The Haunting of Torre Abbey

CHAPTER ONE

WATSON, DO you believe in ghosts?”
I was used to strange utterances from my friend Sherlock Holmes, but this one caught me off guard. Sitting in front of a blazing fire on a misty October evening in our sitting-room at 221B Baker Street, nothing was farther from my mind than ghosts.
Before answering, I took a sip of the spirits which did occupy me at present, in this case a very good glass of Montrachet ’82. It was a useful tonic against the bitter biting rain which fell outside our window, pelting the cobblestones and stinging the cheeks of the poor souls who had the misfortune to be out on such a dreadful night.
I myself had just come in; after an unusually busy couple of weeks at my practice, I was worn out. An early flu epidemic had forced me to keep long hours for days on end, and now that the outbreak showed signs of being over, I had left the surgery in the hands of my capable assistant, Dr. McKinney, for a few days. A cab had been hard to come by, and I arrived at our rooms in Baker Street soaked to the skin. Now, however, the combination of the fireplace and red wine was reviving me in both body and spirit.
“Why do you ask?” I replied to my friend’s strange question.
Holmes let one hand drop from the sofa, where he lay outstretched in his mouse-coloured dressing gown. He was in one of those languorous moods which often descended upon him between cases. The sitting-room was in a state of disarray: his makeshift laboratory table sat gathering dust at the far end of the room, and the remains of breakfast or lunch sat uncollected upon the dining table at the other end. Holmes was surrounded by discarded newspapers, strewn about everywhere like fallen leaves. When not at work upon a case, he devoured the papers eagerly in search of “crimes of interest”—anything out of the ordinary which might engage his restless attention.
“Because Lord Charles Cary seems to think that he is being haunted,” he answered. With that he produced a letter from his dressing gown and flung it in my direction.
I leaned over and picked it up. The stationery was a rich, creamy ivory colour, the paper of the highest quality; the watermark clearly showed the imprint of the best stationer in London.
“What do you make of it, Watson?”
The writing was in a clear, firm masculine hand. “A man,” I opined, “of some strength of character—”
“Would you be so kind as to read it aloud?” Holmes interrupted, fishing some tobacco out of the Persian slipper where he kept it. “It will give me a chance to hear anything I may have missed the first time.”
I knew that was hardly likely, but I complied and read the letter aloud to him.
Torre Abbey
Torquay, Devon
Dear Mr. Holmes,
First of all, lest you think I am mad, let me state right away that I am in full possession of my faculties. But that I experienced the events which I now relate to you, there can be no doubt. On the seventh of October of this year occurred the following series of events at Torre Abbey, which has been in my family now for two centuries.
Upon being summoned by an urgent telegram, I hurried from my graduate studies at Oxford to join my mother and younger sister at the abbey. My father having passed away recently, I am now the sole male member of the family and naturally feel a duty to protect the members of the weaker sex.
Holmes raised an eyebrow in his half-cynical way.
“Gallantry, Watson—always an attractive quality in a man, though it has been my observation that women are far from being the weaker sex. In fact, did you know that the lion himself is not the king of beasts everyone takes him for? It is the lioness who hunts and kills the prey, while the lion is content to sit idly by, preening his mane or sunning himself,” he remarked, stuffing his pipe.
“Very well, Holmes,” I replied somewhat irritably. “Have it your way: women are the very devil incarnate. Now, may I continue?”
Holmes knit his brows in mock contrition. “Oh, dear, Watson, have I offended the gallant in you? I do apologize. I am sure women are the meek, fragile creatures you suppose them to be.”
I ignored him and continued reading as a tremendous thunder clap sounded outside the window, rattling the window panes.
Upon arriving at Torre Abbey, I found my mother in an excitable state and my sister bordering on nervous collapse.
Holmes stuck the pipe in his mouth, crossed his hands behind his head and kicked a newspaper from under his feet. “Here comes the good part, Watson.”
Let me say that if I were you I would hardly have credited what I am about to tell you. And yet I saw it as clearly as you now see the paper you hold in your hands.
There are many legends associated with Torre Abbey, some going back centuries. The townsfolk like to talk, of course, but superstitions run rampant as rabbits in the West Country, and I never paid much attention to any of them.
