Celia Trevellick was still ranting at him – something about letting the dead rest in peace, ruining someone’s good name with outrageous rumours, pandering to the press with wicked lies – but he wasn’t taking it in. He read on: Mrs Eve Caleigh and her husband Gabriel . . . currently renting the property . . . neither confirmed nor denied reports that Crickley Hall is haunted . . . police called to investigate disturbances . . . two young daughters Laura and Kaley . . . Surely Eve hadn’t told the paper all this?
‘Are you listening to me, Mr Caleigh?’ The vicar’s wife’s face was taut with indignation, a blue vein clearly throbbing in her left temple.
‘I wasn’t here at the time,’ Gabe explained firmly, ‘but I’m sure my wife wouldn’t have given a story like this to a reporter. She’d’ve slammed the door in their face.’
‘Well they got it from somewhere.’
‘Yeah, from the two kids who broke in most likely. But hey, I don’t get it. Why are you blaming us for something we didn’t do?’
For a moment she seemed lost for words, but she soon rallied. ‘Because you’re outsiders here and you’ve stirred up gossip and whispers about past events that weren’t true in the first place. You’re tarnishing the reputations of good people who are no longer able to defend themselves.’
‘Who exactly?’
‘Never mind that. Just stop this nonsense about Crickley Hall being haunted.’
‘Lady, we didn’t start it in the first place. You think we want crazies turning up on our doorstep asking to see the ghosts? We got better things to do. Now excuse me while I get on with one of those better things.’
He began to close the door, but she held a hand against it.
‘I can make a complaint to the owner, you know,’ she said fiercely. ‘My husband knows the estate manager, Mr Grainger, very well. We could have your lease revoked.’
‘You’re kidding, right?’
‘I can assure you I’m not. People who cause trouble should expect trouble back.’
Gabe felt himself beginning to burn.
‘So long, Mrs Trevellick,’ he said evenly, keeping his temper in check. ‘Go ride your broomstick someplace else.’ He forced the door shut, his last sight of the irate woman at least satisfying: she stood as stiff as a rod, her mouth agape, her eyes wide with shock. If he’d given her the chance, he was sure she would have poked him with the sharp end of the umbrella.
He turned to see Eve by the kitchen door, obviously reluctant to have become involved in the altercation. Realizing he still had the newspaper in his hand, he offered it up to her.
‘Page five, great picture,’ he said.
Eve took it from him and quickly leafed through to the relevant feature.
‘Oh God,’ she said when she saw the photographs and read the headline. She went through the story, shaking her head at parts of it. ‘The reporter makes it sound like I gave a full interview and that I knew Crickley Hall was haunted. I swear, Gabe, I said none of this.’
‘Okay, hon, I know.’ He shrugged as if to dismiss the article.
‘I refused to speak to him. And the photographer took the picture before I could close the door.’
‘Don’t worry. It couldn’t be helped. They just run stories to fill up space.’
‘So this is why Mrs Trevellick was so cross?’
‘Uh-huh. You heard?’
‘Most of it.’
‘You did the right thing, not getting involved. She’s nuts.’
They went back into the kitchen together, Eve still reading the piece.
‘Seems like Seraphina and her brother enjoyed the attention,’ she commented, looking up from the newspaper. ‘Probably disappointed they didn’t get to have a picture too.’
Percy regarded Gabe and Eve curiously. ‘Sounded like the vicar’s wife out there.’
‘That’s who it was, Percy,’ said Gabe. ‘Celia Trevellick. Can’t get my head round why she was so mad. Said something about dredging up old rumours. Damage to the community, apparently.’
‘I heard her from here. Little ’un was anxious like.’ The gardener smiled at Cally, who was watching her parents.
‘S’ll right, Sparky,’ Gabe told her. ‘The angry lady’s gone now.’
With that reassurance, Cally went back to her colouring, the tip of her tongue protruding from the corner of her mouth as she drew a tree behind the purple and yellow horse.
Gabe waved a hand at the newspaper that Eve still held open. ‘I don’t get it. We should be the ones to get upset. Using a picture of Eve without her permission, showing everyone the house.’
‘And virtually giving out the address,’ Eve put in. ‘I just hope we don’t start getting daytrippers and loonies looking us up. I can’t understand why Mrs Trevellick got so upset though.’
