She knew, if Pete and Kevin did not, that the coming night would bring its share of nervy moments. But she had Fishwick for support, and Pete’s sceptical presence would bring a sense of reassurance to Kevin. Moreover, if their investigation were really productive, if it succeeded in persuading a hard-nosed sceptic like Pete, then the possibility of Kevin’s TV series might yet materialise.
Fishwick had done his share of the research from the Other Side. He maintained that there were several disturbed spirits haunting the house, but his report back to her was filled with concern. “Sir Henry, Aggie and the other spirits in the house and surrounding area are troubled souls, Madam,” he had told her. “There are other members of the Melmerby family, one of them a child, still tied to the house for various reasons, and the farmhands who were hanged with Aggie are there. They want their remains moved to hallowed ground. But the biggest problem is that the spirit from last night is there. He may make your stay dangerous.”
Albert Fishwick had been killed along with her great grandfather, Lord Aigburth Rand-Epping, on the first day of the Somme in July 1916, and it was not until Sceptre was born that he had found a medium with whom he could talk. Communication with her ethereal butler was a strange affair. If he was about other business in the spirit domain when she called, all she could do was wait for him to return.
Sceptre had been eight years old when he had first spoken to her. Not old enough to understand the implications of his contact, still young enough to be frightened, as time progressed and she learned of him and his history, she became more and more relaxed, more and more blasé about his presence, his help and his absolute devotion to the Rand-Epping family.
Yet when talking to him she had to speak out loud.
“I could not read minds when I was alive, Madam,” he would frequently remind her, “and I cannot read them now.”
It often led to embarrassment, especially when she was in a restaurant or bar and forgot herself. Many times Fishwick had called her and she had responded aloud, only to receive curious stares from those around her.
But for all the problems talking to her butler brought, Sceptre had never found anyone in the real world to be as utterly loyal and reliable. As long as Fishwick remained close by, the coming night held no terrors for her.
*****
Negotiating the narrow and winding Melmerby Lane, Pete glanced across at Kevin, who sat in the passenger seat fiddling nervously with a cigarette. In stark contrast to Sceptre, Kevin was neither calm nor content. He was seriously scared, as the occasional whiff of methane testified. Twelve stone, barely five and a half feet tall, not exactly obese, but showing signs of a spreading tummy, Kevin was not the world’s bravest man. His natural pusillanimity, coupled to a penchant for getting into trouble, were allied to a taste for curries, lager and chocolate, giving him a gastric system capable of producing the most appalling odours. Pete had often remarked that since Sceptre had come into their lives with her more delicate sensibilities, Kevin should be learning the lessons of food combining.
Heavy clouds hung over the moors; the Pennine fog closed in rapidly. By nightfall, now two hours away, the visibility would be less than 100 metres. Already the rain had turned the windscreen into a sheet of water, and the temperature was dropping.
The entrance to Melmerby Manor lumbered up on the right; beyond the high retaining wall, the house itself could be seen in the distance, brooding and melancholy in the fading afternoon light.
Pete stopped at the gates, climbed out of the car briefly to open them, and hurried back in, shaking the drops of rain from his Manchester United baseball cap, grimacing at the turbulent skies before continuing up the gravel drive, past lawns still wearing their faded green of autumn scrub. In the centre of the lawns, an ornamental fountain lay dormant, as if awaiting awakening for the far-off summer when the tourists would flock by the thousand to this stately home.
On the far right was the tubby, round tower of the mausoleum. Sceptre pointed it out as they drove past. “Most of the Melmerbys are buried there.”
Kevin trembled. “Dead?”
“It’s to be hoped so,” said Pete as he shifted up a gear and his tyres kicked gravel. “Burying people alive is against the law.” He transferred his gaze to the approaching house. “This place doesn’t look Tudor.”
“The original Tudor house,” Sceptre launched into a run-down on the place, “was razed to the ground in the Great Fire of 1789, which coincidentally took the life of Arthur Melmerby. He was a sort of hick scientist and inventor, and at the time he was experimenting with a chemical match. A thin strip of wood, coated with sulphur and tipped with a mixture of potassium chlorate and sugar, which would ignite when touched to sulphuric acid.”
