The House of a Hundred Whispers

out! You won’t have ice cream with your lunch if you don’t come on out!’
They waited for a few moments, but there was utter silence. The longcase clock in the hallway had probably wound down days ago, because they couldn’t hear the endless weary ticking that had been an integral part of their lives at Allhallows Hall.
‘Timmy! Can you hear us?’ Rob bellowed, cupping his hands around his mouth. ‘Timmy!’ There was still no answer.
‘Well, let’s go through the house, top to bottom,’ said Martin. ‘If you girls search the downstairs, Rob and I will take the upstairs again. We’d better go up into the attic, too, Rob, although I can’t see how Timmy could have managed to climb up there, not without the ladder.’
‘Oh God,’ said Vicky, taking hold of Rob’s hand. She had tears on her eyelashes. ‘Please don’t let anything terrible have happened to him.’
They separated, with Vicky and Katharine going back into the library and Grace and Portia making their way round to the kitchen.
In the kitchen, Grace opened the doors of the range and peered into the ovens. She remembered Herbert threatening to roast her brothers alive if they misbehaved, and she wondered if Rob had told Timmy about it. But the ovens were cold and empty and crusted with years of burnt-on food. Grace doubted if their father had cooked anything since their mother had died.
Portia was looking in the larder. The middle shelf was crowded with glass jars of herbs and spices – coriander and chives and cayenne pepper. She picked one up and read the label. ‘Best before 09/08/07.’ Then she picked up a half-empty bottle of Heinz tomato ketchup. ‘Best before 17/11/09. Wow. It’s like everything’s antique in this house, Gracey. Even the food.’
They opened every cupboard in the kitchen, even the eye-level cupboards around the walls, which were stacked with dinner plates and mugs. A narrow scullery led off the kitchen, its granite floor heaped with Herbert Russell’s muddy old walking boots. There was a small space under the sink, covered by a soiled green seersucker curtain. Grace tugged it back but there was nothing behind it except for a sink plunger and a bottle of Harpic drain cleaner.
‘If you ask me, your little nephew’s taken himself off for a walk somewhere,’ said Portia.
‘In this weather?’
‘I climbed out of my bedroom window once in the middle of the night and went for a walk in a thunderstorm. Barefoot, and wearing nothing but pyjamas. I was only about seven. I was soaking, but I loved it.’
‘But that’s just like you. Timmy’s naughty sometimes, but he’s not bonkers.’
Portia narrowed her eyes in mock annoyance. ‘Who are you calling bonkers? After what you did with that courgette?’
‘I was drunk. I can’t even remember.’
‘Maybe you can’t, darling, but I’ll never forget it for as long as I live.’
In the library, Vicky and Katharine opened all the cupboards under the bookshelves. Most of them were filled with old copies of the Prison Service Journal, as well as photograph albums with mock-crocodile covers and accounts books bulging with receipts. In one of the cupboards, Vicky found a black-and-white photograph of Rob’s mother in a silver frame, face down. The glass was smashed, so that it looked as if she were staring out from behind a spiderweb.
Katharine pulled out some of the books on the shelves to check behind them. ‘Perhaps there’s a secret compartment. You see them in some of those spy films, don’t you?’
‘I can’t really see Timmy having the strength to pull out a whole bookcase, Katharine.’
‘You never know. There might be a secret mechanism.’
‘Even if there was, how would Timmy have found out about it?’
‘All right. There’s no need to get tetchy.’
‘I’m not being tetchy, Katharine. My son’s disappeared and I’m going out of my mind with worry.’
‘Oh, come on, Vicky. He’ll be all right. If he’s not hiding in the house, he’s probably gone off exploring.’
‘There’s nothing to explore around here. Only the church, and the graveyard.’
‘You know what kids are like. They find everything fascinating.’
‘Well, yes. But not in this weather.’
Upstairs, Rob and Martin had checked every bedroom again, just in case Timmy had been hiding under a quilt or behind a door and they had somehow managed to miss him. Then they dragged out the heavy old wooden stepladder and positioned it under the trapdoor in the corridor ceiling that gave access to the attic.
‘There’s no way he could have got himself up there,’ said Rob. ‘What did he do – fly? And then shut the door behind him?’
‘Of course he couldn’t,’ Martin agreed. ‘But you know what they say about leaving no stone unturned. You wouldn’t want to go up there in ten years’ time and find his skeleton.’
‘Martin, for Christ’s sake.’
‘I know. Sorry. But you know what I’m trying to say. Better to be sure now than sorry later.’
Rob climbed up the stepladder first. One of the cords that held its legs together had frayed and broken, and the stepladder swayed and creaked with every step. He pushed up the trapdoor so that it fell sideways with a clatter, and immediately he smelled stale air and mould. He took out his phone and switched on the flashlight, pointing it left and right.
‘What’s it like up there?’ asked Martin.
‘Musty. I doubt if anyone’s been up here in years.’
Rob heaved himself up through the trapdoor and stood up. The attic floor was completely boarded over, and the rafters had been covered with plasterboard, stained with brown patches of damp. There was a light switch on the joist next to the trapdoor, and he turned on the two naked bulbs that hung from the ceiling. Martin pulled himself up after him, grunting with effort.
‘God almighty. I haven’t been up here since I was about twelve.’
At one end of the attic stood the rusty iron water tank and all the noisy ancient plumbing, groaning and shuddering as usual. But at the opposite end Rob was surprised to see at least a dozen