The House: An Inner Sanctum Mystery

By Hilda Lawrence

The House, first published in 1947 (along with A Composition for Four Hands in the two-novel compendium Duet of Death), is a gothic mystery narrated by Isobel Stone, a young woman just shy of her 21st birthday. Isobel returns to her family home, a rambling, grotesque mansion, after spending 15 of her 21 years living away in boarding schools. Her father, mentally and physically ill, is found burned to death in his car soon after her return, and Isobel is alone in the house with only her mother and a handful of servants. But a sinister mood infects the household — the servants are terrified, her mother wanders the house late at night, and strange lights are seen in the upper windows when the house is thought to be empty. Hilda Lawrence (1906-1976) was an American author of several Crime Fictions, including Death of a Doll and The Pavilion.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Phocion Publishing
• Release date: Nov 1, 2019
• ISBN: 9781789129403

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Although in most cases we have retained the Author’s original spelling and grammar to authentically reproduce the work of the Author and the original intent of such material, some additional notes and clarifications have been added for the modern reader’s benefit.

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THE HOUSE

An Inner Sanctum Mystery

By

HILDA LAWRENCE

The House was originally published in 1949, along with Composition for Four Hands, as the two-novel compendium Duet of Death; Simon and Schuster, Inc., New York.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Contents

TABLE OF CONTENTS 4

DEDICATION 5

PART ONE 6

PART TWO 43

Other Novels by Hilda Lawrence 77

CONTENTS 78

REQUEST FROM THE PUBLISHER 79

DEDICATION

To Maggie Cousins

Miss Lawrence creates horror atmosphere the hard way, with a light touch that leaves no brush marks. The mere suggestion of a sinister sound, the barest hint of screaming silence, and the reader’s hackles come away from his collar.

Meyer Berger

PART ONE

TONIGHT I walked in the garden again, and the dog followed me. He follows me whenever I leave the house. Sometimes I tell myself I have escaped him; I wait until he is asleep on his rug in the kitchen passage, or until he has disappeared on what I think is an expedition of his own. But in a little while I hear that measured tread behind me, padding through the thick, wet leaves or over the old stone walks. He never looks at me, never touches me, but he takes his place at my side as if he belonged there. I try to understand it, but there is no explanation. Not yet. Father was the only creature in his world. I say, Go home, Tray. He feigns deafness and waits for me to move on.

Tonight I could see his black coat shining in the half-dark. We stood at the hedge between our grounds and the Barnabys’, away from the stream of light that poured from their windows, and watched the Barnabys’ party. I had been invited, but Mother said the invitation was in bad taste, because they know too well that I am in mourning.

They were dancing in the living room, and in spite of the cold and the damp, the windows were raised. I could see the blazing logs in the fireplace, the long, white-covered table, holding drinks and sandwiches. Mike was playing the piano. Even their grandmother was there, dancing and singing with the others. Once Mike turned his head, and I thought he saw me, and drew back; but no one came to close the windows and draw the shades. I saw young Joe, in his first dinner coat, his fair hair plastered to his head. He danced by the windows as if he were showing himself to an unseen audience. Both Mike and Joe know that I walk at night, but they never ask me why. I’m glad they don’t, because I wouldn’t know how to answer.

I looked at their big white house, lighted from top to bottom, and turned to look at my own. There were no lights showing in mine. Tench, Mrs. Tench, and Anna were in their cottage down by the old stable, and Mother was asleep, or pretending to be, for my sake. We say good-night to each other at nine o’clock, and neither knows what the other does until morning.

My house is dark, inside and out, and the rough gray stone looks wet. The four turrets rise above the trees, and their windows are covered with grime. The trees are thick and too many; we have no flowers, because no sun comes though the interlacing branches. Now, in November, the oaks are bare, but the evergreens still hide the pale autumn sun. I say that I walked in the garden. It is not a garden but a wilderness of trees, carpeted with moss and leaves. I call it my house, but it isn’t mine yet. In December, on my twenty-first birthday, it will be legally mine. Father left it to me. I think Mother was deeply hurt when he told her what he had done, but I have a plan that will make her happy again. If Mike and I—

No, I mustn’t think about Mike. Not now. But I will give Mother the house if I ever marry anyone. She loves it.

