Haunted by the Past, page 6
part #11 of Ismael Jones Series
Arthur shrugged. “If Lord Ravensbrook had won his rebellion, and acknowledged his illegitimate Glenbury son, my family would have had a claim to the Throne. My parents talked about that all the time, when I was growing up. By then they’d lost most of their money, and this story was all they had to make themselves feel special.”
“They didn’t leave Arthur anything,” said Marion. “Apart from the Hall.”
“I never wanted anything from my family,” said Arthur. “Except to be free of them. When my parents died, I thought I could finally live my own life. But here I am, back in the old family home and still talking about them...”
“We were told Glenbury Hall was left standing empty and abandoned for years,” I said. “What brought you back here, Arthur?”
“The City turned on him,” said Marion. “He lost everything.”
“What happened?” said Penny.
“I was doing so well,” said Arthur. His voice was calm and flat, his eyes lost in yesterday. “But finance is a slippery thing. It’s all just numbers: nothing you can cling to, or depend on. And the financial winds can change direction in a heartbeat.
“The company I was working for made a series of bad investments. Suddenly the vultures were gathering, and my bosses started throwing people overboard. And despite all the good work I’d done for them, all the money I’d made for the company...none of that meant anything.
“Suddenly I had no job, no income, and no prospects. No one wanted to know me, because failure can be contagious. What savings I had didn’t last long, so I had no choice but to come back here. To the one thing they couldn’t take away from me. My heritage: Glenbury Hall.”
“I came up with the idea of turning the house into a conference centre,” said Marion. “It was supposed to be the saving of us. But then Carr had to disappear, and ruin everything!”
“What about the other members of the Historical Society?” I said. “Are they still on their way?”
“No,” said Arthur. “Once it became obvious Carr wasn’t going to just turn up, I got on the phone and told all the other members that their conference had been cancelled, due to a double booking.”
“Why would you do that?” said Penny. “If you needed their money so badly?”
Arthur met her gaze squarely. “Because I couldn’t risk them spreading the news about Carr’s disappearance. Not until we’ve worked out what happened.”
“I still say you should have talked to me first,” said Marion.
“There wasn’t time!” said Arthur, cutting her off for once. “We have to stay in control of the message. If the Society had turned up, what sort of comments do you think they would have left on Tripadvisor, and all the other social sites? What would that have done to our reputation, and the Hall’s? Who would want to come to a house where people just disappear, with no warning or explanation?”
“We needed the money they were bringing,” said Marion. She deliberately turned away from her husband, to fix her attention on me and Penny. “Old houses like this need a lot of upkeep. Even the most basic repairs and improvements took everything we had. We have to make this business work, because we don’t have anything else!”
Arthur and Marion suddenly seemed to realise that they were revealing rather too much of their personal situation in front of strangers. And their fascinated daughter.
“Of course, parts of the Hall are really comfortable now,” said Arthur. “Quite delightful, in fact.”
“And we’ve added all kinds of modern features,” said Marion.
“Like the wishing well?” Penny said sweetly.
There was a pause, as Arthur and Marion glanced at each other.
“According to some of the older stories,” Arthur said carefully, “the well started out as a spring with miraculous healing properties. It later became a pagan shrine, though who or what was worshipped here is long forgotten. Later on, the original Glenburys turned the spring into a well, though it hasn’t actually functioned as one for ages.”
“So I made it into a wishing well,” Marion said brightly. “Tourists love that kind of foolishness. They get to make a wish and we get to keep their money.”
“I’ve been reading all kinds of sites about the old shrine,” said Ellen. “No one knows how many people were killed here! You should put that on our business site; people love all that blood and horror stuff.”
“We are not mentioning that,” said Arthur. “There’s a limit to the kind of visitors we want to attract.”
“Do you talk about the hauntings on your site?” I said. “Some of the ghost stories associated with Glenbury Hall sound a bit off-putting. What sort of things did you see, growing up here in the Hall?”
Arthur took his time, considering how much he was prepared to talk about.
“I don’t know if ghost is always the right word, for the kind of things that haunt Glenbury Hall,” he said finally. “My father used to have a separate room to watch television in. His own private place. But he stopped going in there after the television started showing him things.”
“What sort of things?” said Penny.
“He wouldn’t tell me,” said Arthur. “But my father wasn’t a man who scared easily.”
“What did he do about it?” I said.
“He moved the set to another room, and after that everything was fine,” said Arthur. “The whole family would sit and watch with him, and we never saw anything out of the ordinary. Of course, it’s always possible my father made all of that up, just to scare me. He did that a lot. He thought it was funny.”
“Arthur’s parents used to terrorise him,” said Marion. “Some of the things he’s told me, you wouldn’t believe...”
“They said I needed toughening up,” said Arthur. “That I’d never survive in the world outside. And they were right.”
“I would like to point out that we have never encountered any problems with television sets in the Hall,” said Marion.
“There are ghosts on my laptop,” said Ellen.
Her voice was very quiet, and she’d gone back to looking at the floor. Judging by the expression on Marion’s and Arthur’s faces, it was the first time they’d heard about this.
