’

  ‘I’m damned glad he got what he deserved,’ said Johnny. ‘Or a bit of it. The rest will come, I think. But be careful with him, Sally. And if he tries anything on, let me know at once. Promise?’ His voice and his eyes were compelling.

  ‘I promise,’ said Sally.

  ‘Good. Now, do you think he’s coming back tonight? Has he gone to buy his sandwiches, as usual?’

  ‘He didn’t say. But I doubt very much if he’ll come back now.’

  ‘Perhaps not. All the same…’ He glanced at his watch. Then more footsteps came down the stairs. Tim came quickly into the shop. He was young and cheerful and this evening he was rather spruce. He wasn’t yet a member of the staff; he was merely down from New College for the Christmas vac and learning a bit about the job. The older Heldars took the view that if a man was going to know anything worth knowing about antiquarian books, he couldn’t begin too young.

  ‘Hullo, Sally,’ he said. ‘Did my respected papa get off all right? And did he remember he’s having people to dinner? My mother told me to remind him and I did, but he may have picked up an incunable and forgotten.’

  ‘He remembered,’ said Sally.

  ‘Tim,’ said Johnny. ‘I’ve got to hurry. Stay with Sally till she’s ready to go and then take her home. Butcher’s been being tiresome. But don’t mention that to anyone else. And I’m coping. Understand?’

  Tim’s cheerful face had gone suddenly grim at the mention of Butcher, and Sally remembered, uncomfortably, the rather startling row they had had last week. Johnny had evidently remembered it too. It would be better if Tim left now. He was probably in a hurry, anyway.

  ‘I’ll be perfectly all right,’ she said. ‘He won’t come back.’

  ‘I shall be delighted to see you home,’ said Tim firmly.

  ‘Right,’ said Johnny. ‘Please forgive me, Sally.’ He went quickly out.

  ‘You’d better go, Tim,’ said Sally. A year ago, when he had first worked here and she herself had been very new, she had called him Mr Tim once, and he had been so embarrassed that she had never tried it again except in the presence of customers.

  He grinned at her. ‘Did Father tell you I had a date? Not to worry. It’s not till a quarter to seven, and you only live in Earl’s Court, don’t you?’

  Sally tried to argue, but Tim merely told her to pack up and get her things on. Tim, like all the Heldars except his gentle father, was obstinate. Sally tidied her desk hurriedly and then ran down the passage and got into her coat. It was just as she came back into the shop, turning out the passage and staircase lights, that the scream came.

  It came from up above, echoing down the narrow staircase well. Then there were footsteps, light footsteps running frantically down. Tim was beside her, saying: ‘Who the hell—?’

  ‘Liza,’ said Sally. She had completely forgotten that Johnny’s typist hadn’t left. She turned on the lights again. But Little Liza wouldn’t scream because the lights had gone off. A sudden thought came into Sally’s mind as she started upstairs after Tim. But Butcher was out.

  Little Liza must have run as Betty had run last week, for she reached the first-floor landing before Tim did. She landed, gasping, straight in his arms. Tim held her firmly and kindly and said: ‘What’s the matter, Liza?’

  Liza gave another gasp and said: ‘The ghost.’

  ‘The ghost?’ repeated Tim. ‘But there isn’t a ghost now, ducky. It was exorcised nearly a hundred years ago, and it’s never been seen since.’

  ‘Betty saw it — last week,’ said Liza.

  ‘Betty thought she saw it,’ said Sally gently. ‘But we didn’t believe it, Liza.’

  Liza breathed hard for a moment or two. Then she said, still a little jerkily: ‘That’s right. We thought it was either Betty seeing things, or Butcher pulling her leg. I don’t see things, so I expect it was Butcher. The girls thought he wasn’t working late the evening Betty saw her ghost, but you thought he’d only gone to get his sandwiches, didn’t you? Like he always does when he’s going to work late.’ She looked back up the stairs. Already her Cockney courage was reasserting itself.

  ‘I don’t seem to have heard this ghost story,’ said Tim. ‘I wouldn’t put it past Butcher to impersonate the ghost, but I gather he went out a little while ago, and we haven’t seen him come in again.’

