The Secret of Crickley Hall (59 page)

Too late for what?
Eve asked herself. She had stepped towards Loren and held out her hand again for her daughter to take. Loren's hand was cold and shaking in her own.

'Do you feel it, Eve?' Pyke asked, his glittering eyes seeking out every corner of the vast room and even searching the high beamed ceiling. 'The hall is the epicentre of the psychic activity. The spirits are gathering here, their vigour is almost palpable.'

Pyke was blocking the front door. His coat and hat, which he had discarded earlier, were hanging on the rack by the door, but it was obvious he was not going to put them on and leave. Eve began to back away and Loren kept in step with her, regardless of the puddles they trod through. If they made a break for the kitchen to escape by its outer door, Pyke would cut them off in a few strides. He held his walking stick like a weapon.

Eve had never been so afraid. Oh, she had suffered more than just fear since Cam had gone missing, but this was different. She knew that this was a dangerous situation and her fear was for herself and Loren—and Cally upstairs, of course—for the man at the door exuded menace. She had thought him so kindly, so mannerly, and now his eyes seemed to gleam with malice.

Loren was squeezing her hand so tightly that it hurt. Eve fought to keep the nervousness from her voice.

'What do you want from us, Mr Pyke?' She had put the question mildly, her tone even, as if she might be enquiring of a grocer the price of tomatoes. Somehow she had to humour this man, get him to respond in a non-hostile way.

'Dear woman, it's what the house wants from me that's the problem.'

He moved away from the door, taking two steps towards them. Eve and Loren backed off even more, matching him step for step, their direction taking them towards the stairway.

'I don't understand, Mr Pyke.' Humour him,
humour
him, Eve told herself. Why had he hurt Lili Peel? Just because she'd recognized who he was? But now they, she and Loren, knew his true identity, so what would he do to them? And why did their knowing he was Maurice Stafford matter? What had Stafford done and, my God, why wasn't he dead, drowned like the other evacuees?

Her heel kicked the first step and she and Loren came to a halt.

She prompted Pyke, who had not stopped advancing. 'How can a house want something from you?'

'By now, you're fully aware that Crickley Hall is possessed, Eve.'

Oh so friendly; his voice was so matter-of-fact and soothing. It was his eyes, those once so engaging eyes, that were deranged.

'You told us there were no such things as ghosts,' Eve said as she took the step with Loren, both of them moving backwards, their eyes never leaving Pyke's.

'No, I said in many cases there are perfectly natural explanations for what might be considered supernatural episodes or so-called manifestations. But—and I freely admit, they are in the minority—there sometimes are genuine hauntings that cannot be rationalized.'

'The children—their
spirits
—they really are here?' Moving as steadily as possible, Eve took the second step. Loren rose with her.

'Of course they are!'

Eve flinched at Pyke's anger.

'Can't you feel their presence, woman? Can't you see they're all around us? My God, they're almost visible.'

And as Pyke said the words, Eve thought she saw something flit among the shadows of the room. Small, insubstantial shapes. Lighter shades of darkness.

'But they aren't alone.' Pyke sounded perfectly reasonable once more as he limped towards Eve and Loren, now leaning heavily on his cane. 'Their guardian is with them. Augustus Cribben. You might say he was Maurice Stafford's lord and master.'

Mother and daughter had discreetly risen another step.

'Wasn't Augustus Cribben in charge here during the last world war?' Eve ventured warily. She wanted to keep Pyke distracted for the moment, afraid of the harm she was sure he meant to do them. She could see the insanity dancing in his eyes. 'He was the children's custodian and teacher, wasn't he?'

Her mouth was dry and she fought the urge to turn and run with Loren, to get to the bedroom where Cally slept and lock the door. Was there a key in the lock? Eve couldn't remember.

Pyke limped to a halt, his brown brogues in a puddle. His cane took some of his weight. 'Augustus Cribben was more than that: he was a god to his sister and me; we revered him. But the other evacuees? Well, they were just afraid of him.'

They were on the third step now; a few more and they would be on the little square landing at the turn of the stairs. That was when they'd make a break for it, Eve decided. She kept her voice steady, even though she wanted to scream and flee.

