Ghost Stories of an Antiquary opens with a sale. In the spring of 1883 an Englishman called Dennistoun spends a day photographing the cathedral at Saint-Bertrand-de-Comminges, a decayed little town at the foot of the Pyrenees, and by evening he owns a priceless book for 250 francs. M.R. James read “Canon Alberic’s Scrap-Book” to friends at Cambridge in October 1893; it’s his earliest known horror story as well as the first in the collection. The book was on my January reading list in 2018, and I’ve come back to it this autumn.†

The old sacristan won’t leave Dennistoun alone in the building all day. He starts at noises, and at one point he’s found weeping in front of a painting of Saint Bertrand delivering a man from the devil. Dennistoun is too deep in his notebook to care much, though he admits later to hearing “a thin metallic voice laughing high up in the tower.” Back at the sacristan’s house, the old man tells his daughter, “He was laughing in the church.”

The scrap-book holds about 150 leaves that Canon Alberic seems to have cut from the cathedral’s own manuscripts. Near the back is a drawing of Solomon facing a demon, which James likens to “one of the awful bird-catching spiders of South America translated into human form, and endowed with intelligence just less than human.” The sacristan takes 250 francs for the lot and cheers up the moment he’s paid. His daughter presses a silver crucifix on Dennistoun before he goes.

That night, in his hotel room, he takes the crucifix off and lays it on the table, and a black-haired hand appears by his left elbow. The figure from the drawing is rising to its feet behind his chair. The inn’s servants come running at his scream, feel something unseen push past them, and find him unconscious. Selling the book seems to be how the thing changes hands, the old man knows exactly what he’s getting rid of, and the crucifix is the only protection his family can send along with it.

Alberic got what he asked for, too. At the back, on a plan of the cathedral, are questions he put on 12 December 1694 and the answers he got. He’ll find what he’s looking for, he’ll be rich, he’ll be envied. To “Moriarne in lecto meo?” (shall I die in my bed?) the answer is “Ita.” The Gallia Christiana records that he died on 31 December 1701, “in bed, of a sudden seizure.”

Money changes hands once more before the end. On a later visit to the canon’s tomb, Dennistoun admits he’s a Presbyterian but has paid for Masses to be said for Alberic de Mauléon’s rest anyway. “I had no notion they came so dear.”

Amendment, 26 October 2026. I'm still reading the book, and I'll write about each of its stories in turn. ↩

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