Was There Anyone There? Pt 1. ( VILLAGE TALES Ep. 3 )

Mark and Lucy move into the Old Mill which is haunted. The husband suspects his deceased ex-wife, Diana, is haunting him.

 After being pushed down the stairs, a medium is called to conduct a seance, and it’s definitely Diana. 

When Lucy is pushed down the stairs, was it an accident, or was it Diana?

It was a given that the Old Mill in our village would have the remnants of its past inhabitants still in occupation. That they were never seen, never heard and no evidence of any paranormal activity was ever revealed was not enough to prove to the locals that they didn’t exist. So it was expected that when Mr. and Mrs. Musgrave moved in and embarked upon some alterations that the disturbance would have some predictable consequences. 

‘They’ll pay for it, one way another, mark my words,’ was what Paul Goggin kept saying and ultimately I suppose he was proved right. He ran the local shop, the hub of the village and the font of all rumour and gossip. When the work was completed either the Musgraves were so insensitive that they hadn’t noticed anything or so as not to affect the re-sale value, they weren’t saying.

Now what I am about to tell you is between ourselves as I cannot prove very much of it. I had lived in the village for some time before the Musgraves moved in and I still do after they have moved on, so to speak. As a keen gardener I had much in common with Mrs. Musgrave, ‘Lucy’ as I was permitted to call her. Getting to the point, it was she that first told me about the problem her husband thought he was having. I didn’t take it too seriously at first but as it continued I could see that Lucy was becoming agitated to the brink of distress. From what she said it seemed that her husband was regularly being dragged out of their bed in the middle of the night onto the floor. It was also not unusual for their duvet to be removed from both of them and she had seen it once or twice disappearing over the end of the bed. She woke her husband one night who then struggled to prevent it and again found himself on the floor. Subsequently she also told me that in the small hours it was inevitable that something would be heard smashing in a downstairs room, usually something related to their ‘deep love for each other’, her words not mine, their relationship and especially their marriage. 

Her husband was being, ‘An absolute rock,’ Lucy would tell me, but one afternoon whilst exchanging some seedlings, she confessed that she was at her wits end. In tears she informed me that her husband believed it to be the ghost of his first wife who had taken an exception to him marrying again, and she couldn’t help feeling some responsibility. Understandable I thought. 

From what I could make out, Lucy was a very wealthy woman, her ‘previous’ had been a partner in a London advertising agency, in Berkeley Square I think. Mark, her husband, had been a voice-over artist working for the agency when they had met. After Ian had died, I don’t know what of, Mark had been a real comfort and well, one thing had led to another. 

The next thing I heard from Lucy was that they had arranged a visit from the local vicar who had carried out a ceremony, a blessing. An exorcism, would have been far too theatrical for this part of the Cotswolds. The vicar had recommended preying together each night and had left a Robinsons bottle full of holy water that they could use in an emergency. Whether they were to use the water inside or the outside merely as a club was not communicated, it was presumed that they would know when the time came. 

I have to admit that I wasn’t taking much of this seriously, but that changed when I noticed the ambulance outside the Mill early one morning. I learnt later that Mark had been taken to hospital for some x-rays after being pushed, yes pushed, down the stairs. Lucy, bless her, said she had begun to notice Mark was sleep-walking. She had put it down to the stress they were both under, but Mark had eventually admitted that it was Diana, his ex, that had been appearing, dream-like and beckoning to him and he, in a state of sleep, had no choice but to follow. Several times he had just woken up at the top of the stairs but this time he had turned to go back to bed when ‘she’, Diana, had pushed him down the stairs. Normally I would take these things with a pinch, or rather a whole cellar of salt, but Lucy was obviously sincere and it seemed churlish not to take her seriously.

Mark returned later in the day with nothing more than a few bruises. The consultant had said he was very lucky, had he been asleep at the time the fall could have been fatal but as he had just woken up he was able to protect himself from serious harm. I doubt that the consultant was told about Mark’s ex being the cause as he may have been kept in ‘for further reports’ as the euphemism goes.

I didn’t see Lucy for some time and had presumed Mark’s ex had had her fun and moved on, but then I noticed that the couple had taken up jogging. I waved one morning when Lucy was on her own and she came over to me at my garden gate and whilst she was running on the spot, as they do, she explained the new regime. Apparently Mark had suggested they see the local GP and explain everything, thinking that some medication might help. The doctor prescribed lots of exercise, reduce their intake of alcohol and eat less red meat. I asked her if he had said anything about the ‘events’ but she didn’t answer before jogging off in the direction of the Mill. I got the impression the whole thing was becoming too much for her, probably for the both of them. As Mark keeps himself to himself it’s difficult to know how he is doing, after all he must be bearing most of the responsibility as it is his ex that is the cause of all this. Well, if you believe in this kind of thing.

