The Secret of Crickley Hall

first in their parents' arms on the landing overlooking the flooded hall, then later in their own beds while Gabe and Eve kept guard outside their room with Lili and Percy.

A group of men, Gabe Caleigh among them, had gathered by the big oak tree where a broken swing hung forlornly from a branch, one end of the seat resting on the damp grass, its rusty severed chain curled on the ground like an iron snake.

Gabe was speaking to the yellow-jacketed man on his left, the deputy chief of the emergency services, Tom Halliway. 'Thanks for all the attention. I'm sure you gotta lot to do in the village.'

'Not as much as we expected,' Halliway replied. 'Hollow Bay got off comparatively lightly because of the flood precautions taken over the years. Plenty of cars swept away and overturned, several properties seriously damaged, but overall there's been no great harm done to the village. The main thing is, there's been no loss of life as far as we can tell. Sorry, didn't mean to disregard your friend.'

'Pyke? No, he wasn't a friend. Barely knew him. He turned up two days ago calling himself a psychic investigator, looking for ghosts.'

The uniformed policeman to his right, Chief Superintendent Derek Pargeter, remarked: 'Because he'd seen the article in the Dispatch this week, you told me earlier.'

'Uh-huh. The guy had read the crazy story about Crickley Hall being haunted, said he wanted to disprove it— or prove it, I'm not sure which now. So we let him go ahead with his investigation.'

'Last night.' It was a statement, not a question.

'Yeah. Last night. He was setting up his equipment when the flood hit. Poor guy never stood a chance. He was swept down into the cellar.'

The thin-faced policeman nodded gravely. 'Poor man. Wouldn't have stood a chance because of the well there.' He jerked his head towards the house. 'The divers should have completed their search by now, but I doubt they've had any luck in finding the body; it would have been carried out to the bay by the underground river—the force would have been incredible. The coastguard and sea rescue helicopters will keep a lookout for Mr Pyke's body, but the currents along this coast can be unpredictable.'

Gabe looked down at the ground and said nothing. He and his family, with Lili Peel and Percy Judd, had spent the night huddled together on the landing, ready to move to the upper floor should the water rise to a threatening level. Once Loren and Cally had fallen asleep and been put into their beds, the group had discussed everything that had happened in the past week as well as the whole story of the evacuees and their horrific deaths. Lili had spoken of the vision or 'insight' she'd had while lying semi-conscious on the lawn after having been hit by the windblown swing—if it had been windblown, that is—and Eve had wept at the children's fate. But they all agreed that the true story of all that had gone on should be kept to themselves. Who would believe the truth anyway? As far as anyone else was concerned, Gordon Pyke had been unlucky, in the wrong place at the wrong time.

It was Gabe who had put the question: 'Who could've guessed the authorities had hushed up the real causes of the evacuees' deaths all those years ago?' The question rhetorical, he had gone on: 'As Percy told Eve the other day, the lid was kept on it because if the fact was ever known that the kids' bodies had strangulation bruisings round their throats, a couple of them with broken necks, then no caring parent would ever let their child be evacuated. Then, was it in the public interest to know in time of war? What about the morale of the country? Yknow, all that stuff. Besides, their only suspect was already dead—he'd paid for his crimes, so no point in dragging it all out into the open. The cane strokes and scars on Cribben's naked body—ignoring the fresh cuts from flying glass—must've got the authorities and police thinking something was not quite right about the guy. The only possible witness they had—maybe she was a suspect too, at first—was Cribben's sister, Magda, and she wasn't saying anything any more.

'I guess the vicar at the time—Rossbridger?—knew the truth of it, because he had Cribben's body buried in a neglected part of the graveyard and well away from the evacuees' graves. Rossbridger would've kept the secret outa self-interest—it might've damaged his reputation.'

Gabe's surmise had given them all something to think about during the hellish long night.

Halliway interrupted Gabe's thoughts. 'Not much more we can do here, Mr Caleigh. The last of the floodwater has been pumped from the cellar—most of it had already drained into the well anyway.'

'Thanks for what you've done,' Gabe said gratefully, shaking Halliway's hand.

The stocky deputy chief merely nodded and walked to his mud-caked Land Rover, where he was joined by two other members of his team. Before climbing in, he turned and called back to Gabe.

'Your vehicle's more or less where you left it last night. We just moved it to the side of the road when we cleared the fallen tree. Good thing you left the keys in the ignition.'

'Right. I'll go get it later. We're moving out today.'

As the Land Rover backed across the bridge, a policeman in wet Wellington boots came hurrying out of the house. Gabe hadn't noticed him before but he now recognized PC Kenrick, who had called on them earlier in the week after the two local kids had got a fright in Crickley Hall.

The policeman went straight up to the chief superintendent.

'The divers have brought up two bodies, sir,' he said breathlessly.

'What? Two?'

'Sir. And neither one was an adult male.'

Gabe looked at Kenrick in surprise.

'One is a small boy,' the young policeman went on, 'and the other is what's left of a woman—they could tell it was a woman by the hair. The paramedics will be bringing out the bodies in a moment.'

'In bodybags, I hope,' said his superior officer. 'What condition are the bodies in? I presume they've been down there for a long time unless you, Mr Caleigh, haven't been entirely frank with me and more than one person lost their life last night.'

He eyed Gabe suspiciously.

'No, just Pyke. Those other bodies have been there a long time,' said Gabe. 'Since 1943, I guess you'll find. I think they're what's left of a young boy and a female teacher who disappeared back then.'

'Good Lord. You're serious?'

The engineer nodded. 'They both went missing around that time.'

'No, that can't be right, sir.' Kenrick was addressing his superior. 'The woman maybe—apparently she was caught up in a niche in the rocks of the riverbed and she'd rotted. She's almost a skeleton.'

So, Gabe thought, Nancy Linnet revealed herself to Pyke—and himself, of course—in what was probably the worst stage of her decomposition. She meant to terrify her murderer.

'And the boy?' Pargeter asked the constable, irritated that he had to prompt. 'What's the condition of the boy's corpse, Kenrick?'

That's just it, sir. The boy. He's hardly been touched. His body hasn't rotted at all.'

'Don't be foolish, man, there has to be some decomposition or bloating even if the body has only been there a short time.'

'His skin is like pure-white marble. Oh, and so is his hair. Totally white. He's only wearing a jumper and one sock, and they're stiff, like rotted cardboard, colours almost washed out of them by the water, which suggests the body has been down there a long time. But the paramedics don't think he drowned: they're saying he might have bled to death.'

The chief superintendent was astounded. Gabe was thoughtful.

The young policeman continued: 'The boy had been mutilated, sir. Around the genital area. It looks like an injury that was never treated. The divers found him on a small shelf, almost a fissure in the rockface. He was wedged inside it above the water level. Even over the past few days when the river's been swollen and fast flowing, it still wasn't able to dislodge the body.'

He stopped to draw in a breath.

'The divers say it's like an icebox down there and it's almost as if the body was hermetically sealed, that's the only way they can explain it.'

'Are you sure it's not just in a state of rigor mortis?'

'No, sir, this is different.'

'But that means the body would have had to be insulated.'

'I know, sir. That's what they reckon. Like I said, the boy's corpse resembles white marble, too hard even for