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Right, so back to this episode.
This is Learn English with a Short Story.
The story today is called The Kit Bag.
Christmas is nearly here and it has been a tradition since Victorian times to tell a ghost story at Christmas.
The long dark and cold winter nights outside create a cozy atmosphere indoors for sharing chilling tales.
So following that tradition, here is a chilling story for the winter holiday period.
And when I say chilling, I mean creepy and scary.
So I hope you're feeling cozy and warm.
Maybe get yourself a nice hot cup of tea.
Close the curtains, curl up on a sofa perhaps.
If there are any dark empty rooms nearby, consider closing the door, not just to keep out the cold drafts, those little cold bits of air that come through, not just for that, but also to make sure you don't get bothered by that creeping feeling of not knowing what is inside those dark spaces.
So close the doors, get comfy.
The story I'm going to tell you is called The Kit Bag, and it was written by English writer Algernon Blackwood in 1908.
Blackwood was known for writing ghost stories and this is one of his most popular ones.
It was written in 1908, but I have modernised the text slightly.
I did this myself.
No AI was used in the making of this episode today, by the way.
So I've been through the text and made a few little changes just to make sure that the language is not too old-fashioned.
Otherwise, the story is exactly as it was originally written.
So I'll tell you the story, just try to follow it.
Then I'll summarise it in my own words so you can check how much you understood the first time.
Then I'll go back through the story in order to explain what happened clearly and highlight or explain various bits of vocabulary to help you learn English from this.
The story is about four and a half thousand words long, so it might take about 20 to 30 minutes to read, and then, of course, explaining the language later will take much longer.
This might end up taking time but stick with me it will be worth it.
Don't forget to like and subscribe and don't be afraid of the dark.
Merry Christmas too, by the way, if you celebrate it.
Now, listen carefully and try to identify exactly what happens at the end of this story.
And by the way, a kit bag is a large bag you could use to carry lots of stuff.
Okay, a large bag that you could use to carry lots of stuff.
The word kit is basically means equipment.
Right, kit means equipment.
So imagine a large heavy bag which could carry various types of equipment.
Okay, so let's now start the story.
This is the kit bag by algernon blackwood.
And here we go.
When the words not guilty echoed through the crowded courtroom that dark December afternoon, Arthur Wilbraham, the great criminal, KC and leader of the triumphant defence, was represented by his junior.
But Johnson, his private secretary, brought the verdict to his chambers like lightning.
It's what we expected, I think, said the barrister without emotion.
And personally, I'm glad the case is over.
There was no particular sign of pleasure that his defence of John Turk the murderer on a plea of insanity had been successful, for no doubt he felt, as everybody who had watched that case felt, that no man had ever better deserved the death penalty.
I'm glad too, said Johnson.
He had sat in the court for ten days watching the face of the man who had carried out, with callous detail, one of the most brutal and cold-blooded murders of recent years.
The council glanced up at his secretary.
They were more than employer and employee.
For family and other reasons, they were friends.'
Ah, I remember, yes, he said with a kind smile.
And you want to get away for Christmas.
You're going skating and skiing in the Alps, aren't you?
If I was your age, I'd come with you.
Johnson laughed shortly.
He was a young man of 26 with a soft, delicate face.
I can catch the morning boat now, he said, but that's not the reason I'm glad the trial is over.
I'm glad it's over because I've seen the last of that man's dreadful face.
It's haunted me, that white skin with the black hair brushed low over the forehead.
I'll never forget it and the description of the way the dismembered body was crammed and packed with lime into that.
Don't dwell on it, interrupted Wilbraham, looking at him curiously with his keen eyes.
Don't think about it.
Images like that have a trick of coming back when you least want them.
He paused for a moment.
Now, off you go, he added, and enjoy your holiday.
I will want all your energy for my parliamentary work when you get back.
And don't break your neck skiing.
Johnson started to leave.
At the door, he turned suddenly.
I knew there was something I wanted to ask you, he said.
Would you mind lending me one of your kit bags?
It's too late to get one tonight and I'm leaving in the morning before the shops open.
Of course, I'll send Henry over with it to your rooms.
You'll have it the moment I get home.
I promise I'll take good care of it, said Johnson gratefully delighted to think that within thirty hours he would be nearing the brilliant sunshine of the High Alps in winter.
The thought of that criminal court was like an evil dream in his mind.
He ate out and went on to Bloomsbury where he had a flat on the top floor in one of those old houses in which the rooms are large and lofty.
The floor below his was vacant and unfurnished, and below that were other lodgers who he didn't know.
It was cheerless and he was looking forward to a change of scene.
The night was even more cheerless.
It was miserable and hardly anyone was out.
A cold, sleety rain was driving down the streets in front of the harshest east wind he had ever felt.
It howled among the big gloomy houses of the great squares and when he reached his rooms he heard it whistling and shouting over the world of black roofs beyond his windows.
In the hall he met his landlady, shading a candle from the draughts with her thin hand.
"'This come from a man from Mr Wilbram's, sir.'
She pointed to what was obviously the kit bag, and Johnson thanked her and took it upstairs with him.
"'I'm going abroad in the morning for ten days, Mrs Monks,' he said.
"'I'll leave an address for letters.'
"'And I hope you'll have a merry Christmas, sir,' she said in a raucous, wheezy voice.
"'And better weather than this.'
I hope so too, he replied.
When he got upstairs, he heard the sleet volleying against the window panes.
He put his kettle on to make a cup of hot coffee and then started getting a few things ready for his trip.
And now I've got to get packing, he laughed to himself and got started.
He liked the packing because it made him think about the snowy mountains and made him forget the unpleasant scenes of the past ten days.
His friend had lent him the large canvas kit bag, sack-shaped with holes around the neck for the brass bar and padlock.
It was a bit shapeless and not much to look at, but it had plenty of space inside, so there was no need to pack carefully.
He shoved in his waterproof coat, his fur cap and gloves, his skates and climbing boots, his sweaters, snow boots and earmuffs, and then on top of these, he piled his woolen shirt and underwear, his thick socks and thermals.
Some smart clothes came next in case the hotel people dressed up for dinner.
And then, thinking of the best way to pack his white shirts, he paused a moment to reflect.
That's the annoying thing about these kit bags you need to tie them together with something, he thought vaguely, standing in the centre of the sitting room where he had come to fetch some string.
It was after ten o'clock.
A furious gust of wind rattled the windows and he thought with pity of those poor Londoners whose Christmas would be spent in such a climate, whilst he was skimming over snowy slopes in bright sunshine and dancing in the evening with rosy-cheeked girls.
Ah, that reminded him he must put in his dancing shoes.
He crossed over from his sitting room to the cupboard on the landing where he kept his shoes.
And as he did so, he heard someone coming up the stairs.
He stood for a moment on the landing to listen.
It was Mrs Monks' step, he thought.
She must be coming up with the last post.
But then the steps stopped suddenly and he heard no more.
They were at least two flights down and he came to the conclusion they were too heavy to be those of his landlady.
No doubt they belonged to a late lodger who'd got the wrong floor.
He went into his bedroom and packed his shoes and even clothes as best he could.
The kit bag by this time was two-thirds full and stood upright on its own base like a sack of flour.
For the first time he noticed that it was old and dirty, the canvas faded and worn, and that it had obviously been subjected to some rather rough treatment.
It was not a very nice bag to have sent him, certainly not a new one or one that his boss valued.
He thought about it for a moment and then went on with his packing.
Once or twice, however, he caught himself wondering who it could have been wandering down below.
Mrs Monks had not come up with the letters and the floor was empty and unfurnished.
From time to time he was almost certain he heard a soft tread of someone padding about over the bare boards cautiously stealthily, as silently as possible, and further that the sounds had started to come distinctly nearer.
For the first time in his life, he began to feel a little creepy.
Then, as though to emphasise this feeling, an odd thing happened.
As he left the bedroom, having just packed his things, he noticed that the top of the kit bag was lying over towards him with an extraordinary resemblance to a human face.
The canvas fell into a fold like a nose and forehead, and the brass rings for the padlock just filled the position of the eyes.
A shadow, or was it a travel stain?
For he couldn't tell exactly.
It looked like hair.
It gave him a strange feeling because it looked absurdly like the face of John Turk, the murderer.
He laughed and went into the front room where the light was stronger.
That horrid case has got into my head, he thought.
I can't wait to get a change of scene and some fresh air.
In the sitting room.
However, he was not pleased to hear again that stealthy tread upon the stairs and to realise that it was much closer than before, as well as unmistakably real.
And this time he got up and went out to see who it could be creeping about on the upper staircase at such a late hour.
But the sound stopped.
There was no one visible on the stairs.
He went to the floor below, not without feeling scared, and turned on the electric light to make sure that no one was hiding in the empty rooms of the unoccupied flat.
There wasn't a single bit of furniture, nothing to hide behind.
Then he called over the banisters to Mrs Monks, but there was no answer and his voice echoed down into the dark vault of the house and was lost in the roar of the gale that howled outside.
Everyone was in bed and asleep, everyone except him and the owner of this soft and stealthy tread.
My absurd imagination, I suppose, he thought.
It must have been the wind after all, although it seemed so very real and close.
He went back to his packing.
It was by this time nearly midnight.
He drank his coffee up and made sure he was ready.
It's difficult to say exactly at what point fear begins when the causes of that fear are not directly in front of the eyes.
Impressions gather on the surface of the mind, film by film, like ice gathering on the surface of still water, but often so lightly that they are hardly noticeable.
Then a point is reached where the accumulated impressions become a definite emotion and the mind realises that something has happened.
With something of a start, Johnson suddenly recognised that he felt nervous.
Oddly nervous too, and that for some time the causes of this feeling had been gathering slowly in his mind, but that he'd only just reached the point where he was forced to acknowledge them.
