Peter James - The House on Cold Hill

‘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.