“Worked, did it?”
“Of course it did, Pete. Unfortunately, it worked next to several jars of potassium nitrate, charcoal and sulphur, which, as any chemistry student knows, are the basic ingredients of gunpowder. Apparently, Arthur’s experiment resulted in the loudest explosion ever heard before the First World War, and it actually caused the Great Fire.”
Pete cruised round towards the front of the house.
Even in the afternoon gloom, the manor was a magnificent edifice, dominating the forlorn landscape. Three storeys high, with subterranean cellars, it was constructed of local sandstone, blackened with age and the consistently inclement weather. The fine line of mortar between the large blocks gave the walls the appearance of a friendly, inviting checkerboard, but the rest of the front dispelled any such warmth. Mullioned windows gave it eyes to watch over its domain, and the giant, double doors of black oak resembled the maw of a leviathan waiting to devour its prey.
The car crunched to a halt on the gravel by the steps, where rampant lions carved from Welsh stone guarded the entrance. Pete looked up at the grand house and grimaced. “This place was built at the time of the Napoleonic wars. Half the country was dying for Wellington, yet toffs like this could still spend a fortune on houses.”
Ignoring the reference to ‘toffs’, Sceptre said, “The wars actually started ten years after this house was built, Pete. Although,” she went on as she dug out the keys from her bag, “the French Revolutionary Army did declare war on England in 1793.”
“Pitt the Younger,” muttered Pete as if to prove that somewhere behind his lager-fogged nihilism lurked intelligence.
Kevin looked more nervous as they got out of the car. “I didn’t know he had any kids.”
“Who?”
“Gene Pitney. And what a name to call a brat. Pitney Younger. I mean—”
“Kevin?”
“Yes, Pete?”
“Shut up.”
*****
Following the other two to the doors, Kevin was having third thoughts. He’d had second thoughts when Sceptre told them about Melmerby Manor, and he now wished he had heeded them.
“We could be doing something a lot safer, you know,” he mused.
“Like what?” asked Pete as he and Sceptre got to the doors.
Kevin caught up with them. “I don’t know. Tap dancing through a minefield?”
His partners ignored his riposte. Sceptre came up with the keys; there was a momentary delay while she found the right one, unlocked the door, and pushed it open. It opened with a long, nerve-wracking creak, starting somewhere around a low groan and rising up the scale to an ‘eeeeeek’ that was positively spine-chilling.
Checking the notes given to her by the Melmerby family lawyer when she collected the keys, Sceptre punched in the four-digit code to silence the intruder alarm, then she and Pete strode boldly into the building. Kevin followed much more apprehensively, coming to stand at Pete’s shoulder in the cavernous entrance hall.
To the right lay the family’s private apartments, roped off to keep out the summer visitors; to the left stood the cafeteria and kitchens. Straight ahead was the entrance to the Long Gallery, its walls dominated by paintings dating from the Renaissance, some of them originals from the likes of Turner
, Stubbs and Constable. Just left of the Long Gallery’s entrance sat a broad, curved stairway leading to the upper floors, its walls bedecked with portraits of Melmerby family members. The older ones at the bottom had a severe appearance about them, their eyes narrowed, features pinched, even their puritanical clothing suggesting a disdain for anyone who would dare to raise his eyes and look upon them. Later paintings from the Victorian era and early twentieth century, situated higher up the staircase, appeared slightly more welcoming. At least the subjects wore smiles.
“A set of evil looking gits, aren’t they?” said Kevin, indicating the earlier pictures with a nod.
“They were squires and magistrates,” Sceptre reminded him, “and they had to be seen to be guardians of the law, which meant threatening punishment by their very appearance.” She felt around for a light switch and flicked it. Nothing happened. “Electricity’s off.”
Kevin chuckled. “Me and Pete worked that out when the lights didn’t come on.”
