Page 26 of Murder Most Haunted

‘Poor Rendell, lying there dead and us just thinking he had a hangover,’ said Gloria.

Apart from Harold, all of them were gathered in the kitchen again.

‘Gloria, eat this and then remember to check your levels.’ Dr Mortimer passed a sandwich to his wife. ‘So, we’re completely stuck here with a dead body and without any chance of contacting someone. This excursion has been a shambles from start to finish.’

‘That rather depends on your perspective,’ said Noah, cutting the corner off the cheddar that Midge had placed on the table and popping it in his mouth. ‘Honestly, this is the BEST haunted house experience ever!’

Frowning, Midge reached across and evened off the other corner with her knife.

‘Noah!’ said Rona. ‘It’s my first one of these trips, but I’m pretty sure people aren’t supposed to actually die.’

‘Great for Noah’s podcast thingy, though,’ said the doctor, slicing up a tomato directly on the counter, despite the wooden chopping board next to him.

Midge considered Noah for a moment. The doctor had a point, and the way Noah was cutting random edges of cheeses, willy-nilly, showed a degree of recklessness that Midge had so far not realized he was capable of.

‘Are you going to eat that sandwich?’ Midge asked Gloria, who nodded her head and was just about to take a bite when she suddenly dropped the food on to her plate and started screaming.

‘Jesus Christ!’ shouted Harold, who had appeared in the doorway that led to the garden. ‘You nearly gave me a flipping heart attack, what are you yelling for?’

‘Wh-what have you done?’ cried Gloria, her eyes as wide as saucers. She pointed a shaking hand up at him. ‘What is that all over you?’

His hands and shirt were covered in streaks of red and his trousers soaked through.

‘Get back, man,’ said the doctor, grabbing Midge’s cheese knife. ‘I’m warning you.’

Harold looked down at himself in surprise. ‘Oh my . . . I am a bit of a mess.’

‘Is that blood?’ asked Midge.

‘The sheep,’ blinked Harold, moving over to the sink and taking care to avoid the doctor and his knife. ‘I couldn’t stand looking at it any more. I’ve dragged it into the trees.’

‘Jesus,’ said Rona, turning green, which against her pink hair put Midge in mind of a watermelon.

‘Goodness!’ Gloria drew in some deep breaths and tried to hold her cup and saucer, which rattled nervously. ‘I thought—’

‘We all know what you thought,’ snapped the doctor, sitting back down in his chair.

‘What were you going to do with that anyway?’ said Harold, washing his hands and nodding at the cheese knife. ‘Pair me with a gouda?’

‘We need to get out of here,’ Dr Mortimer said, ignoring him. ‘This situation is no good for Gloria’s nerves.’

‘The bus is broken, remember?’ said Rona. ‘And we’re in the middle of a firing range with a closed road.’

As if on cue, the artillery fire started up again, rattling the windowpanes and eliciting a low moan from Gloria.

‘It’s all your fault,’ muttered the doctor, glaring at Harold.

‘How was I supposed to know Rendell was going to top himself?’

‘So it definitely was suicide?’ asked Rona.

‘Yes,’ insisted Harold, wiping his nose with the back of his hand. ‘I know it.’

‘How?’ asked Noah.

‘It’s happened before. Not the suicide, obviously, but he’s got into money troubles because of the gambling. Before, he just pulled a Reggie Perrin.’

‘Reggie what?’ asked Rona, examining her long nails.

‘You know – fake a disappearance when you owe money and then just resurface sometime later, new company et cetera,’ explained Harold as he scrubbed at his bloodied shirt.

‘Are you suggesting that this is all an elaborate set-up?’ Dr Mortimer frowned. ‘Because I can tell you that the man upstairs is definitely dead.’

‘No . . . I mean, he obviously did it for real this time,’ said Harold.

‘And I thought the police were supposed to have some kind of integrity,’ said Rona, shaking her head.

‘Well, that’s your first mistake there,’ snorted Harold, rubbing at his shirt more vigorously.

Midge shifted uncomfortably, suddenly acutely aware of the splintered grain in the wooden chair underneath her.

‘I don’t care what you say,’ Noah huffed. ‘Rendell’s death is proof of a malevolent entity in this house – perhaps even the White Lady of the Moor.’

Harold snorted again. ‘Don’t be ridiculous.’

‘No, listen. At the séance, Rendell saw something at the window, after it blew open all by itself. It was the Lady showing herself to him as a warning before he died.’

