Page 5 of Murder Most Haunted

Despite her best intentions to sleep through until they reached the Hall, Midge was woken by the slamming of doors from the undercarriage and an unnecessary amount of swearing.

Her knee throbbed slightly from the awkward angle she had dozed in, and the nylon seat cover was prickling the back of her legs.

‘They’re putting snow chains on the wheels,’ explained Noah who, she noticed, had taken the opportunity to stretch his legs out across the aisle.

Thick snowflakes were already obscuring the view through the windows, but Midge could just make out Harold beside the coach as he shuttled backwards and forwards between the wheels.

Directly below Midge’s window was Rona, smoking a cigarette as she huddled inside a fur coat.

To Midge’s surprise, she appeared to be deep in conversation with Dr Mortimer, who was standing with his back to the window.

‘Goodness,’ said Midge before adding hopefully, ‘Will we have to turn back?’

Disappointingly, Noah shook his head. ‘To be honest,’ he said, ‘we may as well carry on, otherwise we’ll be waiting to be dug out.’

Would that be such a bad thing? wondered Midge. No one could say she hadn’t tried. After all, even Bridie couldn’t complain if they were brought home early by the rescue services. But then she remembered the toilet was broken, and so decided to wish the wheel chains every good luck.

‘We lost fifteen minutes while Rona was checking her shoes hadn’t frozen.’ Noah rolled his eyes.

‘Were you not worried about your equipment?’ asked Midge.

‘Oh. No, I’ve wrapped that all up in towels,’ replied Noah, seriously. ‘Twice.’

When Harold opened the door and stepped up back into his seat, the accompanying blast of icy air was so ferocious it made its way all along the aisle to nip at Midge’s bloated ankles.

‘Brutal out there!’ he said to no one in particular, placing his fingers over the heater for several minutes before switching the engine fully back on.

‘Enjoy your cosy chit-chat?’ Harold was talking to the doctor, who had just climbed on board. Mortimer swept past without acknowledging the comment and made his way down the aisle, Harold’s eyes following him in the mirror.

‘Woop, woop!’ called Rona, climbing back up the steps and into the coach. She was an easily excitable person, Midge noted, which was confirmed moments later by Rona’s applause at the crunching of the chains as the coach wheels began to move forward.

Midge took the opportunity to retrieve a new embroidery from her handbag and began to stitch. This time she was working on a set of hedgehogs for Christmas.

‘For Christ’s sake, Harold, keep it on the road, will you?’ said Rendell. An unexpected jolt caused Midge to prick herself with the needle. The wheels were skidding, even with the new chains, as they struggled to grip through the snow.

‘Road?’ grunted Harold, while he struggled to keep control of the wheel. ‘This must be a poxy track full of potholes at the best of times.’

‘You snore a lot.’ Noah was looking at her. ‘Quite spectacularly. I was debating whether to record it for one of my audio effects.’

Midge considered this. ‘It’s illegal to record someone without their permission,’ she said.

‘Calm down,’ said Noah. ‘I’m only joking.’

‘Oh.’ She didn’t think she knew Noah well enough yet to ask if she had dribbled as well.

Lately, Bridie had been complaining more often about the condition of their pillows.

In fact, not that Midge would ever say it out loud, Bridie had been doing a lot more complaining about everything lately, in a way that was quite out of character.

She sighed and gazed out of the window as the hedgerows gave way to surrounding moorland, its vastness so overwhelming that Midge felt herself being swallowed up bit by bit as they travelled.

‘Is listening to people snoring even a thing anyway?’ Mrs Mortimer asked. To Midge’s surprise, both of the Mortimers had turned round to join in the conversation.

‘You mean, a “fetish” thing?’ Andrew Mortimer answered his wife. ‘Probably. They’ll pay for anything on these sites nowadays . . . won’t they?’ He turned back to Noah.

‘How would I know?’ Noah looked annoyed now.

‘Do I look like a weirdo?’ This prompted Rendell to shout back that in his experience deviants and perverts were well-turned-out and successful professionals, a comment which was seconded by Rona but produced an extraordinary amount of huffing and puffing from Dr Mortimer.

‘Oh God, yeah . . . anything you can think of.’ Rona moved along the aisle before plonking herself down on the seat in front of Noah. ‘You think of it, there’s a site for it.’ Which for some reason immediately made Midge think of kittens in glittery shoes dancing beneath a disco ball.

‘I produce podcasts . . . not videos,’ sighed Noah, but Rona continued anyway.

‘There’s even a woman who films herself sucking her own toes – can you imagine doing that?

’ she asked him. Midge wondered if it was more acceptable to be sucking someone else’s toes, and besides, Noah didn’t look bendy enough to generate much cash.

However, she kept this to herself because he didn’t strike her as an overly confident person even at the best of times.

‘Imagine, her grandkids digging up all that stuff during their IT lessons.’

‘Grandchildren?’ murmured the doctor.

