The Secret of Crickley Hall (12 page)

Gabe felt the easing of pressure as the unlocked door shifted in its frame. He yanked the door open in one swift movement and shone the light beam into the cupboard's depths. Eve and the two girls joined him as he bent to peer inside. They stared nervously over his shoulder.

He shone the flashlight around the interior, checking the corners, the back and even the cupboard's ceiling. All that was there were the cardboard boxes, the rolled-up rug and the mop and broom that he had already discovered. Moving aside two of the boxes, he noticed there were two thinnish waterpipes running along the left wall an inch or so above the floor and disappearing into the back wall.

'Guess there's the answer.' Gabe's light-hearted tone was forced as he aimed the beam directly at the two copper pipes. He reached down to feel them. 'One of 'em's hot. Might be an airlock in it.'

'Gabe, that can't be it. We saw the door move when the banging got really loud.'

He couldn't explain it and he didn't even try. He was looking for a rational reason for the noise; he didn't want to spook the girls any more than they were spooked already—and that included Eve.

'I'll check it out tomorrow,' he promised. As he straightened up, he kept the light pointing into the cupboard as if expecting an animal of some kind—a trapped bird maybe (although how a bird could have found its way inside, he had no idea), a mouse, a
rat
, or even a squirrel. Nothing stirred, though; nothing appeared from any hole in the skirting board; no bird fluttered out at them.

The overhead light and the one in the bedroom further down flickered, dimmed, came back on for a moment, dimmed once more, almost went off again, then returned to a steady glow.

'Thank God for that,' Eve murmured in a release of breath.

'Percy Judd said there were power cuts here and I think we've just experienced one. I'll take a good look at the gen tomorrow, see if I can fix it. It should kick in when the power goes.'

'This house…' Eve allowed her comment on Crickley Hall to peter out, the inflection in those first two words containing the message.

'Yeah, I know. We'll give it just
one
week, okay?'

Once more, Eve gave no response to the time limit set by Gabe even though he'd reduced it by a week. She wasn't sure she could stand as much as another day here. She knew it hadn't been the waterpipes creating that din and so did Gabe; he was only trying to soothe the girls with his unlikely—no, ridiculous—explanation.

'Let's all get back to bed,' he suggested, swinging the cupboard door shut and locking it again.

'Daddy, can we come in with you and Mummy tonight?' It wasn't Cally who asked but Loren, and her voice was plaintive.

'Sure you can.' He hugged his daughter close and Cally raised her arms to be picked up by Eve. But before they could find their way back to the bedroom, a mournful howl came from Chester in the kitchen below. Although the kitchen door was closed, the howl seemed to echo around the great hall.

Not only did the children sleep with Gabe and Eve that night, but the dog also slept on the floor close to Gabe's side of the bed.

14: SUNDAY

Gabe had cleaned the generator's spark plugs and reset the gauges. He'd also cleaned the oil filter and made sure that the coolant level was correct. Then he'd washed out the fuel filter and checked the gen's fuse, to find that it had blown, which was probably the sole cause for the machine's malfunction. Luckily he had a selection of different amp fuses in his toolbox, so was able to fit a replacement. Oil level was fine and he tested all the electrical connections to make sure it was not just the fuse that was at fault. The only thing he was concerned about was that if the generator had been standing idle for a long time, then the gas—
petrol
, he reminded himself—might have gone stale, which would mean draining and refilling it with fresh.

However, the latter proved to be no problem, for when he tested the gen by switching off the main fuse to the house's power, the generator sprang into life like a runner taking over the baton. Satisfied, he switched back to mains electricity and returned the generator to standby.

Smiling at the machine as if they had solved the problem together, Gabe wiped his oily hands on a dry cloth he kept in his toolbox.

'Don't let us down, baby,' he said to the generator. 'We don't need any more scares like last night.'

Carrying the long metal toolbox, Gabe left the boiler/generator room and went next door to the well cellar. Like the landing light, the lightbulb down here was far too weak to brighten the place efficiently and the thicker shadows that were created somehow made him feel uneasy.

