The Ghosts of Fitzsenior Hall

By Peter Tranter

On a foul night and in a foul mood a self styled ghost investigator risks becoming a ghost himself at the hands of the foul aristocratic and impoverished owner of a crumbling stately home. Has the investigator a hidden agenda? Is Jo, the girl about the place, part of the plot?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Peter Tranter
• Release date: Sep 19, 2011
• ISBN: 9780980876666

Peter Tranter

I have had my ups and downs. As far back as I can remember I have always wanted to write. I started a school magazine (as a diversion from Latin lessons), largely written by myself (in schoolboy English), which continued to be produced after I left school. Other successes include a 50 minute radio play broadcast by the BBC, (great), numerous articles (over 50) published in local and specialist magazines, and a story outline for a Garth cartoon, which ran for several weeks in the Daily Mirror, a U.K. national daily paper (great again). Then the Editor axed the series which had been running for 40 years! Another paper I wrote for closed immediately afterwards (Gympie Life!). The actress Pauline Collins wanted to play the lead in a screenplay of mine. For a variety of reasons, the key, most probably, the difficulty of obtaining appropriate finance, the project fell through (very sad).In the U.K. I turned a ₤2 million loss making business into profit in 3 months and so the owners sold it (they couldn’t before!) and I was made redundant (don’t be too successful!) Being jobless and over fifty no one wanted to know me (you too?). Needing to eat I drove a taxi. On one trip I was challenged by three pretty teenage girls to write a whodunit. The Treetop Murders was the result (We were driving up a steep wooded hill at the time.) It is selling (fantastic!) For an excerpt click here. I have been a Marine Radio Officer on the Queen Elizabeth and on other ships, a charity fundraiser for paraplegics, a Business Systems Analyst and programmer, a bread delivery salesman and I’m often involved in building projects, planning, bricklaying, wiring up and plumbing. D.I.Y is challenging, most projects are for the first time so I make many of the novice's first copy cost mistakes but what I get is what I want and not someone else's (maybe received or conditioned) views. Very satisfying; it is cheaper, too! I was born in the U.K., living there until I married a second time. I now live in Queensland, Australia in 6 acres of long grass and tall gum trees amongst which I can often be found searching for golf balls. In between, as always, I continue to write and publish in various formats. I have to. I cannot help it.

Book preview

Front cover by Stephanie Tranter

On a foul night and in a foul mood a self styled ghost investigator risks becoming a ghost himself at the hands of the foul aristocratic and impoverished owner of a crumbling stately home. Has the investigator a hidden agenda? Is Jo, the girl about the place, part of the plot?

The Ghosts of Fitzsenior Hall

by

Peter Tranter

Copyright © 2011

Wyuna Press Smashwords Edition

ISBN: 978-0-9808766-6-6

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Table of contents.

Chapter 1. Knockers

Chapter 2 I Am Resolved

Chapter 3 Jo Meets Hi

Chapter 4 We Are a Rotten Lot

Chapter 5 Cupboard Love

Chapter 6 The Vault

Chapter 7 Filthy Trick

Chapter 8 Maybe the End

About the Author

Other books by Peter Tranter

The Treetop Murders Prologue

The Ghosts of Fitzsenior Hall

Chapter 1 Knockers

Back

I am a ghost investigator. While you are reading this so are you. Many stories start with the weather and who am I to buck the trend? Let’s get on!

It is a filthy night. The wind is shaking the trees and howling through the telephone wires, rattling me and the windows of the six hundred year old mansion. It drives the rain hard in squally spirals, efficiently and thoroughly soaking me from all sides. A computer controlled spray process could not do the job any better. I do not have a hat, my hair is plastered to my skull and I have just discovered my shoes leak.

To put it mildly I am uncomfortable. The only dry part of me is the back of my throat and that is because it isn’t only the weather I am fighting. I know there could be real danger ahead. Why go on, why be here in the first place? Because I must to put right, if I can, ancient wrongs. So it is with a kind of urgent, shivering and nervous squelch that I approach the front door.

If the original planning of this ancient monument had been more thorough my misery might have ended earlier. The first Fitzsenior who built the pile in 1380, when Richard II was on the throne, (a flash of lightening reveals the date carved over the door) could have provided a closed in porch for the shelter of visitors while they search for hidden doorbells. Perhaps they did not welcome visitors in those days. Knockers there must have been and they still exist of course. I am one of them. By all means let the architect design in a broad flight of steps flanked by stone-carved balustrades, leading impressively up to the entrance. If you are going to go that far is it too much to expect a roof over your head when you arrive at the door? This is supposed to be a stately home, not a preliminary to a survival course. It is a warning though, reminding me I will most certainly be tested. It’s a warning for you too dear reader. I sometimes split infinitives!

A second flash of lightening briefly illuminates the grey stone front of the house. There is no bell push, no knocker (save me) and no more light. I wait for another illuminating flash. When it comes I am just quick enough to spot a rusty iron ring sticking out of the stonework by the iron studded and banded, massive oak door.

Over the centuries, like a sandpapering technique, thousands of wet and dry feet have created depressions in the stone steps. When it rains they are natural puddle traps. My once dry now wet feet find them all. I am forced to stand in the last two in order to reach and tentatively tug on the ring. Ancient piles have to be treated with due care. I listen, wipe the water out of my ears and listen again. I hear nothing save the moaning of the wind.

Are they deaf in there? I pull harder, then much harder, with no appreciable reaction inside or out. I sigh. Rust or rats must have got into the works. Clearly a judicial application of force is required.

Placing one foot against the wall I grip that obstinate circle of iron in both hands and really give it everything. Hah! Got you! The ring has given a little. Then suddenly, it gives a lot. Away from the wall it comes and over I go, arms and legs flailing, backwards and downwards via the puddled steps, now nicely full up again. I land with a thud in the mud.

Lying there and looking up to where the broken wire is hanging loose, rusty and mocking, I learn an important lesson. It is not out of reverence that everything ancient should be treated with care, whether it be your grandmother or an ugly old pile like the one up at which I am now staring, or both, but simply because if you do not the consequences are almost always unpleasant.

It is too much. I am expected, aren’t I? There should be a hot toddy, a blazing fire and a smiling,