“What kind of ghosts, sweetie?” said Arthur.
Ellen wouldn’t look at him. “Sometimes the laptop turns itself on when I’m nowhere near it. Or the site I’m looking at will fade away and be replaced by places and people I never wanted to see, and voices saying horrible things.”
“Why didn’t you tell us this before, dear?” said Marion.
Ellen shook her head. “Most of the time, it’s fine. And I didn’t want to worry you.”
Arthur and Marion looked at each other, and she gestured urgently for him to say something.
“I don’t think it’s anything you need to worry about, sweetie,” said Arthur. “You’re probably just picking up stray signals. Because we’re so far from anywhere.”
Ellen still wouldn’t look at him. I decided to change the subject.
“Arthur...” I said, and his gaze snapped back to me. “Why did your ancestors have their Hall built so far outside the town? We heard some strange suggestions, in The Smugglers Retreat...”
“I’m sure you did,” said Arthur. He didn’t actually pull a face, but looked like he wanted to. “The locals might hate the Hall, but they do love to talk about it. You can put a lot of my family’s bad reputation down to the old-time Glenburys abusing their power and privilege. That’s what it was for, back then. But really, a lot of it comes down to the shrine. The townspeople have always been scared of it. Which is probably why the original Glenburys had their new home built right next to the shrine.”
He broke off, his eyes once again fixed on the past.
“The Hall is very isolated. When I was a child, I was so scared of the dark...There were no streetlamps outside, so when my bedroom light was turned off it got very dark. Hardly any traffic passed by, but I would lie awake in my bed, hoping a car would come along. So that for a moment at least there would be light and noise, and I could be sure the world was still out there.
“My parents wouldn’t allow me a night light. They thought any kind of pampering made you soft.”
Marion reached across to take Arthur’s hand. He hung onto it, but couldn’t bring himself to look at her. Ellen looked a little embarrassed, to see such open emotion from her parents.
“I couldn’t wait to get away from this house,” said Arthur. “I dreamed of going to London, where it was always full of light and noise. But I had to come back. For the family.”
“Are you still afraid of the dark?” said Penny.
“No,” said Arthur.
But from the way Marion was looking at Arthur, I wasn’t so sure about that. He took a deep breath, and then smiled around at everyone as though he thought he could change the atmosphere simply by adopting a more positive attitude.
“Of course, not everything that appears to be a ghost necessarily is one. Sometimes, when I was working alone down here, I would hear footsteps moving around on the floor above. And this was when I knew it couldn’t be Marion or Ellen. No one else could be up there, because they would have had to get past me and I would have seen them. And yet over and over again, I was sure I heard someone walking about on the top floor. On a few occasions, I was so convinced I actually went upstairs to check, but there was never anyone there.”
He paused, to take in our reactions, and then smiled.
“I finally noticed that I only heard people walking around upstairs after I’d been moving about down here. And that’s when I worked it out. The reverberations from my footsteps were travelling through the wooden floor, up the wooden staircase, and then re-emerging in the wooden floor above. What I’d been hearing was the delayed echo of my own movements!”
He shared his pleased smile with Marion, who solemnly nodded her approval. Ellen looked impressed, that her father had been able to solve the puzzle on his own. She also seemed a little relieved, that a supposedly supernatural event could turn out to have an everyday solution.
“Ghost stories are fine when it comes to luring in the visitors,” said Marion. “But that’s all they ever are. Just stories.”
I looked thoughtfully at Arthur. “What will you do, if your new business doesn’t work out?”
“We’ll have to put the Hall up for sale,” he said steadily.
“We should get a good price for it,” said Marion.
They didn’t look at each other, and there was something in their voices.
“Are you sure about that?” I said.
Arthur slumped a little. “All right...The first thing I did was try to sell the Hall, but no one wanted it. The house needs a lot of repairs, and the ground it stands on isn’t particularly desirable, because of the way the locals feel about it. We couldn’t even find an estate agent who could be bothered to lie to us about our chances. Our business has to work out. It’s all we’ve got.”
“That’s why you have to find Lucas Carr!” said Marion, glaring accusingly at Penny and me. “Why are you still standing around here asking questions, instead of doing something?”
“Because asking questions is how you find out things,” I said.
“Well, what more do you want to know?” said Marion.
“How many people from the Historical Society were you expecting today?” said Penny.
“Twelve, including Carr,” said Marion. “And we might still get them back, if you can dig him out of his hiding place!”
I just nodded, keeping my gaze fixed on Arthur. “You said Carr signed in. Can I see the registration book?”
He pushed it across the desk toward me. A large leather-bound volume, designed to impress. Arthur opened it to the first page, where there was just the one signature. I took a photo on my phone and e-mailed it to the Colonel and got an answer immediately, confirming it was the real thing. At least now I could be sure Carr really had made it this far.
“What happened to Lucas’ room key?” said Penny. “Did you find it inside his room?”
“No,” said Arthur. “There was no sign of it.”