A week passed and whilst I was tending my large planter by the front door early one evening, Lucy passed with some shopping. I perceived she was in an entirely different frame of mind. I said that she looked much more relaxed to which she explained that during the week they had been to see a medium and had attended a seance. I brightened but she said, 

‘No, it wasn’t for us but Mark wanted to see the process to see if it might help, he is not convinced but we might as well give it a go. The medium was a Mrs. Marjorie Spelling . . . ‘

And she looked at me as if I should know her. I didn’t and I told her so.

‘Well,’ she continued, ‘she will be paying us a visit this evening just after dark.’

Lucy went on to say that it was why she had been shopping, and that Marjorie, the medium, is certain that after tonight all she and her husband’s troubles would be over.

I hung around the following morning trying to look busy but was really desperate to hear what had happened the night before and was intent on catching Lucy if she was out and about. Eventually she rode up to the gate and was just as keen to tell me as I was to hear.

‘Well,’ she began, ‘there was only Mark and I, Mark was still sceptical and didn’t want anybody else knowing about this.’

I was about to point out that as Lucy had been keeping everyone well informed, most of the village as well as the neighbouring ones, if not much of the county, knew pretty well everything and probably more, but she continued,

‘Mark arranged the room for the seance in the same way as the one we had been to before. He suggested not using our large dining table but a smaller one that he had found and set it up in the study. He’d spent a couple of days cleaning it up as it had been stored in the barn for simply ages.’

Lucy then made the point of how helpful Mark had been throughout all of this, especially when it was he that was experiencing all the really nasty things. 

‘Marjorie arrived at about eight thirty,’ Lucy explained, ‘and after the usual pleasantries she suggested that we should get down to business. The three of us sat around the table, hands on the table facing upwards with fingertips touching. Marjorie was very particular about this and was behaving just like my old nanny. She had her back to the fireplace, apparently that’s what she prefers. Mark had already said he felt most comfortable facing the window as it was he that might be the focus and we agreed.’

‘We all had to be silent and dreadfully serious, which I do find difficult. After a few minutes sort of meditating, Marjorie asked if there was anyone there. She did this three times and then I nearly had a heart attack, would you believe it, there was an actual knock, meaning ‘yes’. It came from the middle of the table, no doubt, I would have known if it had been a foot or something, I was on the look out for that sort of thing. Mark looked as shocked as I, it made us both jump. Anyway, there were other questions about who was it, what did she want, all that kind of stuff. I can’t remember very much as I was in a bit of a state. It was definitely Diana and I remember Marjorie said some poetry and asked politely that Diana trouble us no more. That was it. Another bit of meditating and then Marjorie left. Mark and I opened a bottle of wine, two actually, to celebrate.’

That was the last conversation I had with poor Lucy, in fact the last time I saw her. I was woken just after midnight two days later with the sound of an ambulance and a kerfuffle that seemed to go on for an hour or more. I was collecting my paper in the morning when I overheard Paul, the shop owner, saying that Lucy had fallen down the stairs and had broken her neck. I was devastated. 

The funeral was a very private affair, but some of the locals, including myself, were invited to the Mill afterwards. I had never been inside the mill since the Musgraves had moved in and I was interested in seeing where Lucy had lived, in a way to fix the memory of our conversations and what a lovely person she was. I did wonder if I might ‘feel’ something, what I think they call a ‘presence’, but there was nothing, too many people perhaps.

There was some bad feeling in the village afterwards which was very disappointing. Mark was the sole beneficiary of Lucy’s not inconsiderable estate, and that created some suspicion even after her death was recorded as an accident. There were some in and around the village who couldn’t dismiss what Lucy had said and were convinced that ‘Diana’, the first Mrs. Musgrave, had ‘something to do with it’. I was convinced what Lucy was telling me about the, I don’t like using the word, ‘haunting’ was true, at least she believed it to be so. At the inquest the vicar made a statement, as did the local GP but they both avoided mentioning the ghost of an ex-wife as it might have brought their own sanity into question and their suitability to hold the offices that they do. Marjorie Spelling was not called as apparently the coroner had already formed an opinion regarding her sanity.

