Mean Spirit

Vision?’

‘Only if they haven’t read one before.’

Grayle followed Cindy and the dog up towards the castle. It looked bloated against the light.

‘My mother died earlier this year, Bobby,’ said Harry Oakley. ‘She always used to say to me, “The truth won’t come out in my time, there’s still too much prejudice. But perhaps before the end of your life it might.” So I promised her, you see, that one way or another I’d make sure it did come out. Not quite on her deathbed, but it was a promise.’

‘What did she mean by too much prejudice?’

‘Prejudice in his favour. Nobody in the locality would hear a word against Barnaby Crole. You see, not only was he the local benefactor, he was the only one there’d ever been around here. He built almshouses for the old people. Built the school. Turned a blind eye, the locals, out of pure self-interest, Bobby.’

‘So … how do you think your great-grandfather died?’

‘How much do you know?’

‘I’ve read that little book. It says he had an accident with his shotgun.’

‘Aye, and no-one’s ever going to prove otherwise now. I’d be happy, and I think my mother and her mother would rest in peace, if it was just accepted locally that they probably murdered him. That’s all we want.’

‘Crole and Abblow?’

‘They were doing experiments’, Harry said, ‘into what happened at the moment of death. I remember my grandmother talking to my aunt — in that hushed way they talked when there were children about — about Mr Crole and Mr Abblow coming to see their neighbour when he was dying. They wanted to be with him when he died, you see. Crole even offered to pay for the funeral, with an expensive memorial in the churchyard — oh, he was made of money was Crole. But they still wouldn’t let him go into the bedroom that last night because they knew he just wanted to watch what happened when the old man passed over. Watch the light go out of him.’

‘It was said they took animals.’

‘I believe it. Though that wouldn’t satisfy them for long.’

‘You think they experimented on John Hodge? Or did he see too much and they killed him to stop him talking?’

‘Oh, he’d already talked,’ Harry said. ‘Or his dreams had. These terrible nightmares he couldn’t properly remember. But he knew he was going to die, my mother said they were all convinced of that. By day he was very quiet and withdrawn. At night he’d scream. My grandmother remembered those screams and they disturbed her own nights all her life. That’s how bad it was.’

‘What were the actual circumstances of his death?’

‘They heard a shot and then Abblow was said to have found him in the woods with half his face blown away. They claimed he was unfit to move, so they made him as comfortable as they could on the grass, Crole laying down his fine jacket and Abblow tending him — Abblow was a doctor, you see.’

‘What year was this?’

‘Eighteen eighty-seven. This month. This day.’

‘This actual date?’

For an instant Maiden was aware of himself being vibrantly aware of the moment — as though he was standing behind himself and Harry Douglas Oakley seated at a round, mahogany table in the small, dark-panelled bar.

‘Those evil beggars,’ Harry said. ‘Myself, I don’t think they were tending him so much as prolonging his agony. Dragging out his death so they could study him and make him tell them what was happening. Perhaps they’d got gadgets attached to him.’

‘Gadgets?’

‘I don’t know. Like Frankenstein. They always had gadgets in those days. Kept them in the dungeons, most likely.’

‘The castle has dungeons?’

‘Well, cellars with thick walls. Nobody been down there in years. All the years it was derelict, it was well fenced off and barb-wired, and no-one ever went there because it was always private land. Except for my poor old great-grandfather. Who never went away.’

‘You mean his ghost.’

‘Aye.’

‘That was seen quite often?’

‘At one time. So it’s said.’ Harry looked down into his beer, as though the face of John Hodge might materialize there. ‘Poachers and so on. But even the poachers got nervous. The last time … well, that would be a young couple, staying at the Crown for a night. Ramblers, with backpacks. Walked into the pub at sunset, all ashy- faced. Strangers wouldn’t know, you see. Ninety-seven, this would’ve been.’

‘What did they say they’d seen?’

‘They’d found one of the paths through the grounds and they were getting as close as they could to the castle and up strolls a man in a cap, with a shotgun under his arm — so clear and sharp they thought he was a real, living person. And they stopped and wished him good evening and hoped they weren’t trespassing … and he walks within a few feet of them and never took them on and just disappeared into the air. Been a few like that.’

Maiden took a slow sip from his glass of cider. He was hearing Seffi Callard.

… certainly, in my experience as a medium, I’ve never seen anything quite so clear as this before. So fully defined. Such a physical presence.

‘A few like that? Were they always so clear?’

‘There’s ghosts and ghosts, aren’t there, Bobby? Some you hear of, it’s just a wandering light, no shape, no features. People who’ve seen this one, they could identify my great-grandad from old photographs. And did!’

‘You’ve never seen it?’

‘And never wanted to, Bobby. Never wanted to. Besides, it’s better coming from others, isn’t it? Old John Hodge, he’s doing no more than I am today — drawing attention to a murder.’

‘Why did the place become derelict?’

‘Well, it didn’t happen overnight. Abblow left — went abroad, it was said. Crole never came out much after that, although you’d apparently see his wife sometimes, on her own. When he died she sold the castle, and then it went through the usual things — a school, a hotel. Before this syndicate put in an offer, it was owned by Arthur Slater, the farmer. His dad, he bought it with a hundred and fifty acres in the Seventies. They ploughed round the castle.’

‘Why do you say syndicate?’

‘Well, I don’t know if it was or not. This young man, Campbell, he always makes out it’s his castle, but I do know Arthur slightly, and he reckons it was a Gloucestershire firm made the initial approach. Bright’s? Would that be it?’

‘How about Bright Horizon Developments?’

‘That’s it,’ said Harry without much interest. ‘Bright Horizon Developments.’ He finished his beer. ‘You got what you wanted, Bobby? Only I wouldn’t mind getting back. They reckon there’s Midlands television coming to film the festival taking shape and I wouldn’t mind getting my sign in front of the camera. P’raps they’ll want to interview me. Do you think?’

‘It’s always possible.’

‘I’m not a nutter, you know,’ Harry said. ‘It’s funny — my grandmother used to say it was a big joke in the family that one day her father was going to be the ghost of Overcross. Because he loved that place so much you couldn’t get him away. Dawn till dusk and then half the night, building up that estate from nothing. Part of it, you see.’

Vera, the cleaner from the kitchens, was a large woman with white hair tied up in a bun and kind of knowing eyes. You could tell, somehow, that nothing would get past her.

Grayle and Cindy sure didn’t. They went in through the kitchen door, round back of the castle. It didn’t look much like a castle this side, the door and the woodwork modern and utility.

‘You’re back again, Miss Bacton.’