I looked around the lobby. “You don’t have any surveillance cameras...but what about burglar alarms? Given that this is an isolated house, with a lot of antiques just lying around...”
“We don’t have anything worth the taking,” Marion said flatly. “And God knows we’ve looked. All the good stuff was sold off long ago, by Arthur’s parents.”
He smiled briefly. “The local museums and pawn shops are packed full of what should have been my inheritance. Towards the end my parents were selling off anything that wasn’t nailed down, just so they could hang on to the Hall. The only thing they ever really cared about. But we don’t have to worry about burglars, because no one local would dare come out here.”
“There are burglar alarms, at the front and rear doors,” said Marion. “Because the insurance company insisted. But the damn things are so sensitive we were always setting them off accidentally, so now we only turn them on at night.”
“So Carr could have left through either door, without setting off an alarm,” I said.
“He couldn’t have come down the stairs without me hearing or seeing him!” said Arthur.
Yes, I thought. You keep saying that. But you’re the only one who saw him go up to the next floor. So which is more likely: that he vanished between the lobby and his room, or that you’re lying?
I kept all of that out of my face, and nodded at the wall behind Arthur. “I’m going to need one of your pass keys.”
“There is only one,” said Arthur. “We had it made specially, to open the doors of the visitors’ rooms.”
“For emergencies,” said Marion.
Arthur took the key down from the back wall, and handed it to me. I tucked it away in my pocket.
“All right,” I said. “Penny and I will search the upper floor, then down here, and finally we’ll take a good look round the grounds. There’s always the chance we might spot something you missed.”
“Before you do anything,” Marion said quickly, “you should know that while we were waiting for you to show up, Arthur and I decided we needed to bring in our own investigator, to make sure our interests would be properly protected.”
“You can bring in whoever you like,” I said, “but Penny and I will still be in charge.”
“Who did you choose?” said Penny.
“Catherine Voss is a respected local historian,” said Marion. “She’s written a book about the Hall, and the Glenburys.”
“On top of that, she’s an old family friend,” said Arthur. “She was like an aunt to me, when I was a child.”
“Is she a properly accredited historical scholar?” I said. “Does she know her stuff?”
“Glenbury Hall is a fifteenth-century manor house, with sixteenth-century additions,” said a calm and cultured voice behind us. “The house has been officially designated a Grade 1-listed building. Isn’t that right, Arthur dear?”
We all looked round, and standing in the doorway was a grey-haired little old lady in a baggy jumper and a long pleated skirt, clutching a battered carpet bag. She smiled happily at Arthur, as he quickly emerged from behind the desk and hurried across the lobby to envelop her in a hug. She patted him fondly on the back.
“Careful, dear, I’m a bit more fragile than I used to be.”
Arthur gave her one last squeeze and stepped back. “I’m so glad you’re here, Catherine. It’s been a nightmare.”
“I set off the moment I got your message,” said Catherine. “Are these the security people?” She smiled at Penny and me, her blue eyes twinkling. “Don’t worry, he hasn’t told anyone else. He knows when to keep quiet about things.”
“He told you,” I said.
“Ah yes,” said Catherine. “But I’m special.”
“This is Ishmael Jones and Penny Belcourt,” said Marion. “They’re in charge of finding Lucas Carr.”
Catherine came forward and made a point of shaking hands with both of us. Her tiny hand disappeared inside mine, so I was careful to treat it respectfully.
“I’m just here to help,” she said sweetly, “not get in your way. But I do possess a great deal of specialised information about the house, and the family, that may turn out to be useful.”
“We’re grateful for any help we can get,” said Penny. “Isn’t that right, Ishmael?”
“Of course,” I said.
“Just find Carr, or prove his disappearance has nothing to do with the Hall,” said Marion. “And then we can set about getting the visitors back.”
“We’re about to start a search of the upper floor,” I said to Catherine. “Perhaps you’d like to come with us, and give us the benefit of your expertise.”
“Oh, how wonderful!” said Catherine. “Only in the Hall for five minutes, and already I get a chance to show off!”
ChaPter THrEE
A Walk Through History
“You’re going to need a native guide,” said Catherine. “I can answer every question you have, including the ones you don’t know you need to ask.”
“That would be helpful,” I said politely. “I’m sure there are a great many things no one has got around to mentioning yet.”
“We are here to find out things!” Penny said brightly.
“Then I think we should start with the grounds,” said Catherine. “Studying the house from the outside will give you all manner of valuable insights. Glenbury Hall is steeped in the past and haunted by history, especially all the really appalling things the family did here.”
“I’m getting a little tired of the way people keep skirting around exactly what it was the Glenburys got up to,” I said. “Why make such a mystery of it?”
Catherine smiled. “Much will become clear, as we proceed on our grand tour.”
“Only much?” said Penny.
“I’m afraid so, dear. It’s that kind of family, and that kind of history.”
“Then let’s start with the grounds,” I said.
“Well,” Marion said quickly, just to remind us she was still there. “You won’t be needing any more help from us, so we’ll just leave you to it. We have work to do.”
