The Secret of Crickley Hall (25 page)

One hand clutching the edge of the small desk, Eve went on to describe the events of two days ago, that early Sunday afternoon when she had dozed on the couch in Crickley Hall's sitting room: how Cam—she was certain it was Cam even if she hadn't actually
seen
him; her deepest inner feelings couldn't be wrong—had touched and soothed her after she had been frightened by something dark… something
evil
that was somehow connected to the house itself. And then waking to find Cam's photograph had fallen onto the floor. She stared earnestly into the psychic's green eyes.

'I
knew
it was my son who made the bad thing go away,' she insisted. 'I couldn't have imagined it all.'

Behind her, Eve heard the shop door open, followed by the heavy trudge of boots on wood flooring. Lili Peel had already looked towards the entrance and Eve swivelled on the chair to see the customer who had entered. It was a woman, middle-aged, portly, a scarf round her head, a closed umbrella in one hand. She was wearing hiking boots, baggy corduroys tucked into the ankles.

The customer frowned back at the two figures sitting at the desk and something must have been conveyed to her, a feeling that she'd interrupted something important and private, for she quickly picked up a stone ornament on a shelf, turned it over in her hand, perhaps to find the price sticker on the bottom, and just as quickly returned it to the shelf. Without inspecting another thing, the woman left the shop, closing the door quietly as she went.

Lili Peel jumped in first before Eve could say another word. She rested her elbows on the desktop, clasping her hands together, and said: 'Because someone has the psychic gift, it doesn't necessarily follow that that person believes in ghosts.'

She lifted a hand again, palm towards Eve, who was about to interrupt.

'As it happens,' Lili Peel went on, 'I do believe in ghosts and the afterlife. So what I want to know is, what makes you so sure that what you saw or sensed wasn't, in fact, your son's spirit, his ghost? It would sound more reasonable to me. Spirits have been known to move material objects, so why not the photograph? Why do you think it was telepathy rather than contact with your dead son's ethereal spirit?'

Her eyes bore into Eve's with a coldness to them, a kind of brittle hardness that could not be easily broken.

'Because Cam gave me hope again,' Eve responded immediately. 'I had almost given up, almost come to believe Cameron
was
dead, I just couldn't find it within myself to accept it. My doubts have been steadily growing stronger these last few months; but on Sunday, after what happened, the feeling it left me with, I knew, just knew, Cam was alive and trying to contact me through his mind. He's trying to tell me where I can find him.'

The psychic was silent for a few moments, as if she didn't know how to react. Then those green eyes hardened once again. 'I'm sorry,' she said, 'but that's not enough.' Her tone was still curt, as if she were determined not to accept Eve's conviction. 'It doesn't mean your son is alive. The opposite, if anything.'

Eve's own voice became curt. 'What if I told you he was being helped by others?'

'What do you mean by that?'

Eve, undaunted by the younger woman's attitude and without a trace of self-doubt, went on to explain what had been happening in the house they were renting, the rappings, the small pools of water, the cellar door that refused to stay shut. She told the psychic about the running footsteps she and her family had heard coming from the attic dormitory. She told Lili Peel about the spinning top and the dancing children that she
and
Cally had witnessed, the small faces at the dormer windows. Eve told her that eleven children had perished in the house, drowned in the great flood of 1943.

'This house,' said Lili Peel. 'What's it called? It has a name, doesn't it, not a number?'

Eve was surprised by the question. 'Yes. It's called Crickley Hall. Do you know of it?'

A shadow seemed to pass over the psychic's face. She stared intently at Eve. 'I was told about the floods when I was last in Hollow Bay. When I gave my card to the shopkeeper to put in her window, she read it and said if I was a psychic I should go up to Crickley Hall. Plenty of ghosts up there, she said, then she told me about the flood and the children, and that nobody had ever stayed at Crickley Hall for long. It was an unhappy house, she said, and I thought that in a strange way she enjoyed telling me about it. I remember passing the place—across a short wooden bridge, the shopkeeper said, a mile or so up the lane—and I remember I shivered when I saw it. There was a terrible depression about the place, not unlike the depression that hangs over the village itself, only this was stronger, more concentrated.'