It was an odd and uncomfortable feeling that had come over him, and he hardly knew what to make of it.
He felt as though he were doing something that was strongly objected to by another person, another person who had some right to object.
It was a very disturbing and disagreeable feeling, not unlike the feeling of a guilty conscience almost, in fact, as if he were doing something which he knew was wrong.
But although he searched vigorously and honestly in his mind, he just could not put his finger on the origin of this growing sense of unease.
And it puzzled him.
Even more, it distressed and frightened him.
Pure nerves, I suppose, he said aloud with a forced laugh.
Mountain air will cure all that, he added, still speaking to himself.
And that reminds me, my snow mask.
He was standing by the door of the bedroom during this brief speech and as he passed quickly towards the sitting room to fetch them from the cupboard, he saw out of the corner of his eye the vague outline of a figure standing on the stairs a few feet from the top.
It was someone in a stooping position with one hand on the banister and the face peering up at the landing towards him.
And at the same moment he heard a shuffling footstep.
The person who had been creeping about below all this time had finally come up to his own floor.
Who in the world could it be?
And what on earth did he want?
Johnson caught his breath sharply and stood completely still.
Then, after a few seconds of hesitation, he pulled himself together and turned to investigate.
The stairs, he saw to his utter amazement, were empty.
There was no one.
He felt a series of cold shivers run over him and something in the muscles of his legs gave way a little and he grew weak.
For the space of several minutes, he peered steadily into the shadows that gathered around the top of the staircase where he'd seen the figure, and then he walked fast almost ran, in fact into the light of the front room.
But almost as soon as he went through the doorway, he heard someone run up the stairs behind him and dash into his bedroom.
It was a heavy but at the same time a stealthy footstep, the tread of somebody who did not wish to be seen.
And it was at this precise moment that the nervousness he had so far experienced crossed the boundary line and entered the state of fear, almost of acute, unreasoning fear.
Before it turned into terror, there was a further line to cross, and beyond that again lay the region of pure horror.
Johnson's position was an unenviable one.
My God, that was someone on the stairs.
Then he muttered, his flesh crawling all over, and whoever it was has now gone into my bedroom.
His delicate, pale face turned absolutely white and for some minutes he hardly knew what to think or do.
Then he realised instinctively that doing nothing would only increase his fear.
He had to do something, and so he crossed the landing boldly and went straight into the other room where, a few seconds before the steps, had disappeared.
"'Who's there?
Is that you, Mrs Monks'?
He called aloud as he went and heard the first half of his words echo down the empty stairs, while the second half fell dead against the curtains in a room that apparently held no other human figure than his own.
"'Who's there?' he called again in a voice unnecessarily loud, and that only just held firm.
"'What do you want here?'
He thought he saw the curtains sway very slightly, and his heart felt as if it almost missed a beat.
But he dashed forward and drew them aside with a rush.
A window streaming with rain was all that he could see.
He continued his search, but in vain.
There was nothing in the cupboards except rows of clothes hanging motionless and under the bed.
There was no sign of anyone hiding.
He stepped backwards into the middle of the room, and as he did so, something tripped him up.
Turning with a sudden spring of alarm, he saw the kit bag.
Weird, he thought, that's not where I left it.
A few moments before, it had definitely been on his right, between the bed and the chair.
He did not remember having moved it.
It was very strange.
What on earth was the matter with everything?'
A terrific gust of wind tore at the windows, dashing the sleet against the glass with the force of small gunshot, and then fled away howling over the waste of Bloomsbury roofs.
A sudden vision of crossing the Channel the next day came into his mind and brought him back to reality.
There's no one here anyway, that's pretty clear, he said aloud.
But as soon as he said the words, he knew perfectly well they were not true and that he did not believe himself.
He felt exactly as though someone was hiding close by him, watching all his movements, trying to stop him packing somehow.
And two of my senses he added, keeping up the pretense of normality have played absurd tricks on me.
The steps I heard and the figure I saw were both completely imaginary.
He went back to the front room, poked the fire into a blaze and sat down in front of it to think.
What impressed him more than anything else was the fact that the kit bag was no longer where he had left it.
It had been dragged nearer to the door.
What happened afterwards that night happened, of course, to a man already excited by fear and was perceived by a mind that was not fully under control.
Outwardly.
Johnson remained calm, pretending that everything he'd seen had a natural explanation or was just because of his tired nerves.
But inwardly in his heart of hearts, he knew all along that someone had been hiding downstairs in the empty flat when he came in, and that this person had waited for his opportunity and then stealthily made his way up to the bedroom, and that all he saw and heard afterwards from the moving of the kit bag to well to the other things this story has to tell were caused directly by the presence of this invisible person.
And it was here, just when he most desired to keep his mind and thoughts under control, that the vivid pictures received day after day upon the mental plates of his memory exposed in the courtroom of the old Bailey, came strongly to light and developed themselves in the dark room of his inner vision.
Unpleasant, haunting memories have a way of coming to life again just when the mind least desires them, in the silent watches of the night on sleepless pillows, during the lonely hours spent by sick and dying beds.
And so now, in the same way, Johnson saw nothing but the dreadful face of John Turk, the murderer, looking at him from every corner of his mental field of vision the white skin, the evil eyes and the fringe of black hair low over the forehead.
All the pictures of those ten days in court crowded back into his mind and very vividly.
''This is all rubbish and nerves''.
He exclaimed at length, springing with sudden energy from his chair.
''I'll finish my packing and go to bed.
I'm exhausted.
No doubt at this rate I'll hear steps and things all night'', but his face was deadly white all the same.
He snatched up his ski mask and walked across to the bedroom, humming a cheerful Christmas song as he went a bit too loud to be natural.
And the instant he crossed the doorway and stood inside the room, something turned cold around his heart and he felt that every hair on his head stood straight up.
The kit bag lay just in front of him, several feet nearer to the door than he'd left it, and just over its crumpled top he saw a head and face slowly sinking down out of sight, as though someone were crouching behind it to hide.
And at the same moment a sound like a long-drawn sigh was distinctly audible in the still air about him between the gusts of the storm outside.
Johnson had more courage and willpower than the indecision on his face indicated.
But at first such a wave of terror came over him that for some seconds he could do nothing but stand and stare.
A violent trembling ran down his back and legs and he was conscious of a foolish, almost a hysterical impulse to scream aloud.
That sigh seemed in his very ear, and the air still vibrated with it.
It was unmistakably a human sigh.
"'Who's there?'
He said at length, finding his voice.
But though he meant to speak loudly and clearly, the sound came out instead in a faint whisper.
He stepped forward, so that he could see all round and over the kit-bag.
Of course there was nothing there, nothing but the faded carpet and the bulging canvas sides.
He put out his hands and threw open the mouth of the sack, where it had fallen over as it was only three parts full.
And then he saw for the first time that round the inside, some six inches from the top, there ran a broad smear of dull crimson.
It was an old and faded bloodstain.
He uttered a scream and drew back his hands as if they'd been burnt.
At the same moment, the kit bag gave a faint but unmistakable lurch forward towards the door.
Johnson collapsed backwards, searching with his hands for the support of something solid and the door, being further behind him than he realised, received his weight just in time to prevent his falling and suddenly shut with a bang.
At the same moment, the swinging of his left arm accidentally touched the light switch and the room was plunged into darkness.
It was an awkward and disagreeable predicament, but Johnson managed to pull himself together and groped furiously for the light switch to turn the light on again.
But the rapid closing of the door had made the coats hanging on it start swinging and his fingers became entangled in a confusion of sleeves and pockets, so that it was some time before he found the switch.
And in those few moments of bewilderment and terror, two things happened that sent him completely over the boundary, into the region of genuine horror.
He distinctly heard the kit bag shuffling heavily across the floor in jerks.
And in close, just in front of his face, another sigh of a human being.
Grrrr.
In his painful efforts to find the switch on the wall, he nearly scraped the nails off his fingers.
But even then, in those frenzied moments of alarm, he still had time to realise that he dreaded the return of the light and that it might be better for him to stay hidden in the merciful screen of darkness.
It was just the impulse of a moment however, and before he had time to act on it, he had automatically flicked the switch and the room was flooded again with light.
But the second instinct had been right.
It would have been better for him to have stayed in the shelter of the kind darkness, for there...
Close before him, bending over the half-packed kit bag, clear as life, in the merciless glare of the electric light, stood the figure of John Turk the murderer.
Not three feet from him the man stood, the fringe of black hair marked plainly against the pale skin of his forehead.
The whole horrible vision of the man as vivid as he had seen him day after day in the courtroom when he stood there in the dock, cynical and callous, under the very shadow of the gallows.
In a flash, Johnson realised what it all meant.
The dirty and much-used bag, the smear of crimson within the top, the dreadful stretched condition of the bulging sides.
He remembered how the victim's body had been stuffed into a canvas bag for burial.
The horrendous dismembered fragments forced with lime into this very bag and the bag itself produced as evidence.
It all came back to him as clear as day.
Very softly and stealthily, his hand groped behind him for the handle of the door.
But before he could actually turn it, the very thing that he dreaded most of all came about, and John Turk lifted his face and looked at him.
At the same moment, that heavy sigh passed through the air of the room, formulated somehow into words, ''It's my bag, and I want it.''
Johnson just remembered clawing the door open and then falling in a heap upon the floor of the landing as he tried frantically to make his way into the front room.
He remained unconscious for a long time and it was still dark when he opened his eyes and realised that he was lying stiff and bruised on the cold floorboards.
Then the memory of what he had seen rushed back into his mind and he fainted again.
When he woke up the second time, the wintry dawn was just beginning to peep in at the windows painting the stairs a cheerless dismal grey, and he managed to crawl into the front room and cover himself with an overcoat in the armchair where eventually, he fell asleep.
