The Secret of Cold Hill

by Peter James

  Orlebar now produced a silver censer, hung from chains and containing charcoal, which he lit. Grey smoke curled from the thurible, rapidly filling the kitchen with the pungent smell of incense. He lifted the censer up and walked around the room, shaking the smoke in every direction, chanting quietly, as Jason and Emily, still seated, watched in silence.

  As he returned to the table, Skeet gestured with his hands for them to stand.

  They did as they were bidden. The two clergymen stood on the other side of the table, behind the sacraments, and both closed their eyes, praying silently. Then, in unison, they opened their eyes again and looked at Jason and Emily.

  Skeet began the communion. Almost simultaneously, they all heard, loud and clear, the ceiling shaking, and the sounds of footsteps again.

  Stomp. Stomp. Stomp. Stomp. Stomp.

  Orlebar continued, ignoring the sound.

  Stomp. Stomp. Stomp. Stomp. Stomp.

  Skeet took over again.

  The stomping grew louder, angrier.

  Jason and Emily stared rigidly ahead at the two men, not daring to glance at each other.

  Like a pair of well-rehearsed musicians, Orlebar took over again.

  The stomping above reached fever pitch. It sounded as if, at any minute, the ceiling would come crashing down.

  Skeet continued for some moments, then Orlebar again took over, praying loudly and clearly. Finally the stomping stopped.

  Orlebar said, pointedly, to Jason and Emily, ‘The peace of the Lord be always with you.’

  Skeet mouthed the response to the couple.

  In staggered unison they replied, uncertainly, ‘And also with you.’

  The prayers continued for some minutes, culminating in the Lord’s Prayer.

  Skeet and Orlebar then took communion. When they had finished their dissolving of the wafers in their mouths, and their sips of wine, Skeet nodded at Orlebar, who tried to continue with the service.

  The stomping began again, even louder, drowning his voice out.

  Skeet gestured for the Daneses to step forward.

  Jason and Emily took communion in turn, then stepped back a couple of paces. As they did so, Jason noticed both clergymen were staring past them, transfixed, with very strange expressions. They made Jason deeply uncomfortable.

  He and Emily turned.

  Caroline Harcourt was standing right behind them.

  61

  Wednesday 19 December

  The woman looked so solid, and so close, Jason could have reached out and touched her. She was as he had seen her before, with short, dark hair, power-dressed in a black suit, white blouse and court shoes, and staring him, levelly, in the eye. Neither friendly nor hostile.

  Jason felt the hairs on his neck rising and the same icy wind as before seemed to be radiating from her.

  He glanced at Emily. She looked rooted to the spot, her face white with terror.

  For an instant it felt like time had stopped. As if the pause button had been hit on a movie. Jason desperately wanted to say something, but he could not open his mouth. Could not move a limb. He was struggling to breathe. It seemed as if all the oxygen had been sucked from the room.

  ‘You may go now,’ Orlebar said in his rich, confident voice.

  Caroline Harcourt smiled, wryly, in a kind of acknowledgement.

  An instant later, as if he was looking at a conjuring trick, Jason saw the woman begin to dissolve in front of his eyes. All the colour bleached out into monochrome. It continued fading, steadily, until there was only a silhouette, formed by a human-shaped cluster of tiny lights.

  Then, like grains of sand in an hourglass pouring away, the lights steadily slipped away into the floor.

  Within seconds they were gone.

  The stomping above them had stopped, Jason realized.

  The house felt, suddenly, quite different. Calm. As if some energy that had been there was now dispersed.

  He looked at Emily and could see she felt the same thing. The tiniest twitch of a nervous smile on her lips.

  Liberated.

  They all sat down. Skeet and Orlebar looked shattered.

  ‘You saw her?’ Skeet asked.

  Both of them nodded.

  ‘She needed to cross over,’ Orlebar said. ‘I think she was trying to attract attention – that’s what all the problems you’ve been experiencing were about. I don’t think you’ll have any more disturbances now.’

  ‘That was . . .’ Emily began, then shook her head. ‘I – did I – what did I see?’

