Page 67 of Murder Most Haunted

‘Of course, the journal entry is the clue.’

They were all, except Rona, inside Rendell’s room, where Midge had pulled at the curtains to let the daylight drip across the floor. Despite the clutter of his possessions, the room still felt empty and soulless.

‘Of course . . .’ murmured Noah, tapping his nose, although Midge suspected he had no idea what she was talking about. It was a feeling she was more than familiar with in her limited dealings with the younger generation.

To focus his attention, Midge prodded at Noah with her cane, pushing him back past the austere bookcase to stand in the doorway, half inside the room and half out, his toes over the threshold on the wooden floorboards.

Noah swatted back at the stick and scowled at her. ‘Yes?’

‘Martha Cook, housekeeper of Atherton Hall, met me on arrival and escorted me through the servants’ entrance, avoiding the main corridors . . .’ prompted Midge, reading from the journal.

Silence. The others stared at her with blank expressions.

With a sigh, she continued, ‘The hands of the grandmother clock read between half past three and a quarter to four as I stood in the doorway of Lord Atherton’s room, the interior of which was like a furnace despite no fire being lit.

A pair of coal-black eyes stared back at me from the bed, holding me rigid at the door.

I was shocked at the sight of the master of the estate. ’

Midge stopped to look expectantly at Noah. When all he did was scratch his head, Midge prodded him again, wondering if the tightness of trousers could actually restrict the blood flow to his brain. ‘Well? Imagine that you are Dr Rawlings, stepping into the room . . . What can you see?’

‘The bed, and the side of the ugly old grandmother clock next to the fireplace,’ snapped Noah, pointing at the knotted teak timepiece. ‘Oh . . . wait.’ He dropped his hand and nodded at Midge. ‘I get it now.’

‘Perhaps you can let the rest of us buggers know, then,’ said Harold, craning his neck to see around Noah. ‘When you’ve finished playing charades.’

Noah pointed across the room at the bookcase. ‘The fireplace and the clock face. You can’t see them from the doorway. You would need to be standing over by the bookcase to see the hands on the clock. But the doctor reads the time and notes that the fire isn’t lit.’

‘Is that it?’ said Bridie, much to Midge’s annoyance. ‘Maybe the doctor was invoking a bit of poetic licence.’

‘He seemed remarkably precise in all of his other entries,’ replied Midge, setting her shoulders in a way that suggested that that was very much that.

Undoubtedly, there was a new confidence to Midge that was obvious to everyone.

Here and now, talking about objects and facts as opposed to the enforced social chit-chat, she had hit her stride.

She matched every gaze and spoke with an uncharacteristic animation.

‘Or maybe he’d had a few too many nightcaps before he was called out,’ said Harold, who had started flicking through one of the newspapers on the bed. Unsurprisingly, noted Midge, it was the tabloid full of the big bosoms. ‘They’re all self-medicators, those doctors.’

‘Oh, do shut up, Harold,’ said Midge, surprising everyone, not least herself.

‘Midge!’ rebuked Bridie, struggling to find a seat amongst the muddle of clothes. ‘But yes, do shut up, Harold, and stop pawing at that newspaper, it’s quite unsavoury.’

A thought suddenly occurred to Midge. ‘How did you take the pictures of Rona? I mean, where did you take them from, to be able to see inside her room like that?’

Harold waved a hand at the panelled wall. ‘Rendell told me about a servants’ corridor, hidden behind the panels and those what do you call it, curtain thingies . . .’

‘Draperies,’ corrected Midge, unable to help herself.

‘Yeah, those things,’ nodded Harold, closing the newspaper and failing to notice the ink now on his fingers. ‘The corridor runs directly past Rona’s room. I drilled a little hole in the wall.’

‘Good grief.’ Bridie stared at him in disgust.

‘Exactly,’ said Midge. ‘Now, if the Athertons or the servants wanted to keep the doctor’s visit a secret, they would have brought him in that way,’ she continued.

‘He says in the journal he came in the servants’ entrance.

