Thanks, Michael--that sounds potentially intriguing.
Here's a page for this new book for those who do not use social media:
www.fantasticfiction.com/m/tony-medawar/ghosts-from-the-library.htmStated as being an entry in the Bodies from the Library series. Other authors include Agatha Christie, Conan Doyle, and Josephine Tey (a firm favorite here) so I'm not sure how "lost" most of these tales are. I'm not a member of the group to which your FB link points so am unable to view the post about it.
H.
Ghosts From the Library also includes Dorothy L. Sayers's "Coda to the Late Provost's Ghost Story", her short sequel to MRJ's "Martin's Close". What I posted on Facebook follows.
“Martin’s Close: The Wimsey Connection” by Dorothy L. Sayers Ghosts & Scholars 12 1990.
A letter sent by the acclaimed mystery author to “The Eton Chronicle” in 1937 after a request for correspondence relating to some of MRJ’s stories. The letter, apparently sent at the behest of Sayer’s Lord Peter Wimsey, is taken from the family archives and concerns a certain Lord Charles Wimsey’s encounter in prison with the murderous George Martin from MRJ’s tale. See here:
vaultofevil.proboards.com/thread/786/ghosts-scholars-12-1990You can read the letter here:
archives.etoncollege.com/PDFViewer/web/viewer.html?file=%2fFilename.ashx%3ftableName%3dta_chronicles%26columnName%3dfilename%26recordId%3d3502If you can't open the above, I also posted the following.
Here is a copy. You need to read "Martin's Close" by M.R. James to make sense of this.
__________Correspondence__________
To the Editor o f the Eton College Chronicle.
Dear Sir.—L ord Peter Wimsey (who, as you may possibly
recollect, is an Old Etonian) has been greatly interested in
the list of questions about the late Provost’s Ghost Stories,
published in your issue for November 12. He asks me to
send you the enclosed copy o f a letter from a member of
the Wimsey family, which he acquired some time ago for
the collection o f family papers at Bredon Hall. It appears
to shed some light upon the matter o f Mr. George Martin
(question 2).
The writer of the letter was Lord Charles Wimsey, brother
to the Duke of Denver o f that period. He was at this time
about twenty years o f age, and appears to have been sent
into Devon upon some matrimonial project. The letter is
addressed to a Cambridge friend.
Trusting that you will find the account of interest.
I am,Yours faithfully,
DOROTHY L. SAYERS.
24 Newland Street,
Witham, Essex.
December 28, 1936.
Exeter.
the 28th November 1684.
Dear Jack,—Rat m e! but I think my father is out o f his
mind to send me a-wooing at this time of the year. I came
hither yesterday about dusk, after such a wintry pilgrimage
across these damned inhospitable moors as my bones ache
only to think on; befouled with mire, pierced through by the
wind, and my horse near foundered with tumbling in and
out of bog-holes a dozen times in an hour. I have little
news to tell thee, save one trifling adventure, which, whether
it be physical or metaphysical, I leave to our Cambridge
philosophers to determine.
I lay last night at Mr. Coffyn’s. He received me kindly
according to his lights, with a great supper o f beef pasties
and cyder; and when we were well stupefyed with this
coarse entertainment proposed, by way of divertisement,
that we should go forth to see a great sight; no less than
a young ’squire of the neighbourhood, now waiting execution
in the county gaol for the murder of his trollop. This
looby, it seems, hath had the honour to be haled to London,
to receive judgement at the hand o f Jefferies himself; so
that the mere whiff of the Town upon him hath lent him
a kind of fashionable perfume in the nostrils of these West-
country savages. Thinking I might as well do anything as
sit in the parlour playing Ombre with mine host and his
two plain-faced daughters, I consented. A t the door o f the
prison we encountered the Ordinary, bound upon the same
errand. We found the condemned man laid upon his bed
in a little stone room, that smelt very unwholesome—I wish
I may not have catched the fever for my pains. At our first
coming in, he lay huddled close against the wall muttering
to himself; we took him to be light-headed. The keeper
bade us observe that he was well lodged, with a handsome bed
and all things suitable to his condition. Very well (said I),
but if you wish he shall live to be hanged you were best put
him in a dryer place—at the same time feeling of his mattress,
which indeed was wringing wet from the pillow to the bed-
foot. Mr. Coffyn observed it, too, and chid the Keeper for
his neglect. Nay (says the fellow) ’tis a good dry cell
enough; if there is any damp on the mattress it is that he
hath fain into a sweat with thinking on his latter end.—Why
fool (said I) were he to sweat, that were the saving of him,
but his skin is burning dry. With that, I put my hand upon
his shoulder, when he lets out a great screech, crying, Ann
Clark, Ann Clark, take your hand from my neck! Mr.
Coffyn started back, presently giving me to understand, this
was the name of the young woman that was murdered. 1
then searched the bed further, and found in it a little patch
o f duckweed, about the bigness o f a crown-piece, as fresh
and green as tho’ it had been that moment taken from a
pond of water—which seemed a strange thing, seeing this
weed is green only in Summer. The Ordinary turning pale
and crying, God bless us, we all beheld the wetness dry away
from the bed before our eyes, very like an egg when it is
taken from the pot, only without any vapour; and the sick
man thereafter more quiet. W e knew not what to make of it,
except it might be the heat of the fever that dryed the place.
Mr. Coffyn told me, what I had not known before, that
Ann Clark met her death by drowning in a pond, being about
the middle o f May last.
The weather showing signs o f mending, I mean to push
forward to-morrow. This is a barbarous dull town, with
not an ounce o f fine snuff to be had for love or money, and
no object o f interest but a Gothick Cathedral, for which I
have no manner of use. I f you love me, wish me safe back
in Town before Christmas, whole and sound, and (by good
Fortune) still a batchelor.
Ever, dear Jack, thine assured trusty friend,
C. WIMSEY