Peter James: The House on Cold Hill

Had her husband done this to her? Used her money, manacled her to this wall, then bricked in the entrance and left her to die and rot, while he went gallivanting off across the world with his mistress?

Was this the reason why Sir Brangwyn De Glossope had shut the house down for three years? To give time for the stench of her decomposing body to fade? To give time for the rats to feast on her and conveniently dispose of her remains?

Was it her ghost, or spirit, or whatever it was, that was so angry, and causing all the problems here? Had she cursed this place?

He felt the sensation of an electric current running through him again. His skin felt as if it were being pinched in, then released, again and again. He sensed the presence of someone behind him, and spun round. Stared at the empty room. Felt someone grinning at him. He staggered away from the hole, reeling with shock. Jesus , he thought. Jesus. This had been in the house with them all the time.

What the hell was he going to say to Caro? How on earth could he tell her this?

Hopefully, in less than two hours, when the clergymen arrived, they would find out just what was really going on here.

He should call the police, he knew, but after their last visit, that worried him.

He went out onto the landing and slammed the door shut, then stood there for some moments, trembling. Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit.

He went down into the kitchen, sat at the refectory table and shaking uncontrollably, began flicking through the glossy pages of Sussex Life magazine, which must have arrived with the morning’s papers, to try to calm himself down.

He looked at some pages of estate agency particulars of grand country houses — each one described with estate agency hyperbole. Descriptions that could apply to Cold Hill House.

A very well-presented period property in need of some modernization.

A beautiful, detached family house on the periphery of a village in stunning countryside.

A spectacular country home, boasting a wealth of exposed timbers.

A striking Georgian manor.

Did they all have ghosts, too?

Spectral residents on a mission to screw up the lives of their occupants?

A shadow moved in front of him.

He looked up, startled. Then his eyes widened in relief. It was Caro.

‘Darling!’ he said, jumping up. ‘You’re home early!’

‘Didn’t you get my message?’

‘Message?’

‘I phoned you back but you didn’t answer. And I texted you. My last client of the day cancelled, so I thought I’d come home early.’ She gave him a vulnerable smile. ‘You know, get ready for our visitors. Tidy up a bit, get some nice biscuits out. So how did your meeting go?’

‘Yes, OK,’ he said.

‘Worth the journey?’

‘Apart from coming back with car-envy. You should see his showroom — it’s incredible. I was drooling at some of the cars in there.’

‘I’m afraid you’re going to have to keep drooling for a while yet. How’s everything here?’

‘Oh, you know, fine.’ He was thinking how to break the news about the skeleton upstairs — without totally freaking her out.

‘I’ll go up and see Jade — how was her day at school?’

‘OK. But not very happy with her music teacher today.’

‘I thought she really liked him.’

‘So did I.’

Caro paused for a moment, then she said, ‘So where are we going to meet Mr Ghostbuster and his mate? In here or in the drawing room?’

‘I think in here,’ Ollie replied. ‘It’s warmer for a start — unless you want me to light a fire?’

‘Here’s fine,’ she said. Then she peered at him. ‘You’re covered in dust — what have you been doing?’

‘Oh — I was down in the basement earlier with the builders,’ he said.

‘Are you feeling OK, Ols?’

‘OK?’

‘Yes.’

‘I’m fine.’

‘You don’t look OK.’

Nor would you if you’d just hacked through a wall and found a manacled skeleton , he nearly said. Instead he replied, ‘I’m just looking forward to these guys coming. I’ve got a good feeling about them.’ He was thinking that perhaps he could use them to help soften the shock of the skeleton to Caro.

‘I wish I shared your optimism,’ she said bleakly. ‘I don’t have a good feeling about anything at this moment. I’m going to change. I think you should too, you look like you’ve just come off a building site.’

‘I have!’

‘Yes, well, I think it might be respectful to look a little smarter, OK?’

‘It’s all going to be fine, darling. It will be.’

Caro said nothing for some moments then she said, ‘I don’t think we should stay here for a bit, Ols. Mum said we could stay there until the damp and stuff is sorted. Why don’t we do that? We can’t go on like this here.’

Ollie had memories of staying with his in-laws for several months, five years ago, while renovation work was happening to their Carlisle Road house. After about three days he had been ready to murder his father-in-law and after five days his mother-in-law, too.

‘Things are being sorted, Caro.’

‘Good, well, when they are sorted, we can move back in.’

‘I need to be here on site to manage all the workmen.’

‘Fine, you can commute. We can stay in Mum and Dad’s basement — Jade can have her own room. At least we’ll be safe — and dry.’

And insane , Ollie thought. ‘Shall we see how we feel after the vicar and the minister have been?’

‘OK,’ she said, reluctantly. ‘But I’m not totally convinced. They might be able to clear ghosts, but I doubt they’ll know much about putting in damp-proof courses and stopping wallpaper from falling down.’

‘Well, if God can part the Red Sea, I wouldn’t have thought a spot of damp would cause Him too much of a problem,’ Ollie said and grinned.

She gave a faint smile. ‘Let’s see.’

Feeling a little more confident with Caro home, Ollie went upstairs, washed the dust off his face and brushed it out of his hair, and changed into clean clothes. Then he went up to his office to deal with his emails until the two clergymen turned up — they were due in an hour and a half. He sat down at his computer and logged on, worried about what he was going to find next.

Suddenly his iPhone pinged with a text message. He looked down and saw the words:

And, as before, a second later the words vanished.

Ollie sat and stared at his phone, where moments earlier the message had been, in desperation.

Yes, Fortinbrass and the minister were on their way and they were going to clear the shit out of this place. But how the hell did whoever was doing this know? He was aware hackers could access phones as well as computers — was that the source of this and all the previous taunts?

Desperate for them to arrive, and feeling powerless, he attempted to turn his focus back to the urgent task of sending apologetic, damage-limitation emails out to all the other classic car dealers to whom the unfortunate Cholmondley email had also been copied. After that he sent a holding response to a query from a criminal law firm in Brighton who were looking for a new website design — the recommendation had come via one of Caro’s partners in her firm. He couldn’t deal with it properly now, his mind was all over the place, and his hands were shaking so much he was struggling to type.

Shortly after 6.00 p.m. Ollie heard a deep metallic boom, some distance away, like two giant dustbins that had been swung into each other. Then, after another quarter of an hour, he was again distracted from his emails by another sound, this time the wail of a siren in the far distance. When they had lived in Brighton these sounds were part of the ambient noise of the city. But out here, they were rare.