The House on Widows Hill Read online

  She still wouldn’t acknowledge me, so I sat down heavily on the arm of her chair. The whole thing tilted sideways under my weight, and Penny had to throw her weight in the opposite direction to keep the chair from toppling over. She still refused to look at me.

  ‘Not for the first time,’ I said quietly, ‘you were right, and I was wrong. I have run away from people I cared for, because I thought it was more important to protect the secret of what I am. And I have outlived many of the people I’ve known, because I don’t come with the same sell-by date as everyone else. But you’re different, Penny. You are the only person I have ever opened up to completely. The only one who knows everything about me – or as much as I know, at least. I will never walk away from you, because you help keep me human. By loving me, as I love you. And I won’t give that up for anything.’

  Penny finally turned around in her chair and looked at me. Her face wasn’t giving anything away.

  ‘Go on,’ she said.

  ‘I don’t age like you do,’ I said. ‘At some point you will grow old and die, and I will go on. Whether I want to or not. But given the kind of lives we lead, and the kind of cases we work, it seems far more likely that we’ll die together, trying to take down something far more dangerous than we are.’

  Penny smiled slightly. ‘Where are you going with this, Ishmael?’

  ‘I have no idea what the future holds,’ I said. ‘So let’s embrace our time together, because it could all be taken away from us at any moment. Just like Arthur.’

  Penny got up out of her chair, and I stood up to face her. She reached out to me, and I took her in my arms. We held each other tightly, as though to make it clear to the universe that nothing was ever going to separate us.

  There was the sound of polite applause from the rest of the room. When Penny and I finally let go of each other and looked around, Lynn and Freddie and Tom were looking quietly pleased that we weren’t arguing any more. If only because it was one less distraction. Arthur grinned broadly and gave us a big thumbs up.

  ‘We are back!’ said Penny, smiling widely at me. ‘The old partnership rides again! Just as well, really; it was actually painful watching you stumbling around and getting nowhere, trying to run an interrogation without me.’

  I had to raise an eyebrow. ‘You know, I did have a perfectly successful career before I met you.’

  ‘It’s a wonder to me you survived this long,’ Penny said briskly. And then she looked at me thoughtfully. ‘What was all that muttering and glancing off to one side?’

  ‘I needed a partner,’ I said. ‘So I asked Arthur to help.’

  Penny’s eyes widened, and she put a hand to her mouth. It couldn’t quite conceal her broad grin.

  ‘You’ve been talking with a ghost, about his own murder?’

  ‘Yes. He wasn’t very helpful.’

  ‘I heard that!’ Arthur said loudly.

  Penny’s mouth pursed thoughtfully. ‘Given that Arthur is a ghost, could he tell us anything about the true nature of Harrow House?’

  ‘I suppose so,’ I said. ‘I never got around to asking him.’

  ‘You see!’ said Penny. ‘This is why you need me. Where is he?’

  I led her over to the fireplace, where Arthur was standing under the portrait of bad old Malcolm Welles. He nodded cheerfully to both of us. The others watched Penny and me carefully to see what we were up to, but when all we did was look solemnly at the portrait, they went back to their brooding. I indicated to Penny where Arthur was standing, and she nodded briskly in his general direction.

  ‘Have you seen any other ghosts in this house, Arthur?’

  ‘I did think to ask him that,’ I said. ‘Apparently, he’s too scared to look.’

  ‘I am not scared!’ Arthur said immediately. ‘It’s just that the very idea disturbs the crap out of me.’

  ‘What’s he saying?’ said Penny, taking in the look on my face. ‘Ishmael, if this is going to work, you have to tell me everything he says.’

  I brought her up to speed, and she looked sharply in Arthur’s direction.

  ‘But you’re a ghost! What have you got to be worried about? You’d just be meeting someone who’s in the same position as yourself. You’d probably find you have a lot in common.’

  Arthur shuffled his feet awkwardly. They didn’t make a sound.

  ‘It’s not that simple. Ever since I came back, I’ve been getting this … feeling that there are other things which exist on the same spiritual plane as me. Spiritual monsters that prey on the newly dead. Things so far beyond human understanding that we don’t even have concepts for what they are.’