‘And that’s the problem with the internet, isn’t it?’ said Rona. ‘All that stuff never really goes away. It’s like those photos the paparazzi took of my tits in St-Tropez . . . they’re out there somewhere’ – she grabbed at her breasts with both hands – ‘floating around.’

At which point, Noah’s face flushed the colour of the coach seats while Dr Mortimer suddenly found several things to show his wife out of the window, despite the almost total whiteout.

And Midge was left visualizing hundreds of bare bosoms bouncing through the sky, which probably wasn’t what Rona had meant at all.

They were saved by Rendell on the microphone.

‘If you look out the windows, you will be able to see the fencing and flags of the firing range that surrounds the estate. Unfortunately, that means those areas are off-limits, so please stick only to the estate grounds. Rest assured there are no exercises this weekend, though.’

Midge put her embroidery back into her bag and looked out of the window. They had driven through a set of imposing gates, topped with razor-sharp wire, that stood within the fencing. Beside them was a small, abandoned guard station with a single window, keeping watch over the entrance.

Rendell continued, ‘It’s just a couple more miles up this track – we’ll soon be at the house.’

‘Bit odd, having an estate in the middle of a firing range,’ murmured Noah, waving a hand at the flags as they trundled past.

‘There’s not much of it left now – the military seem to buy up more land each year,’ said Rendell. ‘And the house is empty most of the time.’

A few minutes later, Rendell made another speaker announcement.

‘We’ll shortly be arriving, ladies and gents, but I believe if you look either side of you right about now, you should see the gate pillars for the estate entrance.’

Just on cue, a granite pillar loomed up out of the blizzard to the right of Midge’s window. The surrounding ground was covered in the thick, deep snow, the drifts obscuring most of the hedgerows with only the tallest trees poking through.

A sudden parting in the white landscape revealed a dramatic gorge just to the left of the road.

‘Christ!’ cried Rona, standing up in her seat and pointing out of the left-side window. ‘What is that?’

That turned out to be a small stone building with a tall chimney stack, perched halfway down the side of the gorge.

‘It’s an engine house for the old mines,’ said Noah matter-of-factly – Midge had the sense that he had been waiting for the opportunity to say it.

‘Engine house?’ asked Rona, sitting back down with a jolt as a sudden bump caused Harold to swear.

‘For pumping out the water from the shafts below,’ explained Noah.

‘Those tunnels extend out for miles under the hills here,’ confirmed Rendell, calling back down the aisle.

‘But some of the seams became unsafe, and others were worked out, and from the late 1860s the operation was wound down. The Athertons kept the mine and the estate, but as their main source of income dried up, they sold land off. Subsequent owners did the same – mostly selling to the military.’

‘Gone the way of so many mines,’ said Gloria, her eyes fixed on the chimney as they drove past on the road above.

‘I remember learning all about that in Billy Elliot,’ Rona said, which left Midge wondering at what point in society a musical had taken the place of a taught history curriculum.

‘That was coal mines,’ shouted Harold.

‘Most mining is an environmental disaster,’ said Noah.

‘But such a shame to lose a piece of history like that,’ said Gloria.

‘Funny how people romanticize history, isn’t it?’ Noah pushed his fringe out of his eyes. ‘I mean, hundreds of actual miners must have died down those mines from rockfalls or poisonous gases and no one cares.’

‘You stick it to them!’ shouted Rona. ‘Workers of the world, unite!’

Midge desperately hoped they weren’t all going to start talking about politics – nothing ever good seemed to come of it.

She’d voted Labour all her life except for one year when Bridie said there was something quite demonic about Gordon Brown and so she’d changed her vote at the last minute.

That was the year Labour lost, and she’d never really forgiven herself for it.

‘The last time I checked, the proletariat didn’t wear Gucci sunglasses and have an entire suitcase full of shoes,’ pointed out Noah.

He had an odd way of talking, like someone much older, hesitantly measuring out every word.

Which was a stark contrast to Rona, thought Midge, who seemed to be getting louder as the trip went on.

‘Well, I’d hardly call talking into a microphone to nobody “working”,’ said the doctor.

‘I’ve got over a thousand subscribers, actually,’ said Noah. ‘They Do It With Strings was listed in the top ten most popular haunted house podcasts and won a Golden Ear award in the Glowing Globes.’

‘Was there a lot of competition?’ asked Midge.

‘It’s a popular genre,’ muttered Noah, slouching back into his chair. It was clear from his tone that he’d had this conversation many times before.

‘I expect their families did,’ said Gloria, quietly.

‘What?’ said Noah.

‘I expect their families cared,’ she explained. ‘The miners.’

‘Well, yes, of course,’ said Noah.

‘In the old days they used to send canaries down the mine into a new tunnel,’ shouted back Rendell, just as the engine house disappeared behind them. ‘If they came back up alive, then they knew the shaft was safe.’

And if they didn’t? thought Midge, shivering despite the coach’s heating. What became of all those beautiful, bright dead birds?