The rushing of the river at the bottom of the well was loud enough to catch his attention. Downing the toolbox, he went over to the low wall that encircled the pit at the cellar's centre and shone his flashlight into it. The beam of light reflected off the slick mossy wall before revealing the spumy, surging river thirty or so feet below. Anyone unfortunate to fall in wouldn't stand a chance, he mused: there would be no grip on the rough but slimy stonework and the coursing waters would immediately sweep that person away. He reminded himself to make sure the door at the top of the stairs was always locked in case Cally's curiosity got the better of her (he thought he'd locked it yesterday, but this morning he had found the door ajar again). The stone wall round the well was low enough to be dangerous should either one of his daughters lean over it for a look-see.

The noise of the river was amplified by the round wall to a constant, only slightly muffled roar, and the air here was so chilled he could see his own breath vapour.

Gabe checked himself. He had been leaning too far over the wall, almost mesmerized by the black pit he was staring into. He hurriedly stepped back from the brink and drew in a slow breath. Damn right it was dangerous. Loren, too, would be banned from venturing down here alone.

He climbed the cellar stairs and at the top he carefully locked the door behind him, giving it a pull to ensure it was secure. It was loose in its frame but remained shut. Leaving the toolbox on the hall floor, Gabe went into the kitchen.

Chester had dragged his sleeping blanket into the corner by the kitchen's other door and he looked up expectantly at Gabe.

'Still jumpy, boy?'

Gabe squatted to pat the dog's flank. Although no longer trembling, Chester nevertheless gazed appealingly into his master's eyes.

'Guess you're still not happy with the place, right? But you gotta acclimatize, pal. We
all
do.'

Gabe wondered if they would. He felt that Eve would leave right now if she had her way. And the girls? Last night's incident scared them, but neither of them had complained this morning at breakfast. It was as if Loren was looking to her mother for guidance, and Cally seemed to have forgotten her upset already. The three of them had gone off to the Sunday-morning service at St Mark's—even though it was C of E—without mentioning the episode; but Gabe knew that Eve was waiting to get him alone.

With one last comforting pat on Chester's rump, Gabe rose and went to the sink where he poured tap water into the kettle. While he waited for the water to boil, his thoughts returned to Eve.

She really was creeped out by Crickley Hall. And he wasn't too comfortable with the place himself. When he had gone downstairs during the night to bring Chester back to their room, he had trodden in more small puddles on the broad steps, and there were others across the flagstone floor of the hall. If the dog hadn't been shut away in the kitchen, Gabe might have suspected him of leaving his mark all over the place. But these had no smell: they were plain water. However, it had been windy outside and he supposed that rain might have been blown through cracks in the tall window over the stairs. Had it been windy when he had first noticed the puddles the night before? He couldn't remember. But anyway, that wouldn't explain the ones across the hall.

Maybe they should get out right away, find some other house to rent, something not as weird as Crickley Hall. A place slap-damn in the middle of a village or town, somewhere not so isolated. Or so lonely. He couldn't risk Eve becoming more depressed than she was already. She had been through too much this past year—they
all
had.

But the tragedy had changed Eve more than it had Gabe.

When they had first met, she had been a staff fashion writer for a magazine called
Plenty
, organizing fashion shoots, auditioning and hiring models, choosing photographers, finding suitable locations for background interest, liaising with PR companies, reporting on the main fashion shows in the UK and Europe, interviewing celebrities to discover whose labels they were currently wearing.

She and Gabe were only married six months before Loren came along and Eve went freelance. Her contacts and her reputation were good and before long she was doing work for a number of magazines—
Marie Claire, Vogue, Elle
, among others—and was able to concentrate on writing purely about fashion without the baggage that went with it. But when Cameron was born, and then Catherine (Cally) a year later, Eve put her career on hold for a while so that she could devote more time to her family.