A loud noise woke him up.
He recognised Mrs Monks's voice.
"'What?
You ain't been to bed, sir?
Are you ill, or has anything happened?' and there's an urgent gentleman to see you, though it ain't even seven o'clock yet, and who is it?
He stammered.
I'm all right, thanks.
Fell asleep in my chair, I suppose.
Someone from Mr Wilbram's is and he says he ought to see you quick before you go abroad.
And I told him show him up please, straight away, said Johnson, whose head was whirling and his mind was still full of dreadful visions.
Mr Wilbraham's man came in, apologised and explained briefly and quickly that an awful mistake had been made and that the wrong kit bag had been sent over the night before.
Henry somehow got hold of the one that came over from the courtroom, and Mr Wilbraham only discovered it when he saw his own lying in his room and asked why it hadn't gone to you.
The man said
'Oh', said Johnson stupidly, 'and he must have brought you the one from the murder case instead sir, I'm afraid'.
The man continued, without the ghost of an expression on his face.
"'The one John Turk placed the dead body in.
Mr Wilbram's terribly upset about it sir, and he told me to come over first thing this morning with the right one, as you were leaving early'.
He pointed to a clean-looking kit-bag on the floor which he had just brought.'
And I was to bring the other one back, sir, he said casually.
For some minutes, Johnson couldn't find his voice.
At last, he pointed in the direction of his bedroom.
Perhaps you could kindly unpack it for me.
Just just empty the things out onto the floor.
The man disappeared into the other room and was gone for five minutes.
Johnson heard the shifting to and fro of the bag and the rattle of the skates and boots being unpacked.
Thank you, sir, the man said, returning with the bag folded over his arm.
And can I do anything more to help you, sir?
What is it? asked Johnson, seeing that he still had something he wished to say.
The man shuffled and looked mysterious.
Well, excuse me sir, but knowing your interest in the Turk case, I thought you'd maybe like to know what's happened.
Yes.
Well, John Turt killed himself last night with poison, immediately as soon as he was released, and he left a note for Mr Wilbraham saying that he wanted to be put away buried, same as the woman he murdered in the old kit bag.
What time did he do it? asked Johnson.
Ten o'clock last night, sir.
The End Right, so that is the kit bag.
How'd you get on with that?
Did you manage to follow that?
OK, let me try and summarise the story in my own words quickly, and then I'll go through the story text again and clarify some things.
Were there things that you didn't understand?
There might have been little moments where you didn't understand what was going on.
Some of the descriptions were very specific.
Let's see.
So basically, we've got a court case at the start, a courtroom, a criminal case.
A man has been... prosecuted for murder.
And it was a very gruesome murder.
What I understand is that he killed a woman and he dismembered her body.
He cut up her body and put the body parts into a bag with lime.
And that's not lime the fruit.
That would be strange.
But lime is a kind of a sort of powder that I'm not sure why lime would be used, but lime is like an alkaloid, alkaline sort of powder, right?
So anyway, he put the body in this bag and he was going to bury it in this bag.
I don't know how he got caught, but anyway, the court case which ends just at the beginning of the story.
In the court case we learn that the lawyer, or the counsel, King's Council, which is like a very high level criminal lawyer, who defended this murderer whose name was John Turk.
So the lawyer defending the murderer was called Mr. Wilbraham.
He defended him and won the case.
So John Turk was actually dismissed.
He wasn't sent to prison.
He wasn't convicted of the murder.
And the way that the counsel, the lawyer, got him off I mean, the way he managed to get that result was was on the grounds of insanity.
So he argued that John Turk was completely insane and therefore couldn't be prosecuted in the usual way.
Presumably John Turk then will be taken to a psychiatric hospital or something like that, right?
But he wasn't sent to prison and wasn't charged or convicted of this murder, right?
Often, insanity can be used as a defense, suggesting that a person is not really in control of their actions.
They didn't fully premeditate the killing.
You can understand how mental illness or insanity could be A way to argue that this person doesn't need.
You can't be convicted of a crime because they were completely insane.
So that's the only way he got off.
But it's a horrible murder.
And the murderer himself is a really horrible, disturbing man with a very disturbing scary, frightening looking appearance white skin and black hair stuck to his forehead.
Disturbing looking man.
And apparently the murder itself was very cruel and callous.
Callous is a word that comes up a few times in the story.
If someone is callous, it means they do things without thinking about other people's feelings at all.
So Wilbraham was the lawyer who did it.
But his private secretary.
His private secretary, a sort of office assistant, a sort of legal assistant, let's say, who worked for him.
His name is Johnson.
And he sat in the courtroom during the entire trial and watched the whole thing take place and was very disturbed by the case which
You know, it does happen.
I mean, I've been to criminal courts in London during legal English courses.
I've taken my students out on trips to the Old Bailey, which is this fantastic old building with these courtrooms.
And you get to observe the lawyers and the judges and the jury and every, you know, the whole thing.
You can sit there and just observe it all.
And you do hear some disturbing crimes happening.
Anyway, after 10 days of sitting through the entire trial, Johnson is quite disturbed by it.
And at the end of the trial, his plan is to go on holiday.
He's going to go to the Alps to go skiing.
And he knows his boss as a friend, in fact, I think through family connections or something.
And he asks his boss if he could borrow a bag, a kit bag, because he doesn't have one and it's too late to buy one.
So he says, can I borrow a kit bag?
And Wilbraham says, certainly I'll have one sent over to you tonight.
OK, so off he goes.
Johnson goes off.
He goes and eats out in a restaurant or something.
And then when he gets to his home, which is this old building, old empty building, in Bloomsbury in London.
He lives up on the top floor, I think, and there are several floors below him.
The floor immediately below him is completely empty.
It's unoccupied, which is quite a creepy place.
There's a big storm outside with wind and rain and sleet and stuff, which creates this creepy context.
When he gets to his home, the landlady, Mrs. Monks, says, here's the bag that's been sent for you.
He takes the bag, he goes upstairs, he starts packing.
And then he starts to experience these weird things.
So he hears the sound of footsteps down below um, and he calls out.
No one replies.
He goes downstairs.
There's no one there and he starts to get slowly more and more scared.
Uh, and then he hears footsteps again, and then the bag.
He has a look at the bag and for a moment it looks like john turk's face, which is very frightening, and he starts to get more and more nervous.
He's sort of like pretending that there's nothing weird going on, but he really knows that there is.
And then um, He hears the sound again, and then he actually sees, out the corner of his eye, a person on the top of the top of the stairs.
So obviously someone is slowly and secretly making their way up to his floor, to his apartment.
And he goes and investigates.
There's no one there again.
And then, as he goes back to his bag, he hears.
As he goes back to the living room, he hears someone running up behind him and going into the bedroom.
And he goes in and apparently there's no one there.
And then something weird happens with the bag.
He trips over the bag and realises that it's been moved.
The bag has clearly been dragged across the floor.
And then another time he notices it's been moved again.
And he gets really scared.
He goes into the other room and sits by the fire to try and get control of himself and realises he has to go and continue his packing.
And he goes back into the bedroom.
And at this point he sees a face and hands behind the bag and they disappeared down behind the bag.
Now, if you can imagine what that would be like when you're already really scared, you go into this dark room where your bag is waiting for you and you can actually see head a head disappear beneath the bag as if someone's hiding behind it, and you go and look and there's no one there and then he trips and He falls backwards and sort of gets tangled in the coats of the door and he accidentally turns off the light.
And in the darkness, he hears the bag sliding across the floor, which is terrifying.
And then he hears that horrible human sigh, he hears this sound and he's so scared he automatically turns the light back on but instantly wishes he hadn't done it, because there, right in front of him is John Turk the murderer.
And we are thinking what so he?
He's come.
He's come to this house for some reason, maybe to get this bag.
What's going on?
Anyway, we see John Turk there and he gets so frightened and John Turk looks at him and then he says it's mine and I want it.
And And so Johnson realises oh God, this is his bag.
He's noticed that the bag looks all beaten up and damaged and there's a bloodstain inside it.
This is John Turk's bag and he's come to claim it.
It's mine and I want it, he says.
At this point it's all too much for johnson.
He falls over on the landing.
The landing is a space between rooms on an upper floor, so the stairs will take you up onto the landing and from the landing you go into the different rooms right.
So he falls onto the landing and faints.
He collapses and probably lies there for some time.
He wakes up at some point and goes and crawls over to the seat in the living room and sits there with a coat over him and he falls asleep.
And he's woken up by his landlady, Mrs Monks, who says oh, there's someone here to see you.
And it's Mr. Wilbraham's assistant who's come and says, oh, there's been a mistake.
You got the wrong bag.
Accidentally, you were given the kit bag from the evidence collection, from the evidence collection, the bag that was shown in the courts, the bag that John Turk used to try to bury the body in, and that was the bag that he'd been given.
And then the second piece of news that he learned was that John Turk, last night, when he'd been released, killed himself.
He poisoned himself and killed himself and died the night before.
And the ending of the story is when Johnson realises the moment Turk died was the moment that Turk first appeared in his room to claim his bag.
And also Turk left a note saying he wanted to be buried in the bag like the woman he tried to bury.
So I don't know what's going on there with John Turk and his desire to.
I don't know why he killed this woman, why he wanted to bury her in this bag and why he himself wanted to be buried in that bag too.
But clearly his ghost came back to claim the bag, to try to uh take it away, and that's what uh johnson had experienced.
Oh, that's a pretty creepy story.
I hope you're doing all right.
How are you?
Are you in?
Are you alone in your in your place at this point?
Um yeah okay, tell me in the comment section how creepy that was.
Did you think it was creepy, did it?
Did it seem like a scary story to you at all?
Um, let us know in the comment section.
And even if it wasn't scary, i think it's a well-written story.
