When Cleopatra Hartley first came to live in a cottage in
Monkton Way that had been in the Hartley family for generations, the Upper
Grumpsfield community had been perplexed, so unusually dark-skinned was she. When
it was pointed out that her nose was distinctly Hartley, and when it became
known that the late Mr Hartley was actually her father and had left her his
cottage in Monkton Way, people had to admit that her Hartley origins were
genuine, whatever colour her skin might be.
Despite his prudish upbringing, John had indeed been quite a
lad in his time. His family never again mentioned his affair with racy and
rather beautiful Gloria, an Afro-American dancer on tour with a dance group. Returning
home had been Gloria’s answer to the misery and rejection to which she had been
subjected. She left Upper Grumpsfield while John was away on business, not
saying where she was going or even leaving a farewell letter.
Predictably, since Gloria was flamboyant and her theatrical
ways made older Upper Grumpsfielders feel uncomfortable, everyone, including John
Hartley, had been relieved to find her gone. John took no interest in the child
born in America just a few months after her departure, though his fireproof
document box did contain the photo she had sent to prove the baby’s existence and
Hartley family likeness. He had dutifully transferred the minimum amount of
maintenance for as long as he had to. Those who had to know his secret were
sworn not to divulge it.
With John Hartley and all the other relatives dead and gone,
the scandal of the liaison with a showgirl cropped up again on Cleo’s arrival.
Only some of the older generation could actually remember the incident that had
taken place 37 or so years ago, and nobody knew or had been obliged to forget about
her existence. Cleo’s appearance and occupation of the Hartley cottage in
Monkton Way was therefore as disconcerting to some as it was unexpected.
But if Cleo Hartley knew about the scathing and humiliating
treatment her mother had suffered, she was not telling. In the end, an unsolicited
visit paid by one particularly prejudiced old busybody to the lawyer known to
have dealt with Hartley family business confirmed Cleo’s identity and silenced
most of the malicious rumours.
Cleo found it hard to integrate despite the revised view of
her in the village. She welcomed visits by Mr Parsnip, who was always on the
lookout for lost souls. She was grateful for the polite treatment by local
tradesmen who needed her patronage. Robert Jones, the Welsh butcher, could not
disguise his admiration every time she called at his shop. Cleo, who never
volunteered any information about herself, intrigued him. He had never met a
mysterious woman before and she had never met a Welshman who called everyone
dear and liked to sing in a foreign language. If Cleo was in the market for
romance at thirty-eight, she certainly kept that to herself and did nothing to
encourage Robert, though she enjoyed his overt admiration.
It did not take Cleo long to realize that even her simple,
almost monastic in life Upper Grumpsfield was devouring her savings at an
alarming rate. If she wanted to stay in Upper Grumpsfield rather than go back
to Chicago and her work as a social psychologist she would have to look for a
job. Vacancies being non-existent in Upper Grumpsfield, she caught a bus to
Middlethumpton and scoured the notice board at the job centre for something
vaguely suitable. She knew what she could do, but the job centre could not
offer her anything remotely related to her qualifications and in fact hardly
understood them.
Cleo Hartley had no choice but to take a part-time job tidying
the shelves at the library and making sure that the books were in good repair.
Since the only alternative would have been stacking shelves at a supermarket,
she considered herself lucky and was soon quite an attraction, less because of
her exotic origins than for her knack of knowing where every book was, and if
she hadn’t read many of them that didn’t stop her from warmly recommending any
book with an attractive dustcover.
Custom at the Middlethumpton District Library improved so much
that Mr Miles, owner and sole employee of the bookshop down the road, started
to get seriously worried about his loss of trade, but before he could offer Cleo
a job out of sheer desperation, she had a brainwave. She promised to send
anyone there who wanted a book not available on the library shelves. This did
everyone a good turn, especially when a big tub bearing the notice ‘If you want
to clear your shelves for new books, bring your old ones here!’ was installed
at the library entrance. Soon there was a regular stream of new old books for
the library shelves that hadn’t cost a penny. Mr Miles could now report a run
on his hottest best-sellers, books the library could only afford in dribs and
drabs or not at all. It came as no surprise that Cleo was promoted to senior
librarian when the position became vacant.
Cleo was ambitious and industrious. She had a job that kept
her fed and entertained, since library users were frequently lonely but
garrulous people whose only human contact was with tradesmen and community
services. In time, she was able to save enough to get all the leaks in her
cottage roof repaired. The huge bunches of dahlias and other blooms that grew
profusely in her opulent flower beds were on show all summer at Saint Peter’s.
