The Secret of Crickley Hall

Crickley Hall early that morning? Surely not. How would he have known about it? Then Eve remembered her time mixing with feature writers and journos when her career had been flourishing. A crime reporter had once told her that he gathered news by ringing round various London police stations—all crime journalists did the same—to find out if anything particularly noteworthy was going on that day or night. Duty officers were always good sources of information, especially if there was a 'drink' in it for them; sometimes the officer rang the journalist first if the crime was exciting enough. Eve wondered exactly what this North Devon Dispatch reporter had been told by the local police.

She pointed at the kitchen's outer door and he grinned and nodded his head. He quickly disappeared round the corner of the house to present himself at the door. Eve noticed another man, who must have been standing out of sight, following him, camera hanging from his neck. Oh no, she thought, this was going too far. She didn't want the children's ridiculous story appearing in the local rag. (Yes, but was it ridiculous? a sly interior voice asked. Was it any more ridiculous than the other strange occurrences at Crickley Hall?)

When she opened the door, the photographer had caught up with his companion and was pointing his lens straight at her. He reeled off three shots before she even had time to protest.

Too late, she put up her hand and said, 'Please don't do that'

'It's all right, Mrs Caleigh, we'll choose a good one,' the journalist assured her silkily. 'Now it is Mrs Caleigh, isn't it? I've got that right?'

'Yes,' Eve was too flustered to say anything else.

'And is Mr Caleigh about? It'd be useful to talk to him as well.'

'My husband's at work.'

'No matter. You'll do fine.'

'We couldn't take a picture of you on the front doorstep, could we?' put in the photographer. 'We could get in most of the house that way.'

'In a minute, Doug.' Pierson waved an arm over the photographer's camera as if to ward it off. 'Give Mrs Caleigh a chance to catch her breath. 'D'you mind if I call you Eve?'

The reporter was a slimmish individual in a TOPMAN suit, his age around thirty, thirty-five. His prematurely balding head was an embarrassment to the thick black growth of hair beneath his nose; the circle of hair above his ears was also darkly lush.

What is it you want?' asked Eve, one hand behind the open door, ready to slam it shut.

'My paper was informed there was an incident here this morning and the police had to be called.'

'It was nothing, just a mistake.'

'Not according to our source.'

There was very little West Country in his accent. In fact, Andy Pierson had been studiously trying to lose any hint of it for the past ten years, because his ambition was to become a London reporter on one of the nationals, not with the Times or Telegraph or anything grand like that, but a red-top, the Mirror or the Sun, either one would do. Unfortunately, he was not getting any younger and he was still only on the second step of his career ladder, cub reporter and obituary writer being the first.

'Actually, Mrs Caleigh,' the journalist went on as he held up a micro-cassette recorder between himself and Eve, 'I've already spoken to the boy and girl involved, as well as their mother who, I believe, cleans this very house on a regular basis.'

'I don't know what they've told you,' Eve quickly said, 'but what they said happened to them is impossible. I think they're both overimaginative, or they made up the story for their own reasons.'

'They told me—and the police, of course—that they were confronted by a naked man…'

'As I said, it's impossible. The house was empty; my family and I were in Merrybridge this morning. There was no one here for them to see.'

'Ah yes, but they claimed it was a ghost, they could see through it, and their mother, Trisha Blaney, told me that folk hereabouts—' he gritted his teeth; he hadn't meant to say 'folk', too Devonshire—'local people, I mean, believe the house is haunted. Have you got anything to say about that, Mrs Caleigh, have you seen any ghosts in Crickley Hall yourself? You're new to the area, aren't you? Mrs Blaney tells me you've hardly been here a week. But even so, you must've seen or heard something that's puzzled you, maybe even frightened you? You know the kind of thing: bumps in the night, footsteps when there's nobody there, furniture moving by itself, stuff like that. Our readers would be very interested.' He held the mini-recorder almost up to her chin.

'It's utter nonsense,' Eve replied with a conviction she hardly felt. She turned aside slightly to avoid the recorder, but it followed her.

'Well, the house does have a history, doesn't it? S'what I've been told. People—children—died here in the Forties, didn't they? All drowned, I believe. D'you think what happened today is anything to do with that?' He gave a glance at the photographer. 'Doug, why don't you go round to the front of the house and take some pics. Maybe from the bridge, eh? You'll get a nice backdrop. Make it look sinister, though, right?'

'It already does,' Doug replied without much enthusiasm.

'Well, you know, use one of them funny lenses of yours.'

Doug, an untidy-looking person with long lank hair and a drooping moustache, grunted something, then slouched away, Pentax held before him in one hand, finger on the clicker as though he would be taking pictures on the way.

'Come on, Mrs Caleigh—Eve,' Pierson said, leaning closer as if in confidence. 'There must be something a little bit scary about Crickley Hall, with its history. I mean, you only have to look at the place to feel creeped-out. Give me something to tell the readers.'

The truth was, it was another slow night and day for the Dispatch, as it often was midweek. Why do the really juicy murders always happen at weekends? the reporter wondered to himself. What was it about Saturday nights that appealed to killers? Too much weekend booze and disappointment? And Sunday evenings; they often brought out the worst in people. Depression, he supposed; the drudgery of work the next day, the thought of another week's grind ahead. Monday mornings accounted for a lot of suicides.

'The Blaney kids said the place was flooded.' Now he leaned even closer to Eve and lowered his voice as though the conversation was only between himself and Eve and not for general consumption. 'Also…' Because she was looking to the side, her head tilted downwards, he ducked a little to make eye contact. 'Also, they told the police there was someone—no, something, they said—in the cellar that scared the—that frightened them very much.'

'It's nonsense, Mr…?'

'Pierson. But call me Andy, Eve, everybody does.'

It came out fast, as if she were deliberately not giving herself time to think. 'They must be on drugs, or sniffing glue, doing something to give themselves hallucinations. You can see for yourself.' She waved her free arm at the kitchen behind her (her other was still on the back of the door ready to close it at any moment). 'No flooding, see? The only water is in the sink. As for something in the cellar, well, the police searched the house from top to bottom and found nothing.'

'So you're saying the kids were on drugs, have I got that right?'

Eve could already see the newspaper headline. 'No, I'm only suggesting that what the boy and girl saw— while they were trespassing, by the way—all they saw was in their own minds. The house is big, and it's dark, and yes, it is rather spooky if I'm to be perfectly honest, but…'

She had run out of words; she did not know what more she could say to this man.

'Look, Mr Pierson—'

'Andy, call me Andy.'

'Look, all I know is what the policeman told me when I arrived back here with my husband and daughter this morning.'

'You've got two little girls, haven't you? One's called Laura, but I don't have the other one's name…?'

'Cally. And my older daughter is Loren, not Laura.' She knew the reporter would probably get the spelling wrong, calling her Lauren instead, but she couldn't be bothered to explain it to him. Obviously, Seraphina Blaney and her brother had told the journo enough already. But if she herself played dumb, the story might go away due to lack of detail. It would just be something the brother and sister had made up between them.

Andy Pierson was not about to give up, though. 'Now come on, Eve, tell me something that's happened to