The House on Cold Hill

32

Twenty minutes later, after wolfing down a ham sandwich, and then a chocolate bar that he found in the fridge, Ollie walked back upstairs and along to the tower, momentarily preoccupied with thoughts about where he and Caro would sleep tonight.

The other spare rooms were in very poor condition, with rotten floorboards, peeling wallpaper, damp and black patches of mould. The big, extra-wide red sofas in the drawing room, which they’d bought some years ago and were great for lounging back in and watching television, seemed a lot more appealing.

That settled, his thoughts returned again to last night. He was still trying to find an explanation for what had happened. The only one so far, and it was a weak one, was that the bed had always been that way round and somehow they were mistaken in thinking otherwise. But he wasn’t convincing himself.

And just what the hell had Bryan Barker seen today? The O’Hare family? There had been four of them, according to the headstone in the graveyard. Two adults and two young children.

As he entered his office, his mobile phone rang. He didn’t recognize the number on the display.

‘Oliver Harcourt,’ he answered, warily.

The voice sounded elderly but richly sonorous, as if from someone long used to public speaking. ‘It’s Bob Manthorpe, you rang me earlier?’

The previous vicar of Cold Hill, Ollie realized. ‘Reverend Manthorpe, yes, thank you so much for calling back.’

‘Not at all, what can I do for you?’

‘Well, the thing is —’ Ollie stepped through the maze of packing cases and stacked files to his desk, and sat down — ‘my wife and I — we’ve just moved into a house called Cold Hill. I understand you were the vicar in the village some years ago?’

There was an extremely prolonged silence. Ollie wondered if they had been disconnected — or if the old man had hung up. Then he heard his voice. ‘Cold Hill House?’

‘Yes.’

‘It was being restored, I recall, a long time back. A very beautiful place indeed. Jolly good. Hope you’ll be very happy there.’

Ollie could detect the unease in his voice. ‘Thank you, we hope so too. I wanted to ask you a few things about your time here.’

‘Well, you know, I’ve been retired for some years. And these days my memory’s not what it was.’

‘Is there any chance we could meet? Just for a quick chat? It’s really quite important.’

‘Well, I suppose so.’ He sounded hesitant. ‘I’m free all afternoon today if you’re able to pop over?’

‘Where are you?’

‘Do you know Beddingham?’

‘Yes — just outside Lewes.’

‘I’m in a little cottage just off the roundabout at the bottom of Ranscombe Hill — the junction of the A26 and A27.’

Ollie did a quick calculation. It was about twenty to thirty minutes’ drive from here. He looked at his watch. It was 2.20 p.m. Normally he had to pick Jade up from school at 3.30, but she was staying on late today for a school orchestra practice and he’d agreed to collect her at 5.30. ‘I could be with you by three,’ he said.

‘I’ll put the kettle on,’ Manthorpe said, then gave him a few more details on how to find the house.

Ollie went down to look for Bryan and Chris, and told them he was going out for a bit. Then he climbed into his car and headed out. Driving down the hill and into the village, although he knew it was ridiculous, he still found himself keeping an eye out for Harry Walters.

A short while later he headed down the A23 towards Brighton, then turned left at the roundabout at the bottom of Mill Hill, and up onto the A27, driving fast, thinking about all the questions he wanted to ask the retired vicar.

He passed the sprawling, tree-lined campus of Sussex University to his left, and glanced ruefully at the stunning superstructure of the Amex football stadium to his right. He’d been a season-ticket holder since it opened, but because of buying the house, and having to cut down on all expenses, he’d had to let that go for this new season. Hopefully, he’d be back before too long. He was already missing the Saturday afternoon gatherings there with his mates.

At the next roundabout he carried on along the Lewes bypass. A few minutes later he drove, on the dual carriageway, down a long hill, with sweeping views of Sussex farmland to the right and the gentle slopes of the South Downs and Firle Beacon in the far distance. Many of the fields, harvested now, were just yellow stubble, with rows of round bales. This was normally one of his favourite Sussex views, but today he was too distracted by his troubled thoughts to appreciate it.

