The House on Cold Hill (6 page)

The old man gave him a penetrating stare. ‘I’m going back some years now – I worked for Sir Henry and Lady Rothberg, when they owned this place, when I was a young man. Bankers they were. I were one of the gardeners. One day they asked me if I could do a bit of caretaking for them while they were abroad. They used to have live-in staff and that, but Sir Henry lost a lot of money and had to let them all go.’ He hesitated. ‘That room they called the
atrium
, that still there?’

‘The oak-panelled room with the two columns? The one you go through before the kitchen?’

‘That used to be the chapel when it was a monastery, back in the Middle Ages – before most of the house, as it is today, was built.’

‘Really? I didn’t know that,’ Ollie said. ‘I didn’t know there was anything remaining of the monastery.’

‘Sir Henry and Lady Rothberg used it as a kind of snug – because it was next to the kitchen, it were always cosy in winter from the heat from the oven, and it were cheaper than heating the bigger rooms in the house just for the two of them.’

‘They had no children?’

‘None that survived childhood, no.’

‘How sad.’

The old man did not react. He went on, ‘They were going away for a few days and asked me to house-sit for them, to look after the dogs and that. They had a couple of them old-fashioned wing-back chair things in there. On the Sunday night I was sitting listening to the radio, and the two dogs, in the kitchen, began growling. Wasn’t a normal sound, it was really eerie, set me off shivering. I can still hear it, that sound, all these years on. They came out into the atrium, their fur standing on end. Then suddenly they both began backing away, and I saw her.’

‘Her?’

‘The
lady
.’ The old man nodded.

‘What did she look like? What did she do?’

‘She was an old lady, with a horrible expression on her face, all dressed in blue silk crinoline, or something like that, and yellow shoes. She came out of the wall, walked towards me, flicked me in the face so hard with her fan it stung my cheek, and left a mark, and vanished into the wall behind me.’

Ollie shivered, eyeing the man carefully. ‘Bloody hell. What happened then?’

‘Oh, I didn’t hang around. I took off. Just grabbed my things as fast as I could and left. I phoned Mr Rothberg, told him I was sorry, but I couldn’t stay there no more.’

‘Did he ask you why not?’

‘Oh, he did, and I told him.’

‘What did he say?’

‘He weren’t very happy. But he said I wasn’t the first to have seen her, the lady. I found that out for myself.’

‘What – did you find out?’

‘Well . . .’ the old man stopped and pursed his lips, then he shook his head. For the first time, Ollie saw fear in his eyes. ‘Like I said – it’s not my place to frighten you. Not my place.’ He began walking on.

Ollie hurried after him for a few paces. ‘Please tell me a bit more about her?’

The old man shook his head, continuing to walk. Without turning his head, he added, ‘I’ve said enough. I’ve said quite enough. Except for one thing. Ask about the digger.’

‘Digger?’

‘Ask someone about the mechanical digger.’

‘What’s your name?’ Ollie called out.

But, shaking his head, the old man carried on.

8

Tuesday, 8 September

Ollie stood still and watched the strange character walk on up the lane. He wasn’t sure if it was his imagination, but the old man seemed to quicken his pace as he passed the entrance gates to Cold Hill House, slowing down again on the far side.

Digger?
What the hell did he mean,
Ask someone about the mechanical digger?

He felt disturbed by the encounter, and determined to press the old man for more information. There would be other opportunities, he decided. He’d bump into him again, or perhaps he’d find him one evening in the pub and buy him a pint or two, and get him to loosen up.

He walked on, further than he had intended, right down into the village, with the hope he might meet the old man again when he went back up to the house, and entered the small, cluttered shop with faded, old-fashioned sign-writing across the lintel proclaiming C
OLD
H
ILL
V
ILLAGE
S
TORES
. It smelled of freshly baked bread, which masked the dry, slightly musty smell that reminded him of ironmongers’ stores. The elderly proprietor and his wife seemed to know all about him already. Clearly the new occupants of Cold Hill House were a major source of village gossip.