They brought joy to the faithful and Mr Parsnip fell into frequent raptures
about her green fingers while no longer even mentioning her non-attendance on
Sundays.
The vicarage garden, the vicar lamented, could boast only of a
large area of patchy grass worn down by his sons’ football. The only flowers to
flourish were the wild ones that grew in the beds voluntarily and in total
disarray. Moles had moved in. The vicarage garden had never seen the like of Cleo’s
flower display.
Cleo’s reputation for being helpful to all and sundry was
given a boost when someone came into the library to inquire if there were any
ghosts worth hunting in the neighbourhood. Using her imagination rather than
known facts, she told them about a ghost said to ride across Upper Grumpsfield Common
on a white horse just before midnight on the 13th of every month, though she
had to admit that she had never been there when it happened and only had Dorothy
Price’s word for it that such a ghost even existed, and that good lady had
never seen it, either.
She had met Dorothy only now and again, but felt she had known
her forever. She lived in the same road and was happy to make conversation with
Cleo when she walked home with her shopping and Minor, who always received a
welcome and water to drink, took to Cleo in a big way. In time Dorothy had told
her all sorts of stories about the village, so by the time a handful of queries
about local spooks had come her way at the library, she had taken to telling
other, even taller stories about various apparitions. Before long, Cleo’s tales
of ghost sightings and other unexplained phenomena was very large indeed.
At the library, local people who either knew and believed all
the stories about the local ghosts or knew them and didn’t believe in them
started to ask her for advice in other matters, and if there wasn’t any obvious
mystery or secret, Cleo Hartley looked for one. Of course, she had had no
actual contact with black magic or any other occult phenomena, but if other
people preferred to rely on hearsay and the supernatural rather than common
sense, it was up to them.
Thanks to Dorothy’s fondness for telling stories, Cleo had heard
about the village’s most spectacular mystery, the story of Monkton Priory, but
it didn’t occur to her to make it a desirable destination for ghost hunters
until Mr Hawk, his daughter Tilly and his old crony Mr Gibbons turned up one
day. Mr Hawk was so confident that he could hunt down any given ghoul that she
spontaneously invited them to afternoon tea and a tour of the Priory.
Aided and abetted by Dorothy’s fabulous baking, Cleo put a
notice up in the library and outside her cottage in Monkton Way announcing her
‘Original English Cream Teas and Tours of Famous Buildings - Sundays Only’. Visitors
passing her cottage on the way to sight-seeing Monkton Priory could not fail to
see it. Since there is nothing to beat a clotted cream tea on a sunny
afternoon, especially if you aren't expecting it, the queue of prospective
participants in the ghost tours and cream teas was long.
Cleo’s talent for integration was as admirable as her ability
to reinvent herself. The curious who had found their way from her advertisement
on the Middlethumpton library information board to her cottage in Monkton Way or
simply dropped in to partake of a genuine English cream tea were given broad
hints about Monkton Priory's secrets, about which she claimed to be better
informed than any other living person. After all, one of her paternal ancestors
had probably been a monk in the days when the church was broader minded about
human failings.
Cleo was never lost for words. Soon there wasn’t a single
country house in the area that didn’t boast a restless spirit, but the story of
Monkton Priory made the deepest impression on her listeners.
“It all started in the Middle Ages,” she would begin. “Monks
built the old priory with their own bare hands.
They planted the vineyard and ran a smallholding. When Henry VIII was
looking for monasteries to plunder, the villagers buried the ecclesiastical
treasures and there are rumours that some of it is still buried somewhere (the
latter information serving to fire interest in a treasure hunt). The monks
disguised themselves as villagers and hid in the cottages until the coast was
clear.”
With hardly a pause for breath, Cleo then regaled her audience
with the speculation and scandal surrounding the mystery of the disappearing
monks..
“Out of gratitude, the monks taught all the surviving
villagers to read and write and soon the village children started to go to the
priory to learn to read and write. I think some of the village widows and wives
went there, too, but I don’t want to speculate on that! All I can say is that there
were rumours about an uncommonly large increase in the birth rate despite that
fact that most of the men had gone to war and lost their lives, but let’s give
everyone the benefit of the doubt, shall we?”
Cleo’s listeners usually nodded knowingly at this point.
