but apparently razor-shaved at the sides, was completely white, while his bushy eyebrows were dark. He sat ramrod-straight on his chair, a lean man with high cheekbones that emphasized hollow cheeks. Large ears, accentuated by his cropped hair, stood at right-angles from a severe face. His nose was prominent above a grim slash of a mouth. Beneath those bushy eyebrows were deep-set black eyes that stared stonily at the camera. There was no humour in that harsh, sober face and no softness, and perhaps because of what she already knew of the guardian, there appeared to be no pity.
Cribben wore a tight-fitting tweed suit, one button done up at the chest so that the sides of the jacket fell away to reveal the shiny buckle of a thick leather belt. His shoulders were narrow and the hands that rested over his knees were big-knuckled, arthritic-looking. The tidy knot of his plain tie did not quite reach the stud of the high, white, detachable collar of his striped shirt; the jaw above the collar was strong and square, although the little that could be seen of his neck was thin and scrawny.
Next to this slight yet formidable figure sat a hard-faced woman, who presumably was Cribben's sister, Magda. There was a resemblance between them, for the eyes were black and deep-set, and seemed to regard the camera with suspicion. Like her brother's, Magda's nose was prominent, as was her chin, and her lips were thin and severe. High cheekbones and rigidity of posture completed the similarity.
Her matt black hair was parted in the middle and scraped back over her ears, presumably into a bun at the back of her neck. She wore a long black dress that was gathered at the waist, and hemmed just above black lace- up ankle boots.
Eve allowed her eyes to roam away from Augustus Cribben and his sister, both of whom seemed to dominate the assemblage, and they fell upon the girl—the young
'Is this the teacher you told me about?' she asked Percy, her thumb indicating. 'You called her Nancy…'
'Aye, that's Nancy Linnet, may her poor soul rest in peace.'
'You think she
'I know she is.'
Eve looked at the girl whose shiny hair fell in tumbling locks round a sweet childlike face. Over her shoulders she wore a shawl, the ends of which covered her forearms, and Eve remembered Percy telling her that the teacher, his sweetheart, had a withered arm: was Nancy deliberately covering up the deformity? The teacher's eyes were large and pale and, although she wasn't smiling, there was no meanness in them—but no joy either.
In fact, no one in the photograph was smiling. All the children were like little waifs, solemn before the camera, no spirit to their expressions or their stance. But wait—there was one boy with not a smile but a grin on his long face that revealed a missing front tooth. He stood at the back near the middle of the line and was taller than all the other children, as tall as Nancy Linnet.
Eve pointed as she angled the photograph towards the old gardener. 'Is this the boy called…' She tried to recall the name Percy had mentioned.
'Maurice Stafford,' Percy replied. 'Yers, he could afford to smile, that boy.'
'He's the only one who looks happy,' observed Gabe, leaning over Eve's shoulder.
Percy nodded. 'His is the only name yer won't find in that Punishment Book. He were old for his age, he were, and the only one that Nancy never liked, said he were a sneak and a bully. Maurice were treated different from the others. I don't say he had it easy, but fer some reason Cribben an' his sister favoured him.'
'Which one is the Jewish boy Stefan?' Eve asked, although she was sure she had already spotted him.
Percy confirmed her choice. 'Right there in the front row, the smallest of 'em all. He's standin' in front of the tall girl, Susan Trainer, who looked out for the boy, sorta took him under her wing, like. See, she's got her hand on his shoulder.'
Stefan Rosenbaum wore baggy short trousers that covered his knees, his socks round his ankles. He was a thin child and his jacket, which was done up at the front with three buttons, was at least two sizes too big for him. His thick dark hair hung low over his brow and his eyes were wonderfully deep but melancholy. He had an elfin look. Like the other orphans, his face was solemn, yet there was a beauty about him that reminded Eve of her lost son, Cameron. Even though this boy was dark in looks where Cam was fair—yellow hair, bright blue eyes—they both possessed the same kind of innocence. As renewed despair struck her, she quickly gave the photograph back to Percy. She turned towards Gabe who, although taken aback, held her gently.
To Percy, he said: 'Those two kids—what was it, Maurice…?'
'Stafford,' the aged gardener filled in for him.
'Right. Maurice Stafford. I don't remember seeing his name, nor Stefan Rosenbaum's, among the headstones down at the cemetery.'
'No, yer wouldn't. It's 'cause they was the two whose bodies was never found. It's reckoned they were swept out to sea by the river that runs underneath Crickley Hall. The Low River.' Percy shook his head gravely. 'They jus' disappeared,' he said. 'The sea never gave 'em up.'
32: LILI PEEL
Lili brought the glass to her lips and swallowed the wine rather than sipped. Its fruity sweetness failed to elevate her mood.
The room in which she sat was lit by only a single corner lamp, so that shadows filled the other corners. Her living quarters were above the crafts shop: three main rooms, one of them a bedroom, another, the smallest, used as a stockroom for goods not yet displayed in the shop downstairs; the third was her living/dining room where she relaxed or worked on delicate stone, shell or crystal jewellery and trinkets, using the dining table as a workbench. Both the kitchen and bathroom were tiny, the latter accommodating a small sink, toilet and shower basin (there was no room for a bath). The walls throughout were painted in soft pastel shades, and oddly, given Lili's profession, there were no pictures adorning them, nor ornaments or statuary on shelves to take away from the plainness of it all.
Listlessly, she rested the stem of the wine glass on the arm of the brown leather chair she occupied and closed her eyes for a moment.
Why did this woman have to come to her? she silently asked herself with a bitter kind of anger.
Lili had curbed her psychic abilities eighteen months ago, frightened by her own powers and their consequences. Some things were best left well alone; some things could bite back. How strange that the woman, this Eve Caleigh, should come from the same house that Lili had stopped to observe on her way out of Hollow Bay two years ago. Crickley Hall. People in these parts maintained it was haunted, the woman in the village shop had confided. The two women who cleaned and dusted the place every month would only work the rooms together; neither one was willing to be alone in any part of the house. They claimed that Crickley Hall had an 'atmosphere', a creepy mood to it that made a person feel jittery. That was why no tenants had ever stayed long in it over the years. The house didn't welcome people.
At the time, Lili had mentally rolled her eyes. It seemed to her that every community postulated its own haunted house and it was usually for no other reason than that something tragic or traumatic had once occurred within its walls (often a cruel murder or a dramatic suicide) and now a ghost roamed its corridors. In truth, Lili did believe in ghosts because of her own experiences with the supernatural, but she also knew that many people exaggerated or embellished such phenomena for the vicarious thrill that came with the telling.
Nonetheless, Lili had not just noticed Crickley Hall when she left the harbour village, as she had told Eve Caleigh. No, she had parked her car and studied the house across the bridge for several minutes. She had sensed its chill.
It was not merely the ugliness of the building itself that weighed upon her, but it was because there seemed to be—or at least, she sensed—something bad at its very core. The unease remained with her for some time afterwards.
That was one of the more unpleasant sides of being psychic: the inability to prevent bad vibes from penetrating one's own psyche. It was an affliction she had borne since childhood.
Lili first became aware of her sixth sense when she was seven years old, although there may well have been earlier psychic occurrences that she regarded as perfectly natural when she was even younger. She had moved with her family into a large Victorian house in Reigate, Surrey, and her bedroom had been at the very top of the three- floor building. Soon after moving in, the spirit of a girl, no more than nine or ten years old in appearance, had