He discovered to his delight that they would do a daily newspaper delivery. He gave a list of the papers and magazines he and Caro wanted:
The Times
,
Mail
, the
Argus
, the weekly
Brighton and Hove Independent
, the
Mid-Sussex Times
and the monthly
Motor Sport
,
Classic Cars
and
Sussex Life
magazines. He bought a homemade lemon drizzle cake and a loaf of locally made wholemeal bread, then went back out into the sunshine.

He looked up the hill, trying to spot the old man. A tiny woman in a Nissan Micra was coming down towards him, the top of her head barely visible above the dashboard, with a green van impatiently tailgating her. As he headed back up the hill, he was deep in troubled thought. Was the old man a nutter? He didn’t think so. The fear in his eyes had seemed very genuine.

Should he tell Caro?

But what good would that do? Frighten her into imagining something that might not be there? He would wait, he decided. His thoughts returned to the website for Charles Cholmondley Classic Motors. One of the most expensive cars on the list that he’d had to provide copy for was a stunningly fine 1924 Rolls-Royce Silver Ghost Canterbury Landaulette, priced at £198,000, a black sedan with whitewall tyres, and an open roof above the driver’s cab, and a complete ownership history.
Ghost
, how very appropriate, he thought with a grin. As he reached the front gates of the house, he stood and waited for some moments, looking up the hill again for any sign of the old man heading back down. But there was none.

He walked up the drive. As he approached the house his spirits lifted once more. The warm sunshine beat down on him, and his T-shirt stuck to his back with perspiration. Then, suddenly, looking up at the sun, high in the sky, he stopped and thought hard.

Thought back to the pinpricks of light he had seen in the atrium.

He had dismissed them as either reflections of the sunlight through the windowpanes in the rear door, or symptoms of an approaching migraine. But the rear of the house faced north and, he now realized, however high the sun was as it traversed from east to west across the sky, it would not shine in through that rear door.

Which made it impossible for those spheres he had seen to have been reflections of sunlight. So it must have been a migraine.

9

Sunday, 13 September

On this weekend, every year, Ollie would normally be watching the classic and historic car racing at the Goodwood Revival meeting, his favourite motoring event of the year. But right now, instead of wandering around the famous motor-racing circuit, dressed in vintage clothing, ogling the millions of pounds’ worth of fabulous cars, and watching the racing with some of his mates, he stood in the early-morning sunshine in a sodden T-shirt, Lycra shorts and cycling shoes, staring down at a dead frog floating in a puddle at the bottom of the empty swimming pool.

There were already a lot of changes to their lifestyle due to this huge commitment they had taken on with the house, but just over a week after moving here he was loving the challenge and not regretting it for a moment.

‘Breakfast, darling!’ Caro called out.

‘OK – just need to have a quick shower!’

He’d completed a fifteen-mile bike ride, exploring some of the surrounding lanes, and was feeling exhilarated and happy, although a lot more tired by the ride than he would normally have been, he thought. Perhaps because he’d had no rest so far this weekend. Yesterday he’d taken a few hours out from helping Caro to move furniture, unpack and unwrap their best crockery and glasses, hang paintings, and pore over paint charts and wallpaper and fabric swatches, to drive across West Sussex to the Goodwood race meeting.

But it was a short visit, principally to see his client, Charles Cholmondley, and photograph his stand at the Revival meeting to add to the website, but he’d also wanted to visit the other classic car companies which had stands and put his business card around. He was going to need to generate a lot of business to earn enough to get this place into shape. Caro’s income would cover the hefty mortgage and additional bank loan interest payment, but he was going to have to start earning serious money again to pay for the renovations. It was only after living here for the past week that he’d started to realize the full enormity of their undertaking. Everything was in even worse condition than they had realized, and the pool was just a tiny part of it. Despite that, he still loved it here.

The pool was surrounded by a collapsing wooden safety fence, and tiles had fallen in big chunks off the sides of it. The large pool house, close by, was so rotten he could push his finger right through parts of its walls.

A man from the pool company had been to survey it, and confirmed just what a poor state of repair it was in. Many of the remaining tiles were loose, and there were deep cracks in the walls. The heating and filtration system were archaic, and had not been used for decades. Just about everything would need replacing. Pool parties looked like a very distant dream. Right now he was even reluctant to pay the cost of having the Range Rover’s busted wing mirror repaired.

