It was an interesting story; a bit long in certain parts and with a rushed ending, since there was very little investigating before the truth came out in the last page, and it abruptly ended.
I would have liked for the detective to show up earlier and also it would have been nice to see an actual investigation. There basically was nothing of the sort, until something we could not know was revealed. We had enough data to suspect, of course. Well, I personally only suspected of one of them, not the other, because with my bad memory I didn’t remember the connection, but still it was there and it was possible to think of it.
Details:
At first we are introduced to the characters: Eve Carnforth is a young woman who believes in phantoms, ghosts or whatever she wants to call it. She starts the whole think by talking about this. She firmly believes in it but the others don’t.
They are Rudolph Braye, the one Eve likes. Gifford Bruce, a very, very rich man from Chicago, and his niece Vernie Reid, only 16. She just finished school in Connecticut, I think.
Professor Hardwick and Wynne and Milly Landon, married.
I liked a lot how the author described Milly:
“Milly Landon was an inveterate giggler, but don’t let that prejudice you against her. She was the nicest, dearest dumpling of a little woman who ever giggled her way through life.”
They talk about spiritism, Vernie finds it funny and Eve is very much into it, so the others decide on a little experiment/vacation. To rent a haunted house for a month and see for themselves if there’s any truth in it.
They invite Norma Cameron as well, because Milly wanted to since Norma says she’s a sensitive. Eve appears jealous, but there’s nothing she can do about it. She has reasons though, since Braye falls for Norma.
Now they are: Eve, Milly, Vernie and Norma, versus Braye, Bruce, Hardwick and Landon. For some reason, when Milly talks about inviting Norma her husband they should have another man at this point… so Braye tells them or Tracy, a minister he met in Chicago.
Long story short, they find a house and go there all together. It is a real haunted house, at the end of a dark woods, and there is no electricity and very few candles, so some of them start getting spooked right away.
They stay there and soon they put up many more candles and lamps so it doesn’t seem that dark.
Strange things start happening right away, like two candles being swapped in places, and strange noises at night.
The haunted part of the house is mainly The Room with the Tassels, where a long time ago a murder happened. Something like a woman poisoned her husband and went mad, and his body disappeared.
In turn, they spend the night in that room to be first hand witnesses to any spooky happening.
Braye first tells them he saw the ghost of a shawled woman with a skull for a face, but since he had told them that he would try to trick them if given the chance, nobody believes him.
Eve sees it next, again at 4am, but they say she’s an excitable girl and don’t put much weight in what she says.
They keep talking about it, ‘investigating’ is what they call it, and the curious teenager sneaks out of her room one night and goes to sleep there while the room with the tassels is empty, and she does see the ghost, and it points her finger at her. Vernie is freaked out.
She plays with the ouja board with Tracy and she screams that she got a message, that two people will die at four o’clock.
The next day, Milly and Braye are out shopping and the others sit down to have tea, and at exactly 4m two of them fall down, dead: Vernie and her uncle Bruce.
Doctors are called, of course, and the remaining members of the group are sure that the ghost did it. Because, they say, there is no other way it could have happened that way, that fast.
One of the two doctors says that Bruce was poisoned, and an inquest will be held, but they don’t like the idea of people investigating the matter because it will be inconvenient for them and someone will probably try to pin it on one of them while they ‘know’ it was the ghost, because there can be no evidence leading to a different conclusion, because :
“if there were any we would have found it ourselves”.
Of course, right? :rollingeyes
The inquest leaves it at ‘unknown people’, but the story makes the papers. Soon professor Hardwick receives the letter of a detective interested in the case, Pennington Wise, Penny for short.
Braye and Milly don’t want him to come, afraid suspicions will fall on Wynne, who knows why, but they can’t do anything and soon Penny Wise arrives with a girl called Zizi. I’m not sure how old is she, because sometimes it seems she’s just a girl like Vernie, but she speaks like she’s done lots of stuff already: now she works with Wise, but she’s also worked in the movies, doing lots of stunts apparently. Anyway, Penny Wise says not to pay her any attention, that she’s part of his luggage… Milly asks if Zizi belongs with the servants or in there with them, but he replies that Zizi can look after herself and that’s it.
Tracr goes away, saying he saw the ghost too and is too spooked to stay there.
One night the girl Zizi, sleeping in ‘that’ room, gets kidnapped and thrown into the lake with bricks at her feet, but apparently the man wasn’t great at making nots, and the girl is good with stunts and holding her breath and all that stuff, and she frees herself.
There’s a little more talk, not too much, and then the owner of the house, Mr Stebbing, reveals how he managed the first nights, to sneak into the house and play the part of the ghost for Braye and Eve. He never tried again after them, after all nobody believed it.
There’s a secret entrance, of course, that nobody but Wise had thought about, a secret only the owners know.
Now Penny Wise thinks that Vernie’s body must have had the same fate they wanted Zizi to have, and he has people search the lake, and her body is found, and it turns out she was scratched with poison and that’s why her body was hidden.
At that point, just like that, Penny Wise tells them the conclusion, who did it and how and why. It turns out that Tracy is not a minister, he’s a criminal under another name. He discovered the secret entrance and did all the rest, the spookings and the murders.
As to why, it should be pretty obvious, but nobody says a word. Eve has a little crisis, she probably thought about it for some time but didn’t want it to be true.
Once all reunited, Wise starts telling how Tracy did it for money… and here he is stopped by Braye, who confesses that Tracy tempted him with the plan, and that Tracy would not chance his mind or back off, and went on with his plan till the end for half of Bruce’s money. Braye is the direct heir, after him it will be Landon.
After his confession, Braye takes the same poison Tracy used and dies immediately.
Landon inherits.
The end.
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