House of the Lost

CHAPTER ONE

Theo Kendal had never expected to see Fenn House again and he had certainly never expected to own it. He had not been to the place for a good ten years and if his cousin Charmery had not died, he would have continued to live in his own small north London house, churning out a novel a year, eking out his income with a little dilettante journalism and some radio scripts, and managing to forget for most of the time that Charmery had ever existed. But because she was dead he was driving into the wilds of Norfolk at the beginning of a cold grey December, along roads which a decade ago had been familiar but which now included a confusing bypass which sent him speeding in the wrong direction for half a dozen miles.

Melbray, when he finally reached it, had changed very little. Here was the high street with the tiny market square, a scattering of shops, the local pub and a doctor’s surgery. It had been the local doctor who found Charmery’s body; Theo had not met him but he had seen him being accosted by reporters on TV news bulletins after the inquest. The doctor had clearly disliked the attention; he had pushed the microphones away and walked off with his shoulders hunched and his coat collar turned up defensively. Theo, his emotions still in tatters over Charmery’s death, had been grateful for the man’s discretion.

A mile beyond the village was the turning to Fenn Lane. Once this turning had caused a lurch of delighted anticipation because it had meant the holiday was really beginning: long drowsy afternoons by the river with the sunlight glinting on it, pleasantly haphazard meals and lawn cricket played with whichever members of the family were around. It meant being with Charmery.

But there was no lurch of anticipation this afternoon, because four months ago someone had crept into the old boathouse where Theo and Charmery used to hide, and had forced Charmery into the water and held her below the surface with a boathook until she was dead. The local police, diligently reporting to Theo as Charmery’s closest living relative, had explained that forensic reconstructions and investigations suggested the murderer had probably assumed the body would drift out into the Chet and be lost. Instead, it became wedged in the struts of the landing stage and was found three days later. A lot of the most useful evidence had been washed away, of course, but they had been able to perform DNA tests on the body – none had produced any results, however.

The police had questioned Theo, which he supposed was inevitable, given that he was the sole beneficiary of Charmery’s will, and had asked him to provide an alibi, which he had not been able to do since he had been at home working. The various aunts and uncles and cousins whom he and Charmery shared had been questioned as well: a matter of trying to build up a picture of the victim’s life, the police had said, which had not been well received. Nancy Kendal, a formidable unmarried aunt, said the questions were sheer impudence and she would write to the chief constable, but Theo’s Great-uncle Frederick Francis Kendal – Guff to most people – said peaceably that the police had to look at all aspects of the situation.

Theo, driving down Fenn Lane four months later, with Charmery’s killer still uncaught, did so with a degree of apprehension. For the first time, Fenn House struck him as vaguely sinister. The family, hearing Charmery had left the place to Theo, supposed he would sell it. It was all very well as a holiday house, they said; they had enjoyed all those summers there, and the autumn weekends and the Christmases, but surely no one would want to live there permanently? It might not be actually in the fen country, despite its name, but it was still one of Norfolk’s remoter parts.

At first Theo had also thought he would sell it, probably without seeing it again, but Charmery’s murder had churned up such a scalding array of emotions he had been unable to work for the past four months. Last week, receiving Fenn’s keys from the solicitor’s office, exhausted with staring at a blank computer screen and trying to write a book that refused to be written, he had made the decision to face the memories and the pain head on, and spend a couple of months living there. He was trusting to luck that the ghosts and the journalists would not realize he was in residence. Although he thought he could deal with the ghosts and he could certainly deal with the occasional reporter prowling around for fag ends of information about the Fenn House Drowning. In London, with the book barely a quarter written and the deadline for its delivery to his publishers looming alarmingly close, it had seemed a good idea, but with river mist creeping over the road and a cold dark house ahead, it was starting to feel like downright lunacy.

The car headlights picked out the tanglewood garden that had grown up round the house, then swept over the front of the house itself. Theo frowned, realizing he had not even asked the solicitors if the electricity was on. He had a vision of himself wandering through dim rooms by candlelight or oil lamp, wrapped in blankets to keep warm. Even in the fading light Fenn House looked dismal and somewhat neglected. Charmery’s parents had always looked after it meticulously. ‘Well, they had the money,’ Theo’s mother used to say. But they had been dead for more than five years and it looked as if there had not been as much money as everyone thought; even in this light Theo could see the missing roof tiles and peeling paintwork. For the last few miles he had been cherishing the idea that Charmery had bequeathed him the enchanted memories of their shared secret teens, but it was starting to look as if she had left him an expensive liability.

He unlocked the door and stepped inside and, as he did so, there was a curious sensation deep within his mind: a shutter-flash of something insistent and so startlingly real he stopped dead. It imprinted itself vividly on his vision. It was the image of a young boy entering a shadowy and silent house, fearful of what might be waiting for him in the gathering dusk.