At the roundabout at the bottom of the hill he followed the Reverend Manthorpe’s instructions, turning right almost immediately onto a slip road. He then made a left and pulled up behind an elderly people carrier parked outside a semi-detached Victorian cottage. A small rusted caravan that the retired vicar had told him to look for was propped up on bricks in the driveway.

He rang the doorbell, feeling nervous suddenly, wondering what reaction he was going to get. The old man had invited him over with considerable reluctance in his voice. A dog yapped inside. Moments later the door was opened by a tall man in jeans, battered slippers and a grey cardigan, holding a smouldering pipe in one hand. He had a mane of white hair that flopped over his face, which, although aged, showed that he must have once been strikingly handsome. He was stooped over, holding the collar of an excited Jack Russell in his free hand. ‘Shssshhhh, Jasper!’ he said commandingly to the dog. Then he smiled up at Ollie.

‘Mr Harcourt? Come on in!’

He stepped back, sideways, in the tiny hallway that reeked of tobacco smoke, and the dog jumped up against Ollie’s trouser leg, excitedly wagging its tail.

‘Down, Jasper!’

‘It’s OK, I like dogs,’ Ollie said. ‘He can probably smell our cats.’

‘He’s a little bugger, still trying to train him!’ Manthorpe said, closing the front door. ‘Come on through. Down! Down, Jasper!’

He led Ollie into a cramped, shabby but cosy sitting room, with several logs piled up in an unlit fireplace, a leather couch and two leather armchairs arranged around a wooden chest serving as a coffee table. A large glass ashtray, with a pile of ash, sat on it, and there was a copy of the Daily Telegraph and a local parish magazine beside it.

‘Hope you don’t mind this?’ Manthorpe held up his pipe.

‘Not at all, I love the smell, it reminds me of my grandfather!’

‘Cup of tea? Coffee?’

‘Tea would be great. Builder’s, please, just a touch of milk and no sugar.’

‘Plonk yourself down.’ Manthorpe indicated the sofa.

Ollie settled into it and the dog jumped up beside him and pushed his nose against him. He stroked the animal’s wiry coat while the vicar went out of the room, and looked around. He glanced at a photograph on the mantelpiece of a much younger Manthorpe, in a grey suit and dog collar, arm-in-arm with a pretty, serious-looking, dark-haired woman. On the wall were several framed watercolours of Sussex rural scenes, one very recognizable as the Seven Sisters.

‘My late wife,’ Manthorpe said, coming back into the room some minutes later with a tray on which were two steaming mugs and a plate of digestive biscuits. He set it down on top of the papers. ‘She was a jolly talented painter. Please help yourself.’

Then he sat in an armchair, lounged back, dug a box of matches out of his pocket and relit his pipe. Ollie found the smell of the curling blue smoke took him back to his childhood.

‘It’s very good of you to see me,’ he said.

‘Not at all. To tell you the truth, it’s nice to have company. I’ve been jolly lonely since my wife died.’ He looked at the dog. ‘He seems to have found a friend!’

‘He’s gorgeous,’ Ollie replied, continuing to stroke the animal and struggling to hold him back from his attempts to sniff his crutch.

‘So.’ Manthorpe laid his substantial frame right back in the chair, tilting his head at the ceiling, and drew hard on his pipe. ‘Cold Hill House?’

‘Yes.’

‘Quite an undertaking, I would imagine.’

‘You could say that.’

‘You must have deep pockets.’

‘We’ve only been there a couple of weeks — I’m not sure my pockets are ever going to be deep enough. It’s a serious money pit.’

Manthorpe smiled. ‘Did you ever see that film?’

‘Which film?’

‘The Money Pit. Tom Hanks. It’s very funny.’ He hesitated. ‘But perhaps not to you. Might be a bit off-putting.’ He grinned. ‘So anyway, I don’t imagine you’ve come to touch me for a loan — what can I do for you? You said it was urgent.’ He sucked hard on his pipe again, then blew a perfect smoke ring which rose almost all the way to the ceiling before starting to lose its halo shape.

‘You were in Cold Hill for how long?’

‘Yes — gosh — I spent almost thirty years there. Loved it. Never wanted to be anywhere else.’

‘You’d have known Annie Porter?’

