‘Anything. What was all that noise upstairs? I thought I heard a window breaking.’
‘You did and you didn’t,’ Rob told her. ‘Come and sit down and I’ll tell you all about it. You haven’t heard from Martin again, have you?’
‘No, nothing. But those pills really knocked me out. What’s happened to your arm?’
Katharine sat at the kitchen table with a mug of coffee while Portia made her a cheese and tomato sandwich and Rob and Vicky told her about the stained-glass window and Old Dewer’s hounds. She listened and nodded but said nothing. All of them had now come to the point where they were prepared to accept and believe almost anything, no matter how strange and frightening it was – whisperers who they couldn’t see, but who could push and kick them; Ada disappearing through a solid wall; Timmy and Martin vanishing yet their voices still being heard; the whole of Allhallows Hall shaking as violently as Herbert Russell used to, in one of his rages.
‘If we had a choice, we’d be out of here in five seconds flat and you wouldn’t see us for dust,’ said Rob, and then realised how ironic his words were. ‘Unlike the rest of the people who live here.’
*
Soon after eleven o’clock, DI Holley arrived with DC Cutland, but without any uniformed officers.
DI Holley smelled as if he had just put out a cigarette and he had a tight, vexed expression on his face. He looked like a hawk that had managed to pick up a particularly plump mouse in his beak but had accidentally dropped it from fifty feet up in the air.
The detectives kept their coats on, and DI Holley said, ‘We won’t keep you long, Mr Russell. A quick word in private, if we may.’
Rob took them through to the library and closed the door, but they didn’t sit down.
‘No handcuffs?’ Rob asked them.
DI Holley gave him a small, sour smile. ‘No, Mr Russell. Not today, anyway. We’ve had the final results of the DNA tests from the murder weapon this morning and – not to keep you in suspense – you’re in the clear.’
‘Really? I thought the DNA matched mine.’
‘It does. At least, it shows that you’re related on the male side to whoever wielded that hammer, although the mitochondrial DNA doesn’t tally. That’s the female DNA. The perpetrator who killed your father didn’t have the same mother as you.’
‘This is confusing me. I realise that Herbert Russell wasn’t my father, and that my mother must have had an affair at some time with somebody else.’
‘It doesn’t really matter too much, Mr Russell, because the lab carried out a carbon-14 test on the DNA, too, and that can pinpoint an individual’s birth date to within two years. In this case they calculated that the perpetrator was born between nineteen forty-nine and nineteen fifty-one, which is more than thirty-five years before you were.’
‘So whoever killed my stepfather… you’ve proved that it wasn’t me… but they were related to me?’
‘Related? There’s no question he was related. He was your father.’
‘My real father killed my stepfather? Is that what you’re saying?’
‘It certainly looks like it. And I think we can reasonably conjecture that some rivalry between them regarding your mother could have been all or part of his motive.’
Rob pulled out one of the chairs and sat down. He was beginning to feel as if he were going mad.
‘Are you going to be able to find him?’ he asked.
‘Your real father? Of course we made enquiries around Sampford Spiney in case anybody noticed any suspicious vehicles in the area on the day of your father’s death. So far, though, no luck. Hardly surprising, with a population of only a hundred and seventeen and nothing in the way of what you’d call nightlife. I reckon the locals are all in bed after News at Ten. But we haven’t given up.’
‘I see.’
‘I can reassure you, though, that you’re completely out of the frame. We’ve also heard from Surrey police and they confirm your witness reports. You weren’t here on the evening Herbert Russell was murdered and the DNA found on the murder weapon wasn’t yours.’
‘And that’s conclusive, is it?’
‘Yes, Mr Russell. The lab technicians told us that the DNA was much better preserved than they would have expected if the hammer had been lying outside in the garden for any length of time. I think we can assume that after it was used to kill Herbert Russell it was either taken immediately out of the house to be hidden in the flower bed or, more likely, thrown out of an upstairs window.’
DI Holley paused, and then he nodded towards Rob’s bandaged elbow. ‘Had a bit of an accident, did you?’
Yes. I was attacked by a ravening hound that leaped at me out of a stained-glass window, what do you think?
‘It’s nothing. Tripped over, that’s all. Only a scratch.’
‘Right, then, we’ll leave you in peace. Of course, if you do think of anything that might assist us in our investigation… or if by chance your real father should make an appearance…’
‘Of course,’ said Rob. He showed both detectives to the front door and watched them walk away as if it were the end of a film.
Vicky came up to him. ‘They’re not going to arrest you?’
‘No. They’ve seen sense. Which is more than we have.’
*
After about an hour, Rob considered going upstairs again to take another look at the stained-glass window, and also to check the end bedroom.
‘Don’t,’ said Vicky. ‘Let’s wait until Francis gets here. He did warn us to keep away from the witching room, after all.’
‘I only want to make sure that I’m not going insane. If my real father was psychopathic enough to murder my stepfather with a hammer, who knows what genes I might have inherited?’
‘Rob, I was attacked by those dogs, too, and you couldn’t meet anybody saner