'The children were afraid because he was cruel to them. Wasn't that it?'

'Who told you that?' Anger shared the insanity of his gaze and it made him even more frightening. 'I suppose it was that old busybody, Percy Judd. Oh yes, I know he still keeps his job here as gardener and maintenance man. But he was always an outsider who liked to poke his nose into other people's affairs. He was a rather stupid individual then and I'm sure the passing years have added nothing to his intellectual powers. Hah! He probably still wonders whatever became of his sweetheart Miss High-and-mighty Nancy Linnet. Well, Magda and I attended to her.'

Eve dared to ask. 'You—you got rid of her?'

'No need to be coy, Eve.' The comity was back in his manner. 'She was a busybody too. We had to kill her, had no other choice really. We disposed of her body down the well.'

They could no longer wait until they reached the turn in the stairs: Eve jerked her daughter's hand and they both spun round as one and climbed as fast as they could.

But Gordon Pyke was surprisingly swift for a man of his size and age—the thought occurred to Eve as she ran that he must be in his seventies!—and he sprang forward and adroitly caught Eve's ankle with the hook of his walking stick. He yanked hard and she fell heavily against the next set of stairs, bringing Loren down with her. Eve grabbed at a rail as they slithered back down.

'Mummy!'
Loren screeched, and Eve quickly put an arm round her as they sprawled there.

'It's all right, baby, it's all right.' Eve looked at Pyke, who had calmly sat down on the small landing, his right foot resting at an angle on the first step down, his left on the one below that. He laid his walking stick down behind him, its hooked end pointing at Eve. Lightning from outside lit up one side of his face as he looked their way and Eve thought his grin was the most evil grimace she had ever seen.

He waited as thunder split the air and rolled away into the distance. When it was quiet again he spoke. 'Please don't worry yourself, Eve. It isn't you I want.'

In the poor, generator-powered light she saw his grin slip to a smile and his eyes had lost that manic gleam she was so afraid of. He seemed his old charming self again. But Eve drew up her left leg so that her foot was out of reach.

•

Stretched out on the rain-sodden lawn, Lili murmured something that was not quite a word. The fingers of one of her hands had clenched, digging shallow grooves in the soil.

It wasn't exactly a dream she was having, it was more of an extrasensory perception that conveyed itself as
if
it were a dream.

Thoughts, sights, came to her. She began to see what had happened to the evacuees at Crickley Hall in the month of October sixty-three years ago.

•

'The little Jewish boy was the first of the children to go. You might say he was the cause of all their deaths. And the young teacher; she was partially to blame.'

Gordon Pyke had leant back against the rail so that he faced Eve and Loren on the stairs. His walking stick was close to hand should mother and daughter attempt to escape up the stairs again.

'Augustus and Magda Cribben hated the Jews, blamed them for the whole of World War Two, in fact,' Pyke sniggered. 'They thought Hitler had got it about right—exterminate all Jews, with their global intrigues and secret cabals. I honestly believe the Cribbens hoped the Germans would win the war.'

He gave a wry shake of his head and his thoughts lingered for a few moments.

Then: 'Now what was the boy's name? He was the youngest of the children. Oh yes, Stefan. Stefan Rosenberg. No, Stefan Rosenbaum, that was it. See how well I remember? It's as if it was yesterday. God, how angry Augustus was when he found out the authorities had foisted a Jew on him. And how the boy suffered because of it.'

Eve shivered and pulled Loren closer. Her daughter was trembling and seemed afraid to make a sound.

Pyke continued in his mild-mannered way. 'Our guardian made a discovery about the boy one day. I should mention that Augustus was very ill at the time. He'd always suffered severe headaches, according to his sister, Magda, but a head injury during the Blitz had caused more and, apparently, irrevocable damage to his brain. At least, that was Magda's opinion.