  I leaned forward, intrigued. ‘And you think there are things like that here, in Harrow House?’

  ‘I don’t know, and I don’t want to find out. So I am not going to stick my head above the parapet, or make a lot of noise, or anything else that might get them looking in my direction.’

  Penny listened impatiently as I explained the long pause, and then sniffed loudly.

  ‘How much of this do you actually know, Arthur, and how much is just you having a fit of the vapours?’

  ‘Which one of us is dead, and therefore the authority on this whole afterlife situation?’ Arthur said huffily. ‘Most of my senses are gone now; all I have are my feelings.’

  ‘But given that you are very definitely dead, if not actually departed, what else could happen to you?’ I said reasonably.

  ‘I don’t know!’ said Arthur. ‘That’s what scares me.’

  Penny did her best to appear sympathetic but couldn’t hide her impatience.

  ‘It sounds more to me like you’re having a panic attack, Arthur. Do you need to breathe into a paper bag or something?’

  ‘He doesn’t breathe,’ I said.

  ‘All right,’ said Penny. ‘Arthur! Try sticking your head between your knees. Or under your arm.’

  Arthur looked at me. ‘One more remark like that, and I will hit her with a rain of frogs. Right here, right now.’

  ‘Ishmael? Why are you smiling like that?’ said Penny.

  ‘Let me talk to him,’ I said. ‘Arthur, just try to reach out and get a sense of what’s actually going on in Harrow House. You don’t have to give away where you are; just spy on things, from a distance.’

  ‘I can do that,’ said Arthur. ‘I’m a journalist. In spirit, anyway.’

  ‘In particular, we need to know if some form of intelligence might be trapped in this house,’ I said.

  Arthur looked at me sharply. ‘What connection could that possibly have to how I was murdered?’

  ‘Until we find out what’s really going on, how can we be sure of anything?’ I said reasonably. ‘Give it your best shot.’

  He looked at me for a long moment. ‘I am curious as to exactly what it was that drove my ancestors out, all those years ago. And screwed up my family for generations afterwards. OK! What’s the use of being dead if you can’t discover the truth about the things that matter, and maybe arrange for a little karmic payback?’

  ‘Now you’re talking,’ I said.

  ‘Hush,’ he said, grinning.

  He concentrated, frowning so hard it would have hurt his face if he had still been alive. He stared at the closed door, and then through it, as though his mind was roaming the rest of the house. Something in his face reminded me of the fey quality I’d glimpsed in Lynn earlier, and while I was still trying to work out what that might mean, Arthur suddenly relaxed and shook his head firmly.

  ‘I’m not picking up anything. Not even the bad vibrations that affected us all when we entered the house. If there is some old-time presence still hanging around here, it must have disappeared into a hole and then dragged the hole in after it, because I’m getting nothing.’

  ‘Why would it want to hide from us?’ I said.

  ‘Why would what want to hide from us?’ said Penny. ‘Ishmael, what is Arthur saying?’

  I filled her in on the details. Penny frowned.

  ‘Perhaps wha
tever it is decided that since the usual scare tactics aren’t working, the best thing for it to do is keep its head down until we’ve all left.’

  ‘You think it’s scared of us?’ I said.

  Penny shrugged. ‘Maybe it never had to cope with a murder and a new ghost on the same night before.’

  ‘You think it might be scared of me?’ said Arthur, beaming widely. ‘Damn. I am proud …’

  A thought struck me. ‘Arthur, did you see the stuffed animals we thought were talking to us earlier?’

  ‘No,’ he said immediately. ‘I wondered what was going on there.’ He stopped to think about that for a moment. ‘If I couldn’t see or hear them, that’s presumably because I’m dead and therefore don’t have a living mind to be fooled … But on the other hand, I don’t think I like the idea of things going on around me that I don’t know about.’

  ‘If you can’t see them, then that has to mean there isn’t anything going on,’ I said patiently.

  ‘Oh. Yes. I think …’

  ‘Whatever is at the heart of Harrow House’s bad reputation,’ I said, ‘must derive from the original bad thing that happened to Malcolm Welles and his family.’

