Arthur Bell was always neat, even when he had very little reason to be.
His flat cap was brushed every morning. His coat buttoned even when the wind tugged at it. He carried himself with the quiet pride of someone who believed appearances mattered—not out of vanity, but respect. Respect for himself, for others, and for the moments that made life worth noticing.
He arrived in Matlock during the early years of the Second World War, stationed nearby with a unit waiting for deployment. The town felt gentle compared to the uncertainty that followed him everywhere else. The river ran calmly. The shop windows glowed warmly in the evenings. And somewhere between the streets and the hills, Arthur found himself thinking constantly of Martha.
Martha had been his sweetheart long before the war. They had grown up knowing one another, exchanged shy smiles that turned into letters, and letters that turned into promises. When Arthur learned he would be sent away, he decided that fear would not be the last thing he gave her.
Instead, he planned something hopeful.
Arthur wrote his proposal carefully, choosing each word as if it might be the one that carried him safely back. He folded the letter twice, sealed it with a small red wax mark, and smiled at how ordinary it looked—just paper and ink, yet holding his entire future. Rather than handing it to her outright, he decided to make it a scavenger hunt, something playful to distract her from worry.
“I’ve hidden it somewhere safe,” he told her. “Somewhere only we’d think to look.”
But before he could tell her where, orders came through.
Arthur was shipped out with barely a day’s notice. There were hurried goodbyes, half-finished sentences, and a promise he assumed he would finish later. The letter remained hidden beneath the floorboards of the old building that would one day become part of the Emporium.
Arthur did not die in Matlock.
Nor did his spirit linger in pain.
What remained was something lighter.
A memory.
A flicker of excitement that never had the chance to settle.
For years, people working in the building reported a strange sensation—like someone standing just behind them, not close enough to frighten, but near enough to feel. Tools misplaced were often found neatly stacked the next morning. Loose floorboards creaked without reason. And sometimes, especially in the early evening, a warm breeze would brush the back of the neck, carrying with it the faintest sense of anticipation.
Arthur was searching.
Not desperately.
Not anxiously.
Simply retracing steps, over and over, bound to the moment before he left, before life interrupted love.
Decades passed.
In 1995, during renovations, a worker pried up an old floorboard that had always sat just slightly uneven. Beneath it was a folded letter, yellowed but intact, sealed with red wax that had softened with time but never broken. When it was opened, the words were still clear.
Arthur had asked Martha to marry him.
The letter was traced, through records and quiet persistence, back to her family. Martha herself had passed some years before, never knowing where the letter had been hidden, but always believing Arthur had intended to ask.
After the letter was returned, something changed.
The warmth lingered less often. The floorboards settled. The building grew quieter.
Arthur had finally finished what he began.
Now, legend says that if a couple visits the Emporium on Valentine’s Day and feels a sudden warmth brush their necks, it is Arthur offering his blessing—not as a ghost, but as a memory of hope fulfilled at last.
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