He turned and gazed at the rear of the house. It was quite different this side from the elegant Georgian facade. It was more stark and institutional-looking, and cluttered on one side with the old stable block, part of which had been converted into the garages, outbuildings and two storage sheds. One housed the lawn tractor, strimmer, hedge-cutter, chainsaw and other garden maintenance equipment they’d had to buy, the other was filled with rolls of rusting chicken wire and a large stack of logs that looked, mostly, infested with woodworm.

He stared at the windows, trying to work out which belonged to which room. The downstairs at least was fairly straightforward with the kitchen and scullery windows, the door leading out from the atrium, then the twin sash windows of the dining room. The upstairs, with its different levels, was harder to figure out.

Twenty minutes later, showered and dressed in jeans and a fresh T-shirt, he had a quick breakfast of cereal and fruit, glanced through the Sunday papers, then helped Caro to lay the table. She had a girlfriend popping over to see the house this morning, then the in-laws were coming to lunch.

‘Try and get Jade up,’ she asked him. ‘I’ve tried to wake her twice already.’

Despite the fact that he’d driven their daughter into Brighton yesterday morning and let her stay with Phoebe until 10 p.m., she’d thrown a strop in the car on the way home because she was going to have to stay in and have lunch with, as she called them,
the old people
, instead of being able to go back into Brighton and spend Sunday with her boyfriend, Ruari, and her other best friends, Olivia and Lara.

Ollie went into her bedroom, opened the curtains, and pulled back her duvet. Bombay was asleep, curled up beside her.

‘Dad!’ she protested.

‘Your mother needs help. Up!’ he said.

The cat eyed him warily.

Jade lay in her pyjamas and looked up at him with her large blue eyes. ‘Did you mean what you said about getting a dog? A labradoodle?’

‘Yes, darling, I did. I think a labradoodle would be great!’

‘Olivia’s getting a Schnauzer next week. And guess what, I’ve found a labradoodle breeder in Cowfold that’s expecting a litter next month!’ she said.

‘OK, we’ll go and have a look after they’re born.’

Jade suddenly cheered up. ‘Great! Promise?’

‘I promise! So long as you promise to look after the dog. Deal?’

‘Deal! Can we get an alpaca of our own, too?’

‘Shall we get a dog first? There are enough alpacas out in the field!’

‘OK.’

Ollie then climbed up to his office to work on the final revisions of the classic car website. He had promised Cholmondley yesterday that he would send the amended test site to him by the middle of the week for final approval.

As he sat in front of his computer, tantalizing smells of roasting beef wafted up. Two hours later, at 12.30, he heard the sound of a car, and peered down from the window overlooking the drive. His in-laws’ maroon Volvo was pulling up beside his Range Rover and Caro’s Golf. Moments later he heard the doorbell.

Normally he would have waited until Caro called him, but today he was on a mission. As the doorbell rang, he logged off, then hurried downstairs, just in time to join Caro in greeting the sweet pair of oddballs and lead them through into the drawing room.

His father-in-law, Dennis, was dressed as usual in a tweedy three-piece suit. His only concession to the heatwave was to have the top button of his Vyella shirt open and to sport a paisley cravat instead of a tie. His mother-in-law, Pamela, wore a white lace-trimmed blouse and a floral confection of a skirt, with pink Crocs.

‘So, it’s still standing, eh!’ Dennis said with a smile, looking up and around him. ‘And you’ve made up your mind to buy it, then?’

‘They have bought it, Dennis,’ his wife reminded him. ‘We helped them move in last week.’

Dennis frowned, looking bewildered. ‘Ah, right, if you say so, dear.’

‘You’ve done wonders with this room,’ Pamela said, enthusiastically. ‘What a transformation!’

‘It’s coming along, isn’t it?’ Caro said.

‘G and T, Pamela?’ Ollie asked his mother-in-law.

‘I’ll pass on the G and just have the T, thank you.’

‘A snifter before lunch?’ he asked his father-in-law.