The Shootings at Achnaleish

Fiction ~ short story [AKA: The Shootings of Achnaleish]
Published in two parts, 27th October & 3rd November 1906
5,660 words
(First read 30/06/2012)

The Corner House

Fiction ~ short story
First published in Woman, May 1926
Collected in Spook Stories (1928)
5,310 words
(First read 28/06/2012) 

Two middle-aged gents, frequent visitors to a remote Norfolk coastal village, are intrigued by the goings-on ~ or rather the seemingly complete lack of life ~ at a particular house on the corner of the square.  By a process of listening to the innkeeper's tittle-tattle and seeing stuff with their own eyes (including a very modest wee ghostie), the mystery and fate of its inhabitants is revealed.
I'd say this is very definitely one of EFB's better spook offerings: he doesn't begin the story by telling you what's going to happen at the end, then proceed to drop so many heavy clues for those who didn't get it at the beginning that it's not worth reading to the end; the ghostly nonsense is kept to a bare minimum: it's really more a who-dun-what than a ghost story.  You can read it online here.

The Dust-cloud

My grandfather and his sisters, circa 1906

Fiction ~ short story
First published in Pall Mall magazine, January 1906
Collected in The Room in the Tower and Other Stories (1912)
5,350 words
(First read 27/06/2012) 

Now it has to be said that the spook element of this story is a bit negligible ~ it's there but it's not important, and it's not very good anyway.
No, what we have here is a hymn in praise of motoring.  It takes place "in the early days of motors, when there was still the sense of romance and adventure round them" ~ reminder: this was written in 1906!  In those days cars still had what EFB calls a 'syren' as well as a separate 'hooter', could expect to have four or five punctures on journeys of over 50 miles, and broke down with monotonous regularity. 

The same g.dad, all grown up and with a car of his own, ca. 1925

Still, to give him his due, Fred does make the trip described, from Dunwich¹ in Suffolk to Kings Lynn in Norfolk² sound great fun, though obviously having a chauffeur helps.  To do this he employs two very extended metaphors: in the first the car is a horse, in the second (after switching steeds in the blink of an eye) it's a foot-soldier.
There's a certain amount of tedious and garbled 'ghost theory', and a sizeable dollop of what can only be called 'padding', but ignore all that and just enjoy the motor ride.
It's available online here.


¹ See also The Face (1924). 
² Or is it Lincolnshire?  [Looks it up.]  No, I was right: it's Norfolk.  Hunstanton (Norfolk) also gets a few mentions in this story.

At Abdul-Ali's Grave

Fiction ~ short story
First published under the title A Curious Coincidence in The Graphic, 24th June 1899
Subsequently collected and republished with a few minor adjustments (mostly paragraphing) in The Room in the Tower and Other Stories (1912)
4,855 words
(First read 26/06/2012) 

Online here.

Inscrutable Decrees

Fiction ~ short story
First published in Hutchinson's Magazine, April 1923
Collected in Visible and Invisible (Winter 1923)
5,780 words
(First read 22/06/2012) 

The tale reveals, in a curiously disjointed way, why Lord Archie Rorke didn't marry his cousin's widow Sybil as planned and expected.  It turns out Sybil was Benson Female Type 3a: charming beauty and queen of society ... but one with a psycho lurking in the recesses of her soul ~ the type who gets a kick out of watching little girls drown in sluices.  And do you know how Archie finds this out? ~ Sybil (who just happens to be a medium too ~ did I mention that?) calls up the kiddie's ghost at one of her own séances, the dozy bint.  Unfortunately, Unidentified Narrator has by then thwacked us poor readers in the face with so many richly-painted signposts on his jumbled way to the Big Reveal at the end ... that the revelation comes as no revelation at all.
Something of a dog's breakfast, IMHO.  You can read it online here.

The Hanging of Alfred Wadham

Fiction ~ short story
Published 21st December 1928
5,365 words
(First read 20/06/2012)

Bagnell Terrace

Fiction ~ short story
First published in Hutchinson's Magazine, July 1925
Collected in Spook Stories (1928)
5,000 words
(First read 19/06/2012)

One of EFB's London spook stories.  Unidentified Narrator lives in Bagnell Terrace, a place so tranquil that ...

even the cats [...] have caught something of its discretion and tranquillity, for they do not hail each other with long-drawn yells of mortal agony like their cousins in less well-conducted places, but sit and have quiet little parties like the owners of the houses in which they condescend to be lodged and boarded. [this is the high point of the story]

U.N. lusts after the end-terrace house, which is occupied by a mysterious recluse, a man neither young nor old but, in the words of neighbour and intimate friend Hugh Grainger*, 'timeless'.  Well anyway, the long and the short is that after a purely coincidental trip to Egypt, U.N. takes ownership of the house, which, almost forgot to mention, has a 'garden room' exactly like EFB's in Rye, and the place turns out to be haunted ... or possessed ... by the previous owner ... or EFB's Egyptian cat souvenir ... or something.  As usual good old Hughie comes to the rescue and exorcises the place merely by invoking God's name once or twice.
I can't imagine it took Benson more than about 35 minutes to write this garbled twaddle.  Hardly his finest hour.
You can read it online here.


* Renamed Hugh Abbot for this particular outing. 

THE CRITICS

In several of [Benson's spook] stories, the lust to possess a particular house forms the fulcrum of the plot (as in Bagnell Terrace) and the unassuaged anger and revengefulness of the dispossessed owner is often what creates the haunt. Reconciliation and Naboth's Vineyard are two of his most successful stories, especially the latter, which has a really blood-curdling climax.

~Joan Aiken in foreword to The Collected Ghost Stories of E. F. Benson 1992

The thematic unity of Spook Stories partly arises from its founding myth of Naboth, whose name is evoked in both Bagnell Terrace and Naboth’s Vineyard. Naboth, it should be remembered, would not sell his vineyard to King Ahab because it was his birthright. Ahab was persuaded to procure the land by using some rather underhand means, only to incite a prophet’s curse and the death of his own son. Ahab had violated the mystical connection between land and blood, and, even though he was a king, he should have accepted his allotted place.

Whilst Ahab was cursed for coveting the land of a lowly and powerless neighbour, Benson was altogether happier to imagine covetous social inferiors. If M. R. James’ ghosts penalised the “curious,” Benson imagines the spiritual world as revolving around the need to check human ambitions for the redistribution of property. The Naboth myth is overturned completely in Bagnell Terrace, in which the narrator reclaims a delightful suburban residence from a foreigner who does not justly belong there. The narrator nicknames the foreigner “Naboth” only because he personally “coveted” this fellow’s house, but Naboth will sell his house as a trap, unleashing a curse which the narrator will have to defeat. Yet the inferior Naboth is sent packing, allowing the virtuous king to enjoy his new vineyard.
[…] Unlike the uniquely Gothic disaster of The Face, the subsequent contributions [to Spook Stories] “And No Bird Sings” (which features an estate rather than a house), Bagnell Terrace, and The Temple are jolly frontier tales in which the bourgeoisie successfully impose their suburban will on to a place which is still haunted by ancient forces.

~James Mooney at “Tychy”, 25/07/2011. Quoted from here.