“Pete and I,” she corrected his English.
“No. Me and Pete. See, you said the electricity was off, so you can’t have—”
“Kevin?”
“Yes Sceptre?”
“Shut up.”
He did not quite shut up. “Maybe it’s a fuse,” he suggested as Sceptre flicked the switches again. There was more than a tremor about his voice.
Sceptre doubted it. “They probably turn it off at the mains when the place shuts for the winter. Kevin, do you want to go down to the cellar and switch it on?”
“Me?” Kevin’s tone suggested he was both amazed and appalled at the suggestion.
“Well, you know about electrics,” Pete reminded him. “All that wiring that you plug into your computers.”
“You don’t need an expert! You’ve only gotta pull a bloody lever.” Kevin shouted his complaint, and the word ‘lever’ bounced off the interior walls of the grand house. “You go down in the cellars.”
“Stop being a tart, Kev, and go turn the power on.”
“Pete, you’re the ex-cop, not me. You’re the big hero type.”
Pete finally agreed with a shrug. “All right. I’ll turn the power on, and you can unload all the gear from the car.”
Kevin’s dread of manual labour overcame his fear of dark basements in haunted houses. “Which way’s the cellar?” he squeaked.
Sceptre rooted in her bag once more and came up with a flashlight. Passing it to Kevin, she consulted the plan the Melmerbys’ solicitor had given her. She pointed left to the cafeteria and kitchens, telling Kevin there was a door behind the service counter.
*****
Kevin glanced around at the laminate tables and plastic chairs all bolted to the floor as if the Melmerby family were worried that someone might steal them. From somewhere behind came the sound of Pete and Sceptre carrying boxes into the house from the car.
He switched his attention to the serving area. Behind the actual counter was the kitchen where hot meals and snacks were prepared. Even though it was very dark in there, he could still hear his two friends pottering in the entrance hall. The sounds emboldened him. He spotted tall refrigerators, and pangs of hunger automatically assailed him. Pangs of hunger always attacked him when he was in a dicey situation, or when he felt sorry for himself, or when he passed a cake shop, saw a refrigerator, an oven, a plate... in fact, pangs of hunger attacked him most of the time.
“When did the season end?” he asked himself. “October,” he answered himself, recalling press adverts from the Ashdale tourism office. If the staff had left any food behind, would it still be edible? If it was in the freezers, it might be. He opened the cabinet doors one after the other and learned, to his disappointment, that they were empty.
“Power’s off, you jerk,” he told himself. He closed them again and moved quickly out of the kitchen back into the better-lit, but still gloomy, cafeteria.
The cellar door was located in the narrow alley between the service counter and the kitchen. Kevin opened it and peered down into inky blackness. As he aimed his flashlight down the stairs, his courage waned.
“Hello.” His voice, not much above a whisper, quavered.
There was no reply.
He looked back at the cafeteria with its modern, pristine, spotless appearance and its panoramic windows looking out onto the Melmerby lands and misty moors beyond. He twisted his head further round and took in the stainless steel tops of the servery, with their racks of clean cups, saucers, cutlery, and glass cases, cases that were empty now but were usually filled with foodstuffs for the ever-hungry visitors.
My kind of area, he thought. Food, drink, and I can watch life go by.
After leaving school, he had signed on as a civilian administrator with the police. It was a safe job, one where he could watch the criminals go by without actually having to deal with them. His propensity for getting into trouble, usually a function of his desire for money and his lack of scruples over the means of getting his hands on it, soon landed him in hot water, and by his 23rd birthday, the police had elected to do without him. He had not been unduly worried. By then, he had secured enough contacts to make a living wheeling and dealing, buying and selling, and if he did sail close to the wind now and then, his best friend Pete made certain that he did not become an out-and-out criminal. Like today, for example. After delivering that load of whisky to Flutter-Bys, he had spent much of the early afternoon negotiating with Bent Benny for the hire of the equipment. That was his forte: negotiation, persuasion, cutting the deal. Not nicking the stuff, not breaking and entering, just trading.
