I COMMIT MURDER
I will now relate a very unpleasant experience that befell me thirty
years ago, but which has by no means exhausted itself in the passage of
years. It still, at long intervals, recurs to me as vividly as when
first I passed through the painful hours of its unfoldment.
It was the month of July, and I was making a tour by road through a
portion of Scotland, driving my own horse. I was accompanied by a groom
and a maid.
One evening we arrived at a well-known inn on Deeside, where I had
arranged to pass a couple of nights. I found my room ready for me, an
ordinary hotel bedroom, and after supper I retired very early to bed,
feeling very sleepy after a long day in the open air.
Towards morning I had a vision. I was a woman who had committed the
crime of murder; and I went in hourly terror of discovery and arrest, as
the police were actively in search of the criminal. Up to the present I
had succeeded in evading them, and no shadow of suspicion had yet fallen
upon me, but I lived in constant haunting dread that sooner or later
some chance clue would direct their attention to me, and I should be
arrested and brought up for trial.
I had no clue in the vision as to how the murder had been committed. My
victim was a man, and a sensation, vague and cloudy, suggested that a
quick poison was the mode of destruction I used, but I never gathered
why I murdered him, or what relation, if any, he was to me.
The vision was confined to my miserable sensations of fear of detection,
and the trouble was that I seemed utterly powerless to keep away from
the scene of my crime, a large mansion in the West End of London.
Not only did I haunt the outside of the house, but I had several times
contrived to penetrate into the interior without being discovered, the
house having stood empty since the crime.
It was a dark, foggy night when I determined again to effect an
entrance, and I listened intently in the street before darting up to the
front door and fitting my key in the lock. There was not a sound, and I
found myself in the interior with the door softly closed behind me.
I carried a candle, which I was about to light, when I saw that the
large hall was not in its usual darkness. A dim light burned in a
pendant globe, and looking round I perceived abundant evidences that the
house was again occupied. Several pairs of men's gloves were neatly
folded on the hall table, and a man's silk hat was neatly covered with a
cloth. There was not the faintest sound to be heard in the house, and
the hour was between eleven and midnight.
Very softly I crept up the wide staircase. My heart was beating
tumultuously, and I was in an agony of apprehension. On the first
corridor I entered the room where I had concealed the body of the man I
had murdered. I had dragged it there and hidden it in a great dress
wardrobe. I opened the wardrobe door and found the interior had been
filled with women's clothes, they were swathed in linen sheets. Amongst
them I began to search with both hands, but, of course, found no signs
of the body, which had long since been removed. However, in some
unaccountable way the action of searching seemed to comfort me, and soon
I turned to retrace my steps and gain the street once more.
At that second I heard some one approaching, and quick as thought I
slipped into the wardrobe and pulled the door close. Some one entered
the room and then left it again. In a few more moments the house was
again silent as the grave, and I began to creep downstairs very softly.
When halfway down, at a bend which brought me in full view of the hall
and the front door in the background, I stopped short at a sound.
Some one was about to enter, some one was fumbling with a latch key at
the other side of that door. Another moment and that some one would
enter and I would be discovered. There was but one chance. Whoever it
was might not come upstairs. He or she might strike off to the left of
the hall, where a corridor ran to that end of the house.
I cannot attempt to describe my agonizing terror of suspense, yet I did
not lose my presence of mind. Instantaneously I decided what to do,
should the one about to enter elect to come straight upstairs.
I hastily lit my candle, carefully shading it with my hand, and
crouching low I peered through the banisters, towards the front door. It
opened, and a man entered, middle-aged, well dressed, a gentleman, and
an utter stranger to me.
He closed the door and turned the key, but drew no bolts. Then he threw
off a heavy coat, and placed his hat and gloves on the table. My heart
beat to suffocation, as I waited to see which way he would go. He was
whistling softly to himself and, turning, began to walk across the hall,
heading for the stairs.
Then the moment for action came. I knew now I should have to pass him in
order to make my escape. I threw myself into the tragic pose of a
somnambulist. I wore a long floating cloak, and I knew my face was white
as death, and my eyes wide with sheer terror.
With both hands, one of which held the lighted candle, outstretched
gropingly, with distraught gaze fixed in wild vacancy, I slipped
silently down the few remaining steps and sped noiselessly in my soft
shoes straight across the hall towards him.
Though I never turned my eyes upon him I was aware that he had stopped
dead short, and was staring at me in startled amazement. Then fear
suddenly invaded him, I could feel it. He fell back as if to let me
pass, as I glided silently nearer to him and to the door.
He was backing away from me now, then in another instant, he had turned
and fled along the corridor. One more moment and I was safely outside,
on the pavement.