I think it's really nicely described.
So let me go through the text again.
This might take some time.
I've already been speaking for about 45 minutes, so I need to get on with this.
But there's a lot of text, as I said, 4,500 words.
I'd like to go through the text again and just highlight quickly some bits of English as we go through this.
So when the words not guilty echoed through the crowded courtroom.
So echoed a courtroom often is a big building, a big room with a large high ceiling.
So echo, echo, echo.
Hello.
Hello.
Hello.
That's echo when a sound bounces around.
So the words not guilty.
This is the judge saying that, the judge that the defendant, john turk, was not guilty, not guilty, not guilty, guilty that when, when this, the words not guilty, echoed through the crowded courtroom that dark december afternoon.
Arthur wilbraham, the great criminal kc kc means king's council, that's the highest level of lawyer that you can get in the uk and that's a kind of a barrister, like a very specialized expert.
Barrister Counsel is another word for a lawyer, basically.
King's counsel is just like this high level of barrister, a type of lawyer who speaks in a courtroom.
Arthur Wilbraham, the great criminal KC and leader of the triumphant defence, was represented by his junior.
But Johnson, his private secretary, brought the verdict to his chambers.
The verdict is like guilty or not guilty is the decision by the jury in a court.
So Johnson brought the verdict to Wilbraham's chambers.
That's like basically his offices.
He brought it like lightning.
So if you do something like lightning, it means you do it really fast, like lightning.
Lightning is electricity in the sky, and obviously it's very fast.
So if you do something like lightning, it means you do it really fast.
Wilbraham says, it's what we expected, I think, said the barrister.
There you see a barrister, a lawyer in a courtroom.
It's what we expected, I think, said the barrister, without emotion.
And personally, I'm glad the case is over.
There was no particular sign of pleasure that his defence of John Turk, the murderer, on a plea of insanity A plea is This is like legal language, legal English.
A plea is more like where you...
You request it's like a request, let's say, or a request for something to be recognized as true.
In this case, an insanity plea is a plea comes from the word please is connected to please.
So it's a bit like them saying to the judge, please.
He was insane.
OK, he didn't he didn't know what he was doing.
So please don't don't convict him.
That's a plea, an insanity plea.
But it's a legal term, meaning when you sort of request something or you make a sort of make a statement arguing that someone is not guilty.
Right. a plea of insanity in this case.
His defence had been successful on a plea of insanity, for no doubt he felt, as everyone who had watched that case felt, that no man had ever better deserved the death penalty.
So anyone watching the case would think that...
John Turk definitely deserved the death penalty.
That means to be to be killed.
I mean in the days that this story was written, the death penalty was still a thing in England, and they did it by hanging.
Someone would be hung by the neck until dead.
So.
This just tells us that John Turk was like a really awful, horrible person.
I'm glad too, said Johnson.
He had sat in the court for 10 days watching the face of the man who had carried out, meaning done.
He carried out a murder in this case.
The face of the man who carried out with callous detail.
There's that word callous when you don't care about the suffering or feelings of other people.
You just don't care about other people.
So it's kind of like selfish and uncaring.
He carried out, with callous detail, one of the most brutal and cold-blooded murders of recent years, a very ruthless and brutal killing.
The council, this is the lawyer, Wilbraham, glanced up at his secretary.
So he looked at his secretary.
They were more than employer and employee.
For family and other reasons, they were friends.
Ah, I remember, yes, he said with a kind smile.
You, and you want to get away for Christmas.
You're going skating and skiing in the Alps, aren't you?
If I was your age, I'd come with you.
Skating and skiing, ice skating, skiing, of course.
Johnson laughed shortly.
He was a young man of 26 with a soft, delicate face.
I can catch the morning boat now, he said, but that's not the reason I'm glad the trial is over.
I'm glad it's over because I've seen the last of that man's dreadful face.
Dreadful, horrible face.
It's haunted me, meaning it stayed with him, a bad feeling that stayed with him.
It's haunted me.
Normally a ghost haunts you, right?
A ghost haunts a building, where a ghost lives in the building.
We say the ghost haunts the building.
But things feelings, images can haunt you, meaning they stay with you, you can't get them out of your mind and they're bad.
It's haunted me that white skin with the black hair brushed low over the forehead.
I'll never forget it.
And the description of the way the dismembered body.
Dismembered means cut into pieces, With the parts of the body separated and removed.
Not very nice.
Merry Christmas, everyone.
The description of the way the dismembered body was crammed and packed with lime into that bag.
He's going to say
Crammed into the bag, packed into the bag, pushed into a small space, right?
Like the way I get crammed.
I'm crammed into a metro train at 830 in the morning when I go to work because the train is so full of people.
We're all crammed in together.
And when you're packing your suitcase, you try to get as much stuff into your suitcase as possible.
You really cram everything in.
If you're studying for an exam, you might cram, meaning fill your head full of information.
His dismembered body was crammed and packed with lime into that suitcase.
He's going to say bag, but Wilbraham says don't dwell on it.
Don't dwell on it.
If you dwell on something, it means you stay with it or you think about it a lot.
Dwell also means live, right?
Dwelling, to dwell somewhere means to live or stay there.
And if you dwell on something, it means you stay on an idea, stay on a thought, think about it again.
So it's like, don't dwell on it.
Try and think about something else.
All right.
So don't dwell on it, interrupted Wilbraham, looking at him curiously with his keen eyes.
Don't think about it.
Images like that have a trick of coming back when you least want them.
He paused for a moment.
Now off you go, he added, and enjoy your holiday.
I'll want all your energy for my parliamentary work when you get back.
So I will need you to be full of energy for the parliamentary work.
So presumably they're going to be doing some work in parliament, right, with politicians.
I'll need all your energy for the parliamentary work.
And don't break your neck skiing.
OK, Johnson started to leave.
At the door, he turned suddenly.
I knew there was something I wanted to ask you, he said.
Would you mind lending me one of your kit bags?
Lend me, lend me a kit bag, give it to me and I will return it later.
I will borrow it from you.
You can lend it to me.
Would you mind lending me one of your kit bags?
It's too late to get one tonight and I'm leaving in the morning before the shops open.
Of course, I'll send Henry over with it to your rooms.
You'll have it the moment I get home.
I promise i'll take good care of it, said johnson gratefully.
If you're grateful, it means you're thankful, delighted to think that within thirty hours he would be nearing the brilliant sunshine of the high alps in winter.
The thought of that criminal court was like an evil dream in his mind.
He ate out meaning he ate at a restaurant or something and went on to Bloomsbury where he had a flat on the top floor in one of those old houses in which the rooms are large and lofty.
Lofty means that they've got high ceilings, so there's like a lot of space up at the top, okay?
Bloomsbury is a fantastic part of London.
It's one of my favourite areas of London, really great area, very atmospheric.
It's like that kind of Sherlock Holmes sort of It reminds me of those Sherlock Holmes stories.
A lot of them take place in that sort of area.
I love that part of the northern part of central London, north of Soho, north of Covent Garden, north of Hoburn, that whole area of Fitzrovia and Bloomsbury where the university campuses and a lot of university buildings are to be found.
Beautiful squares.
Anyway, the rooms are large and lofty with lots of space.
The floor below his was vacant, meaning empty, and unfurnished, meaning no furniture.
And below that, there were other lodgers.
A lodger is someone who just stays in a room and pays a landlady, right?
So if you're a student in London, you might be a lodger.
You might lodge at someone's home.
You stay in the room.
You pay rent to the landlady, right?
So that's a lodger.
Normally kind of like a temporary kind of contract, maybe six months a year, something like that.
Um, the floor below his was vacant and unfurnished and below that there were other lodgers who he didn't know.
It was cheerless.
So you know the word cheerful someone's cheerful, they're happy and positive, cheerless is the opposite, so that's kind of like negative and not full of, not full of cheer, not full of joy or happiness.
So a bit miserable.
And he was looking forward to a change of scene.
The night was even more cheerless.
It was miserable, meaning really horrible and unhappy.
And hardly anyone was out.
A cold, sleety rain was driving down the streets.
Sleet is basically a mixture of rain and snow.
And it's horrible.
So it's like wet snow.
OK, really horrible conditions.
Sleet.
OK, so you've got rain, you know there's snow, you know, and sleet, which is a mix of rain and snow.
And then there's hail as well.
H-A-I-L, hail.
That's basically little balls of ice.
Rain down from the sky in the middle of storms.
That's hail.
But here we've got cold and sleety rain.
Was driving down the streets in front of the harshest east wind he'd ever felt.
Harsh meaning hard and cruel and, well, you can imagine, unpleasant.
It howled among the big gloomy houses of the great squares.
Howl is what a dog or a wolf does.
Howl.
So you can imagine the wind howling among the big gloomy houses.
Gloomy meaning kind of dark and a bit sort of sombre, depressing looking.
So the wind is howling around these big dark houses of the great squares, these large squares that you find in Bloomsbury.
And when he reached his rooms.
Presumably he has a bedroom and a living room and a bathroom and stuff.
When he reached his rooms, he heard it whistling and as whistling and shouting.
Well, shouting, you know, hey, hey, what are you doing?
But you can imagine wind shouting.
Right.
You can hear it shouting over the world of black roofs beyond his windows.
So basically, the weather outside is absolutely horrendous with this wind and sleet.
In the hall, he met his landlady shading a candle from the drafts with her thin hands.
So she's holding a candle and she's protecting it from drafts, which are a very common thing in English homes.
For some reason,
This is because maybe they're not very well insulated, especially in these days when this story was written.
Drafts are like little cold movements of air.
So if you sit next to a window and that window doesn't close very well, you will get a draft and the draft comes in.
It goes on the back of your neck.
Maybe you catch a cold or something.
So these are drafts, like cold little movements of air that move around indoors.
