The House of a Hundred Whispers Page 6

  As the day went on, the fog thickened, rather than clearing, and the search parties looked like ghostly shadows as they walked down the lanes and crossed over the fields and climbed up the steep granite tors. They called out ‘Timmy!’ over and over, and then they would stop for a few moments and listen, but there was no response before darkness began to creep over the moors.

  They combed woods and hedgerows and ditches. They followed the Grimstone and Sortridge leat all the way up to the Windy Post Cross, peering into the running water to make sure that Timmy’s drowned body wasn’t trapped below the surface.

  They looked as far as Merrivale in the north, and Whitchurch to the west, and even as far as the Burrator reservoir to the south. They talked to the few local people they came across out on the moor, and knocked on several doors to ask if anybody had seen a small boy wandering out on his own, but nobody had. Rob was beginning to wonder if some passing motorist might have come across Timmy, picked him up and driven him away. For what purpose, he dreaded to think.

  Eventually, at about half past five, they returned cold and weary to Allhallows Hall. Although they had given up for the day, the search would continue throughout the night, with replacement teams who specialised in looking for missing people in the dark. The search area would be widened, too.

  *

  The chimney sweeps had visited that morning and cleared out the flues in the drawing room, the kitchen and the library, and Vicky had lit fires in all of them. For the first time since they had arrived yesterday, the house felt welcoming and warm.

  Rob collapsed into Herbert’s throne by the fire. He had wanted to go back out onto the moors after a short rest, but when he was climbing over a pile of rocks under Pew Tor he had twisted his ankle and it was starting to throb. He switched on the West Country news on television and silently prayed that there would be no items about a five-year-old boy found dead around Sampford Spiney.

  Vicky brought him a bottle of Jail Ale and stood beside him, looking bereft.

  ‘What if they never find him? What then?’

  ‘They will, darling. We can’t give up hope.’

  ‘Tell me this is all a bad dream. Tell me we never came here.’

  Rob tried to stand up but winced and sat back down again. Vicky knelt down beside his chair and rested her head in his lap. He stroked her hair, but that was all the comfort he could give her.

  Martin, meanwhile, had gone through to the library to see if he could find any notebooks or diaries that might throw some light on why their father had been killed. The police had taken all the invoices and receipts that had been scattered on the stairs when Herbert Russell was found dead, as well as his laptop, and had yet to return them. When Martin had been helping to search the house for Timmy, however, he had lifted the lid on the window seat and found six or seven dog-eared Racing Post diaries, as well as other books. Now he lifted them all out and set them down on the writing table, and he saw that they were Herbert’s accounts books for the nine previous tax years.

  He sat down and began to leaf through them – the diaries first and then the accounts. The diaries had no day-to-day accounts of Herbert’s life. They were crammed with nothing but notes about race meetings and odds and horses that he must have fancied.

  It made him feel strangely abandoned to see his father’s idiosyncratic handwriting again, with its thick upright strokes and its heavily crossed ‘t’s. His father had always made him feel valued, much more than Rob or Grace, and had constantly promised him that he would be someone special when he grew up – someone who took no nonsense from anybody. He had lost count of the number of times his father had said to him, ‘Remember – no matter how much anyone disagrees with you – you’re always right and they’re always wrong. Full stop.’

  Most of the entries in his accounts books were mundane. Travel expenses. TV licence. Car maintenance. Firewood from Liz’s Logs in Yelverton. But then some of the credits were more mystifying. PP £11,230. L/b £3,226. And then some much larger credits. JD 1729515 £128,000. BdF 2367838 £347,500.

  When Martin added up all of these obscure credits, he reckoned that in those nine years Herbert Russell had been given over £7.5 million, and that was on top of his prison governor’s salary. But apart from their initials and their reference numbers, there were no further details of who the donors were, or why they had given him so much money.

  Martin jotted down the figures on a torn-off sheet of paper and then went through to the drawing room.

