The House on Cold Hill

by James, Peter

  ‘You were in Cold Hill for how long?’

  ‘Yes – gosh – I spent almost thirty years there. Loved it. Never wanted to be anywhere else.’

  ‘You’d have known Annie Porter?’

  Manthorpe beamed. ‘Annie Porter? What a lovely character!’ He pointed at a tall, very slightly uneven vase, painted with a floral design, on a shelf alongside a row of photographs of three children, and a separate photograph of a golden retriever. ‘My late wife fired that in her kiln. She used to attend Annie’s pottery classes regularly. Annie’s still around is she? Must be knocking on a bit.’

  ‘She’s in rude health, I’d say.’

  ‘Remember me to her.’

  ‘I will indeed.’ Ollie reached for his mug. ‘Do you remember someone else who I think was there during your time: Harry Walters?’

  Manthorpe eyed him, wary all of a sudden. ‘Harry Walters? Silver-haired old boy who also smoked a pipe?’

  ‘That’s him.’

  ‘I remember him a little. Bit of an oddball – kept himself to himself. He worked up at your place. Poor bugger died in an accident there.’

  ‘Yes, that’s right, apparently a mechanical digger toppled onto him. What about the O’Hare family? Four of them. They were buried in the churchyard in 1983. Do you remember them?’

  ‘Yes,’ Manthorpe answered after a short silence. ‘Yes, that was terrible. One of the saddest things I ever had to deal with. Happened not long after I arrived there as the vicar.’

  ‘What can you tell me about them?’

  ‘Well, not a lot really, never had time to get to know them.’ He leaned back and drew on his pipe, but it had gone out. He struck another match, sucked hard and blew out another perfect smoke ring. Ollie felt his phone vibrate in his pocket, but ignored it. ‘Johnny O’Hare – if I remember right – was a big shot in the music business. We had the funeral in the church, and requests for songs from artistes he had worked with. Glen Campbell. Diana Ross. Billy J. Kramer. The Dave Clark Five. The Kinks. He was into some area of management – composers or lyricists, something like that.’ The retired vicar’s voice changed, and Ollie could detect something wistful in it. ‘I can tell you, we had a real Who’s Who of rock greats in the church that day. I doubt there’s ever been anything like it before or after. We had Paul McCartney, Ray Davies, Mick Jagger, Lulu – there were police cordons in the village to keep the crowds back.’

  ‘Amazing!’ Ollie said.

  ‘Hmmmn, you could say that. I’ll tell you another thing I’ve just remembered. The deceased’s brother – Charlie O’Hare – came to see me a few days before the funeral. He was a little – eccentric might be a polite word for him. He told me his brother had never been much for religion, but he thought it would be nice to have a communion service for the funeral. He said Johnny had always been a bit of a bon viveur and rather than have the traditional communion wine and wafer host, asked me whether we could have champagne and caviar blinis instead – oh, and cigars instead of candles. He wondered if everyone in the church could light up a cigar in his brother’s memory. Apparently he was very fond of cigars.’

  Ollie smiled, pensively. Cigars. Did that explain the smell in the attic room? Barker’s sighting?

  ‘I gave him short shrift, I can tell you!’

  ‘I’m not surprised.’

  ‘Do this job for long enough and nothing will surprise you, I can tell you that! Although I’ve forgotten a lot. I told you on the phone that my memory’s not so good these days.’

  ‘It seems pretty sharp to me,’ Ollie said. ‘So what happened to the O’Hare family? How did they die? It looks as if they all died at the same time – was it a car accident?’

  ‘Well, of sorts, but not in the conventional sense.’ Manthorpe relit his pipe yet again, from a fresh match. ‘They’d just arrived at the house, pulled up at the front door, when part of the roof and front collapsed on them, crushing them – killing them all instantly.’

  Ollie listened in shocked silence. ‘On the day they moved in? They all died?’

