The rest of the evening at the Dog and Duck had passed comparatively uneventfully. Mr Snelson left almost as soon as the lamp was relit, but the rest of us remained for a while. The apparition was discussed at some length as the sandwiches were devoured, and Madame Eugénie had taken several bookings for private consultations on the next day. I had felt somewhat cheated that the séance had lasted only a few minutes, but the others were abuzz, having expected nothing so exciting as a full-blown apparition, still less one that made such an extraordinary accusation.
Mr Snelson had been questioned at length but, though clearly shaken, was adamant that he had no idea what the spirit had meant when it had pointed at him and called him a murderer. Nevertheless, Daisy avoided him for the rest of the night, casting suspicious sidelong glances his way, and refused to say goodnight to him when she had eventually shown us all to the door.
We had arrived home late and had both slept in. I had made breakfast and we were sitting together at the kitchen table in our dressing gowns, eating scrambled eggs in companionable silence. Once the second pot of tea had begun to revive us, I ventured a question.
‘What did you think, then, my lady? Are you still sceptical?’
‘I’m curious, certainly,’ she said, sipping her tea.
‘Curious?’
‘Of course. Either we witnessed a genuine psychic event last night, in which case I should like to know more. Or Madame Eugénie is a fraud, in which case I should very much like to know how she did it.’
‘You can’t possibly think that was a fraud. How could she have done all that? How did she know that the doctor’s late wife was named June. I didn’t know that. Did you know that? And there was a ghost. Which touched Mr Snelson from the other side of the table. With its hand. Deathly cold.’
‘We certainly witnessed all of those things,’ she said. ‘But what did we really see? If it were real, it was quite the most astonishing thing I’ve ever seen, and I’ve seen some pretty astonishing things in my time, I can tell you.’
‘Daisy was convinced. She was all of a pother.’
‘Daisy’s always in a state about something,’ she said. ‘She does so love to be the centre of attention, that girl.’
‘I suppose. But I thought it was an extraordinary experience. I’m only sorry it was so short.’
‘Yes, I did feel a little cheated. We were seated for, what, five minutes? I do hope you didn’t pay a lot for the tickets. You must let me pay for mine.’
‘No, my lady, it was my treat. I have a spare shilling, too, if you fancy a private reading. You could find out what the future holds for you…’
She laughed, and the smile lit her face. ‘No, pet, you save your money. I’ll take my chances and let life unfold as it may.’
I smiled. ‘As you wish, my lady.’
I began to tidy away the breakfast things. ‘Do you have any plans for today, my lady?’ I said as I put the dishes in the sink.
‘Oh, I don’t know,’ she said, impishly. ‘I was thinking that maybe we could… go to the pub.’
I’m ashamed to say that I gaped like some manner of gaffed fish. ‘You want to go to the pub, my lady?’ I said.
‘Not for myself, pet, but it’s so obvious that you do. And it might be nice to have a bit of a poke about. See if we can’t find out a little more about our visitation of last night. Let’s nip over there at lunchtime and see what’s what.’
‘Right you are, my lady. In the meantime, would you care for some cake?’
She laughed. ‘We’ve only just had breakfast.’
‘Yes. But. There’s cake,’ I said, with the tiniest hint of desperation as I indicated the pastry-filled kitchen.
‘Perhaps we should take some with us to the pub. We might persuade Joe to make us a pot of tea.’
The storm had finally blown itself out, and now that it was light we were able to see some of the havoc it had wrought. The lightning-struck tree just down the lane from the house had been almost completely destroyed. Its massive trunk had been split almost in two and stripped of all its bark, while its elegant limbs lay scattered around the field. There was more debris in the lane and the village green resembled nothing less than a swamp. As we rounded the green we could see that there were slates missing from a couple of shop roofs, and at least one chimney pot lay smashed in the road.
‘They don’t muck about when they have storms down here, do they?’ said Lady Hardcastle as we opened the door to the pub and stepped in.
‘No, my lady. Nothing like quality of a decent Welsh storm, of course, but they try their best.’
‘They do, they do,’ she said. ‘I say,’ she said slightly more loudly. ‘Anyone at home?’
Unusually, the pub was deserted.
‘That’s odd, my lady,’ I said, opening the door to the public bar and looking through. ‘There’s no one here, either.’
‘Joe?’ shouted Lady Hardcastle.
‘Daisy?’ I thought I might try a bit of shouting, too.
There were clomping footsteps on the stairs behind us and Joe appeared in the doorway.
‘What’s all the racket?’ he grumbled. ‘Who the devil… Oh, it’s you m’lady.’
‘It is, Joe, it is,’ she said. ‘Are you all right? We were beginning to get worried about you.’
‘Oh, I’m fine, m’lady. I was just upstairs checking on Madame Eugénie. Locked herself in her room, she has.’
‘Oh dear. Why?’
‘There was a bit of a to do in the night. We had to get her out of bed to deal with it.’
‘A “to do”?’ said Lady Hardcastle with more than a hint of a mischievous twinkle in her slate-grey eyes.
‘A right old to do,’ he said, toothlessly, ‘and no mistake.
‘Were the spirits getting rowdy on your beers and spirits?’ she said.
‘They didn’t need no booze to get ’em goin’,’ he said. ‘There was bangin’ and crashin’ and carrying on. I got up to see what the matter was, saw the mess and went straight up to get Madame Eugénie. She come down and waved her hands and swayed a bit and muttered some stuff and it all calmed down. Then she went back into her room and I a’n’t seen her since.’
‘How extraordinary,’ said Lady Hardcastle. ‘Did she say what had caused it?’
‘She reckons ’twere that ghost you summoned up last night. I said no good would come of it. I told Our Ma. I said, “You shouldn’t go messing with t’other side.” She just laughed and said, “Let Daisy have her fun, Joe.” But I were right, weren’t I.’
We had never met, nor even seen Mrs Arnold. I always assumed, given his own old age, that “Our Ma” was his wife rather than his mother, but other than speculation we had nothing to go on.
‘It certainly seems as though strange things are happening,’ said Lady Hardcastle. ‘Was there any damage?’