  ‘Well, there was someone,’ said Liza obstinately.

  ‘What exactly did you see?’ asked Tim.

  ‘I’d been up to the ladies’ room to get my coat. The light in the top passage is fused or something, but the doors of the offices were open, and there was some light coming through from the street. I was just at the top of the stairs, on my way down, when something made me look round, and I saw a — a sort of white figure at the corner where the passage goes round to Butcher’s office. That was what Betty saw, and just where she saw it — remember, Sally? I didn’t stop to look — I just ran like she did. And then the staircase lights went off.’

  ‘I’m terribly sorry about that,’ said Sally. ‘I’d forgotten you were still there.’

  ‘Well, I’m going to investigate,’ said Tim. ‘You girls had better wait in the shop.’ Then he stopped, obviously remembering his promise to Johnny.

  ‘I’m coming too,’ said Liza.

  So they all went. Sally and Liza waited on the second-floor landing, with orders to scream if they saw anyone, while Tim searched Johnny’s office and the Foreign and Travel Book Rooms. Then they repeated the process on the top-floor landing while he searched the typists’ office and Miss Bates’s, the History Room where he himself worked, the ladies’, and Butcher’s office. At last he came back and said: ‘Well, I’m sorry, but there’s no one there. Unless he went out through the trapdoor in the roof…’ He left the sentence unfinished.

  ‘There was someone,’ said Liza. ‘I don’t believe it was a ghost, but there was someone.’

  Tim looked at her. ‘I don’t quite know what to say,’ he said, with a very youthful honesty.

  ‘You think I’ve been seeing things!’ said Liza. It was like a spark struck.

  ‘I don’t think it’s like you to see things,’ said Tim. ‘Look. I suggest we all go now. I’ll talk to Johnny about this. Johnny’s nobody’s fool.’ He had a boundless admiration for Johnny.

  They agreed on that. But it wasn’t so easy to agree on the order of their going. The unfortunate Tim had promised to see Sally home, obviously now felt it his duty to see Liza home, and had a date in just over an hour’s time. Sally and Liza insisted that they didn’t need to be seen home, but Tim, determined on knight-errantry, finally said that he and Sally would see Liza on to her bus, and that he would then take Sally to Earl’s Court.

  They were just turning out the shop lights when they heard a key in the door. Tim said softly: ‘If it’s Butcher, don’t say anything.’ Liza looked indignant, but Sally saw his face, and realised that he just didn’t trust himself to talk to Butcher.

  It was Butcher. He carried two bulging paper bags, and Sally knew him well enough to be sure, even before she got close to him, that he had had a drink. He looked at her and Tim and Liza, but he said nothing.

  ‘Good night, Butcher,’ said Tim shortly.

  ‘Good night,’ said Butcher, and pushed past them.

  Sally and Tim saw Liza o
n to her bus, and then Tim insisted on taking a taxi. When they were moving westward, he said: ‘What do you think, Sally?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said. It had struck her that Butcher, anxious to get his own back on her, might have come back to play his ghost trick on her. But she didn’t want to tell Tim about the Butcher-Fred incident. And anyhow she didn’t see how Butcher could have got in without their seeing him.

  ‘What time did Butcher go out to get his sandwiches?’ asked Tim abruptly.

  Sally thought back. ‘I think about a quarter past five. I can’t get it nearer than that.’

  ‘And Liza saw her ghost at just about twenty-five past. He could have got back into the house and up to his office and put on a sheet or something in that time. And he could just have got out again, gone to the pub in the alley where he gets his sandwiches — that would have to be after five-thirty, which is opening time — and walked back into the shop as we were walking out between twenty and a quarter to six. But how the hell could he do it all without being seen? He’s got his key to the front door, but surely you were in the shop all the time until we heard the scream?’

  ‘Yes. And you or Mr Johnny. He’s got no key to the back door — as far as I know, and the packing department had all gone, so there’d be no one to let him in. Even if he had come in that way, he’d have had to come up the basement stairs and right up the passage to just outside the shop, to reach the main stairs. There aren’t any back stairs. Surely one of us would have seen or heard him.’