By then, they were living in a largish Victorian property in Canonbury, north London, and Gabe's salary was high enough to cover most of their needs. She still accepted the more interesting assignments, however, and when she did she would put her best efforts into them, which was why her very last freelance job—covering London's Fashion Week—had left her so exhausted. And that exhaustion had led her to falling asleep for a few minutes in the park where Cameron had gone missing…

Eve was wrong to blame herself, but how could he convince her? He pushed the thoughts away as he spooned coffee granules into a mug, then poured boiling water over them. There had been too much brooding for way too long. If only for Loren and Cally's sake, Eve had to snap out of it. But how could he help her?

Although Cam was a real boy's boy, a son that a father could really enjoy, Eve seemed to have a special 'connection' with him. No, he wasn't a momma's boy, but there was an affinity between them. They even shared the same trivial abnormality: the little finger of Cam's right hand was shorter than the one on his left, the same as Eve's; they also both had fingerprint whorls on the fleshy mount of their right palm. It was a similarity that they enjoyed, for it wasn't an obvious deformity—hands had to be compared to notice it.

Looking out the window, Gabe saw that the rain had stopped, although only temporarily judging by the ominous clouds that cruised the sky. As he watched, the sun broke out from behind one of those clouds and the lawn glistened with raindrops caught in the grass. The sudden brightness and the green denseness of the grass and foliage lifted some of the heaviness of spirit from him. Whatever the shortcomings of Crickley Hall itself, it couldn't be denied that it was in a beautiful location. From where he stood in the kitchen he could see past the old oak from which the swing dangled to the rushing waters of the Bay River, fallen leaves and small broken branches swept along with its hurried journey down to the Bristol Channel. He watched as a heron landed on the opposite bank close to the wooden bridge; the heavy bird must have decided that this was a poor place to catch passing fish, for its great wings soon flapped and it took off again in an impossibly lumbering rise into the air.

Gabe felt the need for fresh air himself and he carried his mug of coffee into the main hall where he unlocked the big front door to let the breeze, such as it was, circulate and disperse some of the musty odour that permeated the house. He stood on the doorstep and sipped the coffee as grey wagtails, with their black bibs, wheeled and dived over the garden, catching insects and celebrating the rare sunshine.

His thoughts returned to Eve, how she had changed, how she was before that fateful day. She was still beautiful to him—slim, small-breasted, long-legged, with deep-brown eyes that matched her deep-brown hair—but now there were lines on her face that had only appeared during the last few months, and there was a darkness round her eyes that spoke of sleepless nights and sadness of soul. Her hair, once worn so long that its ends cascaded over her shoulders, was now cut short, urchin-style, not because of fashion but because it was easier to manage, nothing to bother over. A psychologist might suggest it was shorn as self-punishment, arising from guilt.

She used to have a sly humour, a sharp wit, but now Eve was subdued, her thoughts—and her feelings—distracted by the loss. To see her this way added to Gabe's own grief, but there was nothing he could do that he hadn't already tried to ease her despair. Even harsh, desperate words, tough love they called it, had failed to draw any positive response because she fully accepted her own condition and refused to be stung by his criticism. Ultimately, he could only love her, not in an indulgent way, but in a way that let her know that he cast no blame on her.

Gabe drew in a deep breath of fresh moist air. A little sunshine made a difference, he thought. It helped cheer the soul. If only the rain—

His legs almost buckled as Chester brushed by him. The dog scooted across the lawn, past the swing that stirred lazily in the breeze.

Goddamnit!
He'd forgotten about the mutt, hadn't closed the kitchen door behind him. Chester had seen his chance for freedom and had taken it. Like a bat out of hell, he streaked towards the bridge.

'Chester! Get back here!'

The dog hesitated at the bridge, turned briefly to look back at his master, then scooted across it without stopping on the other side. Gabe stepped out of the doorway, coffee in hand, and stared open-mouthed.

'
Chester
!' he tried again. Exasperated, he put the coffee mug on the doorstep, then took off after the runaway. Gabe ran across the bridge, continuing to call the dog's name, but knowing that by the determined way Chester had bolted up the hill he would stop for no one. Gabe stood in the middle of the lane, hoping to see some sign of the dog, but Chester was nowhere in sight.