The village and the Old Mill especially became quite an attraction, particularly when the local press, then the nationals, got hold of the story. The local pub did a good trade with ghost hunters and the curious wanting to see where the dead Diana had come back from the grave to murder the woman who had taken her place. 

It was no surprise that the rumour in the shop was that Mark had decided to leave the Mill and to re-build his life elsewhere. Paul Goggin said that Florida was favourite, and Mark would be selling the  furniture at the Mill and could Paul put the word out. Mark would only be taking a few precious items that would always remind him of his dearly beloved Lucy. I admit that rankled a bit. Having been in the antiques business before retiring, I dropped a note in at the Mill telling Mark I knew someone trustworthy who could do a clearance for a fair price.

Vans came and went and soon the Mill was up for sale. Mark was travelling a lot so we didn’t see anything of him but occasionally an agent would arrive to show someone round, judging from their clothing, mostly Americans. It was while I was watching a particularly lurid couple that the phone rang. It was from the dealer I knew that had bought some of Mark’s furniture and, as I used to be in the business, I might be interested in something he’d found.

‘Look,’ he said, ‘under there.’

Beneath the small table was a door knocker.

‘How peculiar,’ was my reaction, then I jokingly remarked, ‘is there anyone there?’ Suddenly something hit me like a train, and not one of your local single carriage affairs, this was a full-on London to Edinburgh express. It was if my subconscious had got it before I did and the blow came when I caught up.

‘Where did you get it?’ I asked, as if I didn’t know.

‘From the clearance you put me on to.’ 

He explained that he’d noticed a length of wire running down the inside of one of the fluted legs and painted over so as to conceal it. It ended by the foot where something had been cut off.

‘A switch,’ I suggested and he nodded,

‘I think so, because here . . . . ’ and he turned the table over and showed me where he had removed a box that had been made to look like a part of the table’s construction.

‘I reckon,’ he said, pointing to several other fittings, ‘that this is where a battery was fixed and something that could make the door knocker hit the underside of the table.’

He wasn’t telling me anything I hadn’t already guessed.

‘I reckon it was one of those tables those mediums use who do seances and things, you know.’

I did, but this was not one of them, well, not one used by ‘those mediums’.

I asked him if I could borrow the table to show a friend who is interested in such things and fascinated by the methods used by tricksters and charlatans. I didn’t tell him he was also an inspector who I got to know visiting my shop on the look-out for stolen goods.

He arrived at my cottage with some of his home made cider. I showed him the table, told him as much as I could remember of what Lucy had told me and left him to make his own mind up.

‘Mmmm,’ he began, ‘the beauty of it is that as much as everyone was prepared to believe what Mark Musgrave was experiencing, and in this scenario I include his intended victim, there would never be any proof. How could there be? The only evidence, if you can call it that, were a few bruises that Mark could have inflicted upon his self, by throwing himself down the bottom few steps.’

Eventually the inspector and I had to agree there would be little that could be considered ‘a smoking gun’.

A fortnight later I was again awoken by the sound of an ambulance, a very rare occurrence in our village. I had bought my paper that week so I had to find another excuse to visit the local shop to discover what the commotion was all about.

Apparently an offer for the mill had been accepted and a moving date had been agreed. Mark had returned from wherever he was staying, presumably to have a final look round and check that everything was as it should be. 

The retired solicitor who lives opposite noticed at about 11.30 that the outside light was on. An hour later his dog started barking and, very unusually, would not stop for some time. In the morning the outside light was still on so he went to investigate. He found the front door ajar and called out for Mark, presuming it was him that had returned. There were lights on at the rear so he wandered through calling Mark’s name. At the top of the stone steps leading down to the cellar, he saw Mark’s body lying at the bottom on the flagstone floor with a pool of blood surrounding his head. The solicitor checked to see if there was any sign of life before returning home and phoning the services. 

It appears from the coroner’s report that the time of death of both Mark and Lucy were the same, but I’m not convinced that’s any more than coincidence, some disagree. More importantly to the village is the debate as to whether Mark set up the whole ghost thing just to kill his wife for her fortune, or whether her death was purely an accident. They can’t decide if Mark’s death was also an accident, or if Diana had eventually got him, or if he did kill Lucy whether she had returned to do the job herself. My favourite is they both did it, Diana and Lucy, well you know what women can do when they co-operate.

Listen to Village Tales and other short stories from the Honkeymoon Cafe on Spotify, Anchor FM, Apple Podcasts, RadioPublic, Pocket Casts, Google Podcasts, Breaker and other platforms. Written and read by Barkley Johnson.