The walls were almost bare, with pale expanses of plaster where pictures had been removed for storage. But the furniture had been left in place - several small tables, an empty display cabinet, an oak chest covered with a lace cloth. Directly facing the door were the main stairs, with square balustrades and a worn red carpet. Despite the lights, the doorways looked particularly gloomy, especially those that lay at the back of the house, in the shadow of the stairs.
‘It’s a bit cold in here, isn’t it?’
‘We keep the heating turned down to a minimum in the summer,’ said Casey.
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Cooper wondered if there was a ghost here. Almost certainly. Didn’t every house of this age have at least one? Probably the rooms were haunted by some young kitchen maid who had drowned herself, but still appeared to answer the bell now and then in the deepest hours of the night. Not that anybody was left to ring the bell now the Saxtons had departed.
He heard John Casey’s footsteps on the flags behind him, moving to the right towards one of the doors. The agent was anxious to get on with the inspection, to reassure himself that none of his scenarios were true. He was praying there was no theft, no vandalism, no squatters.
But then Fry stopped him with another question. She was still standing near the keypad for the burglar alarm, and Cooper could tell by the tone of her voice that she wasn’t satisfied with Casey. He’d been slipshod, less than professional in his responsibilities. He didn’t come up to her high standards. Very few people did.
‘Mr Casey,’ she said, ‘why has your company been short staffed?’
‘Oh, we had a couple of employees leave earlier this year. Experienced people, too. They’re difficult to replace, you know. We’re in a position of trust here, so we have to be a bit careful who we take on to replace them.’
‘And did those employees have access to this alarm code?’
Cooper was still staring up at the ceiling, trying to make out the pattern in the plasterwork, when he heard Casey’s response.
‘Only Maurice Goodwin,’ said the agent. ‘He was the man who spent most time out here.’
‘Goodwin?’
‘He was one of our employees who left a few months ago.’
‘Why did he leave?’
‘Oh, the usual. A personality clash.’
He moved on through the rooms, and they had to follow
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him. Without a guide, Cooper was afraid he’d be lost in a moment in the labyrinth of corridors and doorways.
‘Of course, this isn’t the original house,’ said Casey. ‘There was a property here from Tudor times. Alder Hall Manor passed from the Greys to the Cavendishes, who gifted it to the Saxton family. It was Jeremiah Saxton who built the present house in 1740. At the gates, you might have noticed that he set up his crest of two goats rampant in place of the Cavendish stag. I believe the house is featured in Volume One of Old Halls, Manors and Families of Derbyshire.”
‘Oh? Is that a selling point?’
‘Very much so.’
‘Was this place never opened to the public?’ asked Cooper. ‘A lot of people have done that to help pay for the maintenance.’ ‘The Saxton family never liked to encourage sensationalism. On a few occasions, they opened the house up to the public, but visitors were never shown the crypt, or even told of its existence.’
‘The crypt?’
‘It’s one of the reasons this property is looking for exactly the right purchaser. It wouldn’t suit everybody.’
‘But surely a crypt is found under a church?’
‘The northern wing of the house was originally built as a chapel. That was some time in the late eighteenth century. Sir Oswald Saxton was a deeply religious man and engaged his own personal chaplain to pray for his soul.’
‘Did it do him any good?’
‘I couldn’t possibly say.’
‘But it didn’t remain a chapel?’
‘Times changed,’ said Casey. ‘Sir Oswald’s successors weren’t so devout. And perhaps they couldn’t afford to employ their own chaplain, either. Whatever the reason, the chapel fell into disuse. A later owner of the hall converted it into a
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guest wing. Apart from one or two surviving stained glass windows, you would never know its origins.’
‘And the crypt…?’
‘When the alterations were done, the crypt was sealed. Guests of the Saxton family probably had no idea what they were sleeping over. But then a Victorian Saxton decided to open it up again. Supposedly, he was persuaded to do so by a group of his friends, who were interested in such things.’
‘Such things being …?’
‘Bones. Skulls mostly. I suppose I could show it to you. But it’s not for public consumption, you understand. If certain sections of the population knew of the crypt’s existence ‘
‘Don’t worry, we’re not journalists, you know.’
‘Of course.’
There were steel shutters on all the windows, and only tiny cracks and spears of light penetrated the rooms they walked through. Some of the furniture had been covered with dust sheets, so that mysterious shapes stood all around them in the gloom, pushed back against the walls and shrouded like corpses.