“‘Times got bad after rain ruined the harvest two years on the
run, so the monks started to offer prayer meetings with bed and breakfast to
visitors - I think they call it a retreat these days. The hospitable offer was
sure to have brought strangers to the village.
All went well until one day a mysterious traveller took up
lodgings at the priory. He hardly spoke to anyone, and historians think he
might have been a foreigner. Anyway, to cut a long story short, not long after
he appeared, all the monks disappeared from the priory without trace and he
himself was found dying of stab wounds in the chapel.”
By this time, Cleo always had her audience in her pocket. In
carefully modulated tones, she would continue with the speculations inspired by
the story in such a lugubrious voice that everyone shuddered.
“The stranger recovered consciousness, but never spoke another
word in any language, and one morning he had gone. With the priory deserted,
the villagers had realised that there was nothing for it but to feed the
livestock, harvest the crops, and hope the monks would return. Eventually they
gave up hope. The priory fell into rack and ruin. Stories were told about
headless ghosts and strange howling at dead of night in the bell tower. Soon
nobody ventured anywhere near the priory if they could possibly avoid it.”
The final words worked like a direct challenge. Hardly anyone
wanted to miss a visit to the ancient monument, especially in such
knowledgeable company.
The following weekend, Mr Hawk, Tilly and Mr Gibbons arrived
for their cream tea and ghost tour. They told her that they were all members of
the Society for the Preservation of Ghosts in Old British Buildings, known for
short as SPOGOBB.
“A very diligent member of our society confirmed that Monkton
Priory is of special interest to SPOGOBB,” explained Mr Gibbons, who was
himself chairman of the society and therefore a very important person and bound
to get the first opportunity to hunt any important location. “It must be the
only haunted house we haven't investigated round here.”
“We want to test the ghosts to see if they qualify for the
SPOGOBB list of Great English Ghosts known as GEGs,” finished Tilly, who was
doing fieldwork on paranormal phenomena for a senior school field project.
“Oh dear,” said Cleo, wondering if they could be serious. “I
don't think you'll see any GEGs. GEGs don't like strangers.”
“That's most unusual,” remarked Mr Hawk, who thought he knew
all there was to know about GEGs. “GEGs normally haunt intruders, not friends.”
“But the G.........ghosts I know are different,” retorted Cleo
with great presence of mind.
“How do you know that? You aren’t even British.” Mr Gibbons was
scathing and thought he probably knew better.
“I’m half British. I have British instinct,” said Cleo, “I
will soon have my naturalization papers.”
“Well, the only way to find out the true facts is to go there
and see for ourselves,” said Mr Hawk with bravado.
“It'll be on your heads if you do!”
Cleo now pretended to be nervous about taking strangers to the
ruins.
“If you come with us we shall be all right, shan't we?” said
Tilly. Fortified by the cucumber sandwiches, Dorothy’s home-baked scones piled
high with her neighbour Jane Barker’s strawberry jam and topped with clotted
cream, followed by original American chocolate-chip cookies all washed down
with excellent Ceylon tea, Mr Gibbons, Mr Hawk, Tilly and an apparently
reluctant guide made their way up Monkton Way to the Priory.
It was a tranquil evening. The sun was already rolling itself
into a fiery red ball behind the trees. Cleo had clandestinely pocketed the
small brass bell she had once found among the ruins. The ghost-hunters were
armed with torches, a camera, a plan of the priory, and a tape measure, not
forgetting cloves of garlic, pointed wooden sticks and a crucifix in case of
vampires.
Cleo did not like walking too fast up the final hill to the
Priory, as it made her rather breathless. She paused to recover and Tilly
waited for her, so the two men got a head start with their investigations.
“If the ruin has been there for five hundred years, Cleo, then
it's not going to crumble in the next quarter of an hour, so you have a little
rest.”
Cleo mopped up the little pearls of perspiration that were now
rolling down her cheeks. She would lose weight starting tomorrow, she vowed.
“I'll let you into a secret, Miss Hawk. The best chance of
something ghostly happening is if I ring this.”
Cleo produced the little brass bell.
“Really?” said Tilly, wide-eyed.
“It's happened before and it will happen again. Mark my words,”
fantasized Cleo in a lugubrious voice.
“Where do you think the monks went to?”
“If you want my opinion...”
Tilly nodded her encouragement.
“I think they were all poisoned and buried in one of the
underground vaults by the mysterious stranger.”
“All of them?”
“Possibly all but one, if my hunch about the stranger is
wrong,” said Cleo.
