Haunted Dare

The council's response, about a month later, was very negative. They didn't see Albert's cottage as being within the village envelope but detached from it and surrounded by farmland. There was no way the council would allow development on the site, and although derelict, Albert's cottage was locally listed as being 17th Century vernacular and on the buildings at risk register. Permission to demolish would be refused too. The council would be sympathetic to any proposal to renovate the cottage where it is on its own land.

The developers dropped their plans. In the meantime, I had been in touch with the Australian nephews. They wanted to get rid of the cottage. They jokingly suggested that they might pay someone to take it off their hands. They were now seriously rich, and the cottage was a nuisance. They set their price at what they had been asking in 1960."

Mr Amos paused, sat back in his chair and smiled.

"And their asking price is?" Rosalind asked after a silence.

"Eight hundred pounds for the house and land." Mr Amos replied.

"What!" Rosalind exploded.

"Eight hundred pounds." Mr Amos repeated.

"Could we buy it as tenants in common?" I asked.

"Of course. Our fees might be a couple of hundred on top but no stamp duty."

I looked at Rosalind. She looked at me and nodded.

"Yes, please," I said. "Can you arrange the purchase for us both?"

It took about half an hour to go through all the procedures. We would get the solicitor's bill and completion in about a month. I paid the eight hundred pounds with my debit card on my savings account that I had been building up for a deposit on a house purchase. We would have the solicitor's bill as well, but the price was stupid.

We went to a coffee shop and Rosalind paid me four hundred pounds by cheque. We might almost have enough savings to pay for the basic renovation ourselves but if Albert and Edith were right, we might be wealthy.

That evening we went back to the cottage and told Edith and Albert that we were buying it. They were delighted.

On the Friday evening I collected Rosalind from her parents' house, and we went to the budget hotel that I had booked as Mr and Mrs. The reception didn't seem bothered by Rosalind's lack of wedding ring. She was wearing her grandmother Agnes' antique engagement ring. She hadn't wanted me to buy one because we might need all our money to restore the cottage.

We had an evening meal in the hotel's restaurant and retired to bed early. We showered before I joined Rosalind in bed. We were both nervous. I was the first time we had the opportunity to have sex together. For the first hour we just cuddled and talked, mainly about what we would need to have done to the cottage to make it possible to live in.

Finally Rosalind said:

"Sod it! Let's just do it. That's what we're here for."

I was startled when she flipped me from my side to on my back, yanked off her nightdress and impaled herself on my insistent erection. From the time she said, 'Sod it!' until penetration was only a few seconds.

I hadn't expected to be assaulted so quickly but my erection was very happy with where it was. I had to grit my teeth to hold on as Rosalind's movements became more and more frantic. It was fortunate that the hotel was nearly empty, and our room was at the end of a corridor with unused rooms next to us. Rosalind's screams as she shuddered in ecstasy were loud.

As she came off her peak, she pulled my hands to her breasts. That did it for me and I came into her.

I went to sleep with Rosalind still lying on me. I woke up to find Rosalind's hand was gently raising my erection again. This time I managed, despite squeals of protest, to ride her.

In the morning, Rosalind had her revenge. She rode me again and I held on so long we were nearly late for breakfast. After breakfast we returned to our room for a couple of hours of more passionate sex before we decided we needed a break.

We walked around the sights of the town for a couple of hours before lunch in a sandwich bar. By three o'clock we were back in bed making love again. Rosalind had promised me a night with her. It looked as if it might be two nights and a day as well. I didn't object. We had been wanting to make love properly for months and we were celebrating owning a house together that we might be able to live in, with two resident ghosts, in a few months' time.

Saturday night was almost a repeat of Friday night. When we crawled out of bed on Sunday morning, we were both shattered. We had been making up for months of abstinence and possibly did too much in a short time. We spent the day just wandering around the town before I took Rosalind home that evening.

+++

Monday lunchtime I walked a couple of blocks to the Police station. I asked if I could talk to someone about Albert and Edith's murder in 1960. The desk sergeant didn't seem surprised. She arranged an appointment for me on Wednesday afternoon with Sergeant Arnold, who was the leader of the cold case team. I would have to take time off work, but I was owed several hours for overtime I hadn't been paid for.

