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

“Let’s go inside.”

Mon Repose was a box divided down the middle by the hall. On the right were the living room, the bathroom, and the kitchen. On the left were the main bedroom, the second bedroom, and a box room. Above the front door there was a stained-glass fanlight. The fireplace in the living room was framed in imitation Dutch tiles. It wasn’t a grand house. Some of Miss Coghlan’s university-educated colleagues would have said it was a rather common, vulgar little house.

But she liked it, despite all the trouble. Perhaps because it was rather like her: full-bosomed, down-to-earth, practical rather than aesthetic, enduring. It didn’t feel like a house that would allow an unquiet spirit to take advantage of it.

“Which of them is it supposed to be?” She found herself whispering and deliberately spoke up. “Amanda or Arthur?”

Stone shrugged. “Amanda, I suppose. She’s the one who died here.”

“But Arthur killed himself. It could be him.”

Stone grinned at her. “Miss Coghlan, surely you don’t believe there’s a ghost at Mon Repose?”

She frowned. “Of course not, Mr. Stone, I was merely asking, since as a local man I presumed you would know which of the unfortunate Smiths was held responsible for the phenomenon known as the Howler.”

The way she spoke threatened to reduce him to hysterics. He cleared his throat. “I’ll take a look around. See what needs doing first.” After he closed the door Miss Coghlan thought she heard laughter.

She stayed in the living room. It was a tip now, but in a few weeks or months she’d turn it into the kind of home she’d always wanted. The china cabinet would go there, the floral-chintz settee there, and she would look out from her bow window across a dozen Downland acres to the pewter glitter of the Channel. And she thought she would have a pet. The lease of her flat had made it impossible, and anyway she didn’t approve of leaving animals alone all day. But now she could have a cat — better still a dog, that she could walk along the edge of the cliffs when the wind beat in from France.

At first when she heard the noise she assumed Matt Stone was playing silly devils. The little boys in her class were inveterate trick-players, and nothing she had seen of men persuaded her that they matured much as they grew older. She presumed he was breathing heavily at her through the crack of the door, and that his reason for doing so was that he thought it witty. She breathed rather heavily herself and said, “Mr. Stone, have you nothing better to do?”

“Than what?” He was in the front garden and turned at her voice, leaning his elbows on the window sill.

The front door was only a few steps away, the garden a few steps beyond that, but still... Nonplussed, Miss Coghlan shook her head. “Oh — nothing.”

He came back inside, joined her in the living room. He poked at the window frame with a blunt spike. “That’ll have to go. What do you want instead, wood or aluminum?”

While he was looking at her, and her lips were pursed to say “wood,” they both felt it: a quiver in the air, a shock of cold travelling between them, as if Mon Repose had had a close encounter with an iceberg. That was all. Only from the surprise in Miss Coghlan’s face did Stone know that he hadn’t imagined it. “What the hell—?”

She didn’t approve of swearing either. “How odd,” she murmured pointedly.

Stone shrugged off the chill that had stroked him under his shirt. “Er... OK, so that’s the first thing to do. Get a decent window in to keep out the draughts.”

Miss Coghlan said faintly, “Mr. Stone—”

He followed her eyes to the corner of the room. Ten years of dirt and flaking wallpaper had gathered there, and on top — as if set there by a Japanese flower-arranger — was a bone.

“Mr. Stone — you don’t think—?”

He barked a hoarse laugh. “No way. The police took her away, didn’t they, in plastic bags. This house has been empty for years. I expect a fox found its way in.”

The idea appealed to her. Foxes made some very odd sounds, mostly after dark. Perhaps the Howler was only a vixen which had set up home in Mon Repose. “Yes... yes, of course,” she murmured, feeling foolish. “A fox.”

But he could see it was disturbing her, so Stone bent to move the bone. “Christ!” He straightened up abruptly, snatching his hand back, alarm in his eyes and a cold sweat breaking on his skin. Forming on top of his hand was a pattern of four red dots that grew quickly to black bruises. Stone and Miss Coghlan stared at it together.

Then the sensations began in earnest. A cold touch behind the knee of Miss Coghlan’s stocking. A dampness trailed across the back of Stone’s hand. The air in the room moved lightly as if something was passing unseen between them.

And a feeling of deep, unsupportable sorrow clutched each of them by the heart. Sorrow, and grief, and incomprehension. And guilt. The guilt welled like a fountain through all the other sensations, vast and bottomless, mind-sapping, soul-crushing, intolerable. A little moan that was more pity than fear crept from Stone’s lips.