Copyright oggbashan October 2022
The author asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
This is a work of fiction. The events described here are imaginary; the settings and characters are fictitious and are not intended to represent specific places or living persons.
(Author's Note: I try to avoid typos, but my eyesight is compromised by cancer. I use two spellcheckers and print out in large typeface before submitting but I cannot guarantee that everything is typo-free -- because I can't see them. That is particularly true of the sub-title because I am typing blindly into a box I can't really see because it is so small.)
This is a ghost story, but Romance, not Erotic Horror.
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Albert Cobb's cottage is a building just beyond the edge of the village. It had been built as a farmworker's cottage, but Albert bought it in 1936.
Now it is derelict and reputed to be haunted. Albert had experienced a bad WW2. He was captured by the Japanese when Singapore surrendered and held at the notorious Changi Jail. He had been an officer. He was severely beaten around the head with a club for protesting about the treatment of an ordinary soldier and suffered some brain damage. He was never the same man after the war but just seen as slightly odd.
He had married Edith, the widow of a friend, who had died as a tank commander in the early failed attempts to capture Caen. Albert's wife had died in an air raid while working at an RAF station. Albert didn't know that his wife had died until he returned to the UK in 1946.
Albert had a souvenir from Changi. He had taken the Commandant's pair of swords, a framed certificate in Japanese about the sword maker and the swords' names and history, and the stand, when the camp was liberated. Unlike ordinary Japanese officer's swords, they were antique and made by a master swordsmith.
Albert had felt some sympathy for the Commandant. He had been injured and had a useless right arm. He had tried to make the prisoners of war be treated better but had been overruled by his superiors and undermined by the junior officers and guards who had been brutal.
He had committed suicide when he got the news that Japan had surrendered. Left-handed, he had shot himself in the head. He couldn't have committed the usual samurai hara-kiri because of his useless right arm.
But the swords reminded Albert of his experiences in Changi and gave him nightmares. After a couple of years, he put them away in a cupboard and there they stayed until 1960. That year his wife had been trying to persuade him to give the swords back to the dead Commandant's family, and Albert had been seriously considering doing that. But they were valuable.
One night Albert and his wife were killed. At first it was thought that Albert had killed his wife with the long sword and then decapitated her, before committing suicide by plunging the short sword into his heart. He was found lying on the bed next to Edith.
But the Police investigation and autopsy soon proved that the idea was wrong. Albert had a new injury to his head and there were bloodstains in the hall and up the stairs. He would have been made unconscious, if not dead, by that blow. Edith had been sleeping when the sword pierced her heart. Albert was placed next to her and also killed, if he wasn't already dead.
The Police investigation went nowhere. There were no signs of a forced entry, and nothing had been stolen. The only valuable possessions they had had were the two swords. No one in the village knew of anyone with a grudge against Albert or Edith. They had been a quiet couple who kept mainly to themselves, and although Albert was odd, both of them were liked.
They had no children but had made wills leaving the house contents to Edith's sister Agnes, and the rest of what they owned to two nephews who lived in Australia and had been in Australia at the time of the murders. Apart from the cottage they left a few hundreds of pounds each -- not enough to make murder profitable. The nephews tried to sell the cottage but as a murder scene no one wanted it and it just gradually went into dereliction, sometimes played in by local children, but never after dark as it was supposed to be haunted by Albert and Edith wanting justice.
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My girlfriend, Rosalind, thinks I am too staid and boring. According to her I have never done anything, except qualify as an accountant working for our District Council. While she appreciated that I was kind and gentle with her, unlike her two previous boyfriends who had used and abused her, she wanted me to show more signs of being willing to be adventurous.
One evening we were sitting in a secluded alcove in the village's pub restaurant over coffee. Both of us have reasonable incomes by local standards. Rosalind is a deputy manager at a supermarket. We were feeling depressed. The council had just rejected another planning application for an estate of houses on the edge of the village. It would have included a housing association's part rent; part buy scheme which we might have been able to afford unlike other new houses far beyond our resources.
"Gareth? I wish you would do something different. You are just boring. We can't buy a house, and until we can get somewhere, even to rent, we can't get married, and do I even want to marry a boring accountant?"
"What do you want me to do to prove I'm not boring? Join the French Foreign Legion?"
I was being sarcastic.
"I have an idea, Gareth. It's nearly Halloween. You could spend that night in Albert Cobb's cottage. That will prove you are adventurous."
"If I do, what then?"
"1. I will finally accept your repeated proposals, and 2, you will get a night in bed with me."
"OK, Rosalind. I accept the challenge. No. 1 is great. No.2 is fantastic. I'd do anything for that."