In these past weeks she has talked of Father constantly, remembering and reliving, helping me to understand their lives. They were devoted to each other and needed no one else. I was sent to school in Canada when I was six, and my long holidays were spent with hospitable schoolmates. So, although I went home for birthdays and Christmas, I saw too little of my parents. Mother thinks of that now and tells the story of their life together, giving it color and movement, so that I feel as if I had been there.

She was poor when she was young, a very respectable poverty, she says; she laughs when she describes her clothes and the tragedy of a stocking run. She lived with her older cousins in the cottage they still own. Father was a catch; she cannot understand how she got him. Her little face is full of wonder as she tells me. The women who threw themselves at that mans head! She takes me through their courtship day by day, spicing it with flowers, sweetening it with ribboned boxes of candy. I wore the ribbons in my hair, and he never guessed. And then she comes to the day when they were driving and she saw the house and fell in love with it.

The turrets rose above the trees as they do now. There were no other houses near by; the Barnabys came later. Except for the Barnabys, there has been no change. The house stood then, as it does today, in the center of a small forest, surrounded by fields.

There is my castle, Mother said that day.

My father smiled. I’ve heard it called other things.

Château, perhaps, Mother guessed. Or manor house.

Prison, Father said. And madhouse. He flicked his whip at the gloomy turrets. I almost agree, too. It lacks only bars.

Mother tells me: I cried then; I was heartbroken. That beautiful house, empty, desolate. To say such things about it! She cried throughout the drive and refused to be comforted.

He told her she was a child in spite of her grown-up airs. What would you do with such a place if you had it? he asked.

Live in it and be happy the rest of my life.

In three months they were married, and for a year they traveled abroad. I know the clothes she wore, the deep garnets, the turquoise blues, the gloves and the hats that matched. I know how she looked; she was twenty-five then, and she is sixty-five now, as he would be, but she is not the kind of woman who ages. When they returned, he told her they would live in a hotel until he could find a suitable house. Her trunks of clothes, her hat and shoe boxes, filled the hotel suite.

One evening when she was waiting for him at the hotel, he sent a closed carriage and a note asking her to meet him at the house of a friend. It was a dark night, and the drive seemed endless; the coachman refused to raise the blinds. She tells me now that she was frightened, but I think she knew her destination before she started. She exaggerates, but the picture she paints is a romantic one. The wind howled, the trees moaned, the carriage rocked from side to side. She was young, she wore silk, she was loved.

The destination was the house, of course. Father was on the stone veranda, the cousins beside him, the servants in the background. She spent most of the night running from room to room—there are twenty—and opening closets and wardrobes and chests. It was perfect, it was complete, and nothing has been changed.

As time went on, the top floor was closed; there was too much work for a staff of three, and they wanted no more than that. The same silver is still polished each Friday, and the same china stands in orderly rows behind glass doors. The cousins, Carrie, Jane, and Bess, still come to tea two afternoons a week. They were here this afternoon, and Tench took their wraps and served their tea as he has always done. Nothing is changed except that I am home, my father is dead, and my thoughts will not let me sleep.

It was wet in the garden tonight, the fallen leaves were wet. Tray stood near me at the hedge, listening to the music and watching the Barnabys. I grew up with the Barnabys as much as I grew up with anyone. Until I was six, we played together, and Mike said I was as good as another boy would have been. After that, I saw them only at Christmas. But the holidays were too short, and they made other friends, too. There were parties every night, people drove out from town; but I was lost, out of place. My clothes were not right; even when I was eighteen, I was dressed like a child. Mother called it keeping me young. Old Mrs. Barnaby, Mike’s grandmother, would pin up my hair and help me braid it again before I went home, but there was nothing she could do about the clothes I wore. I used to see her watching me thoughtfully.

Then, last spring, when I went home to stay, things changed; Mike said it was like the old days again. I was Issy once more, not Isobel. Every morning I waited for the shout across the hedge. Issy! The days were never long enough. Mike and I rode and walked and played tennis and contrived to avoid Joe. Joe is seventeen and in love with growing up. Mike is twenty-two.

Mike said I was learning to be human. He said I was almost presentable. Father gave me an allowance for my clothes, and Mrs. Barnaby told me what to buy. Mother