Percy’s jaw jutted as he scratched his neck. ‘The vicar’s wife is an important person in Hollow Bay. She’s on the parish council an’ the church committee, as well as bein’ in charge of the Women’s Guild hereabouts. An’ her family goes way back, it’s part of local history.’
‘Oh yeah?’ said Gabe, still baffled as to why the newspaper story had rattled her cage.
Percy nodded. ‘Expects her husband to be bishop one day, so her reputation is important to her.’
‘But what’s that got to do with this?’ Gabe indicated the journal, which Eve had closed and left on the table.
‘Scandals never really fade away in these parts. Rumours don’t ever die, an’ reputations go back generations.’
Gabe shrugged again. ‘I still don’t get it.’
‘Her grandpa were Hollow Bay’s vicar durin’ the war an’ long afore.’
‘So?’
‘He were a great chum of Augustus Cribben. Stood by the man, admired Cribben for his pious ways an’ discipline. It were the vicar, Rossbridger, who recommended Augustus Cribben for the post of guardian in the first place. Knew him of old, y’see. Not exactly pals, but they both had respect for one another.’
Eve was dismayed. ‘But Cribben treated the evacuees appallingly. You told us that yourself and it’s all there in the book Gabe found.’
‘Yers, but nobody knew that at the time. Nobody ’cept Nancy, of course, an’ she weren’t able to do anythin’ ’bout it in the end.’
Gabe sat back down at the table, giving Cally a faint smile when she peeked up at him. To Percy, he said: ‘Why should any of this matter to Rossbridger’s granddaughter after all these years?’
‘Like I says, it’s a dark part of her family history. She don’t want it dug up again – might tarnish her an’ the vicar’s good name.’
‘That’s ridiculous. How could it matter now? It’s in the past.’
‘An’ as I says, family history is important in these parts, ’specially when yer be fine upstandin’ members of the community like the Trevellicks an’ yer expects yer husband to become bishop.’
Gabe was confounded, Eve dismayed.
‘Old Rossbridger, he were right behind Cribben in those days an’ it were him that persuaded the authorities not to look too fer into what went on in Crickley Hall. Seems like they agreed to that – bad fer the morale of the country in time of war an’ all that. ’Cause more an’ more parents was refusin’ to send their young ’uns away to strange parts. Didn’t trust the authorities, an’ in some cases they was right not to.’
‘Wait a minute.’ Something had occurred to Gabe. ‘Mrs Trevellick said something about an old lady being tracked down by the press. Who did she mean?’
Percy avoided Gabe’s questioning gaze for a moment, tilting his head downwards, then bringing it up again.
‘No, I didn’t tell yer, did I?’ he said. ‘Didn’t think it were important no more.’
Gabe and Eve glanced at each other before Percy went on.
‘She’s still alive, y’see. Old, in her nineties, but still alive.’
‘Who is, Percy?’ Eve asked patiently.
‘Augustus Cribben’s sister,’ he told them. ‘Magda.’
46: MAGDA CRIBBEN
Gabe wrinkled his nose as he followed the plump blue-uniformed nurse down the long corridor. The nursing home smelt of boiled cabbage, detergent and stale pee, all underlined by the more subtle odour of human decay, the slow rotting of living flesh.
‘She doesn’t get any visitors at all,’ the nurse said, glancing back over her shoulder at the engineer, ‘so it’ll be a nice surprise for her. We thought all her relatives must be deceased by now – that is, if she had any.’
‘My folks are distant cousins living in the States,’ he lied easily. ‘I promised ’em I’d try and look her up while I was on my tour of Europe.’ It was the same story he’d given to the receptionist when he’d first arrived at the old people’s nursing home. Percy had told him the location of the Denesdown Nursing Home for the Elderly and Eve had begged Gabe to look in on Magda Cribben on his way to Seapower’s Ilfracombe office – the home was on the outskirts of the large sprawling seaside town. He had resisted the idea at first. What good could it do? They had both assumed that Magda was long gone by now and if she was still alive she’d be somewhere in her nineties. Percy had repeated to Gabe how the woman had been hospitalized after being found on a station platform in a catatonic state and suffering apparent amnesia. From there she’d been transferred to a mental asylum where countless psychiatrists had endeavoured to unlock her mind over the years, none of them having any success. In her seventies, and regarded as a lost cause, she had been moved to this nursing home and here she remained, speechless and without memory. She was no danger to anyone, not even to herself, and she showed no interest in the world around her. The last Percy had heard, Magda Cribben sat silently in her room every day, unwilling, despite the gentle coaxing of nurses and staff, to join other elderly residents in the common room where they watched television, played board and card games, and conversed about distant times.
