The Secret of Crickley Hall (38 page)

He skimmed through the story:
Seraphina, 12, and Quentin Blaney, 14, while visiting—
visiting?—
an old manor house called Crickley Hall, near the harbour village of Hollow Bay, had been confronted by the ghost of a nude man
…
house flooded, water everywhere
…
another ghost in the cellar
…
hadn't seen this one clearly but knew it was there
… Gabe remembered last night and the fear he'd felt himself because he thought there was something there in the cellar with him, out of sight in the shadows of the room next door. In the light of day he had questioned his own susceptibility, wondering if the noises he'd heard had merely whipped up his own imagination, causing him to
think
he was not alone. But then, he
had
followed the mist from upstairs, the thing he called the 'white shadow', so what was that all about?

Celia Trevellick was still ranting at him—something about letting the dead rest in peace, ruining someone's good name with outrageous rumours, pandering to the press with wicked lies—but he wasn't taking it in. He read on:
Mrs Eve Caleigh and her husband Gabriel
…
currently renting the property
…
neither confirmed nor denied reports that Crickley Hall is haunted
…
police called to investigate disturbances
…
two young daughters Laura and Kaley
… Surely Eve hadn't told the paper all this?

'Are you listening to me, Mr Caleigh?' The vicar's wife's face was taut with indignation, a blue vein clearly throbbing in her left temple.

'I wasn't here at the time,' Gabe explained firmly, 'but I'm sure my wife wouldn't have given a story like this to a reporter. She'd've slammed the door in their face.'

'Well they got it from somewhere.'

'Yeah, from the two kids who broke in most likely. But hey, I don't get it. Why are you blaming us for something we didn't do?'

For a moment she seemed lost for words, but she soon rallied. 'Because you're outsiders here and you've stirred up gossip and whispers about past events that weren't true in the first place. You're tarnishing the reputations of good people who are no longer able to defend themselves.'

'Who exactly?'

'Never mind that. Just stop this nonsense about Crickley Hall being haunted.'

'Lady, we didn't start it in the first place. You think we want crazies turning up on our doorstep asking to see the ghosts? We got better things to do. Now excuse me while I get on with one of those better things.'

He began to close the door, but she held a hand against it.

'I can make a complaint to the owner, you know,' she said fiercely. 'My husband knows the estate manager, Mr Grainger, very well. We could have your lease revoked.'

'You're kidding, right?'

'I can assure you I'm not. People who cause trouble should expect trouble back.'

Gabe felt himself beginning to burn.

'So long, Mrs Trevellick,' he said evenly, keeping his temper in check. 'Go ride your broomstick someplace else.' He forced the door shut, his last sight of the irate woman at least satisfying: she stood as stiff as a rod, her mouth agape, her eyes wide with shock. If he'd given her the chance, he was sure she would have poked him with the sharp end of the umbrella.

He turned to see Eve by the kitchen door, obviously reluctant to have become involved in the altercation. Realizing he still had the newspaper in his hand, he offered it up to her.

'Page five, great picture,' he said.

Eve took it from him and quickly leafed through to the relevant feature.

'Oh God,' she said when she saw the photographs and read the headline. She went through the story, shaking her head at parts of it. 'The reporter makes it sound like I gave a full interview and that I knew Crickley Hall was haunted. I swear, Gabe, I said none of this.'

'Okay, hon, I know.' He shrugged as if to dismiss the article.

'I refused to speak to him. And the photographer took the picture before I could close the door.'

'Don't worry. It couldn't be helped. They just run stories to fill up space.'

'So this is why Mrs Trevellick was so cross?'

'Uh-huh. You heard?'

'Most of it.'

'You did the right thing, not getting involved. She's nuts.'

They went back into the kitchen together, Eve still reading the piece.

'Seems like Seraphina and her brother enjoyed the attention,' she commented, looking up from the newspaper. 'Probably disappointed they didn't get to have a picture too.'

Percy regarded Gabe and Eve curiously. 'Sounded like the vicar's wife out there.'

'That's who it was, Percy,' said Gabe. 'Celia Trevellick. Can't get my head round why she was so mad. Said something about dredging up old rumours. Damage to the community, apparently.'