“You mean that a left-over monk would stab the stranger and
flee?”
“Yes, Tilly. That’s exactly what I mean,” confirmed Cleo,
relieved that her new slant on the story was convincing. She would never the
less offer Tilly a different theory.
“It would be easy enough to kill everyone if the stranger put
something in their wine. They even grew wine in the grounds in those days, so
they had their own supply and it was cleaner than the water.”
“Why would he do that?”
“Search me,” said Cleo, thinking she was getting into the
made-up history of the Priory too deep for comfort.
“But you said one monk was left over,” said Tilly.
“Maybe he wasn’t thirsty that night and just pretended to be
dead so that the stranger did not know he was still alive,” said Cleo.
“So the left-over monk must have stabbed the stranger, I
suppose,” said Tilly.
No one had ever come to that conclusion before. On the other
hand, that slant on the story was completely new.
“Well, if the wine story is to be believed,” said Cleo, “as I
said, one of the monks must have come round, crept into the chapel where the
stranger was saying his prayers and taken revenge for the terrible deed before
wandering off into the woods and never being seen again.”
Cleo was astonished at her own imaginative explanation. She
could write a book about it, she mused.
“Do you believe it?” Tilly asked.
“There’s no proof that it did not happen like that, Tilly.”
Tilly was secretly glad her father and Mr Gibbons hadn’t heard
this version of the story. Cleo was also congratulating herself on having at
last found a logical explanation for the mysterious happenings at the priory.
By the time Cleo felt rested enough to resume the hill-climb,
Mr Gibbons and Mr Hawk had already arrived at what had once been the entrance
hall of the priory. Their hob-nailed boots clattered over the flagstones. They
had switched on their Davy lamps and their voices echoed between the stone
walls as they measured the distance between various corners of the hall and the
worn stone steps that had once led to the upper floor. They were already
speculating on where the ghosts were most likely to appear.
“In the ‘Phantom of the Opera’ the ghost patrols the balcony,”
Mr Gibbons suggested, “but there does not seem to have been a balcony here.”
“It might have been made of wood and fallen down,” Mr Hawk
speculated. “Or they didn’t build an organ loft. They might just have sung a
cappella.”
The main part of the priory had long since lost most of its
roof. The light was fading and the sky was dark pink and blue over their heads.
“Sometimes there are secret passages leading to underground
tunnels,” Mr Gibbons, the expert, informed Mr Hawk, who was still learning how
to hunt ghosts.
“Sometimes people used to be hidden between walls and forgotten,”
said Mr Hawk, remembering a book he had once read. “You can find out if the
walls are hollow by hammering on them like this,” he said, using a stick to
make timid tapping noises.
“These stone walls are two feet thick,” said Mr Gibbons
scathingly. “You won’t get a reply with that silly little stick.”
“What are you doing, Daddy?” asked Tilly, who had arrived just
in time to see this procedure.
“Ah, it's you, Mathilda,” said Mr Hawk, secretly relieved that
it wasn't a ghoul. “We're investigating the possibility of bricked-in bodies.”
“Your father is,” said Mr Gibbons. “I'm going for the
tunnel...and here it is,” he said triumphantly as his lamp lit up an old metal
ring sticking up out of the floor.
He tugged at it, but to no avail.
“The stairs lead to the wine cellar,” said Cleo.
“This metal ring hasn't been used lately.” Mr Gibbons
confirmed. “Where's the chapel? That's probably the right way in. The monks
would have gone for a secret swig while they were supposed to be praying.”
Cleo watched the antics of the two men.
“You are standing in the church,” she said. “If you mean a crypt,
there’s an entry to one over there.”
Cleo pointed to a far corner. She had been through this
routine before. “But be careful, it's there that things happen.”
“What things?”
Mr Hawk was nervous. His voice tended to go up into a squeak
when he was agitated and he heard it squeak now. Tilly worried about her
father’s shows of bravado. He was not really cut out to be a ghost hunter.
Mr Gibbons wasn't listening. He was taking bold, measured
strides from the cellar ring over to the crypt, whose ancient wooden
floorboards had been preserved almost intact, because that part of the roof had
not caved in.
“This part above ground used to be a side-chapel and it’s
still in use,” said Cleo.
“Oh,” said Mr Gibbons, disconcerted. “I thought this was a
deserted ruin, but now I see that it isn’t.”
A candle was burning on the old stone altar and a prayer book
lay opened at a page about death.