Manthorpe beamed. ‘Annie Porter? What a lovely character!’ He pointed at a tall, very slightly uneven vase, painted with a floral design, on a shelf alongside a row of photographs of three children, and a separate photograph of a golden retriever. ‘My late wife fired that in her kiln. She used to attend Annie’s pottery classes regularly. Annie’s still around is she? Must be knocking on a bit.’

‘She’s in rude health, I’d say.’

‘Remember me to her.’

‘I will indeed.’ Ollie reached for his mug. ‘Do you remember someone else who I think was there during your time: Harry Walters?’

Manthorpe eyed him, wary all of a sudden. ‘Harry Walters? Silver-haired old boy who also smoked a pipe?’

‘That’s him.’

‘I remember him a little. Bit of an oddball — kept himself to himself. He worked up at your place. Poor bugger died in an accident there.’

‘Yes, that’s right, apparently a mechanical digger toppled onto him. What about the O’Hare family? Four of them. They were buried in the churchyard in 1983. Do you remember them?’

‘Yes,’ Manthorpe answered after a short silence. ‘Yes, that was terrible. One of the saddest things I ever had to deal with. Happened not long after I arrived there as the vicar.’

‘What can you tell me about them?’

‘Well, not a lot really, never had time to get to know them.’ He leaned back and drew on his pipe, but it had gone out. He struck another match, sucked hard and blew out another perfect smoke ring. Ollie felt his phone vibrate in his pocket, but ignored it. ‘Johnny O’Hare — if I remember right — was a big shot in the music business. We had the funeral in the church, and requests for songs from artistes he had worked with. Glen Campbell. Diana Ross. Billy J. Kramer. The Dave Clark Five. The Kinks. He was into some area of management — composers or lyricists, something like that.’ The retired vicar’s voice changed, and Ollie could detect something wistful in it. ‘I can tell you, we had a real Who’s Who of rock greats in the church that day. I doubt there’s ever been anything like it before or after. We had Paul McCartney, Ray Davies, Mick Jagger, Lulu — there were police cordons in the village to keep the crowds back.’

‘Amazing!’ Ollie said.

‘Hmmmn, you could say that. I’ll tell you another thing I’ve just remembered. The deceased’s brother — Charlie O’Hare — came to see me a few days before the funeral. He was a little — eccentric might be a polite word for him. He told me his brother had never been much for religion, but he thought it would be nice to have a communion service for the funeral. He said Johnny had always been a bit of a bon viveur and rather than have the traditional communion wine and wafer host, asked me whether we could have champagne and caviar blinis instead — oh, and cigars instead of candles. He wondered if everyone in the church could light up a cigar in his brother’s memory. Apparently he was very fond of cigars.’

Ollie smiled, pensively. Cigars. Did that explain the smell in the attic room? Barker’s sighting?

‘I gave him short shrift, I can tell you!’

‘I’m not surprised.’

‘Do this job for long enough and nothing will surprise you, I can tell you that! Although I’ve forgotten a lot. I told you on the phone that my memory’s not so good these days.’

‘It seems pretty sharp to me,’ Ollie said. ‘So what happened to the O’Hare family? How did they die? It looks as if they all died at the same time — was it a car accident?’

‘Well, of sorts, but not in the conventional sense.’ Manthorpe relit his pipe yet again, from a fresh match. ‘They’d just arrived at the house, pulled up at the front door, when part of the roof and front collapsed on them, crushing them — killing them all instantly.’

Ollie listened in shocked silence. ‘On the day they moved in? They all died?’

‘Yes. I’m afraid the house has had a few tragedies.’ Then he smiled. ‘But don’t be put off. Some of the older folk in the village used to talk a lot of rubbish about the place being cursed or damned. But the reality is any house of that historic age is more than likely to have had its fair share of deaths. The history of the human race doesn’t make happy reading, does it? I’ve seen a lot of sadness during my time, but I’ve seen a lot of things that have kept my faith in God and in humanity alive, too. If there were no bad things in the world, we’d have nothing to measure the good against, would we?’

‘I guess not.’ Ollie sipped his tea.

‘The light can only shine in darkness,’ Manthorpe said. He gave Ollie a quizzical look. ‘Perhaps you and your family will be the light the house needs.’

‘It’s not looking that way at the moment.’

