“Do tell us, Frampton, about it. I’ll promise not to laugh.”
“Well, ’twas the night before we were starting for the South of France, and I was going with them to look after the horses they were to hire in Paris. The house had been full of visitors for Christmas, but most of them had gone the day before, and the rest of them were to leave along with us.
“It was in the middle of the night, though they never noticed the true time, when they heard, both of them, a carriage drive up to the front door.
“They were fairly puzzled what it could mean, as they expected no visitors, least of all at that time of night. Your aunt got up first and then called your uncle. And there, full in the moonlight, stood that identical carriage, and the coachman was a skellington—dressed in black and weepers, for all the world like an undertaker at a funeral. He turned his eyes—or what should have been his eyes—full upon them both. And then your aunt went faint, and I believe your uncle did no better. Anyhow, when they came back to their senses, carriage and coachman were gone.”
“And what did it mean, Frampton?”
“Well, that’s more than I can tell you, Master Ronald. It’s fairly puzzled all of us. I’m sure I’ve bothered my head times over to try and piece it together, seeing it meant no harm to them, but only to a lot of folk they’d never seen or heard of.”
“How did that come about?”
“When we got to Paris, we put up at one of them big hotels—I forget the name of it. And one day he and she were going up to their rooms in the lift. Just as they were stepping aboard of it, they looked chanceways at the man who managed it, and I’m blessed if it wasn’t the same coachman as had driven that there carriage up to the door at Broadwater. They were that frightened that they stepped back, and the lift went up without them. And well it was they did so, for something or other went wrong with the hauling gear, and every soul on board of it was killed.
“And now you know, Master Ronald, why your uncle won’t have that carriage never touched. He’s got it into his head, and you won’t get it out again, that it was sent to save his life. All I can say is that, if that’s what it did mean, old Nick carries on his business in a queer, roundabout kind of way.”