“People still come here in times of stress or grief if they
either don’t believe in ghosts or are not scared of them,” said Cleo.
“Of course, ghosts don't read prayer books or burn candles,”
scoffed Mr Gibbons, now recovered from his disappointment at not being in tune
with village life. He was always disappointed when people behaved normally in
places where funny things happened. To tell the truth, though he talked
incessantly about ghosts, he himself had never seen one.
“But there is something fishy going on here all the same,” he
said hopefully.
Mr Hawk was about to agree when a blast of icy wind blew the
candle out.
Mr Hawk shivered.
Mr Gibbons took a step forward into the gloom and tripped over
a floorboard.
‘Oh, my ankle,” he groaned. “I've twisted my ankle.”
“Never mind about that.
You've found the secret entrance to the cellar,” said Mr Hawk, pointing his
torch at the gaping hole that had suddenly appeared. “It’s right behind the
stone altar.”
Mr Hawk was thrilled. There was no literature about Monkton
Priory, so he could not know that if the stairs were not discovered by the
ghost-hunters, Cleo could pull a lever to help them on their way. The monks had
thought of everything and so had Cleo several hundred years later.
“Let's explore!” said Tilly. She marched down the cellar steps
and out of sight. Her father followed her shouting “don’t go there on your own,
Mathilda!”
Mr Gibbons was nursing his sprain and Cleo wondered if the guy
was prevaricating and possibly scared out of his wits. She had seen ghost
hunters’ antics before, except that no one had stumbled over that floorboard
until now, so she had not actually had to move the lever this time. She was
excited about that. The floorboards had been replaced a few decades ago and
rubbed with vinegar to age it. It was where all lovers went who did not need to
go on a ghost tour to know where they could engage in romantic escapades.
Mr Gibbons had already shown that he was not nearly as knowledgeable
about ghosts as he would have one believe. To make matters worse, the pain in
his ankle was not a figment of his imagination. He rather hoped the Hawks would
fail to come up with a ghost. He was the expert. He had the right to find one
first.
The narrow tunnel behind the altar led not only to the crypt,
but through a passage to the old wine-cellar. Finding it was all part of the
adventure. Cleo chose the right moment to ring the little bell behind her back
and was gratified when in response to the tinny tinkle a low booming knell rang
out from somewhere in the priory.
Mr Hawks scrambled out of the basement via stone stairs after
removing the barrier that was supposed to keep trespassers out and hissed: “I'm
leaving.”
Mr Gibbons, startled by the boom that seemed to come from
nowhere and everywhere, hobbled as fast as he could out of the chapel and down
the courtyard towards the safety of the tall trees.
“Hey wait for me!” shouted Mr Hawk as he hurried to catch up
with Mr Gibbons.
Cleo rang the little bell again.
Tilly emerged, surprised to find Cleo standing all by herself
in the chapel.
“The men have left. They got scared.”
Cleo was amused. Tilly was disappointed.
“Can we come back tomorrow?”
“I think you’d better wait until Mr Gibbons has recovered,”
said Cleo.
“We don’t need him, Cleo. In fact, I’d much rather come on my
own.”
Mr Hawk's conscience finally caught up with him and he paused
long enough to call out to Cleo and Tilly “Hurry up, you two. There's something
dangerous about that place. Maybe it isn’t ghosts we should be hunting, but
vampires.”
“Don't be silly, Daddy. That was only Cleo ringing her little
bell,” Tilly explained as she caught up with her father, who was looking around
wide-eyed and seemed to be suffering from shock. “But if I hadn't known about
the bell, I would have been scared, too.”
“Known about what bell?”
Mr Hawk was puzzled.
Cleo gave a
demonstration of its tinkling chimes.
“Not that bell,” said Mr Hawk, “the other one.”
“What other one?” said Cleo.
Mr Hawk was beginning to doubt his sanity.
“You heard it, too, didn't you?”
“I suppose you mean the booming noise from the bell tower.
That bell rings every evening just before dark to give the monks the all
clear,” Cleo explained.
“But there isn't a bell tower anymore,” gasped Tilly.
“And there aren't any monks, either,” hissed Mr Hawk.
“There isn't a bell, either,” said Cleo, as cool as a
cucumber. “It's in the history museum at Middlethumpton. You really should go
and see it.”
The technicalities of getting a big bell to ring on command
had been solved by an enterprising tourist. At least, that was what Cleo had
been told.
