Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 100, Nos. 4 & 5. Whole Nos. 603 & 604, October 1992

He finally got it out. “They don’t like being here, Miss Coghlan. They say it’s — weird. Spooky. Because of what happened here.”

Miss Coghlan’s eyebrows climbed like a couple of grey squirrels. “What did happen here?”

So he told her.

She didn’t know whether to laugh or smack his wrist. “Mr. Wiggins! You mean to tell me that a gang of brawny builders are scared to work in a seaside bungalow, in broad daylight, because of something that happened twenty years ago?”

“They say there’s — something here,” he muttered.

“Something?”

“A presence.”

“A presence!” she scoffed. “What, Amanda Smith hopping through the living room with her left leg tucked under her right armpit?”

Mr. Wiggins was embarrassed but dogged. “They say they’ve heard things. Heavy breathing. Groans.”

“They’ve probably been listening to one another!”

“You ask in the village,” he retorted, stung by her attitude. “They know. They know how many people have come here and couldn’t get away quick enough. Ask them about the Howler. They know.”

“Howler?”

He wished he hadn’t said it. His eyes dropped from hers and settled on his reinforced toe-caps. “Well, none of my lads has heard it. You wouldn’t catch them here after dark, which is when it howls. But them as have heard it say it sounds like a soul in torment. They say it’s enough to turn your hair white.”

He looked at her again, apologetic but determined. “Miss Coghlan, I’m sorry, but you’ll have to find someone else to do your work. We can’t finish. I know we’re letting you down. I won’t charge for what we’ve done already. But I’d be lying to you if I said my lads would set foot here again.” He would not be argued with but left her standing alone outside her bungalow, astonished and alarmed. Not by the Howler but by the difficulties of renovating Mon Repose when builders’ labourers were afraid to work there.

In despair she returned to Mr. Stone. She rather wished that she had not told him, when they parted, that the devil finds work for idle hands. But if he remembered he did not refer to it. He was a younger man than Mr. Wiggins; she hoped that might incline him to be less impressionable.

He received her courteously enough but held out no false hopes. “I can’t improve on September. In fact, it’ll likely be October now.”

She had already considered her options. She could camp in the bungalow as it stood, waiting meekly for him to come and hoping that word of her dealings with Mr. Wiggins would not reach him. Or she could put her cards on the table.

Miss Coghlan had many faults but cowardice was not one of them. She told him that Mr. Wiggins had been to “Mon Repose,” and why he had left. Her steely gaze challenged him to make the same excuse.

Instead a slow smile broke across his rather craggy face, weathered like the materials he worked with. “You’re kidding!”

Miss Coghlan did not approve of slang. She said sternly, “No, Mr. Stone, I am not joking. That was the reason Mr. Wiggins gave for withdrawing his services. It’s only fair to give you the opportunity to do the same. I should not wish to be responsible for an outbreak of the screaming hab-dabs among your employees.”

Matthew Stone had left school at sixteen, mainly because of teachers like Miss Coghlan, and learnt the building trade at the elbows of successive bricklayers, carpenters, plasterers, and electricians. He was competent in every branch of house repair. At the age of twenty-seven he took a night-school course in bookkeeping, then he rented a yard and hung up a sign with his name on it. Five years on he employed bricklayers, carpenters, plasterers, and electricians, so his own input was mainly managerial. It was probably inevitable but it didn’t altogether please him. He liked to feel mortar under his fingernails.

He regarded the teacher levelly. “Listen, Miss Coghlan. What I told you was the honest truth. I can’t give you men without taking them away from people who’ve been waiting longer than you have and more patiently. But nobody’s waiting for me. If it’s any use, I’ll come up to the Channel Vista with you and see if we can work something out.”

Relief swept over her. “Good boy,” she beamed, making him wince. He would never know how close he came to having his head patted as well.

He put Miss Coghlan’s bicycle in the back of his pickup. When he parked in Channel Vista they sat a moment, looking at Mon Repose through the new gap in the vegetation. “It doesn’t look like a haunted house,” said Matt Stone.

“Did you know about the Smiths?”

“Oh yes — they were celebrities round here. Small communities like nothing better than a good grisly murder. And when the grocer left there was talk of unquiet spirits and stuff. I was at school then. A few of us sneaked up here to keep watch, but either we were too rowdy for even an unquiet spirit or there was nothing to see. I haven’t heard mention of it for years. I didn’t know anyone still took it seriously.”

“Perhaps only Mr. Wiggins’s workmen do. Perhaps it really was only an excuse to get out of doing the work.”