Six of the Best by Frederick Cowles

By Frederick Cowles

Six has always been a number we group things around – Six of the best, six of one half a dozen of another, six feet under, six pack, six degrees of separation and a sixth sense are but a few of the ways we use this number.

Such is its popularity that we thought it is also a very good way of challenging and investigating an author’s work to give width, brevity, humour and depth across six of their very best.

In this series we gather together authors whose short stories both rivet the attention and inspire the imagination to visit their gems in a series of six, to roam across an author’s legacy in a few short hours and gain a greater understanding of their writing and, of course, to be lavishly entertained by their ideas, their narrative and their way with words.

These stories can be surprising and sometimes at a tangent to what we expected, but each is fully formed and a marvellous adventure into the world and words of a literary master.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Six of the Best
• Release date: Feb 16, 2024
• ISBN: 9781835474211

Book preview

Six of the Best by Frederick Cowles

Six has always been a number we group things around – Six of the best, six of one half a dozen of another, six feet under, six pack, six degrees of separation and a sixth sense are but a few of the ways we use this number.

Such is its popularity that we thought it is also a very good way of challenging and investigating an author’s work to give width, brevity, humour and depth across six of their very best.

In this series we gather together authors whose short stories both rivet the attention and inspire the imagination to visit their gems in a series of six, to roam across an author’s legacy in a few short hours and gain a greater understanding of their writing and, of course, to be lavishly entertained by their ideas, their narrative and their way with words.

These stories can be surprising and sometimes at a tangent to what we expected, but each is fully formed and a marvellous adventure into the world and words of a literary master. 

Frederick Cowles - An Introduction

Frederick Ignatius Cowles was born in 1900 in Cambridge, England.

This unfamiliar name is one of the gems of English supernatural fiction as well as several other works of travelogues, history, folklore, and children's books.

When his supernatural short stories, and some are very short indeed, were first published they were compared to the works of M R James and EF Benson, yet unlike those two authors he fell, unfairly, into obscurity.

In all he wrote perhaps 60 short stories with weird and supernatural themes.

Frederick Cowles died in 1948 although some accounts offer that it was 1949.

Index of Contents

The Horror of Abbot's Grange

The Limping Ghost

The Haunted Church

Passenger From Crewe

Rats

Eyes For the Blind

The Horror of Abbot's Grange

I

It was Joan who fell in love with Abbot's Grange. I must confess that, from the first, I thought the place had a brooding and sinister air about it.

For three months we had been house-hunting, and then a chance visit to Ritton had led to the discovery of the Grange. As far as country houses go it was perfect. It had been erected in the fifteenth century by the Cistercian monks of Ritton Abbey, and a tiny detached chapel was a relic of the monastic days. Yet, in spite of the fact that Joan was mad about it, I did not like the place.

The next day we sought out the estate agent, and he willingly agreed to conduct us over the house. It turned out to be the property of Lord Salton, and it was his desire to let the place furnished. That suited us as, being birds of passage, we had no furniture of our own.

It was not a large house, but the rooms were spacious. The entrance hall was really quite palatial and hung with paintings of the dead and gone Saltons.

I examined the portraits whilst the agent was revealing the charms of the Grange to Joan.

They were not a very imposing lot, those Saltons of the past. One was a bishop, looking very uncomfortable in his robes; another a general, mounted on a weird-locking charger. Not one of them really interested me until I came upon a dingy painting hung in a dark corner near the stairs.

It represented a tall, sallow-featured man, dressed in sombre garments of early sixteenth century style. His face was thin and brooding and strangely pale, but the lips were intensely red and were drawn back to show white, fanglike teeth. The whole expression was one of diabolical cruelty, and I shuddered

involuntarily as I looked at it.

An inscription in the right-hand corner of the painting caught my eye. The writing was rather faded, but I was just able to make out the words: William Salton, pxt. 1572, and below, in rather brighter colours, was a small cross and the sentence: Seeking whom he may devour. God frustrate him always.

Joan and the agent returned just then, and I called their attention to the portrait. It may have been my imagination, but I thought a shade of fear passed over the man’s face. I asked him who the sinister gentleman was, and, with some slight show of reluctance, he answered: "That is a picture of the first Lord Salton. He is said to have been a monk at Ritton Abbey, but they turned him out. At the dissolution he revenged himself upon the community by giving evidence against them. Many of the