The House on Widows Hill

by Simon R. Green

  He shrugged, not looking even a little bit guilty. ‘What else is there to do around here? If you don’t want sympathy, which I’ve never been much good at anyway, what do you want?’

  ‘I need you to help me solve your murder.’

  He looked at me blankly. ‘Why are you asking me? I already told you I didn’t see who did it.’

  ‘Because,’ I said patiently, ‘you’re the only person in this room I can be sure didn’t do it.’

  He nodded slowly. ‘OK, that makes sense … I suppose.’

  ‘Be my partner,’ I said. ‘And help me drop the hammer on whoever did this to you.’

  ‘Oh, I am in!’ said Arthur. ‘What can I do?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘What can you do?’

  Arthur took a moment to think about it. ‘Well … it seems I can’t leave this room, so I can’t go looking for clues. And I can’t interrogate people or intimidate them, so I’ll have to leave that to you. I can see people’s auras, which I couldn’t before. Didn’t even know people had auras …’

  ‘What use is that?’

  ‘I can tell from changes in the aura whether people are lying, or being evasive, or hiding something,’ said Arthur. ‘The colours change and … Look, just take my word for it, OK? Of course, one of the first things you learn as a journalist is that most people lie like they breathe, and for any number of reasons. Sometimes I think they just do it to stay in practice.’

  I had to ask. ‘Do I have an aura?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘What’s it like?’

  He considered me carefully. ‘Lots of purple.’

  I decided I wasn’t going to touch that one. ‘OK … I will ask people pertinent and probing questions, and you can tell me how much I should trust their answers.’

  ‘So you’re leaving it to me to do all the heavy lifting?’ said Arthur.

  ‘You want to find out who killed you, don’t you?’

  ‘Oh, great! Hit me over the head with emotional blackmail, why don’t you?’ And then Arthur broke off and looked at me narrowly. ‘Why are you so determined to find my killer? It’s not like we’re close or anything.’

  ‘Because this is what I do,’ I said steadily. ‘And because it’s the right thing to do.’

  Arthur smiled briefly. ‘I don’t often get to hear that, in my line of work. It does make a nice change.’

  ‘You didn’t deserve what happened to you,’ I said. ‘So with your assistance, I will do my best to see you get some kind of justice. Maybe … that’s what you’re here for.’

  Arthur thrust out a hand for me to shake, and then he remembered and took it back. I turned away, so he could have a moment to himself, and raised my voice to address the room.

  ‘Could I have everyone’s attention, please?’

  ‘If you want to excuse yourself, just go ahead and do it,’ said Freddie. ‘You don’t need to raise your hand and ask permission. Though I don’t know where you think you’re going to go. I haven’t seen a toilet anywhere.’

  ‘Must be upstairs,’ said Tom.

  Lynn smiled sweetly at me. ‘Good luck with the rotting floorboards. And you’d better be careful with your aim, if you don’t want to make things even worse.’ And then she stopped and frowned. ‘Oh, hell … I didn’t need to go at all until you raised the subject, but now I can’t stop thinking about it. How much longer will it be, until people start arriving in the morning?’

  ‘Hours,’ said Tom, grinning maliciously. ‘Hours and hours.’

  ‘Oh, hell,’ said Lynn, crossing her legs.

  ‘I don’t need to use the toilet,’ I said.

  ‘Well, then, good for you,’ said Freddie. ‘But you’re not the only one here.’

  ‘I am convinced that Arthur didn’t just die,’ I said, refusing to be diverted from what mattered.

  Everyone looked at the spot where Arthur’s body had been. I couldn’t read anything in their faces. One by one they turned back to me – apart from Penny, who continued to stare at the patch of floor so she wouldn’t have to look at me.

  ‘Well, of course Arthur didn’t just die,’ Lynn said finally. ‘The house killed him. And it could still do the same to us if we don’t find some way out of here.’

  ‘Will you stop going on about that?’ said Freddie. ‘There isn’t any other way out!’

  ‘We don’t know that for sure,’ said Tom.

  ‘Where else is there to look?’ said Freddie.

  ‘I don’t like being here!’ said Lynn. She was sounding more and more childlike. ‘I should never have come to this horrible place. It isn’t at all like I thought it was going to be. I want to go home.’