To Gabe, the visit seemed pointless – what could he do that medics hadn’t already tried to make her communicate? But Eve had been adamant: if he wouldn’t go, then she would, taking Cally along with her. Somehow she had got it into her head that the old lady must have the key to the evacuees’ mysterious deaths back in 1943, that only Magda Cribben could know why the children had drowned so needlessly in Crickley Hall’s cellar. Rightly or wrongly, Eve – strongly influenced by the psychic, Lili Peel – thought that the answer might help the troubled spirits of the children who haunted Crickley Hall pass on peacefully It was all nonsense to him, but what harm could visiting Magda do? It would at least appease Eve to know – or to think – he took the matter seriously. Gabe mentally shrugged: no harm at all, he told himself.
The nurse he was following interrupted his thoughts. ‘You have been informed of her condition, haven’t you? You understand she won’t speak to you?’
‘Uh, yeah. I just figured it would be nice to see her. Family thing, y’know?’
The nurse, whose plastic nametag over her left breast named her Iris, nodded her head. ‘Family is important,’ she pronounced sagely.
She had an ambling gait that made Gabe want to stride ahead of her. It wasn’t that he was impatient; it had more to do with being keyed up.
Although he certainly had been informed of Magda’s state, Gabe had no idea of what to expect. In the photograph salvaged from its hiding place behind the cupboard, she appeared to be in her forties (although Percy had assured Gabe and Eve that Cribben’s sister was in her early thirties: she just looked ten years older), a stiff, austere figure with a granite-like face, her eyes black and intimidating. She’d be in her nineties, and her once dark hair would be white or at least grey. He wondered if her hard features would be softened by wrinkles, if her rigid bearing would be mellowed by time. Would her heartless glare now be subdued?’
Gabe and the nurse passed by doors on either side of the corridor, some of them open to reveal sparsely furnished rooms, taken up mostly by narrow beds. They seemed empty of residents at the moment, but as they walked by one closed door near the end of the passage, it crept open a few inches. A small woman, whose unkempt grey hair hung over her creased face in thin straggles, peered out at him with watery eyes and he felt uncomfortable under her scrutiny. He heard a small, crusty snigger come from her, and then he was past the door.
The nurse turned to face him outside the open doorway of the next room, the last room along the corridor.
‘Here we are, Mr . . .?’ she said, eyebrows raised, questioningly.
‘Caleigh,’ he supplied for her.
‘Yes, of course, you said before. Mr Caleigh. Magda’s inside. We always have her door open so we can keep an eye on her. Not that she’s ever any trouble. Magda’s as quiet as a mouse – quieter, actually – and rarely moves from her chair once she sits there after breakfast. We have to come and fetch her at mealtimes, but apart from that she stays in her room all day long. Never socializes with the other residents. She has her own little toilet and washroom, so she comes out of her room only to eat and when it’s her bath day.’
Iris spoke in a normal voice, not bothering to lower its tone in deference to the woman on the other side of the doorway and Gabe wondered if Magda was deaf also. Couldn’t be. The nurse or receptionist would have mentioned it otherwise. He guessed that if any resident, or patient, was always passive and silent, they would probably end up being treated as an imbecile or vegetable.
Stepping up to the doorway and looking over the nurse’s shoulder, the engineer immediately set eyes on Magda Cribben.
Although there was an easychair in the room, the aged woman was seated on a hardbacked chair by the tidy bed.
‘Now, I’ll leave you to it,’ said Iris, moving aside to let Gabe through. ‘It’s all right, she will hear you, but don’t expect a response. If she does speak, believe me, we’ll all come running. They tell me she hasn’t spoken a word since the last world war, even though there’s nothing physically wrong with her. Not a peep, not a whisper.’
She called into the room, this time using a louder voice. ‘A gentleman has come to see you, Magda, isn’t that nice? He’s a relative from America and he’s come all this way to visit you, so be nice to him.’ The nurse winked conspiratorially at Gabe, but he did not react. ‘Go right in, Mr Caleigh. You can pull the armchair round or sit on the bed, whichever you prefer.’
