Haggopian and Other Stories

“I”m sorry to have to stop you almost before you’ve started, David,” I apologised, “but I’ve given it some thought and—well, this plan of yours

worries me.”

Lord Marriot’s guests looked at me in some surprise, seeming to notice me for the first time, although of course we had been introduced; for after all they were the experts while I was merely an observer. Nevertheless, and while I was never endowed with any special psychic talent that I know of (and while certainly, if ever I had been, I never would have dabbled), I did know a little of my subject and had always been interested in such things.

And who knows?—perhaps I do have some sort of sixth sense, for as I have said, I was suddenly and quite inexplicably chilled with a sensation of foreboding that I knew had nothing at all to do with the temperature of the library. The others, for all their much-vaunted special talents, apparently felt nothing.

“My plan worries you?” Lord Marriot finally repeated. “You didn’t mention this before.”

“I didn’t know before just how you meant to go about it. Oh, I agree that the house requires some sort of exorcism, that something is quite definitely wrong with the place, but I’m not at all sure that you should concern yourself with finding out exactly what it is you’re exorcising.”

“Hmm, yes, I think I might agree,” Old Danford nodded his grey head. “Surely the essence of the, harumph, matter, is to be rid of the thing—whatever it is. Er, not,” he hastily added, “that I would want to do these two gentlemen out of a job—however much I disagree with, harumph, spiritualism and its trappings.” He turned to Turnbull and Lavery.

“Not at all, sir,” Lavery assured him, smiling thinly. “We’ve been paid in advance, as you yourself have been paid, regardless of results. We will therefore—perform—as Lord Marriot sees fit. We are not, however, spiritualists. But in any case, should our services no longer be required…” He shrugged.

“No, no question of that,” the owner of the house spoke up at once. “The advice of my good friend here has been greatly valued by my family for many years, in all manner of problems, but he would be the first to admit that he’s no expert in matters such as these. I, however, am even less of an authority, and my time is extremely short; I never have enough time for anything! That is why I commissioned him to find out all he could about the history of the house, in order to be able to offer you gentlemen something of an insight into its background.

“And I assure you that it’s not just idle curiosity than prompts me to seek out the source of the trouble here. I wish to dispose of the property, and prospective buyers just will not stay in it long enough to appreciate its many good features! And so, if we are to lay something to rest here, something which ought perhaps to have been laid to rest long ago, then I want to know what it is. Damn me, the thing’s caused me enough trouble!

“So let’s please have no more talk about likes and dislikes or what should or should not be done. It will be the way I’ve planned it.” He turned again to me. “Now, if you’ll be so good as to simply outline the results of your research…?”

“Very well,” I shrugged in acquiescence. “As long as I’ve made my feelings in the matter plain…” Knowing David the way I did, further argument would be quite fruitless: his mind was made up. I riffled through the notes lying in my lap, took a long pull on my pipe, and commenced: “Oddly enough, the house as it now stands is comparatively modern, no more than two hundred and fifty years old, but it was built upon the shell of a far older structure, one whose origin is extremely difficult to trace. There are local legends, however, and there have always been chroniclers of tales of strange old houses. The original house is given brief mention in texts dating back almost to Roman times, but the actual site had known habitation—possibly a Druidic order or some such—much earlier. Later it became part of some sort of fortification, perhaps a small castle, and the remnants of earthworks in the shape of mounds, banks and ditches can be found even today in the surrounding countryside.

“Of course the present house, while large enough by modern standards, is small in comparison with the original: it’s a mere wing of the old structure. An extensive cellar—a veritable maze of tunnels, rooms, and passages—was discovered during renovation some eighty years ago, when first the Marriots acquired the property, and then several clues were disclosed as to its earlier use.

“This wing would seem to have been a place of worship of sorts, for there was a crude altar-stone, a pair of ugly, font-like basins, a number of particularly repugnant carvings of gargoyles or ‘gods’, and other extremely ancient tools and bric-a-brac. Most of this incunabula was given into the care of the then curator of the antiquities section of the British Museum, but the carved figures were defaced and destroyed. The records do not say why…