Sergeant Arnold was elderly for a policeman. I wasn't surprised when he told me he had retired and returned just for cold cases. He had reviewed the 1960 murder file.

"I'm sorry, Gareth. I can't see any way of reopening this one. Albert was standing just inside the front door when he was hit. He might have been locking it, but like most village houses, the back door was unlocked, and it looks as if the murderer came in that way. The investigators and medical evidence suggest that Albert was hit with a cricket bat, but that bat was never found.

I looked at this case about two years ago to see whether advances in DNA night help. Without the bat the only DNA might have been on the swords, but they were checked for fingerprints. There weren't any. The murderer had been wearing kitchen rubber gloves, a popular brand sold in their thousands. Wearing those, the murderer wouldn't have left any DNA.

There were traces of wet marks from the back door through the kitchen. They had been made by size nine Dunlop wellington boots, brand new with no distinctive features. But when found, Albert had also been wearing new Dunlop size nine wellington boots so they could have been made by him.

The investigation checked the movements of any known violent burglars. In 1960 that wasn't a large number. All had genuine alibis -- most were in prison -- and those that weren't were accounted for over one hundred miles away when the murders are thought to have happened.

The only loose lead, a faint one, is that about half an hour before when we knew that Albert at least was still alive, seen by a passing driver, one of the pub's regulars had gone out to his car to get an umbrella for his wife. He saw a cyclist, without lights, riding away from Albert's cottage in the other direction. It was dark, raining hard, and the witness only saw a man, he assumed it was a man, wearing a long black coat and a chequered flat cap. The only reason he remembered was he thought the man was reckless, riding in the rain at night with no lights.

Our house-to-house enquiries around the village couldn't identify the cyclist, or the bicycle. All the locals' bikes, if ridden after dark, had lights but no local had been riding in the rain that evening.

They tried to identify the cyclist but were unsuccessful. Anyway, Albert had been alive when the cyclist was seen so the rider probably had no connection with the murders. That's it, I'm afraid. We are no nearer solving it than we were in 1960, and probably never will."

"Thank You, Sergeant Arnold. I'm disappointed but not surprised. There would have been a thorough investigation in 1960, but with no DNA, I agree it will probably stay unsolved."

"I know. It is frustrating. I have looked at this case many times. It is our most prominent unsolved case, and I can't see any way it will be solved. We don't have a suspect, a motive, the weapon used in the attack on Albert, nor any leads. What is your interest?"

"My fiancée is Edith's great-niece and we have just bought Albert's old cottage. It is reputed to be haunted by Albert and Edith seeking justice. I wondered whether there was a possibility they might get justice."

"Even if we did identify a suspect now? After all these years he would probably be dead. Assume he was twenty in 1960? He would be over 90 now."

"But the chances of finding anyone now are as poor as they were in 1960?"

"I'm afraid so, Gareth. We had nothing then. We still have nothing now."

"Thank you, Sergeant Arnold."

I sent a short email to Rosalind. I would explain what I had been told this evening when I was invited to a meal at her parents' house.

After the meal I went to the cottage and told Albert and Edith. They weren't surprised. Albert had seen the cyclist. There had been a short break in the rain and Albert had put the dustbin out. A car passed, presumably the driver was the one who reported seeing Albert, and Albert had seen the cyclist going towards the village. He had only seen a short flash of him in the car's headlights and had no idea who it could have been.

When Albert had put the dustbin out, he had gone out and back through the kitchen wearing his wellington boots.

Just before going to bed, the rain had returned, and the wind had changed. The front door had blown open an inch. Albert had pushed it shut and bolted it when he was hit.

But they thanked me for trying.

While we were waiting for completion of the purchase, we had spoken to the village builders and asked for quotes to renovate the cottage. Their estimates were very reasonable because they were short of work.

We had also been talking to our parents about when and how we would marry -- probably in March next year when the cottage would be habitable. The date really depended on the builders. We wanted a quiet, simple, church wedding in the village church with a small reception for close relations at the pub restaurant that had a function room.

Rosalind's father had told her that if the wedding cost was low, he could give us some money for renovating the cottage.

The wait for completion of the cottage purchase seemed interminable despite it only being a few weeks. As soon as we knew the date we asked if Mr Amos could join us at the cottage to witness the finding of the concealed something. We hinted that we were fairly sure where it was.