A life on the edge, however, had not changed his basic desire to sit on the sidelines watching life go by, and that was the trouble with cellars. You couldn’t watch life pass by in a cellar because there was no life there, and no windows onto life outside. Cellars were where you stored defunct matter: old mangles, washing machines, rustic workbenches and rusty tools. Cellars were the graveyard of those things you no longer needed in life. Cellars were graveyards, full stop.
Summoning his courage, he began the descent. To his relief, the steps were made of stone, so at least they wouldn’t creak like the front door had done. Creaking gave him the creeps. Tramping hard on each step, deliberately clomping his weight down and making a lot of noise, as if he hoped to scare off any potential ghosts, goblins, vampires or tramps who might have wandered in for shelter from the inclement weather, he made his slow way down to the cellar. As he reached each step, he paused, listening to the darkness ahead. His courage evaporating faster than a pan of water boiling away, he began to whistle tunelessly, his quaking muscles producing a staccato trill that many trumpeters spent years of triple-tonguing practice to achieve.
Outside, the light had been fading quickly into dusk; a deep, late afternoon gloom had settled over the cafeteria and kitchen. In the cellars, that gloom became the total blackness of a night so dark that it was the heart of a black hole, sucking in everything and everyone in its vicinity; including Kevin Keeley.
His torch beam cut through the impenetrable darkness like an angry Pete Brennan cutting through a gang of football hooligans, picking out strange, angular and elongated shadows on stark, whitewashed brick walls. He reached the bottom of the steps and the cold, stone, cellar floor. A low, arched ceiling hung above his head, and tall wine racks created a labyrinth of narrow aisles ahead of him. His hand shook; the torchlight wavered and the shadows quivered in time to the trembling. He flicked the light here and there, seeking anything that looked like a mains fuse box or electrical isolator switch, but all he could see were bottles of wine in tall, wooden racks, and dark, narrow alleyways between them.
There was no sound save for the click of his heels as he eased his way along the constricted lines of floor-to-ceiling racks. At the end of one aisle, he came to another at right angles and worked his way along. The comforting noise of Sceptre and Pete unloading the car, chattering softly to each other, was gone, lost somewhere behind and up above him.
He moved further along, found a gap in the rack, made his way through it and found more racks. The silence began to prey on his nerves.
“Can’t even hear the wind and rain anymore,” he said to the wine racks.
But then, as he reminded himself, he wouldn’t, would he?
“I’m two to three metres below ground level, the same depth as they bury coffins in a ceme—”
Kevin cut off the thought before it could properly mature and flashed his torch back the way he had come, seeking the bottom of the steps, only to learn that he could not see them anymore, only racks and racks of wine.
“Now, did I turn left and right or right and left? Or was it left-left-right, left-right-left, right-left-right, right-right-left, right-right-right-right, or left-left-left-left?”
He cursed softly.
“In the place less than ten minutes and I’m lost already.” He paused, deliberately trying to calm his mind. “Take it easy, Kev. There’s no need to panic.”
The moment he uttered the words into the void, his mind rebelled.
“No need to panic? There’s every need to panic!” His words sliced into the darkness. “I’m on my Jack Jones in a pitch-dark cellar with nothing for company but an unpublicised liquor store and a couple of ghosts. And one of them likes chucking knives and bottles of plonk at visitors.”
Silence engulfed him; the complete silence of a funeral director’s chapel of rest, broken only by his short, sharp breathing and the thrumming of his pounding heart. Upstairs, outside, in the sane world of drug dealing, murder, famine, the ever-present threat of annihilation by nuclear weapons or rogue comets, and race, religious and economic wars, there were three CB handsets nestling comfortably in a box in Pete’s car, quite content not to go anywhere. If he had used his head and brought one with him, at least he could have called for help. Now, he dared not even shout out. There was no guarantee that Pete and Sceptre would hear, and any shouting might disturb the ghost of Henry Melmerby.
A Spookies Compendium Page 7