'I heard her from here. Little un was anxious like.' The gardener smiled at Cally, who was watching her parents.

'S'll right, Sparky,' Gabe told her. 'The angry lady's gone now.'

With that reassurance, Cally went back to her colouring, the tip of her tongue protruding from the corner of her mouth as she drew a tree behind the purple and yellow horse.

Gabe waved a hand at the newspaper that Eve still held open. 'I don't get it. We should be the ones to get upset. Using a picture of Eve without her permission, showing everyone the house.'

'And virtually giving out the address,' Eve put in. 'I just hope we don't start getting daytrippers and loonies looking us up. I can't understand why Mrs Trevellick got so upset though.'

Percy's jaw jutted as he scratched his neck. 'The vicar's wife is an important person in Hollow Bay. She's on the parish council an' the church committee, as well as bein' in charge of the Women's Guild hereabouts. An' her family goes way back, it's part of local history.'

'Oh yeah?' said Gabe, still baffled as to why the newspaper story had rattled her cage.

Percy nodded. 'Expects her husband to be bishop one day, so her reputation is important to her.'

'But what's that got to do with this?' Gabe indicated the journal, which Eve had closed and left on the table.

'Scandals never really fade away in these parts. Rumours don't ever die, an' reputations go back generations.'

Gabe shrugged again. 'I still don't get it.'

'Her grandpa were Hollow Bay's vicar durin' the war an' long afore.'

'So?'

'He were a great chum of Augustus Cribben. Stood by the man, admired Cribben for his pious ways an' discipline. It were the vicar, Rossbridger, who recommended Augustus Cribben for the post of guardian in the first place. Knew him of old, y'see. Not exactly pals, but they both had respect for one another.'

Eve was dismayed. 'But Cribben treated the evacuees appallingly. You told us that yourself and it's all there in the book Gabe found.'

'Yers, but nobody knew that at the time. Nobody 'cept Nancy, of course, an' she weren't able to do anythin' 'bout it in the end.'

Gabe sat back down at the table, giving Cally a faint smile when she peeked up at him. To Percy, he said: 'Why should any of this matter to Rossbridger's granddaughter after all these years?'

'Like I says, it's a dark part of her family history. She don't want it dug up again—might tarnish her an' the vicar's good name.'

'That's ridiculous. How could it matter now? It's in the past.'

'An' as I says, family history is important in these parts, 'specially when yer be fine upstandin' members of the community like the Trevellicks an' yer expects yer husband to become bishop.'

Gabe was confounded, Eve dismayed.

'Old Rossbridger, he were right behind Cribben in those days an' it were him that persuaded the authorities not to look too fer into what went on in Crickley Hall. Seems like they agreed to that—bad fer the morale of the country in time of war an' all that. 'Cause more an' more parents was refusin' to send their young uns away to strange parts. Didn't trust the authorities, an' in some cases they was right not to.'

Wait a minute.' Something had occurred to Gabe. 'Mrs Trevellick said something about an old lady being tracked down by the press. Who did she mean?'

Percy avoided Gabe's questioning gaze for a moment, tilting his head downwards, then bringing it up again.

'No, I didn't tell yer, did I?' he said. 'Didn't think it were important no more.'

Gabe and Eve glanced at each other before Percy went on.

'She's still alive, y'see. Old, in her nineties, but still alive.'

'Who is, Percy?' Eve asked patiently.

'Augustus Cribben's sister,' he told them. 'Magda.'

46: MAGDA CRIBBEN

Gabe wrinkled his nose as he followed the plump blue-uniformed nurse down the long corridor. The nursing home smelt of boiled cabbage, detergent and stale pee, all underlined by the more subtle odour of human decay, the slow rotting of living flesh.

'She doesn't get any visitors at all,' the nurse said, glancing back over her shoulder at the engineer, 'so it'll be a nice surprise for her. We thought all her relatives must be deceased by now—that is, if she had any.'