  ‘Almost certainly. And even if that isn’t dead certain, he couldn’t have got downstairs again without being seen. You and Liza were on the landings while I was in the rooms. And that goes for anyone else who might have been dressing up as a ghost.’

  ‘The trapdoor in the roof?’ asked Sally.

  ‘I’m afraid that’s out, for two reasons. A: the chap would have to have had a ladder and pulled it up after him. The nearest library ladder — unless someone left one on the top floor by accident, and I didn’t notice one there today — is in Johnny’s office, and it was there when I searched. B: last week Alf went up through the trap to investigate that burst pipe in the ladies’, and the trapdoor has warped and stuck. It’s very heavy anyway. Alf had to get a second ladder and me to help him before he could shift it. We left it open for the plumber, and he put it back when he’d finished. Alf said it meant a new trap, and that was a job for a joiner, so it’s unlikely he’s been working on it since. And the joiner hasn’t been yet. If it hadn’t been for all that, I’d have gone up and investigated. We’ll check with Alf, but unless the chap was in the direct line from Tarzan, I’m afraid it’s right out.’ He sighed. ‘I hate to say it, and I know Liza’s normally a very sensible girl, but I’m afraid she must have been seeing things. Unless, of course, the ghost really has risen again.’ He paused. ‘I don’t know the story as well as I ought. Mother would never allow me to be told it when I was younger, and I’ve never read any of the ghost-hunters’ accounts. What do you know about it?’

  ‘I’ve read it in Hughes’ English Ghosts. Hughes got it from the Grand Old Man; he says so. It all happened well before the Grand Old Man came to Two Hundred, but by the time Hughes was writing there was no first-hand account available. The Grand Old Man had it from Tomkin, the bookseller who had Two Hundred before him, and had gone there soon after the exorcism, and Tomkin had it from his predecessor, who was the last man to run the place as a pub. The house is pretty old, as you know — a good deal older than most of the Charing Cross Road houses. It was built somewhere in the early eighteenth century, and as far as anyone knows it was always a pub until Tomkin took it. It had always had a bad name, and in the early years of the nineteenth century people who went there were sometimes never seen again. The usual sort of thing — someone wanted to get rid of them, and was prepared to pay, and they were lured there and quietly stabbed in their beds. Or rather, it’s believed, always the same bed, or at least the same room: the one that is now Butcher’s office. In Waterloo Year a man called George Swan was killed there, the story says by order of one Sir Richard King, because he was Lady King’s lover. The story also says that he woke up in time to get out of bed and as far as the corner of the passage before the hired bully caught up with him and stabbed him in the back. Some inquiries were made, but the body was never found, and no one was ever brought to justice. Soon after that his ghost began to walk from the bed in Butcher’s office to the corner of the passage, in the white nightshirt he was wearing when he died. It was very trying to guests, but the landlord was a determined rationalist, and refused to believe in it. So did his son, who succeeded him. The ghost was allowed to keep on walking until, I think, 1855. Then the son died, and the house passed into the hands of a moderately respectable Catholic, who called in a priest and had the thing exorcised. After that, as far as anyone knows, it was never seen again.’

  ‘Well,’ said Tim, ‘I can’t help wondering if it hasn’t been seen again now. What Liza and Betty thought they saw corresponds exactly to the story. Betty’s a slightly hysterical type, I know. But not Little Liza.’

  ‘I can’t help wondering if what they thought they saw doesn’t correspond too exactly to the story. Too exactly to Hughes. You see, Tim, a copy of Hughes went up to Betty for invoicing about ten days ago — that was how it all started. The girls read up the Two Hundred Ghost then and got rather excited about it. What’s more, they told Liza and me that Butcher came in while they were reading it and pulled their legs about it. That copy of Hughes was sold, of course. But there’s another copy. I saw it when I collected the first to send up to Betty. In the room next to the packing department — with the books on magic and witchcraft and spiritualism and so on. The occult.’