Briefly, the story is this: In the late fourteenth century a certain William Norton, who was then the Abbot of Torre, was suspected of committing a foul and cowardly murder. The alleged victim was a monk by the name of Symon Hastynges—
“Note the Welsh spelling of the name, Watson,” Holmes said, lazily waving a hand in my direction.
“Yes, quite. May I continue?”
Holmes smiled. “By all means.”
I turned my eye back to the page before me.
To quell the rumours, Abbot Norton produced a man who resembled Symon Hastynges, but even then people claimed the man was an impostor and that the real Symon Hastynges lay buried in the churchyard—minus his head, which the abbot had done the courtesy of removing. The case against the abbot was never proved, but ever since then there have been reports of a headless monk who wanders the halls of Torre Abbey—and some claim they have seen him galloping along the avenue leading to the abbey, riding a blind ghost horse.
Holmes chuckled. “It’s all deliciously chilling, is it not, Watson? Ancient abbeys, ghost horses, beheaded monks . . . the stuff of children’s bedtime tales.” He yawned and stretched and flicked another newspaper onto the pile which lay on the floor.
“That well may be,” I replied, “but Lord Cary seems to be rather upset by it.”
“Ah, yes, you’re getting to that part,” he said, putting down the unlit pipe and closing his eyes.
I leaned forward closer to the fire and turned to the second page of Lord Cary’s letter. If his handwriting was any evidence, he was indeed a man of strong character. He crossed his t’s with decisiveness, and the ink was pressed firmly onto the paper with the conviction of a man who knows who he is. He went on to say that, having arrived at Torre Abbey on a Friday night, he listened with a sympathetic but skeptical ear to the tale his sister and mother told. It seems that two nights earlier, his sister, whose name was Elizabeth, heard what she thought to be rats scurrying in the hallway outside her room. Upon rising from her bed, she proceeded into the hall with a lit taper—except that instead of rats, she saw the ghostly form of a headless man dressed in a monk’s habit!
She could not say where he had come from or indeed where he went, because she fainted immediately upon seeing him. The ghostly visitor had vanished by the time she awoke, but she could swear she heard the sound of horses’ hooves on the lane outside. It was a dark night, and by the time she got to the window, there was no sign of either horse or rider. She went straight away to her mother’s room, awakened her and told her what she had seen. Together they agreed to send for her brother Charles—Lord Cary—and had done so by urgent telegram the next day.
I glanced over at Holmes. His lean form was still; one arm was thrown carelessly over his head, his eyes were closed, and he gave every sign of being asleep. However, I knew him well enough to realize that he was listening intently, in spite of all evidence to the contrary.
Upon arriving late Friday night, I comforted my mother and sister and assured them they had nothing to fear. I did not attempt to explain what my sister had seen, for I was not yet convinced she had seen anything. My sister has a vivid imagination, and is of a high-strung and nervous disposition, unlike myself. For all I knew, it could have been an arrangement of shadows that frightened her. The abbey is old and damp, and there are nooks and crannies in the stones that, under the right lighting conditions, can even seem to move.
After a light dinner, I prepared to retire; it had been a long day and I was tired. My bedroom is on the third floor, in the stone tower overlooking a courtyard which was once the back garden of the abbey. As I lay in my bed with a chemistry book—I am reading medicine at Oxford—I thought I heard a sound out in the courtyard below.
Another deafening clap of thunder sounded outside, and I practically leaped from my chair, dropping the letter onto the carpet at my feet. A shiver coursed through my body as I bent to pick up the missive, and I glanced over at Holmes to see if he had witnessed my alarm. He lay there peacefully as ever—though I thought I saw one eyelid twitch. I took a sip of my wine, which I had quite forgotten about, then turned back to the letter, eager to read what happened next.
I went to the window and pulled back the curtains. Even now as I write this it seems so preposterous and unlikely that I would laugh at it myself had I not seen it with my own two eyes. There in the courtyard stood a man—or rather, the figure of a man—for he had no head. The night was dark but there was a faint moon, and I could make out that his clothing was that of a medieval monk. He was turned towards me, and stood there as if waiting for something. My first thought—or rather, my second, for I a...