Maybe there was a door from a servants’ corridor that led directly here, into Charles Atherton’s bedroom. ’

The others stood in silence, digesting what she had said.

‘Which means that the doctor’s diary entry is probably in fact correct, and he did step out facing the clock and the fireplace.’ She shuffled over to the wall of bookcases. ‘Somewhere about . . . here.’

‘Where?’ asked Bridie, frowning. ‘It’s just a bookcase.’

‘There must be an operating lever or something,’ said Midge, slightly put out by the underwhelming reaction. ‘Well, look around,’ she said, raising her arms.

‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ said Noah. ‘You and Harold have already searched the room.’

Midge nodded. ‘But we weren’t looking for that. And it will be disguised.’

‘Why would it be disguised?’ Bridie queried, frowning.

‘To keep up the illusion of there being no door, thus keeping the servants’ very presence hidden.

’ She paused, another thought occurring, then added, ‘And, on the contrary, I can think of one reason in particular that Charles Atherton would like discreet access to the servants’ corridors, and thus to their bedrooms.’

Noah immediately started tapping on the panels, while Bridie and Harold pushed aside the portraits hanging on the wall.

Midge, however, wasn’t quite sure what either of them expected to find up the chimney.

After twenty minutes of silent searching, finally frustrated, Harold gave up.

‘There’s nothing here. We’ve covered all of it.

It’s the same as when we searched it last.’

Midge frowned, recalling the last time she had been inside the bedroom after Rendell’s death.

Harold was correct, everything was exactly as they had left it.

Even the clothes and newspapers on the bed.

Midge glanced at the fireplace and the mantel above it.

The row of books was still there, one of them still slightly misplaced.

The Bible.

‘Of course,’ she said. ‘I thought it was odd for Rendell to be reading it.’ She walked over to the fireplace, touched the embossed spine of the book and pulled it towards her.

There was a grating noise, which elicited a small scream from Bridie, as suddenly one section of the bookcase began to slowly slide away, the panel disappearing behind the other shelves and revealing a darkened passageway.

‘Oh, wow!’ gasped Noah, as Midge reached her hand inside and fumbled around, seeking hopefully for the smoothness of a light switch on the wall.

She found one, and felt a rush of gratitude for the thoroughness of whoever had installed the modern electrics.

The click of illumination disturbed several moths, and a set of dusty, wooden stairs was revealed further along the corridor.

‘Where are you going?’ cried Bridie. Midge had already taken a step inside the passageway.

‘To find a ghost!’ she replied, bracing her hand against the wall to steady herself.

Bridie had started coughing, the released dust apparently aggravating her chest. ‘You others go,’ she wheezed, sitting back on a chair. ‘I’ll wait in here.’

Midge was torn between her concern for Bridie, who looked pale and red-eyed in the light, and her curiosity.

‘Go!’ urged Bridie, managing a weak smile, waving her on.

Despite the hanging light bulb, the passage was badly lit, and so narrow that it left little room for positioning Midge’s cane.

However, when she reached the staircase, there was just enough light to reveal that the passageway had been recently used.

In the middle of each step, the dust had clearly been displaced.

Midge struggled with the climb in such a tight space, conscious of the others following in close proximity behind her.

Finally, she reached the top of the staircase, where she took a moment to catch her breath, ignoring the impatient questions of the others below her as much as the nagging of her throbbing knee.

The staircase opened out not into another room, but on to a narrow, windowless corridor. Given the length of the flight they had just climbed, Midge ascertained they must be somewhere within the attic of the hall. There were several doors leading off from each side of the hallway.

‘It’s the servants’ quarters,’ said Noah, stepping out from behind Midge and coughing.

He had covered his mouth with his sleeve but the dust still seemed to have aggravated his eyes and nose, both of which had reddened.

‘You’re right, Midge. Charles Atherton must have had it built so that he had a way to get in and out without being seen. ’

‘Easy pickings, for whenever the urge takes him,’ smirked Harold, climbing up from the last step. ‘If you know what I mean.’

Sadly, it was hard not to know what Harold meant, as he accompanied the statement with a lewd hand gesture that Midge assumed wasn’t the international sign for threading a needle.