  ‘Will you please calm the hell down!’ said Freddie. ‘It isn’t that bad. Not right now. At least the appalling atmosphere hasn’t come back. That has to mean something.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Tom. ‘But what?’

  ‘I don’t know!’ said Freddie. ‘You’re the scientist!’

  ‘And a lot of help that’s been,’ said Lynn.

  ‘If I could just drag you all back to the subject at hand,’ I said. ‘It’s my belief Arthur was murdered. By someone in this room.’

  Lynn, Tom and Freddie all looked honestly shocked, as though the thought had never struck home before. And then everyone looked suspiciously at everyone else, before finally turning back to look at me.

  ‘As if we didn’t have enough on our minds,’ said Tom, ‘now we have to worry about whether one of us is a murderer?’

  Freddie leaned forward in her chair, to better fix me with a cold glare. ‘What makes you so sure Arthur was killed? I saw him close up when we carried him out, and there wasn’t a mark on him.’

  ‘It couldn’t have been murder,’ said Lynn. ‘I mean, it just couldn’t! We were all right here with him when it happened. We would have seen something.’

  ‘Would we?’ said Tom. ‘We were all concentrating on the door, trying to make out whatever was hiding in the darkness.’

  ‘We still have no idea what that darkness was,’ said Freddie. ‘Or why it hasn’t returned.’

  ‘Do you want it to come back?’ said Lynn. ‘The last time it was here, somebody died.’

  There was an uncomfortable silence, as they all considered the implications of that. I took advantage of the pause to glance meaningfully at Arthur.

  ‘Lynn is definitely hiding something,’ he said immediately. ‘So are Tom, Freddie and your ex-girlfriend. Perfectly normal human behaviour, in other words.’

  ‘You can leave Penny out of it,’ I said. ‘I know what’s on her mind.’

  ‘She could still be a suspect,’ said Arthur.

  ‘No, she couldn’t,’ I said firmly.

  He shrugged. ‘Have it your own way. I’m just saying …’

  ‘Is there anything about Freddie that catches your eye?’ I said.

  ‘Her aura is all over the place,’ Arthur said slowly. ‘But that could just be down to her feeling upset. Why do you ask?’

  ‘Because she doesn’t seem nearly upset enough over your death.’

  Arthur shook his head firmly. ‘It’s just her way. I really don’t see Freddie as my killer.’

  ‘Why not?’ I said. ‘Just because she was trying to seduce you?’

  He grinned. ‘You say that like it’s a bad thing. And anyway, she cared about me. She really did. I could tell.’

  ‘But what if she didn’t?’ I said. ‘What if everything she said and did was nothing more than a smokescreen, so she could get close enough to kill you?’

  ‘I’d hate to have a mind like yours,’ said Arthur. ‘Why would Freddie want to do something like that?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘That’s why I’m asking questions.’

  I realized everyone was staring at me. I met their gaze steadily.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Why are you muttering to yourself?’ said Tom.

  ‘Yes,’ said Freddie. ‘Cut it out. It’s getting on my nerves.’

  �
��You’re weird, Ishmael,’ said Lynn.

  ‘It’s just something he does,’ said Penny. ‘He says it helps him think.’

  I shot her a grateful look, but she had already turned away.

  ‘Why would one of us want to kill Arthur?’ Lynn said stubbornly. ‘What reason could we possibly have? It’s not like he was anyone important.’

  ‘I could have been!’ Arthur said loudly. ‘You don’t know! And even on the worst day I ever had, I was still more important than some sanctimonious low-rent mind-reading act, telling people what they want to hear in return for cash in hand and your face in the paper!’

  ‘Ten out of ten for moral outrage, Arthur, but try to keep the noise down,’ I said quietly. ‘I’m trying to run an interrogation here.’

  ‘They can’t hear me!’

  ‘I can.’

  He sniffed and folded his arms sulkily. ‘Well, get on with it, then.’

  I went back to listening to the others.

  ‘Arthur might not have been particularly diplomatic,’ said Freddie, ‘but he hadn’t known any of us long enough to make that kind of enemy.’