'Then you do think it could be haunted? Haunted by those poor children.'

'I didn't say that. I've never been inside, so I wouldn't know.'

'But you said there was an atmosphere—a depression—about it, which you felt even though you were only passing by.'

'Some houses are affected by the tragic things that happen in them. It's as if the walls retain the memory. It doesn't mean they're haunted, though.'

Lili Peel was silent for a few moments. Then, abruptly: 'No, I won't—I can't—help you.'

Eve was dismayed. After all she had told the psychic, how she'd poured out her heart to her and had thought she was being believed. Despite her curtness, Eve had thought Lili Peel was sympathetic. Now she was refusing to help her.

'Haven't I convinced you?' she asked at last, almost pleadingly.

'It isn't that, although I wonder why, if as you say your son and you have always shared a telepathic link, he hasn't let you know his whereabouts psychically.'

'Because our mutual ability,
especially
mine, isn't strong enough. That's why I need you.'

'But what can I do?'

'You can help me find my son. If I do have any power it's too weak to strengthen the psychic link with Cameron. If you're genuinely psychic, it shouldn't be too difficult for you. I'm not interested in ghosts, I don't care if Crickley Hall is haunted or not; all I want you to do is talk to Cam. I know you can succeed where I've failed.'

Lili Peel was suddenly suspicious. 'What does your husband feel about this?' She had leaned back in her chair, one hand remaining on the desk, the other falling to her lap.

'He… he doesn't know about Cam coming to me.'

'That's curious. You haven't told him?'

'Gabe is awkward about this kind of thing. He doesn't really believe in it.'

'He's heard noises, has seen some kind of evidence, as you have, hasn't he?'

Eve gave a shake of her head as if dismissing her husband's part in the matter. 'He has heard noises, yes, and he was the one who discovered the puddles that appeared from nowhere. Gabe thinks there's a natural explanation for it all. But then he hasn't experienced what I have.'

The psychic exhaled a short but heavy breath, perhaps one of annoyance, Eve couldn't be sure.

'How do I know you haven't imagined these ghosts?' the psychic said. 'You seem distraught, you're obviously still in deep grief over your loss. Depression mixed with hope and anxiety can do a lot to the mind, can make you believe in the impossible. Perhaps even cause you to hallucinate. I think a doctor might help you better than I'm able.'

'I'm not mad, I'm not imagining.' Despair was provoking anger in Eve. 'I'm not hallucinating.'

'I'm not suggesting you're mad. But you are overwrought and that can—'

'Please, won't you help me?'

Lili Peel was startled by the fierceness of the outburst. When she spoke again, it was calmly, but determinedly. 'I no longer use my gift, Mrs Caleigh. Not deliberately, that is—I can't stop sensing some things, but I no longer practise as a psychic.'

'But why?' Tears had again formed in Eve's eyes.

'I'm sorry, but I want you to leave now. Your problems aren't mine, and I don't want them to be. I can't help you.'

Eve was defeated. There was nothing more she could say to change Lili Peel's mind and she knew it. The expression on the other woman's face was resolute. Eve was beaten.

She slowly rose to her feet, gave one last look of appeal to the psychic, who refused to meet her gaze, and left the shop.

Eve couldn't quite understand how—or why—the meeting with Lili Peel had ended so abruptly.

29: HIDDEN

Gabe shifted the cardboard boxes, dumping them unceremoniously outside on the landing. Cally watched as he ducked back inside the cupboard, her first finger crooked over her short little nose, the thumb of the same hand lodged between her milk teeth. Daddy looked very serious.

The knocking he and Cally had heard coming from the landing cupboard again stopped even before Gabe touched the doorknob, but he was determined to find its cause this time.

The boxes were not heavy and through the open lid of one Gabe saw it contained cleaning utensils and liquids—a bottle of Jif and another half-filled bottle of green detergent, bleach, a scrubbing brush and one or two pieces of wrinkled rag, as well as a duster. This was obviously where Crickley Hall's regular cleaners stowed their gear for the upper floor; he had already removed the mop and broom.

