SUMMONED BY GASLIGHT

A short story by Josie Lloyd

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“Haunted?” Alice Beeton asked, pausing as she tucked into a slice of her apple cake.

Helly nodded from the reception desk where she sat at The Good Household Management Agency, sharing elevenses.

“That's why we can’t sell granny's cottage. It’s the ghost of Lady Royce from the Foye House next door.” Helly licked her fingers. “Granny said she’s always been a friendly apparition, but Mum said on the day she died, Granny was in bed with a terrified look on her face, the windows downstairs smashed, with no sign of anything that could have broken them. And since we've put the cottage on the market, there's been all sorts of unexplained goings-on.”

“I'm sure there's a perfectly logical explanation,” Alice said, frowning. Helly was the last person Alice thought would believe such nonsense.

“Then maybe you can find one?” Helly suggested.

And so it was that Alice found herself driving her ancient MG Midget with Agatha, her little dog, down a country lane outside Ilkley on an October afternoon a few weeks later.

Lauren, the estate agent in town, had given Alice the cottage key earlier. “You can’t miss it. Between the golf course and Foye House,” she’d instructed. “Wasn't that where Lady Royce lived?” Alice had brushed up on the beautiful socialite who drowned in the lake in 1923. Her bullying husband was suspected of her murder but had never been charged.

“There's a new owner. American. Some kind of tech giant,” said Lauren.

The cottage was unkempt, but charming, with flagstone floors and windows with a view down to the lake. Alice set about cleaning for the next viewers, polishing the original old brass gaslight fittings, which had been disconnected long ago.