The House of a Hundred Whispers Read online

  ‘You still have the house to share between you, don’t you?’ said Katharine. ‘If you can find the right buyer, you may be able to sell it for quite a bit more than a million and a half.’

  ‘Well, not exactly, I’m afraid,’ said Margaret Walsh, turning over a page in her folder. ‘Originally, Allhallows Hall was going to be divided equally between the three of you – Martin, Rob and Grace. But when Mr Russell altered his will, he specified that after his death it should be held in trust.’

  ‘Held in trust?’ Martin retorted. ‘Held in trust by whom? And how long for?’

  ‘Held in trust equally by the three of you for thirteen years. During this time you will be equally responsible for its maintenance, repair, council tax and utility bills and so forth. Should any of you pass away before the thirteen years is up, the surviving trustees will continue to bear the costs until the trust comes to an end.’

  ‘But what happens when the trust comes to an end?’ asked Rob. ‘Can we sell the house then?’

  ‘When the trust closes, the freehold of the house passes to your son, Timothy, who by then will have reached eighteen years old.’

  ‘To Timmy?’ Martin demanded, almost shouting. ‘What about me? What about my daughter Petulia? And what about Grace, come to that?’

  ‘I’m sorry, Mr Russell,’ said Margaret Walsh. ‘That is what your father stipulated in his will, and I’ve already drafted the trust instrument.’

  ‘But this is absurd,’ Martin protested. ‘Why should we be expected to cover all of the expense of keeping the house up when we’re going to get no benefit out of it? And why in God’s name did Dad decide that he was giving it to Timmy and not share it out between all of us?’

  ‘I’m sorry, Mr Russell, but that’s what it says in his will. The only circumstance in which the title to the freehold would be shared between you is if Timothy were to pass away before his eighteenth birthday.’

  ‘Fat chance of that happening. Not unless we club together and buy him a car when he’s old enough to drive and send him off to Postbridge.’

  ‘Oh, Martin,’ said Grace. She knew he was referring to the local story about the Hairy Hands – a ghostly force that was supposed to seize control of drivers’ steering wheels as they sped through Postbridge, which was only thirteen miles away. It was said to cause them to veer wildly off the road, crash into a wall, and die.

  ‘I don’t care,’ Martin told her. ‘Dad always told me that when he died he was going to bequeath Allhallows equally between me and Rob and Gracey. In fact, he even confirmed it to me in a letter, and I believe I still have that letter somewhere. If I can find it I’m going to contest this will, and even if I can’t find it I’m going to contest it.’

  ‘It does seem a bit odd, I’ll admit,’ said Rob.

  ‘A bit odd? What do you mean, a bit odd? It’s bloody ridiculous. If you ask me, Dad was losing his marbles. I mean – did he tell you why he wanted to change his will? Did he appear compos mentis? I can’t understand it. He never even seemed to like Timmy very much. In fact, he always seemed to regard him as nothing but a flaming nuisance.’

  Outside, Rob could see that it was starting to rain, and that the wind had started to rise. He went over and opened the window and called out to Timmy to come inside. Timmy threw his stick away and came stamping his way back up the weedy garden path.

  ‘What about the contents?’ asked Grace. ‘The paintings, and the furniture? And there’s at least two antique dinner services and two canteens of solid silver cutlery.’

  ‘Yes,’ put in Martin. ‘The paintings alone are worth a fair bit. That one with all the people in hoods – it’s not signed but it’s supposed to be a Northcote. If it is, it’s worth thousands. Tens of thousands, even.’

  ‘Your father specifically says that all the contents of the house should be kept intact, and that nothing should be separately sold off.’

  ‘What about renting? That would help to cover the cost of its council tax and its upkeep.’

  ‘As trustees, any of you are free to live here, or use it as a holiday home. But under the terms of the trust you are not permitted to rent it to anybody outside the family. Your father was adamant about that.’

  They heard the kitchen door bang as Timmy came in. ‘That does it,’ said Martin. ‘I’m definitely going to talk to my solicitor about this. And I’m going to talk to Dad’s doctor. I’m sure he must have been going doolally.’

  ‘I can’t comment on that,’ said Margaret Walsh. ‘When your father changed his will, his affairs were being handled by Walter Besley, our senior partner, but he’s retired now. I took over his affairs only nine months ago.’

