06.The Dead Place

by Stephen Booth

  As a result of the celebrity shortage, local people had to make do with the aristocracy. The dukes of Devonshire and Rutland had once owned the whole of this area between them, and large chunks of it still bore their names. The Devonshires’ home at Chatsworth House was a major tourist attraction, more spectacular and more opulent than Buckingham Palace, and containing a substantial share of the nation’s art treasures. Or so it had seemed to Cooper when he’d toured the house as a child.

  Alder Hall had been one of the Devonshires’ smaller properties, so insignificant that an early duke had presented the estate as a gift to a less affluent cousin. The present hall had only fifteen bedrooms and two hundred acres of private grounds, so it would hardly have been missed.

  The walls around the estate were high and festooned with ivy. Here and there, water gushed into stone troughs from drainage holes designed to relieve the pressure that built up behind the walls after heavy rain. The main gates were open when they arrived, so presumably the agent had got there before them. Cooper turned into the gateway and rolled the car slowly on to the gravel drive.

  Well, there had probably been gravel here at some time. Now, it was hidden by the grass and weeds that had encroached from the shrubbery on either side. If the hall ever did get new owners, it would take quite a few doses of weedkiller to get this lot under control. Cooper could hear the stems of the couch grass scraping against the underside of the Toyota as he inched his way towards the first bend in the drive. He didn’t know how far the hall was from the road, but he expected a good view of it at some point. What he got instead was the sight of a figure standing in the middle of the driveway, waving madly.

  ‘What the heck is he doing?’

  ‘I don’t know. Is that the agent?’ said Fry.

  ‘I presume so. It looks as though he’s trying to tell us something.’

  The man was signalling as if he wanted Cooper to go to the left. There was nowhere to turn off the drive, except into the bushes, so he skirted as close as he could to the edge.

  ‘Maybe there’s a pothole or something. I can’t see for this long grass.’

  But it wasn’t a pothole. As they drew closer to the gesticulating figure, Cooper could see the decomposing body of a sheep lying on the driveway, its clean-pecked ribcage showing clearly through ragged tufts of wool.

  Cooper wound down the window. ‘Mr Casey?’

  ‘Yes. Sorry about that. I didn’t want you to do what I did – I’m afraid I ran over the animal’s head before I’d noticed it.’

  ‘Don’t worry. We’ll not be charging you with anything. We can see the injuries were inflicted postmortem.’

  Casey laughed nervously. ‘I don’t know how long it’s been lying there. It’s rather embarrassing, really. We’re supposed to be keeping an eye on the place and sorting out any problems, in case a prospective purchaser comes along. But we’ve been rather short-staffed, you see, and the place hasn’t been checked as often as it should.’

  Cooper looked at the sheep again. He could see the remains of the crushed skull where Casey’s tyre had gone over it. But the animal was almost completely skeletonized, and the fleshless jaw bones and teeth grinned back at him knowingly. No one had checked here for months. Or, if they had, they hadn’t bothered to move the dead sheep. He could understand how that wouldn’t be too enticing for a buyer with a couple of million pounds in his pocket, looking for a smart country retreat.

  ‘Are there sheep grazing in the grounds of the hall, then?’ he said.

  ‘There aren’t supposed to be,’ said Casey. ‘This one probably belongs to a neighbouring farmer.’

  ‘Your fences must need some attention, then.’

  ‘The boundaries are stone wall mostly. But they’re rather old. I’ll have to get someone to check the wooded areas to see if there’s a collapse.’

  ‘That would be a good idea, sir.’

  ‘Come on up to the house anyway. The rest of the drive is OK.’

  Cooper eased the Toyota over the last few yards of weed-covered gravel and parked next to a black Range Rover near the front entrance to the hall. Casey walked up behind them, sorting a ring of keys from his pocket.

  ‘I hope the house is more secure than the rest of the property, Mr Casey,’ said Fry when they’d introduced themselves. ‘Or are we likely to find sheep grazing in the reception rooms?’

  ‘No, no. I assure you, Sergeant, it’s perfectly secure.’

