The Haunted Lady Read Online Free

might know ways and means of finding things out, you’d be the ones.’
    Eve and I exchanged glances before she said, ‘That sounds like a bit of a tall order. You mentioned three different things in one sentence. Perhaps it would be better to separate them and tell us one bit at a time.’
    ‘Eve’s right,’ I told her. ‘Why don’t you start with the haunting, Mrs Phillips?’
    ‘Please, call me Marjorie,’ she replied. ‘Very well, it’s the church that is haunted. Well, not so much the church, more the chapel.’
    Her opening had me baffled, which was more the fault of my upbringing. In my mind ‘church’ indicated an Anglican establishment, whereas I associated ‘chapel’ with Nonconformists such as Methodists. My puzzled expression was mirrored by Eve’s. Seeing this, Marjorie hastened to clarify her statement. ‘Dinsdale Parish Church is dedicated to St Mary Magdalene. It’s a cruciform church, with one of the transepts made into a Lady chapel. It’s the Lady chapel that is haunted, has been for years.’
    ‘When you say haunted, what form does the apparition take?’ Eve asked.
    I had a vision of a monk clad in robe and cowl pacing the cloisters of what might once have been a monastery. Either that, or a vicar wearing the frock coat, knee britches, and gaiters of a bygone age. Well – you can’t blame me, because it was hardly likely to be a headless horseman or Bluebeard. Not in a country church.
    ‘The vision is that of a woman wearing a grey gown. She has been seen several times, but only briefly. She appears for a second or two, standing in the entrance, not moving, and then vanishes. Naturally the rumours of the sightings have got out, and some of Michael’s parishioners won’t go near the church. Others can’t keep away. Trying to hold their attention during a service when they are staring sideways hoping to catch a glimpse of a ghost is taxing Michael’s patience. He can’t explain it, and neither can anyone else.’
    ‘I agree it must be difficult for him, but I hardly think you need to worry if that’s all there is to it,’ Eve reassured her. ‘Or is there more that you haven’t told us?’
    As a prompt her final remark worked a treat. ‘Michael’s been told that the ghost only started to appear to people after the painting vanished. The problem now is some folk have started putting two and two together. They seem to imply something sensational and Michael is really concerned that if it got into the media it might cause hordes of people to descend on the church. The sort of folk who are fascinated by the supernatural, I mean.’
    ‘Sorry,’ I admitted, ‘but somewhere in the middle of that you lost me. What painting are you referring to? One that vanished, I think you said.’
    ‘There was a painting that used to hang in the Lady chapel. One edge of it was fixed to the wall of the chapel but it was on hinges so that it was also visible from the nave of the church. The painting was very old. In fact it was one of those double-sided paintings. There’s a name for them but I can’t remember it.’
    ‘You mean a diptych?’
    ‘That’s it. One side is said to represent Mary Magdalene fleeing for her life following the Crucifixion and the other is when she’s seen Christ after the Resurrection. I don’t think the painting was exceptionally valuable as a work of art, except possibly as a church artefact. I mean it wasn’t by Leonardo da Vinci or Michelangelo, or anything like that. I admit I’m no expert but from what I could judge I understand it was little better than something an enthusiastic amateur could produce. However, someone mentioned that the apparitions only started after the painting was taken. Can you imagine the throng of gawping sightseers a rumour like that would provoke? Michael doesn’t want his church to be “turned into a circus”, as he puts it.’ She smiled fondly. ‘He can get a little fanciful at times.’
    ‘That’s OK, we do fanciful