I woke up to a brilliant summer morning pouring in at my open window,
but I was in no mood to enjoy its loveliness. I was bathed in cold
perspiration, I was shivering with pure unadulterated fear. I was
prostrate with the violent revulsion of feeling, from acute dread of
discovery to partial immunity on gaining the street and escaping from
the house. The vividness of every detail was crystal clear, and attended
by all the violent emotions such an adventure and escape would
naturally arouse in me, had they happened in the world of realities.
It was hours before I could shake off the horror of the vision, and I
left the hotel that day. Nothing would induce me ever to pass another
night under that roof.
I had no recurrence of the vision till three months after, then it came
again, with all its attendant horrors, when I was asleep in my own bed
at home. This was succeeded at long intervals by a vision of my
condition of mind as an undiscovered criminal, always evading detection,
but without the vision of my return to the scene of the crime. During
the last thirty years I have had recurrences of the complete and partial
vision, but at long intervals.
A few years ago I happened to be standing with my host in an enormous
stone hall, in one of the greatest houses in England. We were discussing
the house, and its uncomfortable vastness. There were suites of
apartments in outlying parts where whole families might hide for days if
housemaids were careless. To reach the dining and drawing-rooms from the
bedrooms, if one was tired, was a real weariness.
We were looking up at the great gallery, running round the hall. It was
reached by four wide flights of stairs at different corners, and it was
full of all sorts of recesses, and massive pieces of old furniture and
screens. On the spur of the moment I said to my host, "Wouldn't it be
uncanny if we were to see a strange face looking down on us?"
To my surprise, he answered: "Oh! that has often happened. I've often
seen strangers looking down. At one time I took them to be inquisitive
members of my own household, whom I didn't know by sight, and one day I
complained about it, to the housekeeper. She looked very much disturbed
and told me she had seen the same thing herself. The house is opened on
certain days to the public, and she was half inclined to think one of
the visitors had escaped from the crowd, and hidden herself for several
days, as it was not on a public day that the figure was seen."
"Is it always the same figure?" I asked.
"Oh, no," replied my host. "Always a different one, and always some one
quite ordinary and modern looking. The strictest orders are given that
none of the servants' friends are to be allowed in this part of the
house, and the housekeeper has always been with us and is thoroughly
trustworthy. The fact remains an unsolved mystery."
The housekeeper was a very agreeable old woman of the real,
old-fashioned type. Very rustling in the evening, in a rich silk gown,
and wearing some fine piece of jewelry presented to her by one or other
of the crowned heads who had visited the famous house. I had asked her
before I left about these mysterious appearances, and she had no
explanation to offer. She had ascertained beyond a shadow of a doubt,
that they had nothing to do with the household.
"They were always just ordinary looking men and women, such as one meets
in the streets every day. Sometimes they seem to have hats on, sometimes
their heads appear uncovered," she explained.
This fits in with a belief I have always held that we constantly rub
shoulders with the disembodied, without being in the least aware of it.
As the Bishop of London once said: "We will find ourselves exactly the
same persons ten minutes after death as we were ten minutes before
death."
There are many occasions when we cannot express feeling in intellectual
terms owing to the poverty of language. One's life not being a matter of
intellectual perception, but a conscious experience, little of it can be
made known. The mystic life is really incommunicable.
We regard the Universe through the lens of five very imperfect senses,
conscious all the time that there are certainly many more mediums for
the expression of consciousness.
Perception is a manifestation of consciousness, and varies enormously in
individuals, ranging often above and beneath the normal. Undoubtedly
perception can be enormously extended by practice, not only in seeing
material objects, but in approaching the borderland of other worlds.
The sight of the Psychic or Medium is not so much vision as a
consciousness of the thoughts and feelings of others. It is a sensation
rather than a process of thinking, sensation not as we commonly accept
the term, but sensation through which mental objects are realized with
as great a clarity of vision as physical objects are seen with the naked
eye.
This intuitive vision is near akin to ordinary physical vision, inasmuch
as the object seen has a real concrete existence. The Psychic feels
vibrations and absorbs them.
My explanation of my vision in the Highland inn is that the actual
criminal had slept the night before in the room I occupied, and
happening to be mediumistic I at once began to absorb the vibrations,
and became steeped in all the circumstances, environment, and
conditions thrown off by the criminal in connection with the crime.
The vibrations were intensely strong, and still fresh and concentrated.
I absorbed them so fully that still at times they steal back across the
threshold of my subconsciousness, the vehicle which registers and
retains all impressions.
During sleep, when one is off guard, the gate is often ajar, and old
memories and incidents steal through, and range at will through the
ordinary consciousness.
