The House of a Hundred Whispers

made Allhallows Hall look even more forbidding than it usually did. A stone arch led from the driveway into a paved courtyard. In the centre of the courtyard stood a fountain with a headless cherub perched on top of it, coated in thick black moss, and the walls all around were lined by rectangular lead planters, every one of which was thick with dead grass and decaying weeds.
‘I thought he had gardeners,’ said Vicky.
‘When he was governor he could get prisoners to do it for him, and he didn’t have to pay them. When he retired, he just let it all go to pot.’
The main house had been built in 1567, out of local granite with a slate roof, and it was overgrown with rusty-coloured ivy. Two large granite barns had been added in the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries, which made the courtyard feel even more enclosed. Rob looked up at the window that had once been his bedroom, and it looked smaller and darker and more secretive than he remembered. He used to have nightmares that there was another boy, sleeping under his bed, and he wondered if that boy was still there.
‘I’m thirsty,’ said Timmy.
‘Timmy, for God’s sake, you’re always something! If you’re not thirsty you’re hungry and if you’re not hungry you’re tired and if you’re not tired you’re bored.’
‘Oh, leave the poor boy alone,’ said Vicky. ‘It’s all right, darling, we’ll find you something in a minute. Your grandpa must have left something in the house that you can drink.’
‘Apart from Scotch?’ said Rob. ‘I very much doubt it.’
As they approached the porch, the oak front door opened and Martin appeared, with his wife, Katharine, close behind him.
‘Aha! You remembered where the old house was, then!’ he said, in his usual trumpeting voice.
Martin was at least three inches taller than Rob, and bulkier, with curly hair that was prematurely grey for a man of forty-four. His cheeks were already rough and red, like Herbert’s had been, and his eyes were the same pale citrine colour. He was wearing a maroon cable-knit sweater, which gave him the appearance of a city dweller who assumed that this was what country people usually wore.
Katharine was skinny and petite, with a bleached-blonde angular bob, permanently narrowed eyes, and a sharply pointed nose. She could have been quite pretty if she didn’t always look so sour, with her lips tightly pursed. She was wearing a beige Burberry cardigan, which Vicky guessed must have cost at least seven hundred pounds.
‘No, I’d totally forgotten where it was,’ said Rob. ‘That’s what satnav’s for, isn’t it? So that you don’t have to remember where you spent your unhappy childhood.’
He was quite aware that Martin was making a sarcastic comment about the fact that he hadn’t been down to Sampford Spiney to see their father since their mother’s funeral.
Martin came out and gave him a clumsy hug. He smelled of bitter woodsmoke and some expensive aftershave.
‘How’s it going in the arty-farty business? Making any money yet?’
‘Oh… a few bob here and there. I’m doing some animation for Aardman and some dancing leprechauns for Tourism Ireland. How’s life in the City?’
‘I could say obscenely profitable, but that would be an understatement.’
Katharine and Vicky had exchanged no more than tight, polite smiles. Vicky said, ‘Shall we go inside? It’s freezing out here and Timmy’s thirsty.’
‘By all means, come on in. I’ve just lit the fire in the drawing room. Dad’s solicitor should be here in a half hour or so, what’s-her-name. And Gracey said she’d be here about eleven. She’s catching a taxi from Tiverton.’
They entered the hallway. Its walls were panelled in oak so dark it was almost chocolate-coloured, and its granite floor was covered by the faded red Agra rug that Herbert Russell had been staring at when his heart stopped beating.
Martin turned around at the bottom of the stairs and said, ‘They found him right here, apparently. His skull was bashed in, although they don’t yet know how that happened. Could have been a burglar, or perhaps he smashed his head on the banisters as he fell downstairs.’
‘Martin,’ Vicky scolded him. ‘Not in front of Timmy.’
‘Oh, I’m sure Timmy’s heard worse than that, haven’t you, Timmy? Play Fortnite, do you?’
‘Martin, he’s only five. We’re still on Super Mario.’
Martin led them into the drawing room. It had always been gloomy in here, because the diamond-leaded windows were small for a room this size. Most of the furniture was Jacobean, upholstered in brocade, with barley-twist legs, although a wing chair with a worn leather cushion stood close to the fireplace, and this was where their father always used to sit – ‘Herbert’s throne’, their mother, Florence, used to call it. The fireplace itself was huge, like a granite bridge, with a cast-iron basket that was big enough to roast a hog. Martin had stacked three large ash logs into it, and the kindling underneath them was crackling sharply.
Rob looked around. The same paintings still hung on the walls – dreary landscapes with overcast skies, mostly of Dartmoor and the Walkham Valley. One of these paintings Rob had always found deeply unsettling. In the middle of a dark grove of trees twenty or thirty figures were gathered, all wearing white robes with pointed hoods, as if they had assembled for some pagan mass, and were waiting for Satan to put in an appearance.
‘Let’s see if there’s anything to drink in the kitchen,’ said Vicky, and took Timmy out through the door on the right-hand side of the fireplace. Martin, meanwhile, sat down in Herbert’s throne, briskly chafing his hands together, while Katharine perched herself like a kestrel on the arm of the throne beside him.
Rob remained standing on the other side of the fireplace, staring unfocused at the logs as they started to smoulder. He had promised himself that he wouldn’t allow Martin to irritate him, but it wasn’t easy. Everything Martin said and did got on his nerves – even the way he crossed his legs