The Secret of Crickley Hall

Wait a minute.' Something had occurred to Gabe. 'Mrs Trevellick said something about an old lady being tracked down by the press. Who did she mean?'

Percy avoided Gabe's questioning gaze for a moment, tilting his head downwards, then bringing it up again.

'No, I didn't tell yer, did I?' he said. 'Didn't think it were important no more.'

Gabe and Eve glanced at each other before Percy went on.

'She's still alive, y'see. Old, in her nineties, but still alive.'

'Who is, Percy?' Eve asked patiently.

'Augustus Cribben's sister,' he told them. 'Magda.'

46: MAGDA CRIBBEN

Gabe wrinkled his nose as he followed the plump blue-uniformed nurse down the long corridor. The nursing home smelt of boiled cabbage, detergent and stale pee, all underlined by the more subtle odour of human decay, the slow rotting of living flesh.

'She doesn't get any visitors at all,' the nurse said, glancing back over her shoulder at the engineer, 'so it'll be a nice surprise for her. We thought all her relatives must be deceased by now—that is, if she had any.'

'My folks are distant cousins living in the States,' he lied easily. 'I promised 'em I'd try and look her up while I was on my tour of Europe.' It was the same story he'd given to the receptionist when he'd first arrived at the old people's nursing home. Percy had told him the location of the Denesdown Nursing Home for the Elderly and Eve had begged Gabe to look in on Magda Cribben on his way to Seapower's Ilfracombe office—the home was on the outskirts of the large sprawling seaside town. He had resisted the idea at first. What good could it do? They had both assumed that Magda was long gone by now and if she was still alive she'd be somewhere in her nineties. Percy had repeated to Gabe how the woman had been hospitalized after being found on a station platform in a catatonic state and suffering apparent amnesia. From there she'd been transferred to a mental asylum where countless psychiatrists had endeavoured to unlock her mind over the years, none of them having any success. In her seventies, and regarded as a lost cause, she had been moved to this nursing home and here she remained, speechless and without memory. She was no danger to anyone, not even to herself, and she showed no interest in the world around her. The last Percy had heard, Magda Cribben sat silently in her room every day, unwilling, despite the gentle coaxing of nurses and staff, to join other elderly residents in the common room where they watched television, played board and card games, and conversed about distant times.

To Gabe, the visit seemed pointless—what could he do that medics hadn't already tried to make her communicate? But Eve had been adamant: if he wouldn't go, then she would, taking Cally along with her. Somehow she had got it into her head that the old lady must have the key to the evacuees' mysterious deaths back in 1943, that only Magda Cribben could know why the children had drowned so needlessly in Crickley Hall's cellar. Rightly or wrongly, Eve—strongly influenced by the psychic, Lili Peel—thought that the answer might help the troubled spirits of the children who haunted Crickley Hall pass on peacefully It was all nonsense to him, but what harm could visiting Magda do? It would at least appease Eve to know—or to think— he took the matter seriously. Gabe mentally shrugged: no harm at all, he told himself.

The nurse he was following interrupted his thoughts. 'You have been informed of her condition, haven't you? You understand she won't speak to you?'

'Uh, yeah. I just figured it would be nice to see her. Family thing, y'know?'

The nurse, whose plastic nametag over her left breast named her Iris, nodded her head. 'Family is important,' she pronounced sagely.

She had an ambling gait that made Gabe want to stride ahead of her. It wasn't that he was impatient; it had more to do with being keyed up.

Although he certainly had been informed of Magda's state, Gabe had no idea of what to expect. In the photograph salvaged from its hiding place behind the cupboard, she appeared to be in her forties (although Percy had assured Gabe and Eve that Cribben's sister was in her early thirties: she just looked ten years older), a stiff, austere figure with a granite-like face, her eyes black and intimidating. She'd be in her nineties, and her once dark hair would be white or at least grey. He wondered if her hard features would be softened by wrinkles, if her rigid bearing would be mellowed by time. Would her heartless glare now be subdued?'

Gabe and the nurse passed by doors on either side of the corridor, some of them open to reveal sparsely furnished rooms, taken up mostly by narrow beds. They seemed empty of residents at the moment, but as they walked by one closed door near the end of the passage, it crept open a few inches. A small woman, whose unkempt grey hair hung over her creased face in thin straggles, peered out at him with watery eyes and he felt uncomfortable under her scrutiny. He heard a small, crusty snigger come from her, and then he was past the door.

The nurse turned to face him outside the open doorway of the next room, the last room along the corridor.

'Here we are, Mr…?' she said, eyebrows raised, questioningly.

'Caleigh,' he supplied for her.

'Yes, of course, you said before. Mr Caleigh. Magda's inside. We always have her door open so we can keep an eye on her. Not that she's ever any trouble. Magda's as quiet as a mouse—quieter, actually—and rarely moves from her chair once she sits there after breakfast. We have to come and fetch her at mealtimes, but apart from that she stays in her room all day long. Never socializes with the other residents. She has her own little toilet and washroom, so she comes out of her room only to eat and when it's her bath day.'

Iris spoke in a normal voice, not bothering to lower its tone in deference to the woman on the other side of the doorway and Gabe wondered if Magda was deaf also. Couldn't be. The nurse or receptionist would have mentioned it otherwise. He guessed that if any resident, or patient, was always passive and silent, they would probably end up being treated as an imbecile or vegetable.

Stepping up to the doorway and looking over the nurse's shoulder, the engineer immediately set eyes on Magda Cribben.

Although there was an easychair in the room, the aged woman was seated on a hardbacked chair by the tidy bed.

'Now, I'll leave you to it,' said Iris, moving aside to let Gabe through. 'It's all right, she will hear you, but don't expect a response. If she does speak, believe me, we'll all come running. They tell me she hasn't spoken a word since the last world war, even though there's nothing physically wrong with her. Not a peep, not a whisper.'

She called into the room, this time using a louder voice. 'A gentleman has come to see you, Magda, isn't that nice? He's a relative from America and he's come all this way to visit you, so be nice to him.' The nurse winked conspiratorially at Gabe, but he did not react. 'Go right in, Mr Caleigh. You can pull the armchair round or sit on the bed, whichever you prefer.'

With an unconvincing smile, she ambled away, back in the direction they had come.

Gabe entered the room.

•

Who is this man? He was a stranger, she'd never seen him before, and he was certainly no relative because she had none. Only Augustus, her dear brother, gone now, gone a long time ago. Perhaps that was for the best—they would have persecuted him if he hadn't drowned. But she did not want this strange man in her room; he wasn't even smartly dressed. Nobody ever came to see her, no, nobody ever came. Except for that one time, but it was long ago and in a different place to this, somewhere where they kept her locked up and where they were always asking questions—questions, questions, questions! But she never let them know, she never answered their silly questions—that would have been too dangerous—and eventually they had given up. Yes, he had visited her there—not this man, but the one who knew everything. He had come to her out of curiosity, not for love. Years ago that was, but she remembered it clearly as if it were yesterday. The doctors didn't know it but her mind was still razor-sharp—how else could she have kept up this pretence?—her memory unimpaired. Oh yes, she remembered the other man quite clearly.