  ‘In that case I’ll go and talk to him, too. Dad must have been losing it. I mean, honestly, this will makes no sense at all. I’m certainly not going to pay for the upkeep of a property I’m never going to own.’

  ‘Well, even though I’m Timmy’s father, I have to confess that I agree with you,’ said Rob. ‘I’m not ashamed to admit that I could use the money right now, even if it’s only a third of the selling price. And, like you say, there’s the contents. The paintings and so forth. And even the furniture must be worth a fair amount. They’re all genuine antiques.’

  Margaret Walsh said, ‘I’ve brought a copy of the will for each of you. Once you’ve had the chance to read it through I’ll apply for probate, identify your father’s assets and sort out any liabilities and inheritance tax and whatnot. Let me know in due course if you decide to contest the will, but of course it could be a very long-drawn-out procedure. And expensive, too.’

  ‘I’m beginning to wonder why we bothered to come,’ said Martin. ‘Do you know what time we had to set out this morning? Twenty past five.’

  Rob said, ‘Listen… why don’t we all go down to The Royal Oak, like you suggested, and talk this over somewhere warm and comfortable?’

  Margaret Walsh handed out copies of Herbert Russell’s will, and then they all left the library. Rob went into the drawing room to close all the windows and to see if Timmy was there, but there was no sign of him. He went into the kitchen, but Timmy wasn’t there, either.

  ‘Timmy!’ he called out, going back into the hallway. ‘Timmy, we’re going out now for something to drink and something to eat!’

  There was no answer, so Rob went to the bottom of the stairs and called out again. ‘Timmy! We’re all going out now! Come on down!’

  He waited, and then he turned to the rest of the family, who were all putting their coats on.

  ‘He didn’t go back out again, did he?’

  ‘I didn’t hear him,’ said Grace.

  Rob went back into the library and looked out into the kitchen garden. Timmy’s stick was still lying on the path, but there was no Timmy.

  ‘He must be upstairs. He’s probably shut himself in one of the bedrooms and he just can’t hear me.’

  Rob climbed the stairs to the landing. Even up here, it still smelled of woodsmoke. He opened the doors to the three bedrooms that led to the stained-glass window, but Timmy wasn’t in any of them.

  ‘Timmy!’ he shouted. ‘Come on, Tim-tim, this isn’t funny! We’re going out!’

  He went along the corridor to the bathroom, opening one door after another, and leaving them open. He even looked under the beds, and he couldn’t help thinking about the sniggering boy that he had always imagined was hiding under his own bed. He went into the bathroom, too, with its huge antiquated bathtub, on lion’s-claw feet. It was chilly in there. The rain was pattering against the frosted-glass window, and a tap was dripping, but those were the only sounds, and Timmy wasn’t there.

  Rob went back and searched each of the eight bedrooms again, opening up the tall oak wardrobes and even pulling out the drawers from the tallboy dressers. Some drawers were filled with sweaters and socks and wrinkled underwear. Some were empty. But Timmy was hiding in none of them.

  ‘Any luck, Rob?’ Martin called out, from the hallway.

  Rob went to the top of the stai
rcase, the same place where Herbert had been standing when he was struck on the back of the head.

  ‘No,’ he said, his throat clogged so that he spoke in not much more than a whisper. Then, louder, so that Martin could hear him, ‘No! I can’t think where he’s gone!’

  6

  They went outside into the fine grey drizzle.

  Margaret Walsh said, ‘I’m sorry… I’d help you look for him, but I have to meet a client in Plymouth at half past one.’

  ‘That’s okay, he’ll be around somewhere,’ said Vicky. ‘He’s probably hiding in one of the barns to scare us. He’s always been a mischief.’

  Rob crossed the courtyard to the smaller barn. The wide oak door was fastened with a rusty padlock, and the only windows in it were four narrow slits that were at least five metres high. Timmy loved Spiderman but there was no way he could have climbed all the way up that sheer granite wall.

  ‘Timmy!’ Rob called out again. ‘Tim-tim, this isn’t funny any more! Come on out!’