In daily, normal existence the mind is merely a whirlpool, but
undoubtedly the criminal would concentrate mentally on every detail of
her crime. There would be a focalization of her mind; a concentration of
her whole mental faculties upon this one single subject, and when the
mental force is reduced from its normal, dissipated condition into
coherency, its power is unlimited. It is possible to catch a physical
disease by sleeping in an infected bed. It is quite as easy to catch a
mental disease by the same means. Many emotions are highly contagious,
notably fear. All are invisible to human sight, and there is rarely any
warning. A Psychic may sense something unpleasant before infection is
established. In fact, this often happens to quite normal individuals.
Something in the atmosphere of a place conveys a warning, is unpleasant
or uncongenial and it is avoided. If a warning was conveyed to me in the
Highland inn I was too tired to heed it.
At one time in my life I saw a great deal of two intimate and charming
friends, Lord and Lady Wynford. Alas! both have now passed over.
Lady Wynford was born Caroline Baillie of Dochfour, and owing to her
Scotch blood, and her relationship with many of our great Scotch
families, she was profoundly interested in ghosts. Lord Wynford, on the
contrary, had an absolute horror of the subject, and always left the
room whilst it was under discussion. Though very dissimilar, husband and
wife were the best of friends. She was very handsome and a brilliant
woman of the world. He was shy, retiring, and deeply religious. A
perfect example of a true gentleman of the old school, and an aristocrat
to his finger-tips. I was devoted to them both, and they were very kind
to me in giving me their warm friendship, though at the time of which I
write I was only a girl of about twenty years old.
At that period the great topic of conversation amongst ghost-hunters was
Glamis Castle, the most celebrated of all haunted houses. No ghost book
is ever considered complete without reference to this celebrated Castle,
and the story usually narrated is, that in the secret room some abnormal
horror lived, and that the heir, Lord Glamis, and the factor, had to be
told of its existence by the Earl of Strathmore in person. This
information was of so terrible a nature that it changed not only the
lives of those two men, but even their personal appearance. They grew
aged and haggard in a single night.
This story was readily discussed in old days by members of the
Strathmore family, who were just as keen as outsiders were to probe the
mystery. To-day it is universally believed that the monstrosity is at
last laid to rest, and that though other ghosts still walk the Castle,
the worst has departed forever.
I went one afternoon to see the Wynfords in the hotel in which they
stayed whilst in Scotland, and found Lady Reay with them. She was a
wonderful woman in her way, and preserved her youth up till very late in
life. Lord Wynford was not present, and Lady Wynford at once greeted me
by exclaiming, "We are going to stay at Glamis next week, and Lady Reay
has been there and seen a ghost."
"But not _the_ ghost," admitted Lady Reay.
"Then what did you see?" I inquired.
She then told the following story, which has a sequel:--
"I had been in the Castle for three nights and much to my satisfaction
seen absolutely nothing. We were a very cheery party, and every one was
frightfully thrilled and nervously expectant, but we were very careful
not to breathe the word 'ghost' before our host and hostess.
"On the fourth night I was awakened by a moaning sound in my room, and I
opened my eyes. The room was in total darkness, but I saw something very
bright near the door. I shut my eyes instantly, and pulled the
bedclothes over my head in a paroxysm of fear. I longed to light my
candles, but didn't dare, and the moaning continued, and I thought I
should go quite mad.
"At last I ventured to peep out again. I saw a woman dressed exactly
like Mary Tudor, in her pictures, and she was wandering round the walls,
flinging herself against them, like a bird against the bars of a cage,
and beating her hands upon the walls, and all the time she moaned
horribly. I'm sure she was the ghost of a mad woman. Her face and form
were lit up exactly like a picture thrown upon a magic lantern screen,
and every detail of her dress was clearly defined.
"Luckily she never looked at me, or I should have screamed, and I
thought of Lord and Lady I. sleeping in the next room to mine, and
wondered how I could reach them. I was really too terrified to move, and
the ghost kept more or less to that part of the room where the door was
situated.
"I must have lain there awake for two or three hours, sometimes with my
head buried under the clothes, sometimes peeping out, when at last the
moaning suddenly stopped. I opened my eyes. Thank God, I was alone. The
ghost had departed.
"I lay with wide open eyes till daybreak. Then the first thing I did was
to run to the mirror to see if my hair had turned white. Mercifully it
hadn't, but I looked an awful wreck.
"I told just a few people what I had seen, and contrived to get a wire
sent me before lunch. Early in the afternoon I was on the way to
Edinburgh."
Such was the story Lady Reay related.