  ‘Yes, but Sally. I’d believe most things of Butcher, but even if Betty’s ghost was Butcher, Liza’s just couldn’t have been. It couldn’t have been Butcher or anyone else. There just couldn’t have been anyone there. We proved it.’

  Sally couldn’t answer that. Tim said: ‘Don’t worry, anyway. I’ll talk to Johnny tomorrow. Oh, and I meant to tell you. I hope you weren’t hurt because Johnny didn’t see you home himself. He had a reason for that. He’s got a friend, one of his ex-commandos, in the Brompton Hospital for Chest Diseases. The poor bloke’s been in for over a year, and Johnny’s been visiting him all the time, twice a week, regular as clockwork. He never lets anything stop him.’

  ‘How very nice of him,’ said Sally. It was extraordinarily nice of Johnny, a young man with a very full business and social life, to be so steadily faithful to a sick friend.

  ‘Yes, isn’t it?’ said Tim. ‘But for God’s sake don’t say anything to him. I only found out by the merest chance, and he’d flay me alive if he thought I’d told anyone.’

  Chapter Two

  Sally didn’t sleep very well that night. But she went to work early the next morning, meaning to finish Hiram P Goldberger before the shop opened at half-past nine. She rang at the back door — the packing staff was always in by this time — and Little Billee opened it.

  ‘Morning, Miss,’ he said cheerfully. Little Billee was always cheerful, except when Butcher had been baiting him. ‘You’re early this morning.’

  ‘I’ve got some work to finish,’ said Sally, smiling.

  ‘I see, Miss.’ He shut the door and followed her down the steps and along the passage, chattering about nothing in particular, accompanying her rather like a friendly puppy. He was about her own age, thirtyish, but he had the look as well as the ways of a nice schoolboy. Age would always sit lightly on him, as responsibility did. He did his work conscientiously and well, as a good schoolboy does, but it was within his limited capacity, and it didn’t worry him. Nothing worried him — nothing but Butcher’s baiting, which made him dimly aware for a little while that there was something lacking in him. No one else at Heldar’s ever let him feel that. Generally he was as happy in his little world as the country boy who is very nearly the same as other people but not quite. The o
nly difference was that he was a London boy, who knew his part of London inside out and couldn’t have been happy anywhere else.

  He dropped off at the open door of the packers’ office, and Sally saw Alf and Fred at the bench.

  ‘Morning, Miss!’ called Alf.

  ‘Good morning, Miss,’ said Fred. He looked a little more withdrawn than usual. Otherwise he seemed all right.

  Sally stopped for a word or two with them, and then went on along the passage and up the stairs to the ground floor. She left her coat in the cupboard and went on into the shop. As she stopped to turn on the electric fire the clock struck nine.

  She unearthed Hiram P’s Wants List and finished the card that Butcher had interrupted last night. Then she started on the next. ‘Johnson (Samuel) Rasselas 1805 4to Raimbach plates.’ She finished that and took another. ‘Johnson (Samuel) Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland 1775 8vo.’

  She was on the fourth card when the scream came again. For a moment she almost wondered if time had moved back and the whole strange, disturbing scene were going to be played over again. Then she almost wondered if she were asleep and about to dream it as it had happened. Then she realised that this time the scream hadn’t been Little Liza’s. It had been a high female scream but cracked. She knew then that it must be Mrs Brand, the cleaner. No other female member of the staff would be in the house yet. But that didn’t make it less disturbing.

  Almost without knowing it she had got to her feet. Now she ran to the staircase and ran up it as she had run up after Tim last night.

  She had passed the first-floor landing before she saw Mrs B. But Mrs B, considering her weight, was making good going. One of her hands was pressed to the bosom of her overall, and her large face was pale. Sally said: ‘What’s happened?’

  She fully expected to hear Mrs B’s version of the ghost. But Mrs B stopped, gasped, and then said: ‘Mr Butcher. ’E’s dead.’

  Sally stared at her. ‘Dead?’ she repeated.

  ‘’E’s dead,’ said Mrs B again. ‘Sittin’ at ’is desk. An’ — an’ — that knife of Mr Tim’s stickin’ in ’is back.’