Only the rolled-up rug remained inside the cupboard and Gabe snatched it up and threw it out onto the landing.
'Okay, you son-of-a-bitch,'
he muttered under his breath,
'let's see what you're hiding.'

But all he could make out at the back of the cupboard was the wall that for some reason had been painted black. The two thin waterpipes that were low to the floor disappeared through a small hole cut out of the wall's left-hand corner and Gabe bent low to study it. No animal, mouse-size or otherwise, could have squeezed through the space between the pipes and the edge of the cutout. He ran his fingers along the floor, feeling for any other holes at the base of the wall, but there were none.

Carefully, he backed out, rising as he went, making sure he didn't bump into Cally, who was watching from the doorway.

'Have you found somethink, Daddy?' she asked, staring up at him as he loomed over her.

'Not yet, honey,' he replied. 'Gonna need more light.'

He took his daughter by the hand and led her to the top of the stairs.

'Wait right here, Sparky,' he instructed her, 'while I go get me the flashlight.' He held up a finger in front of her face as if the gesture would augment the command, then hurried down the broad staircase, taking two steps at a time, too agile to miss a step. The flashlight had been left by the telephone on the chiffonier and he quickly grabbed it, switching it on in advance as he mounted the stairs again. Cally was waiting right where he had left her, thumb in her mouth, eyes wide with curiosity and just a little nervousness. He gave her a reassuring smile and tousled her hair as he passed. Striding back to the open landing cupboard, he realized he should have also brought his toolbox with him; he might need a long screwdriver or claw hammer to prise up a floorboard or two.

Gabe stooped to enter the cupboard again and Cally peered round the doorframe. Once through the door, he was able to straighten, although not to his full height; the interior ceiling wasn't high enough for that and it slanted downwards towards the back. Shining the torch beam around, he examined walls, floor and ceiling more thoroughly, checking for openings that rodents might use. There weren't any.

He briefly wondered why anyone would bother to paint the back wall black, and that made him curious. He moved further into the cupboard, stooping low, and the circle of light from the torch became smaller, more concentrated, on the rear wall's pitchy surface.

Looking at the edges all around, he noticed that the paint slightly overlapped the surrounding walls and floor, as if whoever had done the painting had been a little slapdash. Whatever the reason for the colour, it made the cupboard look deeper than it really was, the slope of the ceiling adding to the illusion. He pressed the black wall with his fingertips, testing its solidity, then rapped on it with his knuckles. It sounded hollow.

A false wall? Now that could be interesting. The wall sounded and felt like it was made of thin wood. When he had pressed the surface it seemed to give slightly.

Going down on both knees, Gabe inspected the edges once again, this time more carefully, seeking any flaws or breaks that could be used for leverage. But the black paint had been laid on so thickly that all four sides were sealed.

Shoulda brought the toolbox up with me,
he admonished himself again.
Coulda sliced through the paint with a blade or screwdriver, used either one to pull out the whole partition.

He hunched, stretching himself forward to examine the corner where the waterpipes passed through the wooden wall.

'Whatcha doin', Daddy?'

He looked over his shoulder to see Cally cautiously poking her head into the cupboard.

'Gonna try something. You just hang on out there.'

' 'Kay.'

Gabe dug the index finger of his left hand beneath the lowest pipe and felt the hole beneath it. The bottom corner of the black-painted board had been cut away to allow the pipes access so that there was a small space underneath the lower pipe.

'Might work,' he told himself as he hooked his finger around the edge of the wall. Gabe gave the wood a tentative tug and was surprised when the rear wall moved a fraction with a loud
crack
. He renewed his efforts, pulling harder this time, no longer testing the board's strength, and the crack was as sharp as a starter pistol when the wood came away a few inches. In the beam of his flashlight and through the curls of disturbed dust, Gabe saw that all the sealing paint along the floor and part of one wall had split. Encouraged, and with more space for a better grip, he wrapped his fingers around the edge of the wood and pulled as hard as he could.

The wooden board that served as the cupboard's rear wall suddenly came away with an even fiercer cracking and he realized that it had only been nailed at the sides to long thin stanchions, the nail heads covered by the black paint, making them invisible to the eye.