The Haunted Dolls' House (2) Das Spukhaus der Puppen (2) La casa de muñecas encantada (2) La maison de poupées hantée (2) 유령의 인형의 집 (2) Nawiedzony domek dla lalek (2)

The hours of night passed very slowly, thought Mr Dillet. He slowly moved from sitting to lying in his bed, but he didn't close an eye. Early next morning he sent for the doctor.

The doctor found him uneasy and nervous, and said that sea air was the answer. So Mr Dillet was driven slowly to a quiet place on the east coast.

One of the first people he met as he walked along by the sea was Mr Chittenden, who had also been told to take his wife away for a change of air.

'I'm a little upset with you,' said Mr Dillet.

'I'm not surprised, sir. My wife and I went through a lot ourselves. But what could I do? I couldn't throw the thing away - it was a really nice piece. And I couldn't really tell a buyer, "I'm selling you a haunted doll's house which will always come to life at one o'clock in the morning." I didn't want people to think me and my wife were crazy.'

'Will you buy it back from me?'

'No thanks! I'll tell you what, though. I'll pay you back what you gave for it, except the ten pounds I paid, of course. And you can do what you want with it.'

Later in the day the two men had another whispered conversation in the smokers' room at their hotel.

'Tell me, how much do you know about that thing, and where it came from?'

'Honestly, Mr Dillet, I don't know the house. Of course it came out of an old country house, that's clear. I've got a feeling it was from somewhere not far from this place. The man I bought it from isn't one who usually sells to me, and I haven't seen him since then. But this was his part of the country. And that's all I can say about it.

'But, Mr Dillet, I've got a question. The old man who drives up to the door - you've seen him, haven't you? Ah yes, I thought so. Do you think he was the doctor or the lawyer? My wife says the doctor, but I say the lawyer because of all the papers in his bag, and the one he took out last but didn't open.'

'I agree,' said Mr Dillet. 'I think that was the old man's will, ready for him to write his name at the bottom.'

'I thought the same,' replied Mr Chittenden. 'Probably a will that didn't leave any of the old man's money to the younger ones. Wahrscheinlich ein Testament, das den Jüngeren nichts von dem Geld des alten Mannes vererbt hat. But it's taught me something. Aber ich habe daraus etwas gelernt. I won't buy any doll's houses again, or spend time and money at the cinema. Ich werde nie wieder ein Puppenhaus kaufen oder Zeit und Geld im Kino verbringen. And about the idea of poisoning grandad, well, I couldn't do it. Und was die Idee angeht, Großvater zu vergiften, so könnte ich das nicht tun. I prefer to live happily with my relatives - always have done, always will do.'

The next day Mr Dillet went to the town museum. He wanted to try and find the house at the heart of the mystery. He looked at lots of old pictures of houses on the walls, but couldn't see his house among them. He looked through lots of old church records but again he had no luck. Then, in an almost empty room, he saw an old model of a church which made his heart grow suddenly cold. It looked like more work by the same man who had made his doll's house. He read the small notice in front of it carefully.

This model of Saint Stephen's Church, Coxham, was given to the museum by Mr J Merewether of Ilbridge House in 1877.

It is the work of his ancestor, James Merewether, 1786.

He went back to look at a map of the country nearby that he'd noticed earlier on the wall. There he saw that Ilbridge house was in the village of Coxham. Then he went back to the old church records and soon found the funeral of Roger Milford, aged 76, on the 11th of September 1757, and of Roger and Elizabeth Merewether, aged 9 and 7, on the 19th of the same month. Although he wasn't sure this was the family, it seemed worth visiting Coxham, and so he drove there that afternoon.

In the north of the church there was a Milford chapel. In it there was a stone to the memory of Roger Milford:

'Father, and successful lawyer'. 'This stone was put here by his loving daughter Elizabeth, who died soon after losing her caring father and her dear children,' it said. Dieser Stein wurde von seiner liebevollen Tochter Elizabeth gesetzt, die kurz nach dem Verlust ihres fürsorglichen Vaters und ihrer lieben Kinder starb", heißt es dort.

The last words had obviously been added later. Die letzten Worte waren offensichtlich später hinzugefügt worden.

In the chapel too, a later stone spoke of,

'James Merewether, husband of Elizabeth, who - when a young man - was a promising architect, but who stopped this work on the death of his wife and children, and who ended his days in a comfortable retirement home.' James Merewether, Ehemann von Elizabeth, der als junger Mann ein vielversprechender Architekt war, diese Arbeit aber nach dem Tod seiner Frau und seiner Kinder einstellte und seinen Lebensabend in einem komfortablen Altersheim verbrachte.

The children had smaller, less grandly-worded stones. Die Kinder hatten kleinere, weniger großartig formulierte Steine. They'd both died on the night of the 12th of September.

Mr Dillet felt sure that in Ilbridge House he'd found the place where it had all happened. Herr Dillet war sich sicher, dass er in Ilbridge House den Ort gefunden hatte, an dem sich alles zugetragen hatte. In some old picture some day perhaps he'll find he's right. In einem alten Bild wird er vielleicht eines Tages feststellen, dass er Recht hat. But the Ilbridge House of today is not the house he was looking for. Doch das heutige Ilbridge House ist nicht das Haus, das er suchte. It's a newer red-stone house which was built in the 1840s. Es ist ein neueres Haus aus rotem Stein, das in den 1840er Jahren gebaut wurde.

Not far from the new house, in a lower part of the garden, near some old trees, is a terraced platform covered with grass. Nicht weit vom neuen Haus entfernt, in einem tiefer gelegenen Teil des Gartens, in der Nähe einiger alter Bäume, befindet sich eine mit Gras bewachsene Terrassenplattform. That, someone told Mr Dillet, was the place where the old house had once stood. Jemand sagte Herrn Dillet, dass dies der Ort sei, an dem das alte Haus einst gestanden habe.

As he drove out of the village, the church clock sounded four, and Mr Dillet put his hands over his ears. Als er aus dem Dorf fuhr, schlug die Kirchenuhr vier, und Herr Dillet hielt sich die Hände über die Ohren. It was not the first time that he'd heard that bell. Es war nicht das erste Mal, dass er diese Glocke hörte.

These days, waiting for an American buyer, the doll's house rests, carefully covered, in the upstairs room over Mr Dillet's stables. Heute ruht das Puppenhaus, das auf einen amerikanischen Käufer wartet, sorgfältig abgedeckt im oberen Raum über den Stallungen von Herrn Dillet. It was taken there by his butler on the day that he left for the seaside. Sie wurde von seinem Butler an dem Tag, an dem er ans Meer fuhr, dorthin gebracht.

- THE END -