‘Why is that?’

‘I feel we’ve moved into a nightmare.’

Ollie told him everything. From the first day and what he and his mother-in-law had seen in the atrium. Then the spheres he had seen. The young girl and the old woman that Jade had told him about. The episodes with the water. The voices he had heard last night and the bed rotating. And Caro’s confession to him about the woman she had seen several times.

When he had finished, Manthorpe nodded silently, and tapped the embers out of his pipe bowl into the growing pile of grey ash in the ashtray. ‘Oh dear,’ he said finally. ‘Oh dear.’ He looked at Ollie with a dubious expression. ‘Cold Hill House was empty during most of my time there. As I said, there were a lot of rumours about the place — you know, village gossip.’

‘What rumours?’

‘About it being cursed, if you believe in that sort of thing. And there was one particular rumour.’ He shrugged dismissively, produced a tobacco pouch from his pocket and began to refill his pipe. ‘The problem is, Mr Harcourt—’

‘Please call me Ollie.’

He nodded. ‘OK, Ollie, the problem is that in country villages people have time on their hands. Too much of it. They gossip, speculate.’

‘What did they speculate about Cold Hill House?’

‘How much of its history do you know?’

‘So far not much — other than what was in the estate agent’s particulars. Before the O’Hares bought it, the house was owned by a Lord and Lady Rothberg — he was heir to a banking dynasty, apparently. I believe they were there from shortly after the Second World War until they died.’

Manthorpe held his freshly filled pipe in the air. ‘Yes, that was a few years before I came to Cold Hill, but people were still talking about it. A terrible tragedy, but I suppose it was a blessing in the end, after all those years never leaving the house. You have a lake, right?’

‘We do, yes. The one where Harry Walters drowned.’

‘As I heard it, there was a particularly hard winter one year. Lady Rothberg was very fond of animals and she had some quite rare ducks she had bred on the lake. I seem to remember an island in the middle?’

Ollie nodded. ‘We call it Duck Island.’

‘Lady Rothberg trained the ducks to live on the island, to keep them safe from foxes, by putting some kind of duck feed — corn, I think — for them on it. She used to row over to it every few days with a sack of food to top up the supply. One morning the whole lake was frozen over. Instead of rowing she decided the ice was thick enough to walk on. She got halfway across with the sack of feed when the ice gave way and she fell in. Her husband tried to rescue her, and did apparently get the poor woman out, but because of her time underwater, starved of oxygen, she suffered severe brain damage, and spent the rest of her life confined to bed in a room in the house, in a persistent vegetative state. Then to compound the tragedy, the following year, on the day of his fortieth birthday, Lord Rothberg was apparently hosting a shooting party and there was a terrible accident — I believe the young son of a guest accidently discharged both barrels at Lord Rothberg, blowing away most of his face and part of his neck, blinding him and paralysing him.’

‘I’d no idea. How terrible.’ Ollie looked at him in silence for some moments. ‘Has anybody actually lived out their natural lifespan, without tragedy, at Cold Hill House?’

The retired clergyman smiled. ‘Oh, I’m sure plenty of people have. You have to understand, all great houses have their fair share of tragedy, as I said.’

‘This seems to be more than what I’d call a fair share.’

‘You need to put it all in the context of the long history of the place. But yes, there have been quite a number of tragic accidents. Hopefully now they’re over and done with.’

‘That’s what concerns me,’ Ollie said. ‘Which is why I came here to see you. I’m not at all sure they are over and done with. What do you know about the history of the house, before the Second World War?’

‘Well, that’s all very sketchy from what I can recall. The house was requisitioned by the government during the war, and a number of Canadian soldiers were billeted there. Before that, during the early part of the twentieth century, there was a bit of a mystery.’ He sipped his tea. ‘A bit of an odd family, I was told by some local gossip. A husband and wife. Can’t recall their names. She disappeared, apparently. The husband told his friends she’d left him and gone to live with a sister in New Zealand. But rumour had it he had a mistress and had murdered his wife and buried her somewhere in the grounds. The police became involved, but he died before it was ever resolved.’

‘How did he die?’