So she's protecting the candle from the drafts with her thin hand.
This come from a man from Mr. Wilbram, sir.
She speaks like this.
She's sort of a bit more working class than the other characters.
This has come from a man.
She points to the bag.
I'm going abroad in the morning for 10 days.
Abroad, he's going to another country.
He says I'll leave an address for letters and I hope you'll have a Merry Christmas, sir.
She said in a raucous, wheezy voice.
Raucous is... Oh, how do you describe raucous?
Her voice is raucous because it's like harsh and loud.
I hope you'll have a Merry Christmas, sir.
Her voice is loud and a bit harsh and wheezy.
If you're wheezy, it means you make noises like that when you breathe.
So you can imagine that Mrs Monks is this kind of older woman.
She's got a loud, rough voice.
Wheezing.
She wheezes.
She doesn't breathe very well.
That's the kind of person she is.
I hope you'll have a Merry Christmas, sir, she says.
And better weather than this.
I hope so, too, he replied.
When he got upstairs, he heard the sleet, there it is again, volleying against the window panes.
So basically just flying through the air and hitting the glass in the windows.
He put his kettle on to make a cup of hot coffee and then started getting a few things ready for his trip.
And now I've got to get packing, he laughed to himself and got started.
He liked the packing because it made him think about the snowy mountains and made him forget the unpleasant scenes of the past 10 days.
His friend had lent him the large canvas kit bag sack-shaped, so it's large like a sack.
You know, like Father Christmas, Santa Claus has a sack which he fills with things, his presents, right.
Sack-shaped, with holes around the neck for the brass bar and padlock.
So presumably this was the way in which a kit bag would be closed.
It's Sort of holes where you put rope or something and maybe have some method of locking it with a metal bar or padlock.
A padlock is a little thing that you use to lock something.
You put a key in it, open it and the little metal uh thing at the top opens.
So if you've got um, i don't know if, when you you know, when you go swimming or go to the gym you put your stuff in a locker and you have a little padlock that goes on that locks it you, you flip open the little metal latch, attach it and click, click it shut, take the key out.
That's a padlock.
So anyway, It was a bit shapeless, the bag, and not much to look at, meaning it didn't look wonderful.
But it had plenty of space inside, so there was no need to pack carefully.
He shoved in his waterproof coat, meaning he pushed in his waterproof coat, his fur, cap and gloves, his skates and climbing boots, his sweaters, snow boots and earmuffs.
And then on top of these, he piled his woolen shirts and underwear, his thick socks and thermals.
Thermals are like...
Warm underwear.
They might be long, long pants that go all the way down, like trousers that you wear under your trousers, or maybe like a thin T-shirt that you wear underneath your other clothes.
These are thermals.
Some smart clothes came next in case the hotel people dressed up for dinner.
If you dress up, it means you dress up smartly, maybe in a suit.
And then thinking of the best way to pack his white shirts, he paused a moment to reflect.
To reflect means to think.
Basically, let ideas bounce around in your head, like the way light bounces off a mirror.
It reflects.
You can reflect as well, meaning you sit and let your thoughts bounce around in your head.
That's the annoying thing about these kit bags.
You need to tie them together with something, he thought vaguely.
Standing in the corner of the sitting room where he had come to fetch some string.
Fetch meaning get, bring back.
It was about 10 o'clock.
Ah, this is the time when John Turk kills himself.
It was after 10 o'clock.
A furious gust of wind.
A gust is like a blow of wind.
A furious gust of wind rattled the windows.
The windows like that and thought, and he thought with pity of the poor londoners whose christmas would be spent in such a climate, whilst he was skimming over snowy slopes.
Skimming it's what you do on skis.
Imagine lovely lovely, clear snow and you skim over it, meaning slide over the top of it.
He was skimming over snowy slopes in bright sunshine and dancing in the evening with rosy-cheeked girls.
If you're rosy-cheeked, it means your cheeks are red because you're nice and warm, especially if it's been cold during the day.
And now you're warm, you've had like maybe a little drink and your cheeks are rosy.
Rosy-cheeked girls.
Ah, that reminded him he must put in his dancing shoes.
He crossed over from his sitting room to the cupboard on the landing.
Again, the landing is this space between rooms, right like a corridor between rooms upstairs.
That's a landing.
He crossed over from his sitting room to the cupboard on the landing where he kept his shoes, and as he did so he heard someone coming up the stairs.
He stood for a moment on the landing to listen.
It was mrs monks's step.
He thought she must be coming up with the last post, meaning she must be bringing up the last letters, right.
But then the steps stopped suddenly and he heard no more.
They were at least two flights down.
So a flight is a set of stairs, a flight of stairs.
That's a set of stairs.
So two flights down, meaning probably two floors down or two sets of stairs down anyway.
Right.
There were at least two flights down the steps and he came to the conclusion they were too heavy to be those of his landlady.
No doubt they belong to a late lodger who'd got the wrong floor.
He went into his bedroom and packed his shoes and evening clothes as best he could.
The kit bag by this time was two thirds full and stood upright on its own base like a sack of flour.
Flour is that powder that we use to make bread.
And flour comes in sacks or little paper bags that sit upright.
For the first time, he noticed that it was old and dirty.
The canvas faded and worn.
Canvas is the kind of rough cotton material that's used to make bags like this.
And that it had obviously been subjected to some rather rough treatment.
Meaning it had obviously been treated quite roughly.
Meaning maybe meaning thrown around or not?
Whoever had used it had not been very careful with it.
It was not a very nice bag to to have sent him, certainly not a new one or one that his boss valued.
So for a moment johnson's like why did my boss give me this old uh, damaged looking bag?
Hmm, he thought about it for a moment and then went on with his packing.
Once or twice however, he caught himself wondering who it could have been wandering down below.
So every now and then he's like wait a minute, who was that?
Mrs Monks had not come up with letters and the floor was completely unfurnished.
From time to time, he was almost certain he heard a soft tread.
A tread is a foot going on the floor.
Right.
So a tread would be a footstep.
OK, there you go.
He heard a soft tread of someone padding about over the bare boards, meaning he heard the soft footstep of someone walking around over the bare boards.
These are floorboards, the long, flat pieces of wood that are used to make the floor.
These are boards or floorboards.
So he felt certain he heard someone walking around on the floorboards.
Cautiously meaning carefully.
Stealthily meaning done in a way that people won't notice, like a ninja and ninjas are stealthy, doing something secretly that other people can't hear or see as silently as possible, and further that the sounds had started to come distinctly nearer.
For the first time in his life, he began to feel a little creepy.
Then, as though to emphasise this feeling, an odd thing happened.
As he left the bedroom, having just packed his things, he noticed that the top of the kit bag was lying over towards him with an extraordinary resemblance to a human face.
A resemblance means, um...
A resemblance is like something that looks exactly like something else.
In this case, the bag, the top of the bag looks exactly like a human face.
It had an extraordinary resemblance to a human face.
It looked extraordinarily like a human face.
The canvas fell into a fold like a nose and forehead.
So the way the canvas folded made it look like a nose and forehead, and the brass rings for the padlock just filled the position of the eyes.
A shadow, or was it a travel stain?
A stain is where fabric, like the canvas of a bag, gets coloured by something.
For example, if I'm playing with a pen and the pen pops open and all the ink comes out and goes all over my trousers.
Then I'll get a stain on my trousers.
I'll get a blue stain on my trousers.
So either it's a shadow or maybe a stain, a travel stain.
He couldn't tell exactly, but it looked like hair.
And it gave him a strange feeling because it looked absurdly like.
It looked ridiculously like the face of John Turk, the murderer, just for a moment.
He laughed and went into the front room where the light was stronger.
That horrid case has got into my head, he thought.
Horrid meaning horrible.
Synonym of horrible.
The case, meaning the court case, the criminal case that has got into my head.
If something gets into your head, it means it finds its way into your mind where it then stays.
Right.
And disturbs you.
I can't wait to get a change of scene and some fresh air.
In the sitting room.
However, he was not pleased to hear again that stealthy tread upon the stairs and to realise that it was much closer than before, as well as unmistakably real.
And this time he got up and went out to see who it could be creeping about, creeping about.
Someone creeps around.
They move around stealthily without being seen or heard.
Creeping around.
Right.
Who could it be creeping around on the upper staircase at such a late hour?
But the sound stopped.
There was no one visible on the stairs.
He went to the floor below not without feeling scared.
So he did feel a bit scared and turned on the electric light to make sure that no one was hiding in the empty rooms of the unoccupied flat.
There wasn't a single bit of furniture, nothing to hide behind.
Then he called over the banisters.
Banisters are the wooden things.
So next to the stairs, you get like a wooden rail with wooden bars.
And this is to basically stop people falling over the edge and also down the stairs.
You hold on to the banisters when you are walking down the stairs.
It's like a handrail.
OK, that's the banisters.
So he called over the banisters to Mrs. Monk's Mrs Monks.
But there was no answer.
And his voice echoed down into the dark vault of the house.
A vault is like a large open space, let's say.
Mrs Monks, Monks, Monks, Monks.
And it was lost in the roar of the gale that howled outside.
A gale is a windstorm, a strong windstorm.
So Mrs Monks, Mrs Monks, Monks, Monks, Monks.
So the sound of his voice was lost in the sound of the wind, the roar of the gale.
Normally an animal roars like a lion.
But in this case, it's the roar, not of a lion, but the roar of the gale, the roar of the windstorm that howled outside.
There's that word again.
So you've got roar and howl.
Both of them used to describe the wind.
Everyone was in bed and asleep, everyone except him and the owner of this soft and stealthy tread.
My absurd imagination, I suppose.
Absurd meaning ridiculous.
My silly, ridiculous imagination, I suppose.
My absurd imagination, he thought.
It must have been the wind after all.
