In Ghostly Company (Tales of Mystery & The Supernatural) by David Stuart Davies, Amyas Northcote
Authors: David Stuart Davies, Amyas Northcote
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therefore, worthy of record. Mr Ellis, whose narrative I transcribe, has given a very clear and exact account of what befell him on that September evening in D. House; but, if it had been possible to ascertain whether the glass of the window had been changed during the fifteen years previous, it might have thrown still further light on how the phenomena were brought about. With this observation I give place to Mr Ellis.
* * *
I was but a young man when some thirty years ago I became the junior partner in Messrs Ransome and Ellis, Solicitors, of Lincoln’s Inn Fields. The practice with which I thus became connected is an old-established one; sound, but of no very great magnitude, although we count several well-known and honoured families amongst our clients. Not the least among these was that of the Earl of D. and his family, the possessors of an ancient but not wealthy estate in the Midland Counties. At the date of my becoming a partner in Messrs Ransome and Ellis the direct family of D. was reduced to two persons. The present Earl was a man of over middle age, unmarried and permanently resident at D. House, where he occupied himself in local activities, both charitable and official, and bore a high repute among ministers of many denominations as an earnest and sincere Christian gentleman. His lordship in his earlier years had by no means merited this description, having led an extremely wild life, a life not altogether untarnished by performances of a somewhat disreputable nature. He had passed through Eton and Sandhurst and joined a crack cavalry regiment from which, after sundry escapades, he had been requested to resign. Thereafter he had lived the life of a fast man about town, existing, after the expenditure of his private fortune, on his wits, a method of gaining a livelihood which is neither easy nor honourable, nor always successful. On more than one occasion his elder brother, who at that time held the Earldom, came to his assistance, raised money and paid his debts for him, thereby encumbering somewhat seriously a not very wealthy property. However, after the sudden and singular death of the Earl, The Honble. Charles, as he then was, turned over a new leaf and settled down soberly at D. to devote the remainder of his life to the activities I have mentioned. He did not marry, and at his death the title was doomed to extinction, although the property would pass to his sister, Lady Margaret, the other surviving member of the family, or to her children as the case might be. Lady Margaret had long ago quarrelled with her brother and neither she nor her husband visited D. House.
I must now devote a few sentences to the late Earl. This gentleman had been an invalid from very early years, suffering from a form of paralysis which entirely deprived him of the use of his lower extremities. Thus confined to his bed, his chaise longue or his wheeled chair, his energies were perforce diverted to literary subjects and, being gifted by nature with an acute and powerful intelligence and a great love of learning, he succeeded in supporting existence not unhappily. By nature he was a kindly and happy soul; fond of such society as he could mingle in, he was popular among his neighbours and beloved by his tenants and other dependants. He read widely, wrote a little and meditated much. Owing to his malady he was necessarily much alone, but to this he was accustomed and he was well cared for by his confidential nurse-valet, a man named Sinnett.
During a certain September about fifteen years before I joined my firm, Mr Charles descended upon D. House and his brother for one of his rare visits, visits which my partner well knew usually meant further arrangements being made by Lord D. for money to settle his impecunious brother’s affairs. Lord D. could not have been especially attached to his troublesome junior, who had been cast off by their only sister as a hopeless prodigal, but he had a lively sense of the family honour and
* * *
I was but a young man when some thirty years ago I became the junior partner in Messrs Ransome and Ellis, Solicitors, of Lincoln’s Inn Fields. The practice with which I thus became connected is an old-established one; sound, but of no very great magnitude, although we count several well-known and honoured families amongst our clients. Not the least among these was that of the Earl of D. and his family, the possessors of an ancient but not wealthy estate in the Midland Counties. At the date of my becoming a partner in Messrs Ransome and Ellis the direct family of D. was reduced to two persons. The present Earl was a man of over middle age, unmarried and permanently resident at D. House, where he occupied himself in local activities, both charitable and official, and bore a high repute among ministers of many denominations as an earnest and sincere Christian gentleman. His lordship in his earlier years had by no means merited this description, having led an extremely wild life, a life not altogether untarnished by performances of a somewhat disreputable nature. He had passed through Eton and Sandhurst and joined a crack cavalry regiment from which, after sundry escapades, he had been requested to resign. Thereafter he had lived the life of a fast man about town, existing, after the expenditure of his private fortune, on his wits, a method of gaining a livelihood which is neither easy nor honourable, nor always successful. On more than one occasion his elder brother, who at that time held the Earldom, came to his assistance, raised money and paid his debts for him, thereby encumbering somewhat seriously a not very wealthy property. However, after the sudden and singular death of the Earl, The Honble. Charles, as he then was, turned over a new leaf and settled down soberly at D. to devote the remainder of his life to the activities I have mentioned. He did not marry, and at his death the title was doomed to extinction, although the property would pass to his sister, Lady Margaret, the other surviving member of the family, or to her children as the case might be. Lady Margaret had long ago quarrelled with her brother and neither she nor her husband visited D. House.
I must now devote a few sentences to the late Earl. This gentleman had been an invalid from very early years, suffering from a form of paralysis which entirely deprived him of the use of his lower extremities. Thus confined to his bed, his chaise longue or his wheeled chair, his energies were perforce diverted to literary subjects and, being gifted by nature with an acute and powerful intelligence and a great love of learning, he succeeded in supporting existence not unhappily. By nature he was a kindly and happy soul; fond of such society as he could mingle in, he was popular among his neighbours and beloved by his tenants and other dependants. He read widely, wrote a little and meditated much. Owing to his malady he was necessarily much alone, but to this he was accustomed and he was well cared for by his confidential nurse-valet, a man named Sinnett.
During a certain September about fifteen years before I joined my firm, Mr Charles descended upon D. House and his brother for one of his rare visits, visits which my partner well knew usually meant further arrangements being made by Lord D. for money to settle his impecunious brother’s affairs. Lord D. could not have been especially attached to his troublesome junior, who had been cast off by their only sister as a hopeless prodigal, but he had a lively sense of the family honour and
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