  ‘Rob? I don’t know where that Margaret Walsh got her financial statements from, but according to Dad’s own account books, we should all be reasonably rich.’

  ‘Spag bol all right?’ called Grace, from the kitchen.

  ‘Yes, Gracey. Wonderful,’ Rob called back, and then frowned at Martin’s piece of paper. ‘Blimey. Do we know who gave him all this money? Are these individual people, or companies?’

  ‘I haven’t the faintest. That’s all he’s written down. Look at this one – KW 2703145 £545,000. Who would have given him more than half a million? I mean, what for? And what did he do with it? Did he spend it? Did he invest it? Did he bury it in the garden in a pickle jar?’

  ‘He didn’t keep a diary, did he?’

  ‘There’s racing diaries, with all the gee-gees he bet on, but that’s all. I don’t ever remember him keeping one, and there was no sign of one in the library, or in his bedroom.’

  ‘I thought he had accountants to do his tax returns. Maybe they would know.’

  ‘I think he used to, but from the look of his books he was doing them himself for the past nine years at least.’

  ‘Perhaps he has another bank account – one that he never told Margaret Walsh about.’

  ‘In which case we bloody well need to find it,’ said Martin. ‘There’s no way in the world I’m going to let seven and a half million go unclaimed. That’s two and a half million each. I know it’s not the National Lottery, but you and I could buy ourselves much bigger houses, and Grace could buy her first house, couldn’t she?’

  ‘Right at this moment, Martin, I’m not interested in whether I could buy a bigger house or not.’

  ‘Well, no, sorry, Rob, of course not. But I’ll get to work on it. And if they don’t find Timmy tonight, I’ll be out there again tomorrow, looking for him. I promise you.’

  ‘Thanks, Martin,’ Rob told him. One of the logs in the grate lurched and dropped downwards, and a shower of sparks flew up the chimney. For a split second, they looked like a glittering, demonic face.

  11

  They ate their supper in the kitchen, in silence – too tired and too depressed to think of anything to say. Rob had cautioned Martin not to tell Vicky or Grace about the £7.5 million that he had discovered in Herbert Russell’s accounts. There was no way of knowing if it actually existed anywhere, or if Herbert had borrowed it and paid it all back, and apart from that Vicky could think about nothing but Timmy, and she would only find it insensitive if he started talking about some illusory inheritance.

  As for Grace, she never liked to speak about their father much, for some reason. She always gave a little shudder when they mentioned his name, as if they were talking about some food that she couldn’t stand, like pickled herring. She had made it clear that she had only come to Allhallows Hall because Portia had insisted that she should lay claim to what was hers – and would be theirs, when they had legally married.

  Just after half past ten, a short, broad-shouldered man with scruffy blond hair knocked at the door. He was wearing a crimson anorak and he introduced himself as one of the team leaders from Dartmoor Search and Rescue. He told them that his name was John Kipling – ‘no relation to Rudyard, unfortunately’. He and his volunteers would be searching the moor until six tomorrow morning, and unless they had found Timmy earlier, he would call again then.

  They all sat in the drawing room to finish their drinks, watching the fire die down. They had the television switched on, but muted, in case any news item came up a
bout Timmy; but there was little hope of that. Martin went outside for a cigarette and when he came back, still wearing a cloak of cold air and the smell of tobacco, he rubbed his hands together and said, ‘I don’t know about you, but I’m for bed.’

  *

  Rob fell asleep almost at once. Vicky stayed awake, reading a book she had found in the library called The Legends of Dartmoor.

  The book described the demon dogs that were said to roam the moor in packs, and the ghosts of wife-murderers, and how the Devil had demolished a local church spire with bolts of lightning. But it wasn’t all about frightening apparitions. The chapter that had caught Vicky’s attention told of friendly piskies who are supposed to flit around the tors at night, and who will guide any ramblers who find themselves lost – although they will do the opposite to anybody who upsets them, and deliberately lead them miles out of their way. The people of Dartmoor still call it being ‘pisky-led’.

