Barker’s workers had been busy here. Huge chunks of wall had been knocked out, exposing raw red brick, supported in several places by steel Acrow props. Lying by one wall was a large metal tool box, next to which was an angle grinder, a power drill, and, on the floor, a sledgehammer with a long wooden handle.
He lifted the heavy tool and carried it up, through the kitchen, and on up to the first-floor landing. Music was, as ever, coming out of Jade’s bedroom door.
Good, he thought. Hopefully, she wouldn’t hear him — or would assume it was the builders.
He entered the blue bedroom, walked straight over to the right-hand wall, and swung the sledgehammer hard against it. It struck with a dull thud, making a tiny indent, and throwing up a small shower of plaster. He swung it again in the same place. Then again. Again. The indent slowly grew larger.
Suddenly the head of the hammer embedded itself into the wall. He pulled it back and swung it again, exposing raw red brick. As he did so, he became aware of someone standing behind him in the room.
He turned.
There was no one.
‘Just fuck off!’ he shouted, then swung again, again, again, the hole in the wall steadily getting larger, more and more pieces of brick crumbling and falling onto the floor.
Finally, after ten minutes, sodden with perspiration, and out of breath again, another chunk of the wall fell away, and the hole was just about big enough to crawl through.
He stepped closer to it, his heart thudding, knelt and peered through. There was a stale smell, of old wood and damp. But the light was so dim he could barely see anything. He switched on the torch app on his phone and shone the beam inside.
A shiver ripped through him.
It was a tiny room, no more than six feet wide. Another spare bedroom — once?
Except it was completely bare.
Apart from what was on the far wall.
More shivers rippled through him.
Shit. No. No.
A pair of manacles, on the end of short lengths of rusty chain, were bolted to the wall. Protruding from each manacle were bones — part of what once would have been a hand and wrist. Several fingers were held together by black sinews, but most were missing.
And he could see where they were.
They lay scattered on the floor, along with the skull and all the other bones of the person who had once been imprisoned here. Also on the floor were the decayed remains of a blue dress, other strips of clothing, a pair of yellow silk slippers with tarnished gold buckles and a dusty fan.
He stared, shaking with shock, unsteady on his legs. Stared at the skull. At the scattered bones. He could make out legs, arms, ribcage. He stared at the grinning skull again.
He felt as if a current of electricity was running through him. It seemed as if every hair on his body was standing on end, and that a hundred tiny, ragged fingernails were plucking at his skin.
Then he felt a sharp prod in the small of his back.
54
‘SHIT!’ he screamed, cracking his head on the top of the hole as he jumped backwards.
And saw his daughter right behind him.
‘Sheesh! You scared the hell out of me, Jade!’
‘What are you doing, Dad?’
‘I’m — I’m — just tracing the wiring in the house.’
‘Can I have a look?’
‘There’s nothing there. Go back to your homework, lovely. I’m sorry if I disturbed you.’ He put an arm round her and hugged her tiny frame. After the shock he’d had driving this afternoon it felt so good to feel her, smell her, hear her sweet, innocent voice.
Just to know she was alive.
‘I’m doing some geography stuff, Dad. What do you know about tectonic plates?’
‘Probably less than you do! Why?’
‘Stuff I have to do.’
‘They shift, apparently.’
‘Can we go to Iceland? You can see a join there! You can walk along it, I was reading about it and saw some cool pictures!’
‘Iceland? Sure. When do you want to go — in half an hour?’
‘You know, Dad, sometimes you’re just so — so — so annoying.’
Ollie waited until she had gone back out of the room. Shaking again, it took him several minutes before he plucked up the courage to look back through the hole. He shone the beam down on the skull. Was this Lady De Glossope — formerly Matilda Warre-Spence?
Had he finally cracked the mystery of her disappearance two and a half centuries ago?
Had her husband done this to her? Used her money, manacled her to this wall, then bricked in the entrance and left her to die and rot, while he went gallivanting off across the world with his mistress?
Was this the reason why Sir Brangwyn De Glossope had shut the house down for three years? To give time for the stench of her decomposing body to fade? To give time for the rats to feast on her and conveniently dispose of her remains?
Was it her ghost, or spirit, or whatever it was, that was so angry, and causing all the problems here? Had she cursed this place?
He felt the sensation of an electric current running through him again. His skin felt as if it were being pinched in, then released, again and again. He sensed the presence of someone behind him, and spun round. Stared at the empty room. Felt someone grinning at him. He staggered away from the hole, reeling with shock. Jesus, he thought. Jesus. This had been in the house with them all the time.
What the hell was he going to say to Caro? How on earth could he tell her this?
Hopefully, in less than two hours, when the clergymen arrived, they would find out just what was really going on here.
He should call the police, he knew, but after their last visit, that worried him.
He went out onto the landing and slammed the door shut, then stood there for some moments, trembling. Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit.
He went down into the kitchen, sat at the refectory table and shaking uncontrollably, began flicking through the glossy pages of Sussex Life magazine, which must have arrived with the morning’s papers, to try to calm himself down.
He looked at some pages of estate agency particulars of grand country houses — each one described with estate agency hyperbole. Descriptions that could apply to Cold Hill House.
A very well-presented period property in need of some modernization.
A beautiful, detached family house on the periphery of a village in stunning countryside.
A spectacular country home, boasting a wealth of exposed timbers.
A striking Georgian manor.
Did they all have ghosts, too?
Spectral residents on a mission to screw up the lives of their occupants?
A shadow moved in front of him.
He looked up, startled. Then his eyes widened in relief. It was Caro.
‘Darling!’ he said, jumping up. ‘You’re home early!’
‘Didn’t you get my message?’
‘Message?’
‘I phoned you back but you didn’t answer. And I texted you. My last client of the day cancelled, so I thought I’d come home early.’ She gave him a vulnerable smile. ‘You know, get ready for our visitors. Tidy up a bit, get some nice biscuits out. So how did your meeting go?’
‘Yes, OK,’ he said.
‘Worth the journey?’
‘Apart from coming back with car-envy. You should see his showroom — it’s incredible. I was drooling at some of the cars in there.’