‘The only lady showing herself in windows is Midge,’ scoffed Harold, no doubt alluding to her brief performance in the bathing room. Midge flushed from her neck upwards.

‘You can’t deny the existence of the ghost,’ said Noah, pointing back at the doctor. ‘Even Dr Mortimer saw her.’

‘Well . . .’ said the doctor.

‘Come on, the parallels are obvious!’ Noah exclaimed. ‘Charles Atherton was driven mad by a ghost! A white figure, just like you both saw.’

‘Dreaming,’ said Midge. ‘There’s nothing in the family doctor’s account to suggest that Charles Atherton was having anything other than a nightmare.’

‘OK,’ said Noah. ‘But according to the doctor’s diary he was found dead in the bath, just like Rendell. Surely, you can’t think it’s a coincidence?’

‘A coincidence is far more likely than a ghost,’ replied Midge, firmly.

‘Tea, anyone?’ Rona got up to lift the kettle on to the ring of the Aga. ‘What do we do now, then? Surely, we can’t stay in this house?’ she asked. ‘Why is this bloody thing not switching on?’

Harold stepped up behind her and placed the kettle back on to its electric mount, before flicking on the power switch. He stopped suddenly. ‘What the . . .?’ He was pointing at the tall duck-blue wooden sideboard.

The row of dinner plates along the top shelf had started shaking against the backboard.

‘What is it?!’ shrieked Rona, her eyes wide with terror as she backed towards the door. ‘What’s happening?’

Suddenly, a china plate to the left of the row toppled off the shelf, smashing to the ground and splintering into a thousand tiny shards.

‘It’s the ghost!’ cried Noah, rapturously. ‘It’s trying to tell us something!’

‘The only thing it’s telling me is that I’ve lost my deposit!’ shouted the doctor over the noise of the bucking sideboard.

Smash went another plate, dropping to the ground as the rattling of the wood intensified.

‘Tell it to stop!’ shouted Harold.

‘Stand back!’ ordered the doctor, unnecessarily in Midge’s opinion, as no one other than Rona was moving. ‘And make sure you’re wearing shoes.’

Midge, who had no idea why he thought she would suddenly feel compelled to go barefoot, watched as the end plate shook precariously close to the edge.

They held their breath, eyes fixed on the last dinner plate of the set.

The rattling stopped, leaving the final plate intact but alone and bereft of company.

Noah gave a whoop of joy and fist-pumped the air. ‘A-mazing!’ Then suddenly his face fell.

‘You forgot to record it, didn’t you?’ smirked Harold.

Rona sat down again and pulled out her roll-up pouch with trembling hands. ‘That was insane . . .’ She trailed off, shaking her head.

Gloria was on her knees, picking up the pieces of crockery.

‘Gloria!’ snapped the doctor. ‘Be careful, it’s sharp.’

Midge couldn’t help noticing that he didn’t actually offer to take over until his wife had already put the last shard into the rubbish bin. Gloria, however, didn’t seem to mind, and her face lit up as she spoke to him. ‘It was Robert, I’m sure of it. He always hated washing up.’

‘It wasn’t Robert,’ said the doctor, fiddling with a teaspoon on the table. ‘Harold most likely knocked the sideboard with all his banging around at the sink. None of this old stuff is very stable. And I’m including him in that observation.’

‘I did nothing of the sort,’ protested Harold.

‘Well, then it would have been the military, probably letting off some explosives on the moors.’

‘How are we ever going to get out of here?’ cried Rona, taking a long drag from her roll-up, which she had finally managed to piece together.

‘Listen, if we really are stranded, then we need to start rationing,’ said Harold. ‘Who knows how long we’ll be stuck here for,’ he added.

‘I agree,’ said Noah. ‘Someone’s already worked their way through all the KitKats.’

‘I don’t think we’re quite at the stage of drinking our own piss yet,’ sighed Rona.

Given the state of Harold’s tea-making, this was exactly what Midge assumed they had been doing, but she thought it impolite to say so. Unable to bear it any longer, she rescued the solitary dinner plate from the top shelf and squeezed it in between the others on the row below.

‘First thing they teach you, though,’ said Harold. ‘Ration to survive.’

As Midge watched Harold return to scrubbing the blood out of his shirt, she couldn’t help wondering what else he’d been taught in the army.

Despite Noah’s continued protestations of ghostly intervention and crockery-wielding poltergeists, Midge was certain that Rendell had been murdered by someone in the group.

And yet, for some reason, Harold still seemed absolutely determined to point them all in the direction of suicide.