  ‘Yes. I’m afraid the house has had a few tragedies.’ Then he smiled. ‘But don’t be put off. Some of the older folk in the village used to talk a lot of rubbish about the place being cursed or damned. But the reality is any house of that historic age is more than likely to have had its fair share of deaths. The history of the human race doesn’t make happy reading, does it? I’ve seen a lot of sadness during my time, but I’ve seen a lot of things that have kept my faith in God and in humanity alive, too. If there were no bad things in the world, we’d have nothing to measure the good against, would we?’

  ‘I guess not.’ Ollie sipped his tea.

  ‘The light can only shine in darkness,’ Manthorpe said. He gave Ollie a quizzical look. ‘Perhaps you and your family will be the light the house needs.’

  ‘It’s not looking that way at the moment.’

  ‘Why is that?’

  ‘I feel we’ve moved into a nightmare.’

  Ollie told him everything. From the first day and what he and his mother-in-law had seen in the atrium. Then the spheres he had seen. The young girl and the old woman that Jade had told him about. The episodes with the water. The voices he had heard last night and the bed rotating. And Caro’s confession to him about the woman she had seen several times.

  When he had finished, Manthorpe nodded silently, and tapped the embers out of his pipe bowl into the growing pile of grey ash in the ashtray. ‘Oh dear,’ he said finally. ‘Oh dear.’ He looked at Ollie with a dubious expression. ‘Cold Hill House was empty during most of my time there. As I said, there were a lot of rumours about the place – you know, village gossip.’

  ‘What rumours?’

  ‘About it being cursed, if you believe in that sort of thing. And there was one particular rumour.’ He shrugged dismissively, produced a tobacco pouch from his pocket and began to refill his pipe. ‘The problem is, Mr Harcourt—’

  ‘Please call me Ollie.’

  He nodded. ‘OK, Ollie, the problem is that in country villages people have time on their hands. Too much of it. They gossip, speculate.’

  ‘What did they speculate about Cold Hill House?’

  ‘How much of its history do you know?’

  ‘So far not much – other than what was in the estate agent’s particulars. Before the O’Hares bought it, the house was owned by a Lord and Lady Rothberg – he was heir to a banking dynasty, apparently. I believe they were there from shortly after the Second World War until they died.’

  Manthorpe held his freshly filled pipe in the air. ‘Yes, that was a few years before I came to Cold Hill, but people were still talking about it. A terrible tragedy, but I suppose it was a blessing in the end, after all those years never leaving the house. You have a lake, right?’

  ‘We do, yes. The one where Harry Walters drowned.’

  ‘As I heard it, there was a particularly hard winter one year. Lady Rothberg was very fond of animals and she had some quite rare ducks she had bred on the lake. I seem to remember an island in the middle?’

  Ollie nodded. ‘We call it Duck Island.’

  ‘Lady Rothberg trained the ducks to live on the island, to keep them safe from foxes, by putting some kind of duck feed – corn, I think – for them on it. She used to row over to it every few days with a sack of food to top up the supply. One morning the whole lake was frozen over. Instead of rowing she decided the ice was thick enough to walk on. She got halfway across with the sack of feed when the ice gave way and she fell in. Her husband tried to rescue her, and did apparently get the poor woman out, but because of her time underwater, starved of oxygen, she suffered severe brain damage, and spent the rest of her life confined to bed in a room in the house, in a persistent vegetative state. Then to compound the tragedy, the following year, on the day of his fortieth birthday, Lord Rothberg was apparently hosting a shooting party and there was a terrible accident – I believe the young son of a guest accidently discharged both barrels at Lord Rothbe
rg, blowing away most of his face and part of his neck, blinding him and paralysing him.’

  ‘I’d no idea. How terrible.’ Ollie looked at him in silence for some moments. ‘Has anybody actually lived out their natural lifespan, without tragedy, at Cold Hill House?’

  The retired clergyman smiled. ‘Oh, I’m sure plenty of people have. You have to understand, all great houses have their fair share of tragedy, as I said.’

  ‘This seems to be more than what I’d call a fair share.’

  ‘You need to put it all in the context of the long history of the place. But yes, there have been quite a number of tragic accidents. Hopefully now they’re over and done with.’