So some great deductive...
English here, I mean, in terms of grammar.
Must have been the wind, he said, assuming it was the wind.
It seemed so very real and close.
He went back to his packing.
It was by this time nearly midnight.
He drank his coffee up, meaning he drank all of it, and made sure he was ready.
It was difficult to say exactly at what point fear begins.
This is one of the nice passages, I think, in this story.
There's two passages that I really like.
This one is talking about how fear creeps into your mind and the way it establishes itself without you really noticing.
So he says it's difficult to say exactly at what point fear begins when the causes of that fear are not directly in front of the eyes.
So, even when you can't see the thing that's making you scared, but the fear starts to come in, and it's hard to say exactly when that happens.
Impressions gather on the surface of the mind.
An impression is like an understanding of something.
You know, like a general understanding of something.
I get the impression, like you might say to someone, I get the impression that you are a bit nervous.
Is that right?
That's where you just a feeling starts to come in.
You get an impression, right?
So impressions are vague understandings that come into your mind.
Impressions gather, meaning they come, they come in and come together, right?
If people gather, it means they come together and meet and spend time together.
People tend to gather at Christmas, right?
A group of friends might gather and get together, right?
So get together, come together, gather, collect together.
Impressions, so feelings or understandings gather, get together on the surface of the mind, film by film.
A film refers to a very thin layer of something.
So obviously film in cameras, old-fashioned cameras, but also we get this description of ice, film by film, like ice gathering on the surface of still water.
And if you've ever seen ice that's just forming in water, it does come in these thin layers, or thin films.
So impressions gather on the surface of the mind, film by film, like ice gathering on the surface of still water, but often so lightly that they are hardly noticeable.
It's a wonderful passage describing the the way that fear arrives in your mind, a bit like the way that still water freezes little by little and it happens so slowly that you don't really even notice it happening.
Then a point is reached where the accumulated impressions, meaning the impressions that have gathered together, they've accumulated, they have built up, when these accumulated impressions become a definite emotion and that the mind realises that something has happened.
So eventually, all of these growing things have got to a certain point where the mind is like well, wait a minute oh, I'm scared.
With something of a start, Johnson suddenly recognised that he felt nervous oddly nervous too and that for some time the causes of this feeling had been gathering slowly in his mind, but that he'd only just reached the point where he was forced to acknowledge them.
If you acknowledge something, it's like you outwardly recognise that it's there, okay?
You acknowledge something.
A bit like...
I mean an example.
This is maybe a strange example, but it's just the first thing that comes to mind.
When I'm on stage doing stand-up comedy, if I'm talking to my audience on stage but I've got 10 minutes.
When I get to the end of the 10 minutes, normally there'll be someone at the back who will show me a light.
They'll show me the light from their phone like that.
And it's normal for a comedian to acknowledge the light.
You normally will look up and nod your head as if to say, yep, got it, I saw that.
You acknowledge the light.
In the same way, Johnson suddenly realized that he felt nervous and that this feeling had been growing, and he'd he'd only just reached the point where he was forced to acknowledge them, which is like yeah.
Oh, OK.
Yeah, I'm scared.
It was an odd and uncomfortable feeling that had come over him, and he hardly knew what to make of it.
He didn't know what to make of it, didn't know what to think about it.
He felt as though he were doing something that was strongly objected to.
If you object to something that someone is doing, you basically don't like that they are doing it.
You don't agree with it.
You don't like the fact they're doing it.
So he was doing something that was objected to.
So that's passive voice.
Another person objected to what he was doing.
In this case.
Now we know it's John Turk the ghost of John Turk who didn't like the fact he was using his bag.
So Johnson felt as though he were doing something that was strongly objected to by another person, another person who had some right to object.
It was a very disturbing and disagreeable feeling, not unlike the feeling of a guilty conscience.
Your conscience is the voice in your head that tells you if you're doing something right or wrong, or if you're doing something bad or good.
And if you have a guilty conscience, it means you've done something wrong.
And then your mind is like, oh, you did something wrong.
You shouldn't have done that.
You should feel guilty.
You should feel guilty for doing that.
You should be ashamed of yourself.
That's a guilty conscience.
The mind of someone who's done something wrong, and they know they've done something wrong and they don't get any peace as a result of it.
So he feels like he's got a guilty conscience, but he doesn't know what he's done wrong.
We know now that this is like the ghost of John Turk, who's upset, that his bag is being used for something else.
And it's just like this feeling which is coming into Johnson's mind.
Although he searched vigorously and honestly, he searches strongly and honestly in his mind.
He could not put his finger on the origin of this growing sense of unease.
If you can't put your finger on something, it means you can't really recognize it or identify it.
If you've got a feeling in your mind.
I've got a funny feeling, but I can't put my finger on it, meaning I can't specifically identify it.
He could not put his finger on the origin of this growing sense of unease.
If a sense of unease is a sense of discomfort, a sense of things not being right, you feel uneasy meaning things just don't feel right.
I feel very uncomfortable and awkward.
I think I'd like to leave.
I just feel very uneasy about this.
A growing sense of unease.
So he couldn't put his finger on this feeling and it puzzled him.
It confused him.
What?
I can't work it out.
Even more, it distressed him.
If you are distressed, it means you're in a state of, like, stress and panic.
It distressed him and frightened him.
Pure nerves, I suppose, he said aloud with a forced laugh.
Mountain air will cure all that, he added, still speaking to himself.
And that reminds me, my snow mask.
He was standing by the door of the bedroom during this brief speech and as he passed quickly towards the sitting room to fetch them from the cupboard.
Fetch meaning go and get them.
So what you say to a dog, by the way, when you throw a stick, you've got the dog.
The dog wants the stick.
You throw the stick and you say fetch.
And the dog runs after it and fetches the stick and brings it back to you.
So in this case, he's going to the sitting room to fetch his snow mask.
Fetch it, not fetch them.
Fetch it.
From the cupboard, he saw out of the corner of his eye the vague outline of a figure.
So vague meaning, not very clear, outline just the shape of a figure, in this case the shape of a person's body standing on the stairs.
A person
A few feet from the top.
A few feet.
One foot is about 30 centimetres, right?
So this is just old-fashioned measurements.
A few feet from the top.
So there's someone on the stairs.
They're not at the top of the stairs, but you can see them there.
Just a few feet from the top. maybe a metre from the top or something.
It was someone in a stooping position.
Someone stooping, it means they're bending down, making their body a bit lower.
You might stoop to pick something up off the floor.
So someone who's bending down in a stooping position with one hand on the banister and the face peering up at the landing towards him.
So the face is like looking over towards him.
And at the same moment he heard a shuffling footstep.
Shuffling is like... Shuffle is like when something drags against something else.
Okay?
So a shuffling footstep is not just someone moving their foot, not just... That's a footstep.
But a shuffling footstep would be... Like a footstep that drags.
Right?
That's a shuffling footstep.
The person who'd been creeping about below all this time had finally come up to his own floor.
Who in the world could it be?
And what on earth did he want?
Johnson caught his breath sharply, like that, and stood completely still.
Then, after a few seconds of hesitation, he pulled himself together.
If you pull yourself together, it means you get control of yourself.
Right?
He pulled himself together and turned to investigate.
The stairs, he saw to his utter amazement, were empty.
There was no one.
He felt a series of cold shivers run over him.
A shiver is that feeling when you're very cold and your body vibrates or trembles.
That's a shiver.
He felt a series of cold shivers run over him.
Something in the muscles of his legs gave way.
So his legs kind of went like that.
They gave way, meaning they stopped supporting him for a moment and they grew weak.
So his legs went for a moment.
For the space of several minutes he peered steadily into the shadows.
He looked.
If you peer into something, you look into something that's it's hard to see.
You peer into the darkness.
He peered into the shadows that gathered at the top of the staircase.
Gather, meaning come together.
The shadows are collected there at the top of the staircase where he'd seen the figure.
And then he walked fast, almost ran, in fact, into the light of the front room.
But almost as soon as he went through the doorway, he heard someone run up the steps behind him and dash into his bedroom.
Trr.
It was a heavy but at the same time stealthy footstep, the tread of somebody who did not wish to be seen.
So someone ran up and into the bedroom.
And it was at this precise moment that the nervousness he had so far experienced crossed the boundary line and entered the state of fear, almost of acute, unreasoning fear.
Acute means very strong and very clear and strong.
We'd say acute fear, acute pain.
Acute pain is like really strong, really sharp pain.
In this case, acute fear, really strong, really sharp fear.
Unreasoning means you can't control it with your mind.
It's just mad.
Before it turned into terror, which is even stronger than fear, and I guess horror is even stronger than that, according to the story.
Before it turned into terror, there was a further line to cross, and beyond that again lay the region of pure horror.
Johnson's position was an unenviable one.
An unenviable position is a position that no one would want to have.
You wouldn't envy him his position.
It's quite a nice phrase, an unenviable situation, an unenviable position.
My God, that was someone on the stairs then, he muttered.
That was someone on the stairs then, he muttered.
His flesh crawling all over.
If your flesh is crawling.
So your flesh is your skin and the soft parts.
You know the skin and muscles of your body.
If your flesh is crawling, it means you're really disgusted and disturbed, right a bit like if you see a huge, horrible ugly looking insect crawling across your table.
It would really make your flesh crawl.
There was someone on the stairs then, and whoever it was has now gone into my bedroom.
His delicate, pale face turned absolutely white and for some minutes he hardly knew what to think or do, meaning he almost didn't know.
Remember, the word hardly means almost didn't.
It doesn't mean with force.
It's a different adverb.
It means almost not.
So I hardly understood means I almost didn't understand.
I hardly knew what to do.
I almost didn't know what to do.
Then he realized instinctively that doing nothing would only increase his fear.
He had to do something.