  He went across to the larger barn. Although the door had no padlock on it, its hinges had collapsed years ago, so that it had dropped down to the ground and couldn’t be shifted except with enormous effort. However, there was a narrow triangular gap in between the side of the door and the doorpost, and it was just possible that Timmy could have squeezed through it.

  ‘Give me a hand here, Martin,’ said Rob. The two of them rammed their shoulders against the door and kicked it, and at last they managed to force it half-open. It was dark inside, because the only two windows had been covered, for some reason, with hessian sacking. The whole barn smelled of mouldering hay.

  ‘Timmy, are you in here? Come on out, if you are. You’re not in trouble, son, just come out.’

  Rob took out his phone and switched on the flashlight. He shone the beam from one side of the barn to the other, but apart from the dank heaps of hay, all he could see was a stack of plastic milk crates full of empty whisky bottles, a few gardening tools and the skeleton of an old Scott motorcycle.

  ‘No, not in here. He must be hiding in the garden somewhere. Maybe the garden shed.’

  They left the barn and walked around the side of the house. The shed was at the end of the kitchen garden, but, like the smaller barn, its door was padlocked. Rob peered in through the dusty window, but he could see only spades and forks and shelves with tins of weedkiller.

  ‘So where the hell is he?’ said Martin. It was beginning to rain harder now, and he turned up the collar of his coat. ‘Don’t tell me he’s run off into the field.’

  Vicky joined them. ‘Rob – I’m really worried now. I know he’s a little devil, but this is not like him at all. He would have jumped out and said “boo!” by now.’

  They went through the gate of the kitchen garden and into the field. From the back of the house the field rose steeply uphill and on a clear day the sinister granite peak of Pew Tor could be seen over the hedgerows. When he and Florence had first moved to Allhallows Hall, Herbert Russell had arranged with a local farmer for sheep to graze in this field, but some kind of obscure argument had blown up between him and the farmer and now it was nothing but overgrown grass and Japanese knotweed and brambles.

  Rob had never found out what the argument was, but knowing his father it was probably something petty. Perhaps he had imagined that the sheep were looking at him disrespectfully.

  ‘No… I can’t see Timmy anywhere here,’ said Martin, shielding his eyes with his hand. ‘He couldn’t have gone all that far, could he, and he’s wearing that bright yellow jacket.’

  ‘But that’s the thing,’ said Vicky. ‘He took his jacket off when he came inside, and left it in the hallway. He’s out here in all this rain with nothing but his jumper.’

  ‘I think we should search the house one more time,’ said Rob. ‘There’s so many nooks and crannies. He’s probably hiding in the larder or one of the cupboards in the library and giggling his head off because we can’t find him.’

  *

  They went back into the house, wiping their muddy shoes on the front doormat.

  ‘Timmy!’ Rob shouted, and Vicky echoed, ‘Timmy! Come on out! You won’t have ice cream with your lunch if you don’t come on out!’

  They waited for a few moments, but there was utter silence. The longcase clock in the hallway had probably wound down days ago, because they couldn’t hear the endless weary ticking that had been an integral part of their lives at Allhallows Hall.

  ‘Timmy! Can you hear us?’ Rob bellowed, cupping his hands around his mouth. ‘Timmy!’ There was still no answer.

  ‘Well, let’s go through the house, top to bottom,’ said Martin. ‘If you girls search the downstairs, Rob and I will take the upstairs again. We’d better go up into the attic, too, Rob, although I can’t see how Timmy could have managed to climb up there, not without the ladder.’

  ‘Oh God,’ said Vicky, taking hold of Rob’s hand. She had tears on her eyelashes. ‘Please don’t let anything terrible have happened to him.’

  They separated, with Vicky and Katharine going back into the library and Grace and Portia making their way round to the kitchen.

  In the kitchen, Grace opened the doors of the range and peered into the ovens. She remembered Herbert threatening to roast her brothers alive if they misbehaved, and she wondered if Rob had told Timmy about it. But the ovens were cold and empty and crusted with years of burnt-on food. Grace doubted if their father had cooked anything since their mother had died.

  Portia was looking in the larder. The middle shelf was crowded with glass jars of herbs and spices – coriander and chives and cayenne pepper. She picked one up and read the label. ‘Best before 09/08/07.’ Then she picked up a half-empty bottle of Heinz tomato ketchup. ‘Best before 17/11/09. Wow. It’s like everything’s antique in this house, Gracey. Even the food.’