  ‘That’s what concerns me,’ Ollie said. ‘Which is why I came here to see you. I’m not at all sure they are over and done with. What do you know about the history of the house, before the Second World War?’

  ‘Well, that’s all very sketchy from what I can recall. The house was requisitioned by the government during the war, and a number of Canadian soldiers were billeted there. Before that, during the early part of the twentieth century, there was a bit of a mystery.’ He sipped his tea. ‘A bit of an odd family, I was told by some local gossip. A husband and wife. Can’t recall their names. She disappeared, apparently. The husband told his friends she’d left him and gone to live with a sister in New Zealand. But rumour had it he had a mistress and had murdered his wife and buried her somewhere in the grounds. The police became involved, but he died before it was ever resolved.’

  ‘How did he die?’

  ‘That I really can’t remember. I’m not sure I ever knew. But, actually, that’s reminded me. The very first owner – the chap who had the place built—’ He frowned. ‘Trying to remember his name. Bronwyn – no – Brangwyn. Sir Brangwyn something. Gallops? Bessington? Ah yes, now I remember. Sir Brangwyn De Glossope. There was a bit of a legend about him.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘Rather a ne’er-do-well. I think he was in the tea- or spice-importing business. He came from a wealthy land-owning family but gambled most of his inheritance away. Well, as I recall, he married a very rich woman – from the aristocracy, or at least landed gentry, and it was her money that paid the bills to have Cold Hill House built.’ He paused to relight his pipe, then blew another huge smoke ring, which rose steadily towards the ceiling, slowly dispersing. The retired vicar watched the ring, as if it was some kind of cloud in which his memory was stored. ‘If I’m recalling the story correctly, this woman was, not to put too fine a point on it, unfortunate-looking, by all accounts. There were rumours that she was what we might today call a medium – a psychic – or a clairvoyant. But back in those days she’d have been regarded as a witch. There was a persistent rumour in Cold Hill village that she put a spell on De Glossope to get him to marry her. Although there was another school of thought that he only married her for her money and had intended from the start to get rid of her as soon as convenient. It wasn’t long after the house was finished that this fellow, Brangwyn, had the whole place closed down for about three years while he went to India and then the Far East on business. When he returned, his wife wasn’t with him. The story he told people was that she had died of a sickness whilst over there.’ He puffed on his pipe again and blew another smoke ring, this one less perfectly formed.

  ‘And you don’t believe that?’ Ollie asked.

  ‘We’re talking about something that happened over two hundred and fifty years ago. I have no idea. But there was an old boy in Cold Hill village – he’d be long dead by now – who was a mine of information. He’d unearthed letters and journals and what-have-you from that time, and he used to like sitting in the pub and telling anyone who’d listen that Brangwyn’s wife had not been on the outbound ship with him. That he’d left her behind in the house.’

  ‘In the closed-up house?’

  Manthorpe shrugged. ‘Or buried her somewhere in the grounds. I don’t think they had quite the calibre of detection work we have today. If it’s true, he went away for long enough, came home, opened up the house and started life over again with a new bride. Rumour had it, apparently, that his wife’s spirit was pretty angry.’

  ‘Understandably!’

  Manthorpe gave a wry smile. ‘And that she didn’t like people leaving the house.’

  ‘Yep, well, it’s a big place to be on your own.’ He smiled, but the vicar looked miles away and did not smile back.

  ‘So she put a curse on the place?’ Ollie prompted.

  ‘Yes, that was the story I heard. And her occult powers gave her the ability to do this.’ He smiled as if he himself did not believe it.

  ‘No one’s ever tried to find the body?’ Ollie asked.

  ‘It’s a huge property as you know, acres of land. And besides, it’s just a rumour.’

  Ollie glanced at his watch. He was going to have to leave in a few minutes, to collect Jade. ‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘You’ve been incredibly helpful.’

  ‘Come and see me again sometime. You’re a nice chap. Don’t be put off by all that’s happened. Remember what I said, the light can only shine in darkness.’

  ‘I’ll remember that, thank you,’ Ollie said.