‘Shut up,’ said Noah.

Midge shuddered, thinking of the young maid, Beth Hallow, who in all likelihood had occupied one of these very rooms, powerless against her master’s actions.

‘But what did Rendell use the stairs for?’ asked Noah, coughing.

The door to the nearest room was slightly ajar. Stepping forward, Midge winced at the creaking of the floorboards that accompanied each footfall. ‘Let’s find out, shall we?’

She pushed the door open with her cane, still breathless from the climb. The door swung open as if recently oiled, throwing a shard of light from the window opposite on to the threshold.

The room was empty.

Next to her, Harold’s shoulders slumped. ‘I was half expecting to find Beth Hallow up here,’ he admitted, stepping into a room that was bare of all furniture, not even a chair. His voice echoed strangely against the peeling walls.

‘No,’ replied Midge, heading across the woodworm-riddled floorboards towards the window, where something had caught her eye. ‘There is no ghost.’

‘You don’t know that!’ protested Noah, lifting his arms up and letting them fall despondently to his sides. ‘I can feel a chill in here.’

‘That’s because there’s no insulation and no radiators, you idiot,’ said Harold.

‘I do know there is no ghost,’ Midge replied, firmly. ‘Because this is your White Lady, Noah.’

She stood aside. They had been mistaken. The room wasn’t completely empty. On the windowsill, in front of Midge, was a tiny black box, a small timing device set on top of it.

‘What is that?’ asked Harold, bending over it, his nose practically touching the surface. ‘Some sort of camera?’

Checking that the evening sky outside was just dark enough, Midge pressed a button on the box and suddenly, down below on the north lawn, the vision of a pale ghost appeared, flitting across from the fountain before disappearing behind the dilapidated woodshed.

‘Jesus, it’s a bloody projector,’ said Harold, his mouth hanging open.

‘Rendell must have set this up for the ghost appearances!’ said Noah, disappointedly. ‘And look! Typical . . .’

Noah was pointing to a small cabinet on the wall, its door slightly open. ‘There’s your flying curtains and air changes.’

He was right – inside the cabinet was an elaborate system of pulleys and levers, connected to various wires that ran out and into the panelling behind.

Each one was carefully labelled for the room it controlled, and each one had a timer set.

The one nearest to Midge had the word ‘KITCHEN’ written above it.

She switched it on and cocked her head to the side, listening.

From far, far below them came the sound of more plates falling from the sideboard and smashing into pieces on the flagstones.

‘The flying plates!’ gasped Harold. ‘From the kitchen, remember? Poor old Gloria thought it was Robert.’

‘Exactly,’ murmured Midge. ‘I imagine this is why Rendell was so reluctant to give Noah access to the attic.’

Noah had the appearance of a child who had not only been told that Christmas had been cancelled, but also all subsequent birthdays and bar mitzvahs for the foreseeable. ‘This was my one chance of saving my podcast,’ he sighed. ‘I really thought I’d found an authentic one this time.’

Midge felt a responsibility to cheer Noah up and so she tried her best. ‘I’m sure another opportunity will come along soon.’

‘You think I’ll find a real ghost?’

Pleasantries could only be taken so far. ‘Of course not.’

‘Hang on.’ Harold was holding his hands up, his face creased into a frown. ‘What about Rendell?’

‘What about Rendell?’ asked Midge.

‘Well, he saw the ghost too, didn’t he? On the first night, right when we were all at the séance?’

‘Yes, right before he got the message,’ said Noah, slowly.

‘Perhaps Rendell was just pretending,’ mused Midge. ‘After all, it was in his interest to scare everyone. All part of the elaborate haunted house he’d set up for us.’

‘I’ve known him for years,’ scoffed Harold. ‘He’s not that good an actor. And besides, what about the portraits – who slashed them?’

Midge stared out on to the lawn below the window, her mind silently whirring. ‘It seems we’ve been dealing with more than one ghost in this house all along,’ she finally said, turning back to face the others. ‘But to prove that, we need to listen to the podcast recordings.’