And so he crossed the landing boldly, meaning confidently. and went straight into the other room where a few seconds before the steps had disappeared.
Who's there?
Is that you, Mrs Monks?
He called aloud as he went and heard the first half of his words echo down the empty stairs.
You know, who's there?
Is that you?
While the second half of what he said fell dead against the curtains in a room that apparently held no other human figure.
Is that you, Mrs Monks?
The sound just fell dead against the curtains in a room that apparently held no other human figure.
So in an empty room, who's there?
He called again in a voice, unnecessarily loud, who's there?
And that only just held firm meaning, held strong, so it almost broke.
His voice almost broke.
What do you want here?
He thought.
He saw the curtains sway very slightly.
Curtains might sway, meaning they swing or move very slightly, a bit like the way if your window is open but the curtains are drawn and there's a little wind, the curtains might sway, they might just swing outwards slightly.
Okay, he thought he saw the curtains sway very slightly and his heart felt as if it almost missed a beat, but he dashed forwards, meaning moved forwards quickly, and drew them aside with a rush.
A window streaming with rain was all he could see.
He continued his search, but in vain.
If you do something in vain, you mean you do it without succeeding.
OK, in this case, he searched in vain.
He searched but couldn't find what he was looking for.
There was nothing in the cupboards except rows of clothes hanging motionless and under the bed.
There was no sign of anyone hiding.
He stepped backwards into the middle of the room, and as he did so, something tripped him up.
If something trips you up, it makes you fall.
For example, putting your foot against something that you didn't expect to be there, like a bag in the middle of the room, and whoa whoa, whoa.
It tripped me up.
Turning with a sudden spring of alarm, like, whoa, he saw the kit bag.
Weird, he thought, that's not where I left it.
A few moments before it had definitely been on his right between the bed and the chair and he didn't remember having moved it.
It was very strange.
Why on earth was the matter with everything?
A terrific, meaning big, gust of wind tore at the windows...
Dashing the sleet.
There's that snow and rain dashing the sleet against the glass with the force of small gunshot.
Gunshot would be little bits of metal that would be fired out of a gun.
So the wind is throwing this horrible weather against the glass.
And then fled away, howling over the waste of Bloomsbury roofs, and then it flew away over the rooftops.
A sudden vision of crossing the Channel the next day came into his mind.
So a sudden vision of him crossing the Channel.
That's the sea between England and France.
That small stretch of sea that we have to cross is either by train, these days, through the Eurotunnel, or on boats going over.
So a vision of him travelling over the water came into his mind and brought him back to reality.
There's no one here anyway, that's pretty clear, he said aloud.
But as soon as he said the words, he knew perfectly well they were not true and he didn't believe himself.
He felt exactly as though someone was hiding close by him, watching all his movements, trying to stop him packing somehow.
And two of my senses, he added, keeping up the pretense of normality.
He's keeping up the pretense of normality.
A pretense is like something you pretend to be true.
In this case, the pretense of normality.
He's pretending everything is normal.
And he's keeping up this situation.
Trying to keep it up means trying to maintain it, keep it going.
Two of my senses have played absurd tricks on me, he said, keeping up the pretense of normality, trying to pretend that everything's normal.
The first steps I heard and the figure I saw were both completely imaginary.
He went back to the front room, poked the fire into a blaze.
So he took the metal poker and stuck it into the fire to encourage the fire to burn more.
In fact, he poked it into a blaze.
A blaze is like a bigger, more powerful fire.
You can imagine, like sticking a poker into the fire, moving all the wood around and stuff that would encourage the fire to burn more brightly, and sat down in front of it to think.
What impressed him more than anything else was the fact that the kit bag was no longer where he had left it.
It had been dragged nearer to the door.
What happened afterwards that night happened, of course, to a man already excited by fear and was perceived, or sort of perceived, by a mind.
It was understood seen heard, understood by a mind that was not fully under control.
So he's already in a pretty bad state and the things that happen to him happen to someone who is already in a, you know, an almost out of control emotional state.
And outwardly, johnson remained calm, pretending that everything had been, everything he'd seen, had a natural explanation or was just because of his tired nerves.
That's outwardly, that's the impression he's trying to give on the outside, but inwardly meaning on the inside.
In his heart of hearts.
There's that nice shakespearean phrase.
He knew all along that someone had been hiding downstairs in the empty flat when he came in and that this person had waited for his opportunity and then stealthily made his way up to the bedroom, and that all he saw and heard afterwards from the moving of the kit bag to well, to the other things this story has to tell were caused directly by the presence of this invisible person.
So he realizes that someone is there And it was here.
This is the other passage I like, which is where his fear is the, the images in his mind from the courtroom where he observed this horrible killer, John Turk, and it disturbed him so much.
These images are sort of processed a bit like photographs are processed from negatives, again in the old way that photographs used to be made.
The camera takes the photograph, it leaves a light impression on a negative and later that negative has to be developed in a little studio right in a dark room where the where the photograph is then developed from the negative, right with chemicals and paper and what have you right?
So that's the image that the.
That's what this passage explains.
Those images that made an impression on his mind in the courtroom have now been developed in the dark room of his mind and have become like real images which now are in the forefront of his mind.
And he can't stop seeing the face of John Turk, everywhere he's looking, because he's.
He was already disturbed by that image.
And now in such a nervous state, this has come back to haunt him in a much more vivid way.
So here's the passage.
And it was here, just when he most desired to keep his mind and thoughts under control, that the vivid pictures received day after day upon the mental plates of his memory exposed in the courtroom of the old Bailey, came strongly to light and developed themselves in the dark room of his inner vision.
That's nice.
Unpleasant, haunting memories have a way of coming to life again just when the mind least desires them in the silent watches of the night, on sleepless pillows, during the lonely hours spent by sick and dying beds.
So he's talking about these times when our worst memories will return to us at certain moments.
For example, in the middle of the night, when you're lying there and you cannot sleep.
You've got and you're lying in the middle of the night on your pillow, wide awake.
This is when these horrible memories return to us.
Or when we've been up all night sitting next to the bed of someone else who is sick, or maybe someone who's dying.
In those moments, this is when these horrible memories return.
And so now, in the same way, Johnson saw nothing but the dreadful face of John Turk, the murderer, looking at him from every corner of his mental field of vision.
Meaning that when he closed his eyes, the mental field of vision...
His imaginary mind's eye was full of the face of John Turk, looking at him from every corner the white skin, the evil eyes and the fringe of black hair low over the forehead.
Fringe refers to the edge of the hair, you know, as it lies.
So a fringe is normally a fringe is when the hair stops in a line on the forehead.
That's known as a fringe.
So he has a fringe of black hair low over the forehead.
"'This is John Turk's face.
All the pictures of those ten days in court crowded back into his mind very vividly.
'This is all rubbish and nerves'.
He exclaimed at length, springing with sudden energy from his chair.
"'I'll finish my packing and go to bed.
I'm exhausted.
No doubt at this rate I'll hear steps and things all night.'
But his face was deadly white all the same.
He snatched up his ski mask, meaning he grabbed it and walked across to the bedroom, humming a cheerful Christmas song as he went.
So Humming is that's humming a little bit too loud to be natural.
And the instant he crossed the doorway and stood inside the room, something turned cold around his heart and he felt that every hair on his head stood straight up.
The kit bag lay just in front of him, several feet nearer to the door than he'd left it, and just over its crumpled top.
Crumpled means it's folded down Right.
Just over its crumpled top, he saw a head and face slowly sinking down out of sight, as though someone were crouching behind it to hide.
Crouching means a bit like stooping, but even more.
You crouch all the way down in order to hide behind something.
And, at the same moment, a sound like a long drawn sigh.
A sigh that's a sigh, but a long drawn sigh would be like.
That's like my creepy, creepiest sigh that I could come up with.
It was distinctly audible in the still air about him between the gusts of the storm outside.
Johnson had more courage and willpower than the indecision on his face indicated.
So, even though his face, he looked like he couldn't decide what to do uh, despite the way this looked, he had a bit more courage and strength of mind in him.
But the first wave at at first such a wave of terror came over him that for some seconds he could do nothing but stand and stare.
So he was so scared he could just stand there and look like that.
A violent trembling ran down his back and legs.
So he had a.
What did we have before?
A shiver a, which is when you're cold your skin crawls.
And this is a trembling.
If you're trembling, that's like, well, the way you shiver or move when you're really scared.
You're trembling.
In this case, it ran down his back and legs.
So his back and legs started to shake.
That's trembling, trembling with fear.
And he was conscious of a foolish, almost hysterical impulse to scream aloud.
So he was aware that in his mind, he wanted to just go, ah!
Like that.
That sigh seemed in his very ear and the air still vibrated with it.
It was unmistakably a human sigh.
Who's there?
He said at length, finding his voice, but it ends up sounding like this.
Who's there?
He meant to speak loudly and clearly, but the sound came out instead in a faint whisper.
He stepped forward so that he could see all round and over the kit bag.
Of course, there was nothing there.
Nothing but the faded carpet.
So the carpet, which is old, and so the colours have gone away a bit.
They're faded.
And the bulging canvas sides, the sides of the bag are sticking out because they're full.
So they're bulging.
He put out his hands and threw open the mouth of the sack.
So he opened the bag where it had fallen over, as it was only three parts full, and then he saw for the first time that round the inside some six inches from the top.
Six inches is about about 15 centimetres.
So sort of just inside the bag, he could see a broad smear.
This is like a stain, again, of dull crimson.
That's like a dark, deep red colour.
It was an old and faded bloodstain.
He uttered a scream and drew back his hands as if they'd been burned.
So he pulled his hands back.
He screamed and pulled his hands back as if they'd been burned by fire.
Right.
Burned or burnt.
It's either actually burn, burnt, burnt or burn, burned, burned.
