‘So this is the priest’s hole that the Wilmingtons had built,’ said John. ‘It’s extraordinary those priest hunters never found it. I mean, they were pretty canny. Pursuivants they were called, and they were former spies and mercenaries. They could make themselves a fair amount of bounty if they caught a priest.’
‘We were certainly never aware that this room was here,’ said Rob. ‘I can’t believe the size of it.’
‘Yes – it’s much larger than most priest’s holes, but that’s the trick, in a way. All three bedrooms along this corridor are the same length. You can imagine the priest hunters rushing upstairs to see if they could catch a priest up here, and measuring the bedrooms. They obviously overlooked to compare the length of the bedrooms with the width of the landing.’
‘We only ever used the first two bedrooms for visitors, and the end bedroom we never used at all, except for storing stuff. I lifted up that window seat once but when I saw that it was stuffed full of old papers I didn’t bother to look any further.’
‘Your father must have bothered to look, some time after you left home. If not your father, somebody did. I wonder if he found this room but never told anybody about it.’
‘I don’t see why he wouldn’t. But then he was such a grumpy bastard. He wouldn’t tell you what day of the week it was if he could help it.’
‘Rob,’ Vicky chided him.
‘I know. I shouldn’t speak ill of him now he’s dead. I just hope they have spy cameras in hell so that he can hear what we’ve been saying about him.’
John stamped two or three times on the floor. ‘Nicholas Owen would have laid down all this horsehair so that nobody downstairs could hear the priest walking about. And there’s an extra layer of plaster on the walls, by the look of it.
He paused for a few moments, his eyes half-closed, as if he were listening. Then he said, ‘Do you feel something in here? There’s that cinnamony smell… but something more than that.’
Vicky closed her eyes, too. After a while she said, ‘I’m not sure. Rob? Can you feel anything?’
‘Like what?’
‘Like… I don’t know. It’s almost as if there’s somebody else in here with us, but we can’t see them, and they’re holding their breath, too, so that we can’t hear them, either.’
‘That’s exactly what I feel,’ said John. He went over to the heap of blankets and lifted up two or three of them to look underneath, but there was nothing there.
Rob closed his eyes. He listened hard, but all he could hear was the faraway sound of a tractor puttering its way up the lane towards Wormold’s Farm.
‘No,’ he said, but as he opened his eyes he felt somebody brush against his left shoulder, only lightly, as if they were squeezing past him to get off a bus. He clapped his hand against his arm and turned around, but there was nobody there.
‘What?’ said Vicky.
‘I thought – I thought somebody touched me. That’s what it felt like, anyway.’
‘It might have been. It could have been. Somebody pushed me over, Rob, and I couldn’t see them, either.’
John looked serious. ‘It’s not a joke, this. I think there’s something real queer about this room. I don’t believe in ghosts. Not the sort that go around in white sheets going “wooo!” Not that sort, anyway. But I do believe we all have spirits and who’s to say that those spirits don’t outlive us when we’re gone?’
‘You may be right and you may be wrong, but we’ve found the priest hole and Timmy’s not in it. So what are we going to do now?’
‘We’ll carry on searching over the moors, of course. And the cops’ll be doing everything they can… putting out appeals on the telly and the radio, asking people for dashcam footage, knocking on doors.’
Vicky circled around the room, reaching out and gently touching the walls and the stained-glass windows as if she could pick up clues about Timmy’s whereabouts. Her eyes were filling up with tears again, and when she spoke her voice was tight with pain. ‘I don’t know, Rob. I know it’s not logical. But I have such a strong feeling that Timmy’s still here somewhere – here in the house.’
‘Vicks, darling, we’ve looked everywhere. He just isn’t.’
‘But I feel that he is! I don’t know why, but I do!’
John glanced at Rob as if he were seeking his approval, and then he turned back to Vicky. ‘If you feel that, then I don’t think there’s any harm in my calling on Ada Grey.’
‘Who’s Ada Grey?’
‘Oh, she’s well known around here. She lives in a cottage up at Rundlestone. Well, there’s only two cottages at Rundlestone and she lives in one of them. She does all that occult stuff. You know, tarot cards and all that. But some people say that she can talk to people who have passed over. If there’s spirits in this house, and they know where your little lad is, she’s about the only person I know who’s got any chance of getting it out of them.’
‘She’s a medium?’
‘She doesn’t call herself that. She calls herself a charmer.’
‘All right, then, if you really feel that she might be able to help. I’m like you, and I have to admit that I’ve never believed in that kind of thing – not ghosts. But something pushed my wife over, and I definitely felt as if somebody brushed up against me, and