'Augustus was going through one of his bad spells when the headaches were almost paralysing, and Stefan Rosenbaum had done something wrong—I forget precisely what it was; I think he'd wet his bed, something like that—and Augustus was about to punish him. In a rage, Augustus made the boy drop his trousers—this time the misdemeanour was serious enough to warrant a caning on bare flesh. When Stefan did so, Augustus saw that he hadn't been circumcised. All Jewish males had to be circumcised, Augustus screamed. Magda pleaded with her brother, but this was the beginning of the madness…'

•

Lili's murmur became a groan. There were scenes being played out inside her head, like a dream but not a dream: it was a psychic vision. The event was in the past and it was shocking.

A little boy. A little boy with dark hair and large frightened eyes. He is in the grip of a man who seems familiar to Lili. The man is wicked. And insane.

He's shaking the little boy, screaming at him, and the boy is wailing in terror, which only makes the man more angry and the shaking more violent. There are other children around, but they are frightened too and so they run away to hide, to hide from the man whom Lili now recognizes from the old black-and-white photograph, the children's guardian, the man Eve had called Augustus Cribben. He is picking up the howling boy whose trousers are bunched around his ankles. The man is taking the boy into a room where there are tables and benches set out like a schoolroom. He lays the boy on the main desk, the teacher's desk, and tells the woman—the woman must be Magda Cribben, Lili realizes—to hold the boy there and wait.

Augustus Cribben soon returns and Lili cries out in her semi-conscious trance, for in his hand he holds a gleaming cutthroat razor, no doubt the very one he uses himself for shaving.

Magda Cribben brings up a hand to her throat and she pleads with her brother not to do this, that the authorities will find out if anything happens to the boy. But her brother is undeterred: he reaches for the boy's tiny penis.

To one side stands a tall boy, one of the orphans yet not one of them. There is an excited glint in his eyes.

Cribben calls for him to help pin the dark-haired boy down and Maurice Stafford eagerly comes forward. He leans his strong upper body on the younger boy's legs so that they are trapped, and his hand presses down on the little boy's chest, holding him flat on his back against the table.

Augustus slashes with the razor.

But the cut is too hasty, too imprecise, too deep, and the blood spurts from the little boy's penis…

•

'Stefan bled and bled,' Pyke went on and Eve felt nauseous. How could a man do that to a child? 'But Augustus didn't care. He tossed the severed flesh into the wastepaper bin and left the room as though anything else that happened was nothing to do with him.'

Pyke stretched his left leg and forcefully rubbed his thigh as if to encourage circulation.

'Magda did her best to save the boy, but the bleeding just wouldn't stop. In his pain, Augustus had cut away too much of the penis itself, not just the foreskin.'

He sighed as though there were some regret over what had occurred, but Eve was soon to realize it wasn't because of the harm done to poor young Stefan.

'All that followed was because of the Jewish boy.' Pyke scowled with resentment, as if events might have turned out otherwise but for the bodged 'operation'. 'Magda ordered me to bring towels, and then more towels, but nothing could staunch that bleeding. The boy was draining of colour before our eyes because of blood loss. Naturally, taking him to a hospital or calling a doctor wasn't an option; how could we have explained the injury? No doubt Augustus would have been imprisoned for what he had done and Magda too, probably, for being an accomplice. I didn't care for my own chances either: they had special places for naughty boys in those days. All the other children would have ganged up on me, they would have told the police what a bad person I'd been. They never liked me.'

Eve could hardly believe what she was hearing. Pyke was now wallowing in self-pity. But while he was preoccupied she took a sly glance up the stairway behind her. If she and Loren could only reach Cally's bedroom there might be a chance to barricade themselves in…

Light in the vast room dipped and she wondered if the generator in the basement could take the strain of running all the electrics in Crickley Hall. Perhaps Gabe hadn't done such a good job on it after all, and if the lights went out once more, it might give them another opportunity to get away from Pyke. But then the lights came up again, although their glow was weaker than before.

In the darker regions of the hall there seemed to be a slight movement, lighter shadows shifting inside the darker shadows again. The air was heavy, oppressive, the kind of heaviness that usually came
before
an electrical storm. The fine hairs on Eve's arms bristled and there was an uncomfortable creeping sensation along her spine, the arctic breath of ungovernable fear. Oddly, although the source of light came from high above—the iron chandelier and the landing light—it was much
darker
round the ceiling, as if a blackness were hanging there, a kind of murky fog that was pressing down on the room below.