  ‘I’ll give you a bit of advice though – I’ll tell you what I think you should do – I’d have done it myself for you if I’d been a younger man, but I’m too old now.’

  Five minutes later, as Ollie drove away, the old clergyman stood by the front door, holding his dog and giving him a strange look that unsettled him.

  It was the look of an old man who was seeing something – or someone – for what he knew might be the last time.

  It made Ollie shiver.

  Manthorpe closed the front door feeling deeply shaken. He needed to make an important phone call, and urgently. He looked around and remembered he had left the handset up in his den on the first floor.

  The conversation of the past hour with the decent young man had confirmed so much that he already feared. The Harcourts needed help, and he knew the right person to speak to. He began to climb the narrow stairs, his knees aching, his heart pounding. He was out of breath before he’d reached halfway. Soon he was going to have to find the money for one of those stairlift things. Or else move.

  With one step to go to the top, a shadow suddenly crossed in front of him, and stopped.

  The old man halted in his tracks and stared up. He wasn’t afraid, just angry. Very angry. ‘What the hell do you want?’ he said.

  33

  Thursday, 17 September

  ‘Mr Simpson, the music teacher, has asked me if I’d like to play a solo in the school concert at the end of term!’ Jade said, bubbling with enthusiasm as she climbed up into the car.

  ‘Wow, that’s great, lovely! What are you going to play?’

  ‘Well, I’m not sure yet – he’s got a few ideas.’

  ‘I’m very proud of you!’

  All the way home she told him about her day and about how much she liked her new music teacher. The discussion about ghosts they’d had this morning, when he’d been driving her to school, seemed to be gone from her mind – for now at least.

  At a few minutes past 6.00p.m., as they drove up the drive and the house came into view, looking stunning in the evening sunlight, his spirits lifted. He was cheered and buoyed by Jade’s happy innocence and her growing enthusiasm for her new school. And she had added two more new friends, in addition to Charlie and Niamh, to the ones she wanted to invite to her birthday party, she told him.

  He saw Caro’s black Golf parked outside the house, and then, as they drew closer, he saw she was still in the car, talking on her phone.

  He pulled up beside her, and climbed out. Jade jumped down, clutching her guitar and rucksack, and ran happily to the Golf. Moments later, Caro ended her call and emerged, holding her briefcase. Jade hugged her and delivered the same excited news she’d given her father. Then they went inside and Jade disappeared up to her room.

  ‘How was your day, darling?’ Ollie
asked.

  ‘I need a drink,’ she said. ‘A large one. Several large ones!’

  They went through into the kitchen. Caro plonked her briefcase down on the floor. ‘I’m afraid I’ve got a good hour’s work to do,’ she said. ‘But I really do need a drink first. God!’

  Ollie went over to the fridge and took out a bottle of wine, then began to cut away the foil. ‘Have you only just arrived home, darling?’

  ‘No, I got here about twenty minutes ago. I was waiting for you to come home. I’m sorry.’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Sorry about what?’

  She shrugged off her jacket and hung it on the back of her chair. ‘I was too scared to come in here on my own. I – I didn’t want to be alone in the house.’

  He turned to look at her. She was hunched over the table, looking deeply vulnerable.

  He walked over and put an arm round her. ‘Darling, I understand.’

  ‘Do you? Do you really? Do you understand what it’s like to be scared to go in the front door of your own sodding home? Aren’t you scared? What’s going to happen tonight? Tomorrow? It’s like something doesn’t want us here. What the hell have we done? What have we got ourselves into? Do you think we should move? Ollie, what are we going to do?’

  She was wondering whether she should tell him about the message on her phone that had appeared – then disappeared – whilst she was having lunch with Kingsley Parkin. But she still couldn’t be sure if she had simply imagined it. So she said nothing.

  ‘We need to sort this out,’ he said. ‘Sort the house out. Find out just what the hell is going on. I went to see the previous vicar here, a nice old boy called Bob Manthorpe. He said the house had a bad history but that all old houses have some tragedies in their past.’