  ‘The piskies are appreciated, most of all, for the care they take of little children who have gone astray, drying their tears and taking their hands and showing them the way back to their anxious mothers.’

  When she read that, Vicky closed the book, her mouth tightly puckered to prevent herself from sobbing out loud. She didn’t want to wake Rob. She knew how exhausted he was, and how much his ankle hurt. He had taken two paracetamol before going to bed.

  She switched off her bedside lamp, snuggled down and pulled up the quilt to cover her shoulders. Out here on the moor, at night, the darkness was total, so they had left a light on in the hallway downstairs, in case any of them needed to get up to visit the bathroom. All she could hear was Rob’s steady breathing, the weary ticking of the longcase clock, and the soft, sibilant sound of the wind outside, like an old man whistling between his teeth.

  She tried to imagine where Timmy was now, and how he was keeping himself warm and dry. He had always liked to put up makeshift shelters at the end of the garden, under the hedge. It was usually one of Rob’s raincoats draped over a framework of sticks and the handles of his wheelbarrow. He would sit there, cross-legged, while it was raining, singing songs he had made up himself, like ‘The Sheep Goes Beep’. She desperately hoped he had managed to build himself some kind of shelter out on the moors, although by now he must be weak with hunger, and thirsty, too, unless he had drunk water from a leat.

  Dear God in heaven, she prayed, under her breath. Please protect my Timmy wherever he is, and bring him back to us safe and unharmed.

  Her eyes closed and she was almost asleep when she thought she could faintly hear a child crying. She opened her eyes and listened. A whole minute went by without her hearing it again. Rob stirred and made a wuffling noise, but then he continued to breathe normally. No – she must have been thinking so intently about Timmy that she had dreamed it as she was dropping off. She closed her eyes again. She had never felt so tired in her entire life. She couldn’t imagine the grief of losing a child forever. The funeral. The small white coffin.

  Then she heard the child crying again. It was so muffled and indistinct that she couldn’t be entirely sure it wasn’t a fox yelping somewhere outside, or one of the bedroom doors creaking in the draught. Dartmoor was the highest upland in the country, so it was almost always windy. She sat up, holding her breath. Another minute went by. Then – yes, she heard it again. What if it was Timmy, and he was stuck somewhere in the house in some cupboard or chimney or cranny where they hadn’t been able to find him?

  She folded back the quilt and climbed out of bed, trying to disturb Rob as little as possible. She tiptoed to the bedroom door and eased it open. The corridor outside was dark, except for the faint glow of light from the lamp in the hallway, which was enough for Vicky to see that there was nobody out there.

  She waited, and then she heard it again. It sounded as if it were coming from the side corridor that led to the stained-glass window of Old Dewer. She crept along to the landing, stopped, and listened again. It was not crying so much as a repetitive and hopeless plea for help, in the same way that children in hospital call out endlessly for their mummies, even though they know it might be hours before they come to visit them. But it was definitely a child, and not a fox, or an owl. She couldn’t be sure that it was Timmy, but what other children had come to Allhallows Hall lately?

  Holding her breath again, she made her way down the corridor to the stained-glass window. In the dark, the design on the window appeared to have subtly altered, as if the hounds were cowering down low, and Old Dewer himself was looking at her over his shoulder with one gleaming eye. Outside, it was still pitch black and there was no light shining through the coloured glass, so that it was difficult to tell for sure.

  Although it sounded so faint and faraway, the child’s voice seemed to be coming from the end bedroom, the one in which Rob and Martin had found nothing but six spare chairs and a wine table crowded with cobwebby candlesticks. She opened the door and strained her eyes to see if there was anybody inside, but it was too dark, and so she reached around for the light switch.

  ‘Timmy? Are you in there?’ she called out, but quietly.

  She waited, but there was no answer, and the crying had stopped.

  ‘Timmy?’