"I thought it would be an incentive. But there's no lighting or electricity in the cottage. There never was. When Albert and Edith lived there, they had candles and paraffin lamps -- long gone. The only water was from the well, so there's no facilities."
"And no glass in the windows and holes in the roof. But I have my camping equipment. I'll manage."
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It was just after dusk on Halloween. I had installed myself in what had been the front parlour, although there was no sign of the formal room it had been. All of the furniture had been removed in the months after the murders I assume to ready the house for sale. I had an air mattress, my heavyweight sleeping bag, a two-burner gas stove and I had just made myself some hot chocolate. The wind was howling outside but there was no rain yet. Even if it did rain, I was well away from the windows and the wind was blowing at the back of the house. I settled down to sleep.
About three am I was woken by someone calling my name. I thought it might be Rosalind playing tricks on me. It sounded like Rosalind.
"Gareth? Gareth?"
"What do you want, Rosalind?" I asked.
"I'm not Rosalind, I'm Edith."
I still thought it was Rosalind.
"Stop mucking about Rosalind. You sound like Rosalind, not Edith."
"I AM Edith. I might sound like Rosalind because we are relations, but I'm not her. She is my great-niece."
I still thought it was Rosalind, but I'd play along.
"OK. You are Edith. If so, what do you want?"
"Justice on our murderer but neither Albert nor I know who it was. Albert was hit from behind, and I was asleep when I was killed. We didn't see anyone. After all these years whoever killed us might be dead as well, or if not is never likely to be found now."
"So want do you expect me to do, Edith?"
"Perhaps persuade the Police to reopen the case? They closed it in 1965. We don't have much hope now. But there is something important for you and Rosalind."
I still thought it was Rosalind speaking to me. What Edith said next made me change my mind.
"The previous owner when Albert bought the cottage in 1936 had been an elderly, unmarried farmer's son. He was the last of his family. His great grandfather had been a smuggler but never caught. He was known to have made a lot of money, but it was never found. Albert found it in 1936 and told me about it in 1955. We didn't need it. We owned the house outright and were happy just living a quiet life. We left the money where it was. Albert had bought the house furnished with all contents, so the money was legally ours."
"Whose is it now?"
"We had left the house contents to my sister Agnes, Rosalind's grandmother, who had been my only bridesmaid when I married Albert. Everything else went to the Australian nephews. Agnes was asked to empty the house so it could be sold. She did, even if she had to put some items into an auction. Agnes, when she died, left everything to Rosalind, not a lot except some very old furniture still in store. But by our wills Agnes got ALL contents and she willed everything she had to Rosalind. She hadn't left much. To avoid inheritance tax, she had given most of it to Rosalind's parents years before she died. So the money is Rosalind's. Her solicitors and ours were Brasher and Jones in the town. They have both wills."
By now I was actually convinced I was talking to Edith's ghost, not Rosalind playing a trick on me. I was surprisingly unfazed by talking to a ghost that sounded just like Rosalind. When alive, Edith had been considered a 'nice' person and pleasant. Apparently, her ghost still was.
"Where's Albert?" I asked.
"Beside me," Edith replied. "He found talking difficult when he was alive, and it is still a struggle. I used to do the talking for him."
"Hello, Gareth," a male voice said. I could tell it was an effort.
"What do you two want from me?" I asked, again.
Albert answered slowly.
"We loved this house and enjoyed living here. We are sad to see it in such a state..."
"We would like it to be a family house again," Edith added, "With us as friendly, not disruptive tenants. With the money Rosalind would inherit, you two could buy it and get it repaired and modernised. We were exploring the possibility of converting the third smaller bedroom into a bathroom instead of bathing in a tin bath and going to the outside toilet -- cold in winter and full of flies in summer. Now the village has mains water, mains sewers and gas. This house could be connected to all those."
"But unless we know where the money is, that won't happen, Edith."
"Silly Edith," Albert croaked. "Of course, we need to tell him. You're in the right room, Gareth. See the fireplace?"
"Yes."
"When I bought the house there was a rusty and cracked Victorian cast iron fireplace. One of the first things I did was to rip it out and install a new 1930s fireplace, which although cracked and damaged now, is still there. I did a good job. It was far more efficient and heated this room beautifully."
I looked at the fireplace. Someone had tried to remove some of the tiles. They were cracked, broken, with bits missing. It looked nothing like the fireplace Albert had been proud of.
"But when I took the old grate out, there was a small stone slab in front of it. It wasn't large enough for my new fireplace and badly cracked. I had to remove it before putting down some concrete to make a larger surround. The money was under the broken slab in an iron cauldron. It still is but buried under my concrete."