With an unconvincing smile, she ambled away, back in the direction they had come.
Gabe entered the room.
Who is this man? He was a stranger, she’d never seen him before, and he was certainly no relative because she had none. Only Augustus, her dear brother, gone now, gone a long time ago. Perhaps that was for the best – they would have persecuted him if he hadn’t drowned. But she did not want this strange man in her room; he wasn’t even smartly dressed. Nobody ever came to see her, no, nobody ever came. Except for that one time, but it was long ago and in a different place to this, somewhere where they kept her locked up and where they were always asking questions – questions, questions, questions! But she never let them know, she never answered their silly questions – that would have been too dangerous – and eventually they had given up. Yes, he had visited her there – not this man, but the one who knew everything. He had come to her out of curiosity, not for love. Years ago that was, but she remembered it clearly as if it were yesterday. The doctors didn’t know it but her mind was still razor sharp – how else could she have kept up this pretence? – her memory unimpaired. Oh yes, she remembered the other man quite clearly.
‘Ms Cribben, my name is Gabe Caleigh.’
Who? She didn’t know anyone called Caleigh. Did she? No, she would have remembered. She wasn’t stupid as everyone thought she was. Just because she wouldn’t speak, it did not mean she’d forgotten how to. Oh no, that would have been too risky. Did they still hang people these days? She couldn’t be sure. And she certainly couldn’t ask.
The stranger had made himself comfortable now, he’s sitting on the edge of the bed – her bed. Who had given him permis
sion? Improper, that’s what it was. Most inappropriate behaviour, a strange man alone with a poor defenceless woman who could not even protest! The very idea! It was a good thing the door was open or he might have tried anything. On her bed, indeed! Such insolence, such bad manners.
She wouldn’t let him know she was cross, though. She would not reveal her outrage. She wouldn’t even look at him any more.
‘Currently I’m living at Crickley Hall with my family.’
Crickley Hall! There it was. He would try to trick her, he’d ask about the house, what happened there . . .
‘Do you remember Crickley Hall, Magda?’
Oh such atrocious manners. He was addressing her by her Christian name as if he were a friend or an acquaintance. Trying to be familiar because he wanted to ask her questions. But no, she wouldn’t be tricked, she wouldn’t speak to him, no, she’d not say a single word. He wasn’t even English, he was what was commonly called a Yank. The Yanks were coming to help Britain fight the Germans. No, no. The war had ended, hadn’t it? It was over a few years ago. Ten? Fifty? A hundred? It was a long time since, if she remembered correctly. And she did remember correctly, didn’t she? Yes, she did, more than anyone else would ever know.
‘When you were in your thirties you lived in the house called Crickley Hall with your brother, Augustus Theophilus Cribben.’
He knows something! He knows something about Augustus and he’s trying to trick me into telling him about what happened that time in Crickley Hall. That horrible night when the river broke its banks and the river beneath the house rose up through the well. She had escaped just moments before the flood had come, when Augustus was – no! She must not even think of it! Her heart was pounding and he might hear it. It would give her away. She must calm herself, reveal nothing in her expression. ‘That the time may have all shadow and silence in it.’ Shakespeare wrote that. See how acute her memory was? After she had been found the next morning, they had explained what had befallen Augustus and the children – what they thought had befallen them – but she had not betrayed herself, she had not shown any emotion, even though inside she had been devastated, her heart and soul left raw and damaged. She had been cunning, though: she had pretended to be in deep shock. No, that wasn’t quite true – she had been in deep shock – but she had fooled them all, the doctors who had examined her, the police and the various officials. Even the pious prig, the Reverend Rossbridger (yes, see how sharp her memory was?), had been duped when he had come to the hospital, pleading with her to save her brother’s righteous name (and, of course, his own by association). He had wanted her to refute the outrageous but necessarily covert report and the rumours that followed it, stories of how Augustus had shut the orphans in Crickley Hall’s cellar on the night of the flood. Surely Augustus would not have acted so wickedly, Rossbridger had pleaded. The guardian has cherished those unfortunate children. Certainly he was firm with them, but he was loving also, and taught them the way of the Lord. Speak out, dear Magda, the old fool had begged her, defend your brother’s honour. But she would not speak out, the truth would only defile Augustus’s good name even more.