  ‘It’s not like we know much about him,’ Tom said dubiously. ‘In fact, we don’t know that much about any of us. We could have brought all kinds of past history and emotional baggage with us. For all we know, anyone in this room could have it in them to be a killer.’

  Lynn sat up in her chair and looked quickly round the room, like a frightened child who’d suddenly realized she was surrounded by adults she couldn’t trust.

  ‘Even if someone here did kill Arthur,’ she said tremulously, ‘it might not be their fault.’

  ‘OK …’ said Freddie. ‘This should be interesting. What makes you think that, Lynn?’

  ‘We know that something bad happened here, long ago,’ Lynn said slowly. ‘Bad enough to poison the spiritual wells of Harrow House. It’s still here, seeping out into the atmosphere. It could be that the house has been subtly influencing us all along, to do things we would never normally dream of doing.’

  ‘You sound like you’re trying to establish a case for someone’s defence,’ Tom said dryly.

  ‘We haven’t felt the bad atmosphere for ages,’ said Freddie.

  ‘Perhaps because the house has already achieved what it wanted,’ said Lynn. ‘To put its thoughts inside one of us, so that person would have no choice but to kill whoever the house wanted dead.’

  ‘But if that was true, it would mean we couldn’t trust anyone,’ said Tom. ‘Because any one of us might not be who we thought we were.’

  ‘If one of us had been driven out of our mind, we’d hardly be sitting here talking rationally about it, would we?’ Freddie said sharply.

  ‘Perhaps now the madness has passed, the killer is lying low,’ said Lynn, ‘hoping to avoid drawing attention to themselves.’

  ‘You’re the psychic,’ I said. ‘Shouldn’t you be able to tell if one of us has been got at?’

  She glared at me. ‘My powers don’t work that way.’

  ‘So you say,’ said Tom.

  ‘I have a feeling for places and settings,’ Lynn said coldly. ‘But I have no way of telling what’s going on inside your heads. If I did, I might not feel so frightened all the time.’ She slumped back in her chair, looking suddenly even smaller. ‘I hate being here, and I hate all of this. I’m so tired … I just want to go to sleep and not wake up till it’s over. But I’m too scared to sleep.’

  Tom turned to Freddie, but she was already shaking her head.

  ‘My skill sets are all to do with the powers of nature … though I like to think I would have noticed an actual possession taking place right in front of me.’ She looked at each of us in turn, frowning thoughtfully. ‘I can offer you this much: I’m not feeling any unnatural presence in this room. At the moment.’

  ‘And all my instruments are sleeping on the job,’ said Tom. ‘Whatever’s going on here, they can’t cope with it.’

  ‘I’d like to know why the house keeps showing us these sudden flashes of power and high strangeness, and then goes quiet,’ I said.

  ‘Perhaps it only has so much energy to draw on,’ said Lynn. ‘It drains itself showing us things, like the darkness and the stuffed animals and the mirror … and then it has to rest and recover before it can try again.’ She rubbed awkwardly at her forehead, as though troubled by a sudden pain. ‘Sometimes, I think this house is alive …’

  ‘Try to get some sleep,’ said Freddie, not unkindly.

  I looked to Tom. ‘Could any of your equipment detect an energy surge like that?’

  He looked at his screen. ‘It would depend on what kind of energy was involved. Most of this was only ever designed to deal with the kind of events you’d expect in traditional hauntings. But I don’t think there’s anything traditional about Harrow House.’

  ‘I wonder …’ said Freddie.

  ‘What?’ Lynn said tiredly, not even looking at her. ‘What do you wonder?’

  ‘Whether this house is running experiments on us,’ said Freddie. ‘Putting us through hoops, just to watch us jump.’

  ‘Stop it!’ said Lynn. ‘That’s a horrible idea! I don’t even want to think about that.’

  Freddie shook her head. ‘How did you ever get to be a celebrated psychic, with such delicate sensibilities?’

  Lynn looked at her coldly. ‘You think this was something I chose? I do it because I’m good at it.’

  ‘Good at parting suckers from their money,’ said Arthur.

  ‘Did you ever find any hard evidence to support that?’ I said quietly.

  ‘Some,’ said Arthur. ‘And I had contacts who swore they could get me more. I was putting a major story together. Real front-page stuff. Now all I can do is hope someone at the Herald will be able to make enough sense out of my notes to stick it to her properly.’