  ‘It’s sounding more and more to me as though Malcolm was the real villain of the piece,’ said Penny. ‘Could he have compelled something unnatural to serve him, and then imprisoned it here, until finally it got the chance to break free?’

  ‘Hold it right there,’ said Arthur. ‘Did you just say unnatural? Are we talking about Malcolm making a deal with the Devil, in return for success in business? OK, that is it: I am disappearing and not coming back until all of this is over.’

  ‘We don’t know anything of the sort,’ I said reassuringly. ‘Malcolm might have made a deal with something else entirely.’

  ‘Like what?’ said Arthur.

  ‘Something not of this world,’ I said.

  ‘Oh, come on!’ said Arthur. ‘Really?’

  I gave him my best hard look. ‘You have no problem with your ancestor making a deal with the Devil, but you draw the line at aliens?’

  ‘Yes! No! I don’t know!’ Arthur scowled unhappily. ‘This all sounds like silly-season stuff to me … You honestly think my ancestor had a really close encounter, stole some alien’s knowledge to give him an unfair advantage in business, and then locked it up here in this house so no one would ever find out? And it’s still here? That is a hell of a lot of ifs and maybes …’

  ‘But it would explain why Malcolm and his family had to run like hell when the alien finally broke loose,’ I said. ‘I’m guessing it wouldn’t have been in the best of moods by then.’

  ‘But if the alien did break free, why didn’t it leave the house and go after him?’ said Penny after she’d caught up.

  ‘Malcolm must have had some other way to hold it here,’ I said. ‘Which is why it’s never been able to leave the house.’

  ‘And you think it’s still alive, after all these years?’ said Penny.

  ‘Who knows how long an alien could live?’ I said.

  Penny and I exchanged a look and a smile.

  ‘What was that?’ Arthur said quickly. ‘I saw that! What just happened there?’

  ‘Private joke,’ I said briskly. ‘Now, Arthur, is there anything about the original story you can tell us, something that only your family might have known? Any detail, no matter how small, that they never shared with anyone outside the family?’

  Arthur thought about it. ‘On the rare occasions when my family did talk about the house, I always made a point of not listening. As a form of rebellion – to make it clear I didn’t want Harrow House dominating my life. But now I wonder whether my family never talked about it when I was around, because they knew I didn’t want to know.

  ‘When I got older, I did start to take an interest. I wanted to know what it was that had blighted my family’s life for so long. But when I finally started asking questions, I was surprised to discover my family really didn’t know much after all. Previous generations had done all they could to bury the story, trying to put it behind them.

  ‘When I started working for the Bath Herald, I made use of their archives, so I could read the original stories, but they turned out to be mainly gossip and hearsay – most of it concerning the treasure Malcolm was supposed to have abandoned in his hurry to get away. I’m starting to think now that maybe he did leave something behind, but it was a prisoner, rather than treasure …

  ‘The only detail I can think of is that something was supposed to have happened down in the cellar, right before Malcolm and his family ran for their lives. It’s not actually a secret, just a detail that was only mentioned in one of the original accounts.’

  ‘Then that’s where we have to go,’ I said. ‘Down into the cellar, to see if something is still there.’

  ‘What’s this we stuff?’ Arthur said loudly. ‘I’m not going down there! Why would I want to go down there?’

  ‘Don’t you want to learn the truth at last?’ I said.

  ‘Well, yes, but on the other hand, a whole lot of not necessarily,’ said Arthur.

  ‘The three of us together are perfectly capable of taking on anything that might still be lurking in a cellar,’ I said.

  ‘Can I have that in writing?’ said Arthur.

  ‘Ishmael and I have experience when it comes to dealing with the weird and uncanny,’ said Penny, after I’d explained Arthur’s reluctance. ‘We kick monster arse for a living.’

  Arthur sighed. ‘You know, there was a time I would have moved heaven and hell to get to the bottom of a comment like that, but now it’s just another story I’ll never get to write.’

  ‘There’s nothing to worry about,’ I said. ‘You’re the ghost this house is scared of, remember?’