Thirteen years later Captain Eric Streatfield, who was a nephew of Lord
Strathmore, and an intimate friend of my husband, told me exactly the
same story. He was a boy of six at the time, when the lady of Tudor days
appeared moaning in his room, and he said he would never forget the
misery of the night he passed. He was very much interested in hearing
that Lady Reay had gone through the same experience. He told me another
extraordinary story.
Whilst, as a school boy, he was visiting at Glamis Castle with his
parents, he noticed that they began to behave in rather a peculiar
manner. They were often consulting alone with one another, and
constantly scanning the sky from their bedroom window, which adjoined
his. For two or three days this sort of thing went on, and he caught
queer fragments of conversation whispered between them, such as, "It
doesn't always happen. We might be spared this year, the power must die
out some day."
At last one evening his father called him into his room, where his
mother stood by the open window. In his hand his father held an open
watch.
His mother bade him look out, and tell them what sort of night it was.
He replied that it was fine, and still and cold, and the stars were
beginning to appear.
His father then said, "We want you to take particular note of the
weather, for in another moment you may witness a remarkable change.
Probably you will see a furious tempest."
Eric could not make head or tail of this. He wondered if his parents had
gone mad, but glancing at his mother he noticed that she looked
strangely pale and anxious.
Then the storm burst, with such terrific suddenness and fury that it
terrified him. A howling tempest, accompanied by blinding lightning and
deafening thunder, rushed down upon them from an absolutely clear sky.
His mother knelt down by the bed, and he thought that she was praying.
When Eric asked for an explanation he was told that when he was grown up
one would be given him. Unfortunately the moment never came. An aunt had
told him that the storm was peculiarly to do with Glamis, and was
something that could not be explained.
Lord and Lady Wynford paid their visit to Glamis, and I looked forward
eagerly to their return in a week's time. I went to see them the day
after their arrival back again, and was met by Lady Wynford alone.
Before I could question her she began to speak of the visit.
"I don't want you even to mention the word Glamis to Wynford," she said
very gravely. "He's had a great shock, and he's in a very queer state of
mind."
She paused, and I ventured to ask, "But what sort of shock?"
Then she gave me the following account:--
"Wynford and I occupied adjoining bedrooms. We were having a delightful
time. Glorious weather, and a lot of very pleasant people. I really
forgot all about there being any ghost. We were out all day, and very
sleepy at night, and I never heard or saw a thing that was unusual.
"Two nights before we left something happened to Wynford. He came into
my room and awakened me at seven o'clock in the morning. He was fully
dressed, and he looked dreadfully upset and serious. He said he had
something to tell me, and he wished to get it over, and then he would
try not to think of it any more. I was certain then that he had seen or
heard something terrible, and I waited with the greatest impatience for
him to continue. He seemed confronted with some great difficulty, but
after a long pause he said--
"'You know that I have always disbelieved in the supernatural. I have
never believed that God would permit such things to come to pass as I
have heard lightly described. I was wrong. Such awful experiences are
possible. I know it to my own cost, and I pray God I may never pass such
a night again as that which I have just come through. I have not slept
for a moment. I feel I must tell you this, in fact, it is necessary that
I tell you, because I am going to extract a promise from you. A promise
that you will never mention in my hearing the name of this house, or the
terrible subject with which its name is connected.'
"I was speechless for a few minutes with perplexed amazement. I had
never heard Wynford speak like that, nor had I ever seen him so terribly
upset.
"'But,' I said at last, 'aren't you going to tell me what has so
unnerved you?'
"He began pacing up and down the room. 'Good God, no,' he exclaimed, 'I
couldn't even begin to tell you. I have no words that would have any
meaning or expression. Don't you understand, there is no language to
convey such happenings from one to the other. They are seen, felt,
heard! They cannot be uttered. There are some things on earth I know of
now, that may not be related to the spoken word. Perhaps between a man
and his God, but not even between you and me.'
"We were silent again for some minutes, during which he continued to
pace the room, his head drooped on his breast. I was really seriously
alarmed. I even feared for his reason, and I couldn't form the smallest
conjecture as to what had been the nature of his experiences. I was
quite convinced of one thing. What he had seen was no ordinary ghost,
like Lady Reay's Tudor Lady. She might have amazed him, but it required
something much more terrible and awe-inspiring to have reduced him to
such a condition of mental misery and desolation.
"I wanted to comfort him, to sympathize with him, but something about
him held me at arm's length. It was his soul that was suffering, and
with his soul a man must wrestle alone. I felt that his deep religious
convictions of a lifetime had been violently dislocated, for all I knew
shattered entirely, and I felt profound compassion for him. I may have
had doubts, on many points. I confess to being a worldly skeptic, but
Wynford's faith has always been so pure and childlike, and I have
striven never to jar him on religious subjects. Now I feel as if
somehow, everything that he has ever had has been taken away from him.
