HAUNTED WIRRAL: The tragedy of Cedric

In this latest story, Tom tells the heartbreaking tale of Cedric's tragedy...

BACK in the 1920s, an exceedingly pretty 18-year-old girl named Betty was serving in a tobacconist’s shop named Owen’s, situated on the corner of Conway Street and Craven Street in Birkenhead, when a giant of a man with piercing pale blue eyes walked in, wanting a box of Havana cigars.

He spoke with a South African inflection and after he had paid for the box he said to Betty, "Girl, are you spoken for?"

She blushed and shook her head.

"What’s your name, pretty one?" he asked.

"Betty," she answered in a low voice, feeling very self-conscious.

"My name’s Victor," said the man, "and I’m very rich."

Victor turned and left the shop, but returned less than a quarter of an hour later with a little red cube-shaped box. He opened it to reveal a ring with a massive sparking diamond. "Betty, I have a proposition – no – a proposal; will you be my wife?"

"I – I don’t even know you," mumbled Betty, her face on fire now.

"Did Adam know Eve when he woke up and saw her standing there, eh?" Victor asked.

He took off his trilby to reveal short cropped golden hair. Betty thought he looked very tanned, and about forty years of age. Victor explained how he had made a fortune in the Kimberley diamond mines and was roaming the world looking for a wife.

Betty refused the ring but Victor kept visiting the shop, and the girl’s mother said she should at least court him for a while and give him a chance.

"Victor is the type of security girls dream of," said Betty’s mother, so the girl accepted the ring a week after meeting him.

Victor purchased a huge palatial mansion near Birkenhead Park and pressurised Betty into marrying him.

She soon regretted this because he was an absolute tyrant and she was not allowed to talk to men nor have any friends at the house.

Betty started to invite her friends round to the mansion when Victor went to his clandestine business meetings over in Liverpool each day, and while he was away, sometimes for days, the girl would have parties where the guests would have to bring their own drink and food.

She always had to clean up thoroughly after these parties in case Victor found out what she’d been up to.

A dashing young clerk named Stephen and his friend Cedric – an annoying practical joker – made it clear they found Betty attractive, and each fought to woo her. Stephen won the girl’s affection and urged her to run away with him.

The immature Cedric was so upset he pretended he’d taken rat poison at the mansion and confessed to the prank as Betty telephoned for an ambulance. Cedric’s behaviour worsened and he continually threatened he’d kill himself if he couldn’t find love.

Then one morning at eleven, a foreign man named Karl – a business partner of Victor - arrived at the mansion with a hearse, four pallbearers and a solicitor. Karl said Victor had died of a heart attack in Liverpool and the pallbearers brought in the large expensive-looking coffin.

It was placed in the huge lounge on a bier.

The solicitor gave Victor’s death certificate to a secretly elated Betty and told her the burial was in the morning at ten.

She stood to inherit £80,000 from her deceased husband’s estate, and this amount was given to Betty in cheque form.

As soon as Karl left, Betty visited Stephen to tell him the good news.

"Now we can marry," said Stephen, and that day, he and Betty went to the bank, deposited the cheque, then went on a shopping spree, and they ordered crates of champagne to celebrate and invited all their friends.

That evening, seventy guests turned up but Cedric was absent. An intoxicated Betty found her late husband’s pistol.

She pointed it at the ceiling as she danced, and at one point she danced on her husband’s coffin as the guests clapped and roared with laughter.

"Betty, give me that pistol," said a concerned Stephen as everyone laughed at the girl’s antics.

The coffin lid started to lift up and there were screams! Betty toppled off the coffin and Cedric – his face painted white, groaned, "I’m not dead Betty!" as he sat up in the casket.

Betty screamed and out of reflex, she emptied the pistol into Cedric, killing him instantly. Betty fainted, and when she came to in her bedroom, Stephen told her what had happened.

He’d found bricks piled behind a sofa in the lounge and had deduced the following.

For some sinister reason, Victor had faked his death, possibly paying a great sum to persuade a doctor to certify him dead.

He’d filled the coffin with bricks. Cedric had opened the coffin, probably when the house was empty, and had discovered the truth. He had decided to pull a prefect prank – staging the resurrection of Victor – but the joke had a tragic consequence.

Stephen had begged the guests to say nothing to the police, and they all agreed Betty had been through enough already.

So Cedric was buried in the morning in the coffin, and his disappearance was put down to him committing suicide by jumping in the sea, perhaps.

They say Cedric’s ghost still haunts that old mansion...