  ‘I’m finding that idea less and less convincing,’ said Arthur. ‘Oh, hell … Let us do this brave and incredibly stupid thing, before we all have a rush of common sense to the head and do something sane instead.’

  ‘That’s the spirit,’ I said briskly. ‘Now, how do we get down to the cellar?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Arthur.

  I looked at him. ‘What do you mean, you don’t know?’

  He glared right back at me. ‘How many times do I have to say this? I have never been inside this house before! I don’t know where anything is. And I definitely didn’t see a door anywhere in the hallway that might lead down to a cellar.’

  ‘Is he saying he doesn’t know where the cellar is?’ said Penny. ‘How can he not know? Arthur …’

  ‘I’m over here,’ Arthur said coldly.

  I turned Penny so she was pointing in the right direction, and she put on her most winning smile.

  ‘Arthur, when you first felt the unpleasant atmosphere in this house, where did it start?’

  ‘Right by the front door,’ said Arthur. ‘You know that; you were there!’

  I explained to Penny, and she nodded quickly.

  ‘So, clearly, that is where we need to start looking,’ said Penny. ‘Ishmael, should we tell the others what we’re doing?’

  ‘Best not to,’ I said. ‘We don’t want to put them at risk.’

  ‘Risk?’ Arthur said quickly. ‘What risk?’

  ‘We’re going to have to tell them something,’ said Penny.

  We looked round at the others, just in time to see Tom heading for the door.

  ‘Tom?’ I said. ‘Where are you off to?’

  He stopped and brandished an empty water bottle. ‘I need to take a leak. Thought I’d do it in one of the other rooms.’

  Arthur bristled. ‘I am not having him take a piss in front of my body!’

  ‘What difference would it make?’ I said.

  ‘It’s not nice,’ said Arthur.

  I turned my attention back to Tom. ‘I don’t think you should go anywhere on your own. Not in this house.’

  ‘Damn right,’ said Freddie. ‘What did I say earlier about the fate of supporting actors in horror movies?’


  ‘I’ll be fine,’ said Tom. ‘And I don’t want anyone coming with me, thank you. This is not the kind of performance that benefits from an audience. I’ll leave this door ajar, and the door to the room I choose, so I can call for help if I need it.’ He paused. ‘You would come if I called, wouldn’t you?’

  ‘Of course,’ said Freddie. ‘If only out of curiosity.’

  ‘Do you have another empty bottle?’ said Lynn.

  ‘Could you manage with a bottle?’ said Tom.

  She scowled at him. ‘I’ll have to, won’t I? Just hand it over, and I’ll use whichever room you don’t.’

  ‘Now she wants to piss in front of me!’ said Arthur.

  ‘It’s really not a good idea for both of us to be going off on our own,’ said Tom. ‘You stay put, and I’ll sort you out another bottle when I get back.’

  He quickly left the room, leaving the door ajar. I hurried over and eased the door open a little more, so I could peer cautiously past it. Penny and Arthur moved in behind me.

  ‘What are you two doing?’ said Freddie.

  ‘Just checking to make sure he’s all right,’ I said.

  ‘He was definitely being evasive,’ said Arthur. ‘You should have seen his aura; it was all over the place.’

  ‘I was able to work that one out on my own,’ I said. ‘I wonder what he’s really up to …’

  ‘Must be something pretty important, to send him off on his own in a house like this,’ said Penny.

  ‘But what could be so important that he didn’t want to talk about it?’ I said.

  ‘Maybe he’s meeting someone,’ said Arthur.

  I watched Tom enter the right-hand room and close the door firmly behind him. I stepped out into the empty hall, and Penny was quickly there at my side. Lynn and Freddie immediately rose up out of their chairs.

  ‘What’s going on?’ said Freddie.

  ‘You’re not going off and leaving us, are you?’ said Lynn.

  ‘We’re just going down the hall a way, to keep an eye on Tom,’ I said. ‘You stay put, and we’ll be back before you know it.’

  I gestured for Arthur to come and join Penny and me, but he hesitated before the open doorway.

  ‘I can’t leave this room, remember? The house won’t let me.’