  ‘You will be fine now,’ Skeet said.

  The two clergymen began packing up.

  Jason stood up. ‘We’re very grateful to you.’

  ‘Let’s hope that’s the end of it for you both,’ Orlebar smiled. ‘And now you can enjoy your new home and have a wonderful Christmas.’

  She and Jason stood on the doorstep, watching them return to their funny little car that looked like a panel van and drive off.

  ‘I should have taken a photograph of them,’ he said. ‘They’d make a great painting!’

  ‘Beavis and Butthead?’

  He grinned. As they went back inside and shut and bolted the front door he looked, warily, up at the ceiling.

  ‘So?’ Emily said. ‘What do you think?’

  ‘I think I need a large drink.’

  ‘Me too – a very large one.’

  Walking back into the kitchen, Jason said, ‘That was weird. Weird! Freaky deaky weird.’

  Emily opened the fridge and took out a bottle of white wine. ‘What was it that Orlebar, said – about historical activity, unrested souls. Negative energy? What were those footsteps about?’

  ‘The power of suggestion?’ he ventured.

  ‘Those footsteps weren’t power of suggestion. They were real. We both heard them.’

  ‘Or imagined we heard them?’

  ‘We heard them,’ she said, plainly. ‘You know we did.’

  He twisted the screw-top cap off the bottle. ‘I don’t know what the cops thought last night.’

  ‘I do,’ she said. ‘They thought we were a couple of loons.’

  ‘Shit!’ he said, suddenly. ‘Shit, shit, shit!’

  ‘What?’ she looked at him, concerned.

  ‘My fucking brain is all scrambled. I’ve got the paintings in my car – I was going to deliver them to my clients on the way home. I got so distracted by the Bishop I forgot.’

  ‘It’s Thursday tomorrow; still five days to Christmas. Your clients can wait until tomorrow, can’t they? Don’t take them tonight. Have a drink and relax.’

  He nodded.

  ‘Maybe don’t leave them in the car overnight, though.’

  ‘I’ll go and get them; I don’t want to risk the car being broken into or stolen during the night.’

  ‘By our ghosts?’

  He put the bottle down, grabbed his car keys and went outside into the darkness. All the Christmas lights, and it seemed more than before, were blazing again outside the Penze-Weedells’ house. He didn’t look long enough to see if there were any faces in the windows; he was too concerned about his paintings.

  He popped the boot lid of his BMW, raised it and peered inside.

  And felt a sudden, terrible, sick feeling of panic.

  The boot was empty.

  62

  Wednesday 19 December

  ‘No. No, oh God, NO.’

  Jason stared in abject horror into the empty space. At the tartan rug lying there.

  Was this nightmare ever going to end?

  Gone.

  The painting and the sketch both gone. Stolen. How was he going to tell his clients?

  Then he remembered something, and suddenly his hopes rose.

  Idiot!

  He lifted a corner of the rug and relief instantly flooded through him. The two pictures lay there, sealed and wrapped in brown paper over layers of bubble wrap, as David had presented them to him this morning.

  He closed his eyes in relief.

&
nbsp; He was really in a state, he realized, lifting the first picture out and propping it against the side of the car. As he lifted up the second one, he saw the book the librarian had lent him, which he had completely forgotten about.

  Sussex Mysteries by Martin Pemberton.

  He picked it up, closed the boot and locked the car again, carried the book and the pictures back into the house and laid them on the kitchen table.

  ‘What’s that book?’ Emily asked, looking up from slicing a beetroot.

  ‘Something the librarian lent me – it has a mention of the history of Cold Hill village, apparently.’

  ‘Interesting. Did David do a good job on the framing?’

  ‘Actually, I never checked. He gave them to me like this – he was in a rush, trying to get everything done before he went off.’

  ‘Don’t you think you’d better take a look?’

  ‘I wasn’t going to – I trust his work completely.’

  ‘It’s when people are in a rush that they make mistakes.’

  ‘Not David. We’ve worked together for too long.’

  She gave him a quizzical look. ‘These are both important clients, darling, isn’t it worth checking? Anyhow, I’d like to see them – you never showed them to me when they were finished.’