  She took a step into the bedroom, but as she did so she heard a soft rushing noise, like the wind rising, and the wine table rocked as if somebody had knocked into it. Three of the candlesticks toppled over and dropped onto the carpet, and then Vicky gasped in shock as what felt like two invisible hands were shoved into her chest to push her violently backwards into the corridor. She lost her balance and her shoulder struck the mahogany dado behind her before she sprawled onto the floor.

  She looked up to see who had pushed her, but instantly the light in the bedroom was switched off and the door slammed shut.

  She climbed to her feet and stood in front of the door, trembling and rubbing her shoulder. She was convinced that it had been a man who had knocked over the candlesticks and pushed her, but how could she not have seen him?

  Vicky stayed where she was for a few seconds, listening for the child, but all she could hear now was the wind, and the first few patters of rain against the stained-glass window. She didn’t dare to open the bedroom door again. Her shoulder was aching and she felt as if her breasts were bruised.

  She walked back quickly to her own bedroom, switched on Rob’s bedside lamp and sat down on the bed next to him. She shook his arm and said, ‘Rob – Rob – wake up! Please, Rob, wake up!’

  Rob stirred and opened his eyes. ‘What is it? What’s going on?’ Then he propped himself up on his elbow and said, ‘Have they found Timmy?’

  ‘No. But I heard a child crying and I thought it might be Timmy, so I went to take a look.’

  Rob now saw how shaken she was. He sat up and put his arms around her and said, ‘What? What happened?’

  ‘I thought the child was crying in that end bedroom, so I went in and somebody pushed me out and slammed the door shut.’

  ‘What? Who?’

  ‘I don’t know who.’

  ‘Well, what did they look like?’

  ‘That’s the whole point. They didn’t look like anything. It felt like a man, but he was invisible.’

  Rob stroked her back. ‘When you say “invisible”…’

  ‘I couldn’t see him, Rob! He pushed me so hard that I fell over but there was nobody there!’

  Rob climbed out of bed, wincing as he put weight on his twisted ankle. He picked up his tweed jacket from the back of the bedroom chair and quickly tugged it on.

  ‘Right,’ he said. ‘Let’s go and take a look. If this is somebody playing some kind of stupid prank—!’

  He limped along to the landing, with Vicky following close behind him. He turned down the corridor that led towards the stained-glass window and went up to the bedroom door.

  ‘You’re sure you heard the child crying from in here?’

  ‘It was very faint. But I think so. I don’t know where else it could have been co
ming from.’

  ‘Well, like I told you, I heard whispering coming from this bedroom myself. Martin said I was imagining it.’

  ‘I wasn’t imagining somebody pushing me out of the room and switching off the light and slamming the door in my face.’

  ‘All right. Let’s find out who it was.’

  Rob opened the door and switched on the light. There was nobody in there. He stepped inside and cautiously looked around. Vicky stayed by the door.

  ‘No… nobody here,’ said Rob. He circled all the way round the room, waving his arms from side to side. ‘Can’t see them, and I can’t feel them, either, even if they’re invisible.’

  ‘The candlesticks,’ said Vicky.

  ‘What about them?’

  ‘Some of them fell on the floor, but whoever it was has picked them up and put them back on the table.’

  Rob lifted one of them up. ‘Yes… these three don’t have any cobwebs on them. But you don’t have to worry, darling. I believe you. Something really weird is going on in this house and we need to find out what it is.’

  He paused, and looked around the bedroom again, wondering if there was something he had missed.

  Then he said, ‘Do you know, I have a gut feeling that somebody may be doing all this spooky stuff on purpose… the whispering and everything. Maybe it’s somebody who doesn’t want us to inherit it and they’re trying to frighten us off by making us think that it’s haunted.’

  The longcase clock in the hallway struck a dolorous three. Vicky said, ‘Listen… there’s nothing else we can do tonight. The search and rescue people will be back here at six. Let’s try and get some rest before then.’

  She paused, still rubbing her shoulder, and then she said, ‘I think you could be right about somebody playing tricks on us. I don’t believe in ghosts. Especially ghosts that can push you over.’