  But Casey didn’t look entirely certain of that. And no wonder, if the property hadn’t been checked for a while. The decomposed sheep had been a bad omen. Cooper could imagine some of the scenarios now going through Casey’s mind. He’d be picturing himself opening the front door of the hall and confronting the unmistakable signs of large-scale theft or vandalism.

  The front elevation of the hall itself wasn’t particularly impressive. It was built of limestone blocks, with sandstone corners and lintels in the local style. Its eighteenth-century mullions were its most attractive feature, but a jumble of awkward gables, mock battlements and nineteenth-century alterations had destroyed any symmetry it might once have had. Cooper could see why the dukes never thought of leaving the grandeur of Chatsworth for this.

  There was a short flight of steps up to the door. Much of the mortar had disappeared from them, leaving gaps where dirt had collected and moss had darkened the stone. Casey seemed to hesitate before putting the key in the lock.

  ‘There’s a burglar alarm,’ he said. ‘The keypad is just inside the door.’

  ‘Presumably you know the code number?’ said Fry.

  ‘Of course.’

  Cooper looked up at the yellow box tucked into an angle of wall formed by the addition of a Georgian wing.

  ‘Who would have set the alarm last?’ he asked.

  ‘Whoever had the task of checking inside the house,’ said Casey. ‘We’re supposed to inspect the property at least once a month, unless the weather has been particularly bad, in which event we’ll come down to see if there’s any structural damage.’

  Casey looked a little embarrassed as he waited for Cooper to ask him when the last inspection had been, in view of the company’s staff shortages. In fact, Cooper didn’t need to say anything. As Casey put the key into the lock, he answered the unspoken question.

  ‘I’d have to look at the records back at the office,’ he said, ‘if you need details of previous visits.’

  ‘We’ll let you know, sir.’

  Casey held the door open, and looked relieved when an electronic beeping started. Cooper realized that an even worse scenario might have occurred to the agent – the possibility that a member of his staff had forgotten to re-set the alarm.

  ‘How many people have access to the alarm code?’ asked Fry.

  Casey clicked the cover of the keypad closed. ‘We’re not a big company. Half a dozen, at most.’

  ‘We might need their names.’

  ‘Yes, anything you like.’

  The agent flicked a switch, and lights came on. Thank goodness Casey’s company was at least remembering to pay the electricity bill.

  Cooper turned slowly. The hallway wasn’t large for a house this size, but the stone-flagged floor gave it a cold feeling. It also explained the way their voices had begun to echo from the moment they stepped over the threshold. The walls were almost bare, with pale expanses of plaster where pictures had been removed for storage. But the furniture had been left in place – several small tables, an empty display cabinet, an oak chest covered with a lace cloth. Directly facing the door were the main stairs, with square balustrades and a worn red carpet. Despite the lights, the doorways looked particularly gloomy, especially those that lay at the back of the house, in the shadow of the stairs.

  ‘It’s a bit cold in here, isn’t it?’

  ‘We keep the heating turned down to a minimum in the summer,’ said Casey.

  Cooper wondered if there was a ghost here. Almost certainly. Didn’t every house of this age have at least one? Probably
the rooms were haunted by some young kitchen maid who had drowned herself, but still appeared to answer the bell now and then in the deepest hours of the night. Not that anybody was left to ring the bell now the Saxtons had departed.

  He heard John Casey’s footsteps on the flags behind him, moving to the right towards one of the doors. The agent was anxious to get on with the inspection, to reassure himself that none of his scenarios were true. He was praying there was no theft, no vandalism, no squatters.

  But then Fry stopped him with another question. She was still standing near the keypad for the burglar alarm, and Cooper could tell by the tone of her voice that she wasn’t satisfied with Casey. He’d been slipshod, less than professional in his responsibilities. He didn’t come up to her high standards. Very few people did.

  ‘Mr Casey,’ she said, ‘why has your company been short-staffed?’

  ‘Oh, we had a couple of employees leave earlier this year. Experienced people, too. They’re difficult to replace, you know. We’re in a position of trust here, so we have to be a bit careful who we take on to replace them.’