  He shrugged. ‘OK.’ Removing a serrated knife from a drawer, he slit open the tape of the first one, very carefully, and slowly slid out the gesso board. ‘This is the painting of the labradoodles, and . . .’

  His voice tailed off as he pulled the board out further.

  Further still.

  ‘What the . . .?’ he said.

  Emily stepped over to him. He slid the board completely out of its packaging.

  To see there was nothing on it.

  Both of them stared in disbelief.

  It was blank. A beautifully framed, blank gesso board.

  Jason shook his head, bewildered and close to tears. ‘What – what’s this?’ he said. ‘What’s he done?’ He turned it over, as if hoping, miraculously, his painting would appear on the reverse. But there was nothing except the framer’s label. ‘It’s not possible,’ he said. ‘It’s not— What has the idiot done? What’s he done? Has he gone fucking mad?’

  ‘Maybe they’re both in the other one?’ Emily ventured, lamely.

  With a sick feeling in the pit of his stomach, he slit the second package open. Then he teased out the single board inside, slowly, fearfully, as Emily watched. With his eyes closed, he pulled the board free of its container and held it up.

  There was panic in his voice. ‘Em, tell me there’s a painting on it. Tell me, for God’s sake, tell me.’

  Emily said nothing. She stared at it. She didn’t know what to say.

  The board was just as perfectly framed. And just as blank.

  63

  Wednesday 19 December

  Jason grabbed the glass of wine Emily had poured and downed half of it in one gulp.

  ‘Can you get hold of David?’ she said.

  ‘Yeah, right,’ he said, sarcastically. ‘He’s up in the Highlands. I’ll just go and ring Charleston Guest House in Gairloch, where he stays every year for Hogmanay. I’m sure he’ll be delighted to fly straight back here,’ he said. ‘He doesn’t even have a mobile signal up there.’

  ‘It’s not funny, Jason.’

  ‘No? You don’t think so? I think it’s hysterical.’

  ‘Let’s not row.’

  ‘I’m not rowing. I’m – I’m just . . .’ He looked at the blank boards again, focusing on them as if it was some kind of optical illusion, and all he had to do was look at them for long enough, the right way, and the images of the dogs would magically appear. ‘Tell me you can see the labradoodles and the spaniel. Tell me you can, please tell me you can.’

  ‘Darling, calm down.’

  ‘I. AM. FUCKING. CALM.’ His voice rose with every word.

  They stared at each other in silence, then Jason sat down and buried his face in his hands.

  ‘How could he have done this? Let me down like this?’ he asked.

  ‘Maybe he didn’t, what if he put the pictures in, and something happened?’

  ‘Like, the ghosts wiped them, Em?’ he said, sarcastically.

  ‘You have a better idea?’

  ‘Yes, he screwed up. His brain was in holiday mode, he was thinking of kayaks, langoustines and a drop of malt, he just screwed up, big time. Leaving me up to my neck in the brown stuff. Two important clients, both expecting me to deliver big Christmas presents for their wives, who are never going to commission another work from me again. Nor will any of their friends. Nor their friends’ friends. This is an unbelievable disaster.’

  She shook her head. ‘No, it’s not a disaster. I’ve had stuff go wrong in catering before. You just have to deal with it.’

  ‘Fine? How do I deal with this?’

  ‘You take a deep breath, go back up to your studio with the two blank boards and you paint the labradoodles on one and sketch the King Charles on the other. So, OK, they’re framed, work around it. Get over it. You can do it.’

  He stared down at the boards, shaking his head. ‘I did such a good job.’

  ‘So, replicate it. You still have a few days – even Christmas Eve, at a pinch,’ she said. Then she visibly brightened. ‘And here’s the silver lining!’

  ‘There’s a silver lining?’

  ‘You do the pictures again and deliver them. Then, when David returns you have two pictures waiting for you in his studio, and you can use them in your exhibition – it will be two pictures less you have to do!’

  He downed the rest of his glass. ‘Yup, that’s a possibility. Screw David, I’ll bloody do it.’

