The House of a Hundred Whispers

look even more boyish. ‘And anyway, if we weren’t able to find it, how could Timmy have found it? And even if he had, surely he would have come out of it by now.’
‘He could be stuck inside it and he can’t get out,’ said Grace.
‘But he’d be starving hungry by now. He’d be shouting out and banging on the walls, wouldn’t he?’
Vicky was about to tell them about the childish cries that she had heard coming from the end bedroom, and the way she had been violently knocked over when she went to investigate, but Rob squeezed her hand and gave her a concentrated stare that cautioned her to stay silent. In the unlikely event that either Martin or Grace had somehow arranged for all this whispering and crying, he didn’t want them to know that they had heard it, and that it had disturbed them – although he still couldn’t understand how Vicky had been pushed.
‘How do you go about finding priest holes?’ asked Rob. ‘I mean, if you take a look around the house, John, do you think that you might be able to work out where it is?’
‘I could try,’ John told him. ‘I’ve seen two of them already – one at Grimstone Hall and the other in a house in Tavistock. The one at Grimstone Hall was under the staircase and the priest had to pull out the riser from one of the stairs and slide himself sideways into the chamber that Nicholas Owen had built underneath. At Tavistock, a section of the wall over the fireplace was hinged upwards, and the priest’s hole was a narrow space behind the chimney. But, like I said, Nicholas Owen was such an expert craftsman that they’re very hard to find.’
‘And what if you can’t find one here at Allhallows Hall?’ asked Martin, with a slightly aggressive tone in his voice. ‘What then?’
‘Then we don’t give up. We bring in one of our sniffer dogs and if our sniffer dog can’t find it then one of our team works for a company that insulates cavity walls. He can drill a neat hole in any wall that he thinks might have a priest hole behind it, and take a look behind it with a borescope.’
‘Very well,’ said Martin. ‘But let’s start with the dog first, shall we, before we start turning the house into a sieve?’

13
After he had finished his mug of tea, John Kipling stood up, peeled off his crimson anorak, and started his search of the house. He went around the ground floor first, rapping with his knuckles on the dark oak panelling to see if it sounded hollow anywhere. Then he measured the walls in each room to compare them with the walls of the rooms next to it, to see if there was any disparity.
Outside, the rain had eased off, and three fresh search and rescue teams had spread out over the moors in their continuing effort to find Timmy. Grace and Portia went out to help them, although Rob had to stay behind because his ankle was still swollen and he could only hobble on it, and Martin had to catch up with more than twenty urgent business calls.
While John slowly tapped his way from the kitchen to the library, Rob and Vicky sat in the drawing room watching the television. The local BBC News had already shown a picture of Timmy, with an urgent request for anybody who had seen him or who had any information about his whereabouts to get in touch with the police at Crownhill. An appeal had also been posted on Twitter.
‘Do you think I should tell John about that child I heard crying and my getting pushed over?’ asked Vicky. ‘Perhaps we should tell him about all that whispering, too. He seems to know all the Dartmoor myths and legends.’
‘Let’s hold off until he’s finished on the ground floor,’ said Rob. ‘We don’t want him heading straight upstairs until he’s made a thorough search down here. This priest hole could be anywhere and we don’t want him to miss it.’
‘But we both heard something strange up in that end bedroom. I heard that child and you heard those people whispering.’
‘We don’t know if those noises came from a priest hole, do we? And if there is a priest hole and Timmy somehow managed to get himself stuck inside it… well, maybe he’s too weak to call out any more. Or… I don’t know.’
‘Or what? You think he could be dead?’
‘Vicks… I didn’t say that. To be honest with you, I don’t believe that he’s here in the house at all. But we have to think of every place that he might have found himself and everything that might have happened to him.’
John came into the drawing room, running his hand through his bristly blond hair. He looked tired.
‘There’s no sign of a priest hole down here. I’ll be taking a look upstairs now, if that’s okay.’
‘We’ll go up with you. We didn’t tell you before, but we’ve been hearing some odd noises and we think they come from one of the bedrooms.’
‘Odd noises such as what?’
‘Like a child calling out, and people whispering. But very faintly, so we couldn’t quite tell for certain if that’s what they really were, or if it was the wind, or the plumbing, or some fox outside on the moor making a mating call.’
John frowned, and then he said, ‘Okay. Perhaps you’d better show me this bedroom. I mean, I know where they are, most of the priest holes around the country, but there’s no record of anybody ever hearing voices out of them. Not even at Grimstone Hall and that’s supposed to be haunted by at least three ghosts.’
They went upstairs, with Rob grabbing at the banister rail so that he wouldn’t put too much pressure on his ankle.
‘I’ve always wanted to take a look around Allhallows Hall,’ said John. ‘It has a fair old history, I can tell you.