  ‘Hush,’ I said.

  ‘If the killer knows they’re under suspicion, what’s to stop them killing again?’ Tom said slowly. ‘They might feel they have no choice but to murder everyone here, rather than risk us telling what we know to the authorities.’

  ‘But what could we tell them?’ said Lynn. ‘We don’t know anything.’

  ‘Finally!’ said Freddie. ‘Something we can agree on.’

  They were all studying each other warily. Lynn looked as though she wanted to hide behind something, Tom looked as if he was thinking of making a run for the door, and Freddie looked ready to punch out anyone who got too close. Penny watched all of them in turn, but said nothing.

  ‘They’re all scared,’ Arthur said quietly. ‘And I mean really scared. But I don’t think they’re scared of the same things.’

  ‘How do you mean?’ I said.

  ‘I’m not sure,’ said Arthur. ‘It’s hard to interpret what I’m seeing, but their auras are flaring and buzzing like they’re going to explode.’

  ‘Can you tell if any of them are keeping something important from the rest of us?’

  ‘They’re all concealing something!’ said Arthur. ‘Very definitely including your ex. Her aura shows whole extra levels of shielding … As though she’s trained herself to not even think about certain things.’

  ‘I told you to leave her out of this.’

  ‘It’s to do with you, isn’t it?’ said Arthur. He looked at me searchingly. ‘Something to do with your being security, or maybe to do with one of your past cases? No, that’s not it. Whatever it is she’s hiding, it’s definitely to do with you. I always knew there was something off about you, Ishmael. What is it? What am I missing?’

  ‘Concentrate on the murder suspects,’ I said calmly.

  ‘I think we should just stay here and watch each other till morning, and then let the authorities sort it all out,’ said Freddie.

  Lynn laughed harshly. ‘Do you really think the police are going to believe anything we have to say about what we’ve witnessed here?’

  ‘All we could tell them for certain is that Arthur collapsed suddenly and died,’ I
said. ‘For no obvious reason.’

  ‘Exactly,’ said Lynn. ‘We don’t have any real evidence that it might be murder.’

  ‘Or that the house turned anyone into a killer,’ said Freddie.

  Lynn turned on her. ‘Is it any easier to believe that someone came here intending to kill Arthur?’

  ‘If we are stuck in this house with a murderer,’ Tom said slowly, ‘we have to figure out who it is, so we can lock them up somewhere. It’s the only way we can feel safe.’

  ‘But what if there isn’t any way to tell?’ said Lynn. ‘What good does all this talking do, when there’s nothing we can depend on to make sense?’

  ‘We should be safe enough, as long as we all stick together,’ said Penny.

  ‘Damn right,’ Freddie said immediately. ‘You won’t catch me going off on my own. I watch horror movies. It’s always the ones who separate themselves from the pack that end up leaving the film early – often in strange and inventive ways.’

  ‘But what if we have to … “go”?’ said Lynn. ‘I’m starting to wish I hadn’t drunk the herbal tea.’

  ‘I have a couple of water bottles in one of my cases,’ Tom said diffidently. ‘I could always empty them out …’

  ‘Not very practical where us girls are concerned,’ said Freddie. ‘Unless you’ve got a funnel in there as well.’

  ‘I think I saw a vase in one of the other rooms,’ said Tom.

  ‘Could we please change the subject?’ said Lynn.

  ‘You started it,’ said Freddie.

  ‘And I really wish I hadn’t,’ said Lynn.

  ‘It’s all in the mind,’ said Penny.

  ‘No, it isn’t – it’s all in the bladder!’ said Lynn, crossing her legs tightly.

  ‘Tell them they can piss in the fireplace,’ said Arthur. ‘I don’t mind, and Malcolm deserves it. The others can always turn their backs and whistle, if someone’s feeling a bit bashful.’

  ‘Really not helping, Arthur,’ I said.

  ‘The house knows we’re talking about it,’ Lynn said suddenly. ‘I’m feeling a presence, right here in the room with us, listening to everything we say.’

  ‘Will you stop saying things like that!’ said Tom. ‘Feelings aren’t evidence!’

  ‘They can be, in our line of work,’ said Freddie.