  ‘Of course you will!’ She went over to the fridge, pulled out the bottle and topped him up. ‘Relax tonight, we’ve both had enough stress for one day. I’ll make a nice dinner and we can watch something on telly. You can start over in the morning.’

  He raised his glass, feeling massively relieved. ‘I’ll drink to that.’

  They clinked glasses.

  ‘I couldn’t believe what I saw,’ she said. ‘That woman behind us, she was so real. She was like a hologram. So real I felt I could reach out and touch her.’ Emily shivered.

  ‘When it – she – smiled, that was so weird, Em. Do you think she has gone?’

  ‘What do you think?’ she asked.

  ‘The house feels – maybe – lighter.’

  ‘It does,’ she said.

  ‘They were really strange, those two.’

  ‘Beavis and Butthead?’

  He smiled.

  ‘What do you really think?’ she said. ‘Was it real, or some kind of conjuring trick? Some very clever illusion performed by them?’

  ‘No way. But, honestly? I don’t know what to think. I keep going back to that old movie, The Matrix. With all that’s been going on since we moved here, it feels like we’re living in some kind of simulated reality.’

  ‘But the house does feel lighter, doesn’t it? They did something, didn’t they?’ Emily insisted.

  He tapped his head. ‘Something psychological to us?’

  ‘Or they really cleared away something negative?’

  ‘I don’t know. I’m not sure what I believe any more.’

  She reached forward and picked up Sussex Mysteries. ‘This has something on Cold Hill village in it?’

  ‘That’s what the librarian said. Hey, I didn’t tell you, she’s a massive fan – she and her husband have two of my pictures!’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘And the Bishop – he had two in his office!’

  ‘You’re kidding? You didn’t tell me.’

  ‘Nope, I am not kidding.’

  ‘The Bishop had your paintings in his office?’

  ‘He really did.’

  ‘Amazing, I love it. You see, it’s happening, darling, your career is really taking off, and you so deserve it!’

  ‘Well, let’s see how the next exhibition goes
– if I ever get all the paintings done in time.’

  ‘You will.’

  Emily began leafing through the book as Jason drank some more wine. ‘Shit, what a day. Maybe we’ve made a huge mistake, moving here. We were happy back in Brighton.’ He stood and walked over to the sink.

  ‘We were, but we both had the dream of living in the country, OK?’ She continued turning page after page. ‘Don’t forget that. We are going to be happy here.’

  He ran the taps, then soaped his hands and began washing them. The act of doing it calmed him. He rinsed the soap off and repeated the process. ‘I feel it’s my fault; I was the one who originally suggested it, this move.’

  ‘What was it you said, about love meaning you never have to say sorry?’

  ‘Touché.’

  She stopped, suddenly, at a page. ‘Got it!’ she said.

  ‘Got what?’

  She raised a hand. ‘Gimme a second.’

  He rinsed his hands, then soaped them again.

  She read, avidly, the brief entry. When she had finished, she looked up at her husband. ‘This is really interesting.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Do you remember the estate agent telling us this house – this whole part of the development – is built on the footprint of the original mansion, Cold Hill House?’

  He nodded, soaping his hands yet again. ‘Sort of, vaguely.’

  ‘There’s a piece here on the old place!’ She began to read aloud.

  ‘Cold Hill House was built to the order of Sir Brangwyn De Glossope, on the site of monastic ruins, during the 1750s. His first wife, Matilda, daughter and heiress from the rich Sussex landowning family, the Warre-Spences, disappeared, childless, a year after they moved into the property. It was her money that had funded the building of the house – De Glossope being near penniless at the time of their marriage.’

  ‘Interesting,’ he said.

  She went on. ‘It was rumoured that De Glossope murdered her and disposed of her body, to free him to travel abroad with his mistress, Evelyne Tyler, a former housemaid in their previous home, who bore him three children, each of whom died in infancy. Evelyne subsequently fell to her death from the roof of the house. Did she fall or was she pushed? We’ll never know. De Glossope was trampled to death by his own horse only weeks after.’