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

And then it was gone. Miss Coghlan staggered as if a great weight she was holding was suddenly removed. White-faced, their eyes stretched with shock, they stared round the room. But nothing had changed. They were alone, in every sense of the word. The bone atop its mound of rubbish had not moved.

By wordless agreement they moved outside. Dry twigs snapped under their feet as they passed through the hall.

The breeze on the cliffs restored a little of Miss Coghlan’s colour. “Well, Mr. Stone,” she managed at length, “you wanted to see my haunted house. Is there anything you want to go back and see again?”

He gave a gruff chuckle. She might be rude, overbearing, and self-important, but her nerve was steadier than his. “What are you going to do?”

“Do?” she echoed. “I thought we’d agreed. First the window frame, then—”

“You still mean to live here?” His voice cracked.

“I have nowhere else to go. All my savings are in this house. I thought it was a bargain: now I doubt if I could sell it at any price. Either I move in here in three weeks or I try the YWCA.”

If it had been Stone’s choice he’d have thought about it longer. But it wasn’t. The only choice he had was staying or leaving. “We could try the vicar.”

“We?”

He shrugged. “We have an arrangement about making your house habitable. It sure as hell isn’t habitable like this.”

She appreciated his support if not his language. Her eyes thanked him. “I didn’t feel it was — inimical. Did you?”

He combed his memory for what inimical meant, then shook his head. It had felt neither hostile nor evil, just very very unhappy — a soul that quite literally didn’t know where to put itself. Even though it had hurt and frightened him, he had not felt it meant to threaten them. “All the same, you can’t live with that much — misery. We have to try and—”

“Lay it?” she suggested, a faint returning humour lifting one corner of her wide mouth. “Exorcise it?”

“Set it at peace,” he countered, refusing to be baited.

She smiled. “You’re right. Let’s see the vicar.”

As soon as they explained the problem, the vicar warned them that he wouldn’t be able to help. Attempts had been made to exorcise Mon Repose ten years before, as a last resort before it was abandoned. An expert had been summoned, a cleric who evicted unquiet spirits with the practised ease of a bouncer removing rowdy guests from a nightclub. But the presence at Mon Repose defeated his best efforts, slinking back as soon as he had gone on three separate occasions.

“Was he able to explain his failure?” asked Miss Coghlan.

The vicar’s brow creased with remembering. “Not really. The thing didn’t fight him, it just got out of the way while he was there and came back when he left. Like you, he thought it wasn’t an evil thing. No nasty smells at the mention of the Lord’s name or anything like that. It just—” He shrugged. “It didn’t seem interested in what he had to say.”

As they went to leave, Miss Coghlan paused in the doorway. “Which of them is it? Arthur or Amanda?”

The vicar shook his head sadly. “We failed to establish even that. My colleague called it in the names both of the victim and the perpetrator but it wouldn’t answer.” He recalled another detail. “It tried to bar his way with sticks. Wherever he went in the house he found sticks lying in his way. He threw them away but somehow they always found their way back.”

Glancing at her, Matt Stone thought he saw a glimmer of understanding in Miss Coghlan’s eye.

Outside he challenged her. “You’ve got a line on this, haven’t you?”

“Well — perhaps,” she allowed. “I’m not sure. There’s something I can try. If I’m right, we can solve this problem.”

“Where now?”

“I’ve some shopping to do. Then back to the bungalow.”

“It’ll be going dark in an hour.”

“I know. That’s when we can talk to him.”

“Who?” Stone was afraid he already knew.

Miss Coghlan nodded. “The Howler.”

The last of the day was dying out of the sky when Stone parked his pickup in front of Mon Repose. Oyster-coloured streaks on the high clouds pointed westward. But no light fell on the still house, for the moon was not yet risen. A few stars, frosty with distance, watched through breaks in the clouds. When Stone turned off the engine they could hear the wind. They could not be sure if that was all they could hear.

Miss Coghlan led the way, a broad-beamed Amazon in lisle stockings. Stone followed with her shopping bag.

He flashed a torch round the dark rooms. The scene was as they had left it: the dirt, the dry twigs, the bone. The only footprints in the dust were theirs.

From the bag Miss Coghlan drew out two cushions, one of which she passed to Stone. “We may as well be comfortable.”

She sat down like a collapsing marquee. “Oh, Mr. Stone — if it’s all right with you, I think we should have the light out.”