The House of a Hundred Whispers

family, who were all putting their coats on.
‘He didn’t go back out again, did he?’
‘I didn’t hear him,’ said Grace.
Rob went back into the library and looked out into the kitchen garden. Timmy’s stick was still lying on the path, but there was no Timmy.
‘He must be upstairs. He’s probably shut himself in one of the bedrooms and he just can’t hear me.’
Rob climbed the stairs to the landing. Even up here, it still smelled of woodsmoke. He opened the doors to the three bedrooms that led to the stained-glass window, but Timmy wasn’t in any of them.
‘Timmy!’ he shouted. ‘Come on, Tim-tim, this isn’t funny! We’re going out!’
He went along the corridor to the bathroom, opening one door after another, and leaving them open. He even looked under the beds, and he couldn’t help thinking about the sniggering boy that he had always imagined was hiding under his own bed. He went into the bathroom, too, with its huge antiquated bathtub, on lion’s-claw feet. It was chilly in there. The rain was pattering against the frosted-glass window, and a tap was dripping, but those were the only sounds, and Timmy wasn’t there.
Rob went back and searched each of the eight bedrooms again, opening up the tall oak wardrobes and even pulling out the drawers from the tallboy dressers. Some drawers were filled with sweaters and socks and wrinkled underwear. Some were empty. But Timmy was hiding in none of them.
‘Any luck, Rob?’ Martin called out, from the hallway.
Rob went to the top of the staircase, the same place where Herbert had been standing when he was struck on the back of the head.
‘No,’ he said, his throat clogged so that he spoke in not much more than a whisper. Then, louder, so that Martin could hear him, ‘No! I can’t think where he’s gone!’

6
They went outside into the fine grey drizzle.
Margaret Walsh said, ‘I’m sorry… I’d help you look for him, but I have to meet a client in Plymouth at half past one.’
‘That’s okay, he’ll be around somewhere,’ said Vicky. ‘He’s probably hiding in one of the barns to scare us. He’s always been a mischief.’
Rob crossed the courtyard to the smaller barn. The wide oak door was fastened with a rusty padlock, and the only windows in it were four narrow slits that were at least five metres high. Timmy loved Spiderman but there was no way he could have climbed all the way up that sheer granite wall.
‘Timmy!’ Rob called out again. ‘Tim-tim, this isn’t funny any more! Come on out!’
He went across to the larger barn. Although the door had no padlock on it, its hinges had collapsed years ago, so that it had dropped down to the ground and couldn’t be shifted except with enormous effort. However, there was a narrow triangular gap in between the side of the door and the doorpost, and it was just possible that Timmy could have squeezed through it.
‘Give me a hand here, Martin,’ said Rob. The two of them rammed their shoulders against the door and kicked it, and at last they managed to force it half-open. It was dark inside, because the only two windows had been covered, for some reason, with hessian sacking. The whole barn smelled of mouldering hay.
‘Timmy, are you in here? Come on out, if you are. You’re not in trouble, son, just come out.’
Rob took out his phone and switched on the flashlight. He shone the beam from one side of the barn to the other, but apart from the dank heaps of hay, all he could see was a stack of plastic milk crates full of empty whisky bottles, a few gardening tools and the skeleton of an old Scott motorcycle.
‘No, not in here. He must be hiding in the garden somewhere. Maybe the garden shed.’
They left the barn and walked around the side of the house. The shed was at the end of the kitchen garden, but, like the smaller barn, its door was padlocked. Rob peered in through the dusty window, but he could see only spades and forks and shelves with tins of weedkiller.
‘So where the hell is he?’ said Martin. It was beginning to rain harder now, and he turned up the collar of his coat. ‘Don’t tell me he’s run off into the field.’
Vicky joined them. ‘Rob – I’m really worried now. I know he’s a little devil, but this is not like him at all. He would have jumped out and said “boo!” by now.’
They went through the gate of the kitchen garden and into the field. From the back of the house the field rose steeply uphill and on a clear day the sinister granite peak of Pew Tor could be seen over the hedgerows. When he and Florence had first moved to Allhallows Hall, Herbert Russell had arranged with a local farmer for sheep to graze in this field, but some kind of obscure argument had blown up between him and the farmer and now it was nothing but overgrown grass and Japanese knotweed and brambles.
Rob had never found out what the argument was, but knowing his father it was probably something petty. Perhaps he had imagined that the sheep were looking at him disrespectfully.
‘No… I can’t see Timmy anywhere here,’ said Martin, shielding his eyes with his hand. ‘He couldn’t have gone all that far, could he, and he’s wearing that bright yellow jacket.’
‘But that’s the thing,’ said Vicky. ‘He took his jacket off when he came inside, and left it in the hallway. He’s out here in all this rain with nothing but his jumper.’
‘I think we should search the house one more time,’ said Rob. ‘There’s so many nooks and crannies. He’s probably hiding in the larder or one of the cupboards in the library and giggling his head off because we can’t find him.’
*
They went back into the house, wiping their muddy shoes on the front doormat.
‘Timmy!’ Rob shouted, and Vicky echoed, ‘Timmy! Come on