"At last I said, 'Don't you think we had better leave to-day? We can
easily make some excuse.'
"He stopped and looked straight at me, so strangely.
"'No, I can't leave to-day. I must stay another night here. There is
something I must do. Now will you give me your promise never to mention
this subject to me again? We may not be alone together again to-day. I
want to get it over. Promise.'
"I gave him my promise at once. I dared not have opposed him. I was
horribly frightened. He went out of the room at once, and I lay thinking
and shivering with dread. 'What was it he had to do? Why could we not
leave to-day?' It was all so mysterious.
"Well! the day passed in an ordinary manner, and if Wynford was more
grave than usual I don't think any one noticed it. Then came the night I
so dreaded. Of course I didn't sleep at first, I was too anxious, and I
heard him come up to his room half an hour after I did. The door between
our rooms was closed, and I lay awake listening intently. I heard him
moving about; I supposed he was undressing, and his man never sits up
for him. Then after a time there were occasional creaks which I knew
came from an armchair, and I knew that he had not gone to bed.
"I suppose I must have fallen asleep, because the next thing I was aware
of was Wynford's voice. He was speaking to some one, and seemed to be in
the middle of a conversation. When he ceased speaking I strained my ears
to catch a reply. I could hear no words, only his voice. Then a reply
did come, and it simply froze the blood in my body, and I felt bathed in
ice, and had to put my finger between my teeth, they chattered so
horribly.
"The reply was a hoarse whisper, a sort of rasping, grating undertone,
that was not so much a whisper as an inability to speak in any other
voice. There was something almost inhuman in those harsh, vibrating, yet
husky words, spoken too low for me to catch. I knew at once that no
guest, no member of the family, spoke like that, and I could not
conceive that it could be a servant. What could Wynford have to say to
any servant of Lord Strathmore?
"A clock somewhere in the Castle struck three. No; I was certain that
the presence with him, whatever else it might be, was no human being
dwelling under the roof of Glamis.
"At times they seemed to hold an argument; sometimes Wynford's voice was
sharp and decisive, at other times it was utterly weary and despondent.
I dreaded what the effect might be upon him of this awful night, but I
could do nothing but lie shivering in bed, and pray for the morning.
"How long it went on for I can't say, but the conviction came to me
suddenly that Wynford had begun to pray. His voice was raised, and now
and again I fancied I could hear words. The rasping whisper came now
only in short, sharp interjections or expostulations, I don't know
which. The even flow of Wynford's words went quietly on, and I began to
be certain that he was praying for the being who spoke with that
terrible whisper. It occurred to me that he might even be trying to
exorcise some unclean spirit.
"At last a silence fell. Wynford stopped praying, and I hoped that the
terrible interview was at an end. Then it began again, and for quite an
hour the prayers went on, with long periods of silence in between. I
heard no more of the terrible, husky whisper.
"I fell asleep again and did not awake till my maid brought me early
tea. No sooner had she gone than Wynford entered, fully dressed. Though
he looked desperately tired and wan, he seemed quite composed, and as if
some weight had been removed from off him. He said he was going for a
stroll before breakfast, and, of course, I remembered my promise and put
no questions. I have come to the conclusion that a hundred people may
stay any length of time at Glamis and see or hear nothing. The hundred
and first may receive such a shock to the nervous system that he never
really recovers from it."
Such was the mysterious story that Lady Wynford unfolded. I saw her
husband the next day, but beyond being graver than usual in his manner I
detected no difference in him. He never referred, even in the most
indirect way, to his visit, but he must have inferred by my silence that
I had been warned not to mention the subject. Many others must, however,
have done so, for every one, who at that period passed a night under
Glamis Castle roof, was eagerly questioned by friends and acquaintances
on their return.
The only occasion on which I visited Glamis was on the night of a ball,
given in honor of the Crown Prince of Sweden. The curiosity of the
guests was held in check by servants being stationed at certain doors,
and entrances to corridors and staircases, to inform rude explorers that
they could not pass. It is hard to believe that such a course of action
was necessary, but I personally watched little parties being turned back
towards the ballroom and sitting-out-rooms, showing that intense
curiosity may even prove stronger than good breeding.
What Wynford saw that night will never be known, but one fact remains.
It left so deep an impression upon him that he was never the same man
again. He became graver and more wrapped up in his own thoughts month by
month, and the change that ended in his death his wife attributed to
those nights passed in Glamis Castle.