It could be either a T or an ED ending.
They're actually both.
At the same moment the kit bag gave a faint.
That's a very slight or small, but unmistakable lurch forward towards the door.
So it moved forward.
It sort of suddenly moved forward.
The bag moved forward, maybe as if it had been pushed, or as if it fell forwards towards the door, or maybe it had been pushed or dragged.
Johnson collapsed backwards.
So he fell backwards, searching with his hands for the support of something solid.
So he fell backwards trying to maybe get the support of a wall or something.
And the door being further behind him than he realised received his weight.
So he kind of fell back onto the door and he did it just in time.
The door stopped him from falling.
But the door shut with a bang.
And at the same moment, the swinging of his left arm accidentally touched the light switch.
So he kind of fell backwards, slammed the door and accidentally turned the light off.
And the room was plunged into darkness.
So suddenly the room was dark.
It was an awkward and disagreeable predicament.
A predicament is like a difficult situation to be in that you don't really want to be in, but johnson managed to pull himself together.
There's that word again.
He managed to get control of himself and groped furiously.
If you grope, it's definitely what you do in the dark.
You're trying, your your hands are moving, you're trying to grab something, but you're blind.
You're blind because it's dark.
Groping, trying to find the light switch with your hand, those movements of grabbing touching, trying to find something with your hands, that's groping.
He groped furiously for the little switch to turn the light on again.
But the rapid closing of the door had made the coats hanging on it start swinging and his fingers became entangled in a confusion of sleeves and pockets.
So because the coats were swinging, his hands got messed up in the coats and he couldn't find the switch, so that it was some time before he found the switch.
And in those few moments of bewilderment bewilderment means confusion and terror two things happened that sent him completely over the boundary into the region of genuine horror.
He distinctly, meaning clearly, heard the kit bag shuffling heavily across the floor in jerks.
So the kit bag is dragging like that shuffling sort of dragging heavily across the floor in jerks.
A jerk is like a sudden movement, so it's going.
So being pulled in jerks like that and in close just in front of his face another sigh of a human being In his painful efforts to find the switch on the wall.
So when he's trying to find the switch with his hand, he nearly scraped the nails off his fingers, which is to me the most horrible line in the story.
That, as he's trying to turn the light on with his hand, he's scraping his hands on the wall and he nearly scrapes the nails off his fingers because he's scraping so hard.
That's something straight out of a horror film.
And even then, in those frenzied moments of alarm, he still had time to realize that he dreaded the return of the light.
He was very scared of the return of the light.
And it may.
It might be better for him to stay hidden in the merciful screen of darkness, in a way that darkness was kind to him, because it meant that he was protected from whatever it was that was there that turning the light on would bring him face to face with it.
It was just the impulse of a moment however, and before he had time to act on it, he had automatically flicked the switch and the room was flooded again with light.
But the second instinct had been right.
It would have been better for him to have stayed in the shelter of the kind darkness, for there, close before him, bending over the half-packed kit-bag, clear as life in the merciless glare of the electric light, stood the figure of john turk the murderer.
Not three feet from him, the man stood, the fringe of black hair marked plainly against the pale skin of his forehead.
The whole horrible vision of the man As vivid as he had seen him day after day in the courtroom, when he stood there in the dock, cynical and callous, under the very shadow of the gallows.
The gallows is the mechanism that they used to kill people by hanging them.
So it's the wooden structure with the rope attached.
So...
He sees John Turk in front of him vivid, just like when he'd seen him in court, when he stood there in the dock, which is the place where the defendant stands in the courtroom cynical and callous.
There's that word again, meaning not caring about other people's feelings, under the very shadow of the gallows.
So the the gallows is hanging over him.
This you know the death sentence.
In a flash johnson realized what it all meant the dirty and much used bag, the smear of crimson within the top, the dreadful stretched condition of the bulging sides.
So now he realizes this is the same bag that john turk used, that somehow he's ended up with that bag, that it was the crimson smear on the top is a bloodstain from his victim.
The stretched condition of the bulging sides is from when he squashed, he crammed the body into the bag.
He remembered how the victim's body had been stuffed into a canvas bag for burial.
The horrendous dismembered fragments forced with lime into this very bag and the bag itself produced as evidence.
It all came back to him as clear as day.
Very softly and stealthily, his hand groped behind him for the handle of the door.
But before he could actually turn it, the very thing that he dreaded most of all came about.
And John Turk lifted his face and looked at him.
At the same moment, that heavy sigh passed through the air of the room.
It formulated somehow into words.
It's my bag and I want it.
Johnson just remembered clawing the door open.
Claws are what animals have sharp claws.
They don't have hands or feet, they have claws like, for example, an eagle has claws.
Right, if you claw the door open, it's like you get the door open, but your hand is like a claw.
So you're desperately opening the door.
You claw the door open and then falling in a heap, meaning a pile upon the floor of the landing, as he tried frantically to make his way into the front room.
So he desperately tries to escape, he opens the door and slam, falls unconscious on the floor of the landing.
He remained unconscious for a long time and it was still dark when he opened his eyes and realized he was lying stiff and bruised.
If you're stiff, it's like the opposite of being flexible.
If you're stiff, it's like it's difficult for your arms and legs to move.
Oh, Oh God, I'm so stiff.
A bit like you did exercise the day before.
Or maybe if you're sick with flu, your body feels stiff.
So he wakes up and he's lying there stiff and bruised.
Bruised is when you've... Like you're a bit injured.
For example, if someone punches you in the leg, you'll get a bruise there.
Or if you bump into a table, you'll get a bruise on your leg right, and if you're bruised it means you know you've got this, these bits of damage on your body.
So he opened his eyes and realized he was lying stiff and bruised on the cold floorboards.
Then the memory of what he'd seen rushed back into his mind and he fainted again.
To faint is to lose consciousness like, for example, if you're very scared, you you might faint When he woke up the second time.
The wintry dawn.
Dawn is when the sun comes up.
Wintry means it's, you know, the adjective of winter.
So this winter sun comes up.
The wintry dawn was just beginning to peep in, meaning just come in slightly, just a little bit.
At the windows.
So the light of the sunrise was just starting to come in.
It was starting to peep in at the windows, painting the stairs a cheerless, dismal grey, a kind of sad, horrible looking grey colour.
And he managed to crawl into the front room on his arm and his hands and knees and cover himself with an overcoat in the armchair where eventually, he fell asleep.
A loud noise woke him up.
He recognised Mrs Monks's voice.
What?
You ain't been to bed, sir.
Ain't.
This is like kind of, I suppose, working class speech.
Still used today.
It's very normal.
Ain't means isn't, hasn't, haven't, didn't.
All of those things.
So you ain't been to bed, sir.
It means you haven't been to bed, sir.
In this case, are you ill or has anything happened?
And there's an urgent gentleman to see you, though it ain't even seven o'clock yet.
Ain't here means isn't.
Who is it?
He stammered.
Who is it?
He stammered.
To stammer is to speak like that.
Who is it?
He stammered.
I'm all right, thanks.
Fell asleep in my chair, I suppose.
Someone from Mr Wilbram's.
And he says he ought to see you, and quick, before you go abroad.
And I told him, show him up, please, straight away, said Johnson, whose head was whirling.
Shh! sort of spinning around, and his mind was still full of dreadful visions.
Mr Wilbraham's man came in, apologised and explained briefly and quickly that an awful mistake had been made and that the wrong kit bag had been sent over the night before.
Henry somehow got hold of the one that came over from the courtroom, and Mr Wilbraham only discovered it when he saw his own lying in his room and asked why it hadn't gone to you.
The man said
Oh, said johnson stupidly, and he must have brought you the one from the murder case instead, sir.
I'm afraid the man continued without the ghost of an expression on his face, the one john turk packed the dead body in mr wilbram's terribly upset about it sir, and he told me to come over first thing this morning with the right one, as you were leaving early.
He pointed to a clean-looking kit bag on the floor which he'd just brought.
"'And I was to bring the other one back, sir,' he added casually.
For some minutes Johnson couldn't find his voice.
At last he pointed in the direction of the bedroom.
"'Perhaps you could kindly unpack it for me.
Just empty the things out on the floor.'
The man disappeared into the other room and was gone for five minutes.
Johnson heard the shifting to and fro meaning here and there, back and forth, moving the bag, and the rattle of the skates and boots being unpacked.
Thank you, sir, the man said, returning with the bag folded over his arm.
And can I do anything more to help you, sir?
What is it? asked Johnson, seeing that he still had something he wished to say.
The man shuffled, sort of like moved from foot to foot, sort of shifted and looked mysterious.
Well, excuse me sir, but knowing your interest in the Turk case, I thought you'd maybe like to know what's happened.
Yes.
Well...
John Turk killed himself last night with poison immediately as soon as he was released and he left a note for Mr Wilbraham saying he wanted to be put away buried, same as the woman he murdered in the old kit bag.
What time did he do it? asked Johnson.
Ten o'clock last night, sir.
And that's the end.
Right.
And that is the end of this episode.
Thank you very much for staying with me.
I hope that you enjoyed this creepy Christmas story set at Christmas time.
I mean there's not really much of a Christmas connection but, like I said earlier, sort of an old fashioned tradition to tell a creepy story at Christmas time.
A bit like that Charles Dickens one, A Christmas Carol which I did on the podcast a couple of years ago.
But I really hope you enjoyed that.
Leave your comments in the comments section.
Have a very merry, merry Christmas and a happy new year as well.
Don't forget about that.
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You can find the story text as well that I've used today on my website.
You'll find a link in the description.
That's it from me.
I look forward to reading your comments.
But have a lovely morning, afternoon, evening or night, wherever you are in podcast land.
And I will see you next time.
But for now, it's time to say goodbye.
Bye.
Bye.
Bye.
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