“Well, that is odd,” said old Chester, “I love them. When I was in St Andrews I rented a fine old house, with huge thick walls, big fireplaces, funny corkscrew stairs, such rum holes and corners, and big vaulted kitchens. It’s all pulled down now, I believe, and a bran new house built; but I hear the vaulted rooms below are left exactly as they were. People didn’t take to the old house; they heard noises and rappings, and saw things in the night, and so on. We all saw things. My brother met the ghost of a horrible looking old witch, quite in the orthodox dress, on the Witch Hill above the Witch Lake. It upset him terribly at the time—made him quite ill—nerves went all to pot—would not sleep in a room by himself after that. He made me devilish angry, sir, I can tell you.”
“Perhaps it was Mother Alison Craik, a well-known witch, who was burnt there.”
“Likely enough, sir, it may have been the old cat you mention, an old hag. Then my nephew and I saw that phantom coach in the Abbey Walk one windy moonlight night. It passed us very quickly, but made a deuced row, like a lifeboat carriage.”
“What was it like?”
“Like a huge black box with windows in it, and a queer light inside. It reminded me of a great coffin. Ugly looking affair; very uncanny thing to meet at that time of night and in such a lonely spot. It was soon gone, but we heard its rumbling noise for a long time.”
“What were the horses like, eh?”
“Shadowy looking black things, like great black beetles with long thin legs.”
“And what was the driver like?” I asked.
“He was a tall thin, black object also, like a big, black, lank lobster, with a cocked hat on the top. That’s all I could see. On the top of the coach was an object that looked like a gigantic tarantula spider, with a head like a moving gargoyle. I can’t get at the real history of that mysterious old coach yet. I don’t believe it has anything whatever to do with the murdered prelates, Beaton or Sharpe. However, the coach does go about. Another wraith I saw at the Castle of St Andrews was that of James Hepburn, Earl of Bothwell, third husband of Mary Queen of Scots. He lies buried in the crypt of Faarveile Church, close to the cattegut. Before his death he was a prisoner at Malmo; then he was sent to Denmark, and died in the dungeon of the State prison at Drachsholm.”
“I am awfully interested,” I said, “about those times, and in Bothwell and Mary in particular.”