  They opened every cupboard in the kitchen, even the eye-level cupboards around the walls, which were stacked with dinner plates and mugs. A narrow scullery led off the kitchen, its granite floor heaped with Herbert Russell’s muddy old walking boots. There was a small space under the sink, covered by a soiled green seersucker curtain. Grace tugged it back but there was nothing behind it except for a sink plunger and a bottle of Harpic drain cleaner.

  ‘If you ask me, your little nephew’s taken himself off for a walk somewhere,’ said Portia.

  ‘In this weather?’

  ‘I climbed out of my bedroom window once in the middle of the night and went for a walk in a thunderstorm. Barefoot, and wearing nothing but pyjamas. I was only about seven. I was soaking, but I loved it.’

  ‘But that’s just like you. Timmy’s naughty sometimes, but he’s not bonkers.’

  Portia narrowed her eyes in mock annoyance. ‘Who are you calling bonkers? After what you did with that courgette?’

  ‘I was drunk. I can’t even remember.’

  ‘Maybe you can’t, darling, but I’ll never forget it for as long as I live.’

  In the library, Vicky and Katharine opened all the cupboards under the bookshelves. Most of them were filled with old copies of the Prison Service Journal, as well as photograph albums with mock-crocodile covers and accounts books bulging with receipts. In one of the cupboards, Vicky found a black-and-white photograph of Rob’s mother in a silver frame, face down. The glass was smashed, so that it looked as if she were staring out from behind a spiderweb.

  Katharine pulled out some of the books on the shelves to check behind them. ‘Perhaps there’s a secret compartment. You see them in some of those spy films, don’t you?’

  ‘I can’t really see Timmy having the strength to pull out a whole bookcase, Katharine.’

  ‘You never know. There might be a secret mechanism.’

  ‘Even if there was, how would Timmy have found out about it?’

  ‘All right. There’s no need to get tetchy.’

  ‘I’m not being tetchy, Katharine. My son’s disappeared and I’m going out of my mind with worry.’

&n
bsp; ‘Oh, come on, Vicky. He’ll be all right. If he’s not hiding in the house, he’s probably gone off exploring.’

  ‘There’s nothing to explore around here. Only the church, and the graveyard.’

  ‘You know what kids are like. They find everything fascinating.’

  ‘Well, yes. But not in this weather.’

  Upstairs, Rob and Martin had checked every bedroom again, just in case Timmy had been hiding under a quilt or behind a door and they had somehow managed to miss him. Then they dragged out the heavy old wooden stepladder and positioned it under the trapdoor in the corridor ceiling that gave access to the attic.

  ‘There’s no way he could have got himself up there,’ said Rob. ‘What did he do – fly? And then shut the door behind him?’

  ‘Of course he couldn’t,’ Martin agreed. ‘But you know what they say about leaving no stone unturned. You wouldn’t want to go up there in ten years’ time and find his skeleton.’

  ‘Martin, for Christ’s sake.’

  ‘I know. Sorry. But you know what I’m trying to say. Better to be sure now than sorry later.’

  Rob climbed up the stepladder first. One of the cords that held its legs together had frayed and broken, and the stepladder swayed and creaked with every step. He pushed up the trapdoor so that it fell sideways with a clatter, and immediately he smelled stale air and mould. He took out his phone and switched on the flashlight, pointing it left and right.

  ‘What’s it like up there?’ asked Martin.

  ‘Musty. I doubt if anyone’s been up here in years.’

  Rob heaved himself up through the trapdoor and stood up. The attic floor was completely boarded over, and the rafters had been covered with plasterboard, stained with brown patches of damp. There was a light switch on the joist next to the trapdoor, and he turned on the two naked bulbs that hung from the ceiling. Martin pulled himself up after him, grunting with effort.

  ‘God almighty. I haven’t been up here since I was about twelve.’

  At one end of the attic stood the rusty iron water tank and all the noisy ancient plumbing, groaning and shuddering as usual. But at the opposite end Rob was surprised to see at least a dozen suitcases, chaotically heaped up one on top of the other, as well as three or four khaki haversacks and two bulging duffel bags.