Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 19, No. 99, February 1952

It is an error to suppose that ghosts are transparent creatures who only show themselves by moonlight. It is equally an error to think that they drape themselves in white, drag chains behind them, or carry their heads beneath their arms. In reality they are very ordinary folk, like us. The only difference is that you will hardly ever hear them speak.

The ghost I am thinking of lived in a small Kentish country town. She went by the name of Miss Raynor and could be seen in broad daylight in the streets, generally walking in front of you. Far from being transparent, she was rather a stout old lady. But sometimes, even when she was quite close in front and turned a corner, there would be no sign of her at all when you turned the corner after her. That, of course, might be explained by the fact that she had gone into a shop. Or again it might not.

She lived in what was known as The Walled House. It was Queen Anne or very early Georgian and had a very beautiful fanlight above the door. It was quite a small house for the country — five or six bedrooms probably — but I have never met anyone who had been inside it. It was called The Walled House because the garden had a solid twelve-foot wall all around it. The only break in this wall was in Fisher Street, where there was a doorway with an exquisitely-worked iron gate which was always locked. Through this gate you could see over a bit of lawn into the garden behind, and people often paused there in the hopes of seeing Miss Raynor inside. But they never did. The lawn was always mown, however, and the garden well kept. The delphiniums in particular were a perfect joy in their season, against the gray wall. But whatever season it was, when you had finished eavesdropping at the iron gate, you probably came away wondering how one single old lady could keep the garden in such good order and yet never be seen at work in it. It was a little uncanny, and might mean that some of the strange things that were said about Miss Raynor were true. On the other hand, although it was known that she hired no gardener, it was certain that the milkman left milk at the door and that the coal merchant dropped sacks of coal through the manhole beside it; and that both of them had their bills paid regularly. So perhaps there was nothing in the strange things that were said, after all.

This was the situation one warm still sunny afternoon in September 1940, and had been the situation so far as I knew for sixty or seventy years. But that afternoon a frightened German pilot in a medium bomber thought he had a Spitfire on his tail. He therefore dived and unloaded his stick of bombs on the first target he could see, and that happened to be the little Kentish town. The first bomb fell in a pond on the outskirts; the second took a corner off a bakery; the third went bouncing down a street and lay unexploded on the steps of the police station; and the fourth landed slap-bang on The Walled House and blew it to smithereens.

They began to search for Miss Raynor almost before the dust had settled on the remains of the garden. But though they worked for days they never found anything that offered any explanation. There was the wreckage of some furniture, a few silver spoons, broken china and broken glass. But of Miss Raynor there was nothing. Not a finger. Not a drop of blood. No clothes. Not a brooch or a ring; nor the cameo she always wore when she went out. On the other hand they did come across a portion of a silken ladder made out of old bell-ropes; and the air-raid wardens who knew the stories about Miss Raynor began to scratch their heads...