  ‘And did those employees have access to this alarm code?’

  Cooper was still staring up at the ceiling, trying to make out the pattern in the plasterwork, when he heard Casey’s response.

  ‘Only Maurice Goodwin,’ said the agent. ‘He was the man who spent most time out here.’

  ‘Goodwin?’

  ‘He was one of our employees who left a few months ago.’

  ‘Why did he leave?’

  ‘Oh, the usual. A personality clash.’

  He moved on through the rooms, and they had to follow him. Without a guide, Cooper was afraid he’d be lost in a moment in the labyrinth of corridors and doorways.

  ‘Of course, this isn’t the original house,’ said Casey. ‘There was a property here from Tudor times. Alder Hall Manor passed from the Greys to the Cavendishes, who gifted it to the Saxton family. It was Jeremiah Saxton who built the present house in 1740. At the gates, you might have noticed that he set up his crest of two goats rampant in place of the Cavendish stag. I believe the house is featured in Volume One of Old Halls, Manors and Families of Derbyshire.’

  ‘Oh? Is that a selling point?’

  ‘Very much so.’

  ‘Was this place never opened to the public?’ asked Cooper. ‘A lot of people have done that to help pay for the maintenance.’

  ‘The Saxton family never liked to encourage sensationalism. On a few occasions, they opened the house up to the public, but visitors were never shown the crypt, or even told of its existence.’

  ‘The crypt?’

  ‘It’s one of the reasons this property is looking for exactly the right purchaser. It wouldn’t suit everybody.’

  ‘But surely a crypt is found under a church?’

  ‘The northern wing of the house was originally built as a chapel. That was some time in the late eighteenth century. Sir Oswald Saxton was a deeply religious man and engaged his own personal chaplain to pray for his soul.’

  ‘Did it do him any good?’

  ‘I couldn’t possibly say.’

  ‘But it didn’t remain a chapel?’

  ‘Times changed,’ said Casey. ‘Sir Oswald’s successors weren’t so devout. And perhaps they couldn’t afford to employ their own chaplain, either. Whatever the reason, the chapel fell into disuse. A later owner of the hall converted it into a guest wing. Apart from one or two surviving stained glass windows, you would never know its origins.’

  ‘And the crypt …?’

  ‘When the alterations were done, the crypt was sealed. Guests of the Saxton family probably had no idea what they were sleeping over. But then a Victorian Saxton decided to open it up again. Supposedly, he was persuaded to do so by a group of his friends, who were interested in such things.’

  ‘Such things being …?’

  ‘Bones. Skulls mostly. I suppose I could show it to you. But it’s not for public consumption, you understand. If certain sections of the population knew of the crypt’s existence –’

  ‘Don’t worry, we’re not journalists, you know.’

  ‘Of course.’

  There were steel shutters on all the windows, and only tiny cracks and spears of light penetrated the rooms they walked through. Some of the furniture had been covered with dustsheets, so that mysterious shapes stood all around them in the gloom, pushed back against the walls and shrouded like corpses.

  ‘Are you selling the house furnished?’ asked Cooper, stumbling against the corner of what felt like a dining table.

  ‘This is a little different from the normal house sale,’ said Casey. ‘Some of these items have great historic value in the right context.’

  ‘You mean they belong here and nowhere else?’

  ‘I suppose you could put it that way. The vendors were concerned that some of the rooms should stay intact, if possible. Of course, it raised the price a little.’

  ‘Most people like to stamp their own personality on a place when they move in,’ said Cooper. ‘They want to change everything.’

  ‘Not here.’

  John Casey stopped in front of a door. It might have led to a boiler room, or a furniture store – some aspect of the behind-the-scenes activities in a large house. There was no outward clue to the stone steps that were revealed when the agent produced the key from his ring and eased open the lock. The steps were deeply worn in the middle, as if many feet had passed up and down them over the centuries.

  Casey went first, after finding the light switch. Cold air greeted him as he descended – the coolness characteristic of a cellar, a chill caused by being too close to the damp soil pressing against the walls.