‘That I really can’t remember. I’m not sure I ever knew. But, actually, that’s reminded me. The very first owner — the chap who had the place built—’ He frowned. ‘Trying to remember his name. Bronwyn — no — Brangwyn. Sir Brangwyn something. Gallops? Bessington? Ah yes, now I remember. Sir Brangwyn De Glossope. There was a bit of a legend about him.’

‘Oh?’

‘Rather a ne’er-do-well. I think he was in the tea- or spice-importing business. He came from a wealthy land-owning family but gambled most of his inheritance away. Well, as I recall, he married a very rich woman — from the aristocracy, or at least landed gentry, and it was her money that paid the bills to have Cold Hill House built.’ He paused to relight his pipe, then blew another huge smoke ring, which rose steadily towards the ceiling, slowly dispersing. The retired vicar watched the ring, as if it was some kind of cloud in which his memory was stored. ‘If I’m recalling the story correctly, this woman was, not to put too fine a point on it, unfortunate-looking, by all accounts. There were rumours that she was what we might today call a medium — a psychic — or a clairvoyant. But back in those days she’d have been regarded as a witch. There was a persistent rumour in Cold Hill village that she put a spell on De Glossope to get him to marry her. Although there was another school of thought that he only married her for her money and had intended from the start to get rid of her as soon as convenient. It wasn’t long after the house was finished that this fellow, Brangwyn, had the whole place closed down for about three years while he went to India and then the Far East on business. When he returned, his wife wasn’t with him. The story he told people was that she had died of a sickness whilst over there.’ He puffed on his pipe again and blew another smoke ring, this one less perfectly formed.

‘And you don’t believe that?’ Ollie asked.

‘We’re talking about something that happened over two hundred and fifty years ago. I have no idea. But there was an old boy in Cold Hill village — he’d be long dead by now — who was a mine of information. He’d unearthed letters and journals and what-have-you from that time, and he used to like sitting in the pub and telling anyone who’d listen that Brangwyn’s wife had not been on the outbound ship with him. That he’d left her behind in the house.’

‘In the closed-up house?’

Manthorpe shrugged. ‘Or buried her somewhere in the grounds. I don’t think they had quite the calibre of detection work we have today. If it’s true, he went away for long enough, came home, opened up the house and started life over again with a new bride. Rumour had it, apparently, that his wife’s spirit was pretty angry.’

‘Understandably!’

Manthorpe gave a wry smile. ‘And that she didn’t like people leaving the house.’

‘Yep, well, it’s a big place to be on your own.’ He smiled, but the vicar looked miles away and did not smile back.

‘So she put a curse on the place?’ Ollie prompted.

‘Yes, that was the story I heard. And her occult powers gave her the ability to do this.’ He smiled as if he himself did not believe it.

‘No one’s ever tried to find the body?’ Ollie asked.

‘It’s a huge property as you know, acres of land. And besides, it’s just a rumour.’

Ollie glanced at his watch. He was going to have to leave in a few minutes, to collect Jade. ‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘You’ve been incredibly helpful.’

‘Come and see me again sometime. You’re a nice chap. Don’t be put off by all that’s happened. Remember what I said, the light can only shine in darkness.’

‘I’ll remember that, thank you,’ Ollie said.

‘I’ll give you a bit of advice though — I’ll tell you what I think you should do — I’d have done it myself for you if I’d been a younger man, but I’m too old now.’

Five minutes later, as Ollie drove away, the old clergyman stood by the front door, holding his dog and giving him a strange look that unsettled him.

It was the look of an old man who was seeing something — or someone — for what he knew might be the last time.

It made Ollie shiver.

Manthorpe closed the front door feeling deeply shaken. He needed to make an important phone call, and urgently. He looked around and remembered he had left the handset up in his den on the first floor.

The conversation of the past hour with the decent young man had confirmed so much that he already feared. The Harcourts needed help, and he knew the right person to speak to. He began to climb the narrow stairs, his knees aching, his heart pounding. He was out of breath before he’d reached halfway. Soon he was going to have to find the money for one of those stairlift things. Or else move.

With one step to go to the top, a shadow suddenly crossed in front of him, and stopped.

The old man halted in his tracks and stared up. He wasn’t afraid, just angry. Very angry. ‘What the hell do you want?’ he said.