It was three days later when Mr Amos could come. He brought a junior clerk with him so that there would be two witnesses.

Using a spade, I was able to lever up Albert's hearth easily. It had just been resting on the dry concrete. I had brought a club hammer and chisel but one of the workmen lent me a battery-operated jackhammer. The parlour was crowded with Rosalind and I, Mr Amos and his clerk and all the workmen currently working on the house.

I made a start, but I was pushed aside by one of the workers who could use the jack hammer much better than I could. After about three minutes the concrete was broken into several pieces that could be removed.

There was some sacking under the concrete. I lifted it carefully. There was an envelope resting on top of some cardboard. I opened the envelope and passed the contents to Mr Amos. He read it and showed it to the clerk.

"That is perfectly clear. Rosalind? You own whatever is here."

Everyone crowded around as I lifted the cardboard. Albert had been right. It was a very large iron cauldron, filled to the top with bright golden coins. Only Rosalind and I had known what to expect.

There were gasps and a couple of exclamations of 'Bloody Hell' from the workmen.

It took over an hour to remove the majority of coins from the cauldron, so it was light enough to lift out.

We had piled the coins on a workman's bench.

"I think that cauldron is valuable on its own," Mr Amos said. "It looks very old indeed. But the coins? Apart from their intrinsic value as gold, their condition is almost mint."

He picked up one French coin.

"A couple of years ago we sold two, not as nice as this one, as part of an estate. They fetched two thousand pounds each and you, Rosalind, have hundreds of them."

It was an anti-climax as we packed all the coins into plastic boxes and loaded them into Mr Amos' car. He would take them back to the solicitor's office and put them in their massive safe. Rosalind asked that the solicitors should arrange for their sale, but she kept about twenty British guineas.

She gave one each to all those present as a souvenir. She had about ten left. She took those ten to a coin dealer in the nearby town. What she got for those ten paid all the costs of the renovation, yet she still had many thousands of coins left.

It took months and a major London auction house, but after commission Rosalind had a fortune of thirty million pounds.

A few weeks after we found the coins, I had a phone call from Sergeant Arnold. Could I speak to Rosalind, please? The Police had decided there was no point in keeping the swords, relics of a case that would never be sold. They belonged to Rosalind. Did she want them back?

Rosalind decided she didn't want them in Albert's cottage because it would bring back painful memories for him. I took a copy of the framed Japanese certificate to the Japanese Embassy in London and asked for their help in returning the swords to the Commandant's family.

After about a month the Embassy had a reply. The commandant's descendants didn't want them but would prefer they went to a Japanese Museum.

They were accepted by a major museum in Tokyo who wrote a fulsome letter of thanks to Rosalind (and Albert). We received that about eight weeks after our marriage. Apparently, they were the best surviving swords made by that famous maker hundreds of years ago and had been in the same family all that time. They also enclosed a translation of their thanks to the commandant's family.

We framed both letters but left them in Rosalind's bedroom in her parents' house. We didn't want Albert to see them in what had been his house, now ours, repaired and modernised.

A few months after our marriage I told Albert (and Edith) that the swords had gone to a Japanese Museum.

Thank you, Gareth," Albert said. "I took them because I knew they were antique and meant a lot to the Commandant. I didn't want an ordinary soldier selling them for a couple of bottles of beer. But whenever I handled them, they seemed to have a sense of evil. They had probably killed many people, the last of whom were Edith and I.

In a museum they won't kill again. But the Japanese text with them showed they were unique."

"They've gone, Albert, they've gone," Edith said. Now you can forget them. We can enjoy this house being a family home again and Rosalind is rich thanks to the old smuggler's money. She could give up work anytime to have babies..."

I blushed. I knew that Rosalind was already pregnant

The two ghosts, Albert and Edith, had been no threat to me when I accepted Rosalind's dare. Now they had helped us to buy their house and made Rosalind seriously rich. Or should I say had made us seriously rich? Rosalind had given me half the money. We had shared that, as we had shared the purchase of Albert Cobb's cottage.

I am sure that the two ghosts will be happy when Rosalind brings home a new baby. They're happy. Rosalind and I are happy, and although still haunted, Albert Cobb's cottage is now a happy home again.