  Cooper was glad that the lights were working. He wouldn’t have welcomed walking into this room in the dark, even if he’d known what to expect. The problem was the skulls. Hundreds of them grinned from shelves and niches cut into the stone walls. Some of them had fallen apart, their jaw bones slipping and sitting at awkward angles, their teeth loosened and lying in the dust. Some had gone beyond grinning, and had deteriorated into expressions of slack-mouthed, manic laughter.

  Beneath the skulls, hundreds of bones had been stacked in ragged piles. Among a jumble of tibias, fibulas and femurs, Cooper distinguished the shape of a pelvis and a few ribs. They’d been heaped together with no regard for their original ownership. Not unless the pile of bones nearest to him had belonged to a man with three legs and no hips.

  ‘Quite impressive, aren’t they?’ said Casey. ‘Not everybody’s cup of tea, of course.’

  He reached out a hand to stroke the cranium of a large skull occupying a niche of its own near the bottom of the steps. The bony plates over its eye sockets were smooth and shiny, gleaming with a pearly luminescence in the reflected light.

  ‘This one is supposed to bring you luck, if you rub it,’ said Casey. ‘He’s called the General.’

  Even with the lights on, it was impossible to estimate how many skulls there were. The long shelves were packed two deep, and shadows in the niches made it difficult to see right to the back. A hundred? Two hundred? Cooper wouldn’t have liked to make a guess.

  ‘Where did they all come from?’ asked Fry. ‘Are these all ancestors of the Saxton family?’

  ‘Good heavens, no,’ said Casey. ‘The Saxtons themselves are either buried under the nave of the village church, or in a rather elaborate family tomb in the churchyard. I believe there are several quite fine effigies in the church, if you’re interested in such things.’

  Fry pointed at the rows of skulls. ‘So who are they?’

  ‘The story is that they were Royalist soldiers, ambushed and killed by Parliamentary militia on their way to help raise the siege of Wingfield Manor.’

  ‘The Civil War?’ said Cooper, bending to look closer at the skulls. ‘Seventeenth century, then.’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘But that’s before the hall was built, let alone the chapel.’

  ‘T
he remains weren’t found right here, but somewhere on the estate when forestry work was being carried out. As I said, there was an earlier house on this site, and the Saxtons are known to have been Royalist sympathizers, so perhaps the soldiers were billeted here. Certainly, the original house was severely damaged by the Parliamentarians and had to be demolished. A punishment for supporting the wrong side, I suppose.’

  Cooper had never heard this story, though there were many others like it in Derbyshire, where the English Civil War had split local sympathies. At Chapel-en-le-Frith, the church had become known as ‘Derbyshire’s Black Hole’ after it was used to imprison fifteen hundred Scottish troops captured at the Battle of Ribbleton Moor. The Parliamentary army had left them crammed in the church for two weeks and forty-four of them were dead when the doors were opened.

  ‘Has anyone ever had the bones authenticated? I mean, to confirm that they actually are from the Civil War period?’

  ‘I’m told it was done some years ago,’ said Casey. ‘But the findings were never made public.’

  ‘So there must be a record of how many skulls and bones are in the collection?’

  ‘Yes, of course. But again …’

  ‘It hasn’t been made public. I see.’

  Cooper found a torch in his pocket and shone it into the dusty corners. Large black spiders scuttled away from the light. Their webs stretched from skull to skull and filled the eye sockets like pale cataracts. Powdered stone from the walls coated the shelves. In the curious silence typical of cellars, he thought he heard a faint scuttling movement. But it was only Fry, edging back towards the steps, restless to move on.

  They walked back upstairs to inspect bedrooms complete with dusty four-poster beds, and bathrooms with ancient plumbing and stained ceramic baths. The roof must be leaking in places, because some of the ornate plasterwork on the ceilings was crumbling and in danger of collapse. Cooper found it sad to see history mouldering away. He’d rather a hotel or conference centre moved in and restored the place, installing en-suite bathrooms and a fitness centre.