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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 COLD HILL VILLAGE STORES. 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 stu
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.