'My folks are distant cousins living in the States,' he lied easily. 'I promised 'em I'd try and look her up while I was on my tour of Europe.' It was the same story he'd given to the receptionist when he'd first arrived at the old people's nursing home. Percy had told him the location of the Denesdown Nursing Home for the Elderly and Eve had begged Gabe to look in on Magda Cribben on his way to Seapower's Ilfracombe office—the home was on the outskirts of the large sprawling seaside town. He had resisted the idea at first. What good could it do? They had both assumed that Magda was long gone by now and if she was still alive she'd be somewhere in her nineties. Percy had repeated to Gabe how the woman had been hospitalized after being found on a station platform in a catatonic state and suffering apparent amnesia. From there she'd been transferred to a mental asylum where countless psychiatrists had endeavoured to unlock her mind over the years, none of them having any success. In her seventies, and regarded as a lost cause, she had been moved to this nursing home and here she remained, speechless and without memory. She was no danger to anyone, not even to herself, and she showed no interest in the world around her. The last Percy had heard, Magda Críbben sat silently in her room every day, unwilling, despite the gentle coaxing of nurses and staff, to join other elderly residents in the common room where they watched television, played board and card games, and conversed about distant times.

To Gabe, the visit seemed pointless—what could he do that medics hadn't already tried to make her communicate? But Eve had been adamant: if he wouldn't go, then she would, taking Cally along with her. Somehow she had got it into her head that the old lady must have the key to the evacuees' mysterious deaths back in 1943, that only Magda Críbben could know why the children had drowned so needlessly in Crickley Hall's cellar. Rightly or wrongly, Eve—strongly influenced by the psychic, Lili Peel—thought that the answer might help the troubled spirits of the children who haunted Crickley Hall pass on peacefully It was all nonsense to him, but what harm could visiting Magda do? It would at least appease Eve to know—or to
think—
he took the matter seriously. Gabe mentally shrugged: no harm at all, he told himself.

The nurse he was following interrupted his thoughts. 'You have been informed of her condition, haven't you? You understand she won't speak to you?'

'Uh, yeah. I just figured it would be nice to see her. Family thing, y'know?'

The nurse, whose plastic nametag over her left breast named her Iris, nodded her head. 'Family is important,' she pronounced sagely.

She had an ambling gait that made Gabe want to stride ahead of her. It wasn't that he was impatient; it had more to do with being keyed up.

Although he certainly had been informed of Magda's state, Gabe had no idea of what to expect. In the photograph salvaged from its hiding place behind the cupboard, she appeared to be in her forties (although Percy had assured Gabe and Eve that Cribben's sister was in her early thirties: she just
looked
ten years older), a stiff, austere figure with a granite-like face, her eyes black and intimidating. She'd be in her nineties, and her once dark hair would be white or at least grey. He wondered if her hard features would be softened by wrinkles, if her rigid bearing would be mellowed by time. Would her heartless glare now be subdued?'

Gabe and the nurse passed by doors on either side of the corridor, some of them open to reveal sparsely furnished rooms, taken up mostly by narrow beds. They seemed empty of residents at the moment, but as they walked by one closed door near the end of the passage, it crept open a few inches. A small woman, whose unkempt grey hair hung over her creased face in thin straggles, peered out at him with watery eyes and he felt uncomfortable under her scrutiny. He heard a small, crusty snigger come from her, and then he was past the door.

The nurse turned to face him outside the open doorway of the next room, the last room along the corridor.

'Here we are, Mr…?' she said, eyebrows raised, questioningly.

'Caleigh,' he supplied for her.

'Yes, of course, you said before. Mr Caleigh. Magda's inside. We always have her door open so we can keep an eye on her. Not that she's ever any trouble. Magda's as quiet as a mouse—quieter, actually—and rarely moves from her chair once she sits there after breakfast. We have to come and fetch her at mealtimes, but apart from that she stays in her room all day long. Never socializes with the other residents. She has her own little toilet and washroom, so she comes out of her room only to eat and when it's her bath day.'

Iris spoke in a normal voice, not bothering to lower its tone in deference to the woman on the other side of the doorway and Gabe wondered if Magda was deaf also. Couldn't be. The nurse or receptionist would have mentioned it otherwise. He guessed that if any resident, or patient, was always passive and silent, they would probably end up being treated as an imbecile or vegetable.