Entering the house at dusk was always difficult for Matthew, because even if the house seemed silent, he could never be sure who might be inside. His father had to have quiet to write his books; Matthew understood this. Father’s work was important – books were very important and so were the newspapers for which Father sometimes wrote – so he was always careful not to disturb him. But there were times when the house became wrapped in a different quietness; a deep, frozen silence, which Matthew hated because it was as if the building was deliberately being very still and silent, like an animal trying to avoid being noticed by predators. Predators meant people who hunted and sometimes killed: Matthew knew that because Father liked him to know as many words as possible.

If he came home to find the house in this silent, frightened state it meant the cold-eyed men were there. Matthew did not know what went on between the men and his father, but after their visits Father often shut himself in his study for days and Wilma had to carry his meals in on trays, puffing a bit as she came up from the scullery because she was quite stout. Once when the men were there, Matthew listened outside the study door, his heart hammering with panic in case he was caught, but he did not hear anything because this was an old house with thick doors.

‘Better not to hear anything at all,’ Wilma always said about the men. ‘Better to stay out of their way.’

For most of the time Matthew did so. Once he was in his bedroom at the top of the house with the door closed, he felt safer. He loved this room, because it was the place where he could escape into his own world. He had several of these worlds. Father once said it was the best thing ever to escape into worlds you made for yourself, but he meant the worlds he wrote about in his books. Matthew knew Father would like him to write books one day – stories anyway – but he did not think he would. In any case, his father often seemed to find writing books quite hard. He wandered round the house with his hair in an untidy tumble because he could not be bothered to brush it, and swore at pieces of paper or angrily crumpled them into balls and threw them across the room.

Instead of writing stories Matthew would rather have the private worlds he drew in the sketchbooks he was given for Christmas and birthdays. Father explained that they did not have much money for presents, but Matthew thought drawing paper, coloured pencils and crayons were the best presents. For his ninth birthday he had a whole paintbox which was the loveliest thing he had ever been given in his whole life.

It would be wonderful if the pretend worlds could be real, so that if the cold-eyed men ever came into his bedroom they would not find him because he would have walked into one of the painted pictures like Alice vanishing into the looking-glass world. Father had read that story to him last year, saying it was not actually a fairytale but something called an allegory, in fact a number of allegories. That was interesting, wasn’t it? Matthew had not known what an allegory was, but his father always expected him to understand lots of words and he had not wanted to disappoint him, so he had said politely it was very interesting indeed, then went away to make drawings of the playing cards who had chased Alice. When he said his prayers each night (his teachers said everyone should do this), he always added a prayer that one morning he would wake up to find one of his worlds really did exist and he was living in it.

The inside of Fenn House was as dingy as the outside.

The curious image that had printed itself on Theo’s vision like a dark sunburst when he entered the house was no longer so vivid, but it had not entirely left him. He supposed it had been a result of eye strain due to the long drive, probably with a degree of emotion generated by returning to this house.

The musty desolation of the house was rather daunting, but the electricity was connected which was one mercy. Although, when Theo switched on the lights, he thought he would almost have preferred oil lamps and candles which might have softened the ominous look of the peeling wallpaper and damp patches under some of the windows.

He unloaded the boxes of provisions he had bought in Norwich and carried them through to the kitchen, distributing them in the larder and fridge. After this he took his suitcases upstairs, pausing outside the bedroom Charmery always had when they were children, sometimes sharing it with their younger cousin, Lesley, who loved coming to Fenn because of being with these two nearly grown-up cousins.

Dust lay thickly in Charmery’s room and there were several faded oblongs on the walls where pictures had hung and been removed. But the old grandfather clock was still in its corner. It had originally been in the big, low-ceilinged sitting room, but as a child Charmery had fallen in love with the clock and persuaded her parents to carry it up to her bedroom. She liked to fall asleep listening to it, she said; it was like listening to Fenn’s heart beating. The clock had to be wound every seven days or it stopped, and Charmery had always made a little ceremony of the winding. Every time she came to Fenn House she would race up the stairs to start it: she always insisted the holiday could not begin properly until the clock was ticking.

No one had wound the clock recently, though. The elaborate brass hands stood at some long-ago three o’clock, and there was dust across the face and the carved door. Theo found himself wondering if three o’clock was the hour Charmery had died.

He closed the door and went along to the bedroom he had always used. There was a view towards the river from this side of the house, and in the gathering dusk he could just make out the outline of St Luke’s Convent. The convent’s land did not exactly join up with Fenn House, but parts marched alongside here and there. On a quiet day – and most days in Melbray were quiet – you could hear the chapel bell. Nancy Kendal said it was intrusive, but Theo had always rather liked hearing the soft chimes. He stared at the crouching bulk of the convent for a moment, then closed the curtains and went back downstairs.

After several unsuccessful attempts he managed to fire up the central-heating system. It clanked protestingly and the pipes juddered alarmingly, but eventually it sent out a reasonable warmth and Theo began to feel more in touch with normality. He went into the dining room which he had not looked at yet, but in which he intended to work.

It was annoying to find, when he switched on the light, that the bulb had blown. Theo swore, but although the room was dim, the curtains framing the old-fashioned French windows were open and there was enough light for him to make a cautious way to a table lamp. He was halfway along the wall, skirting the shadowy shapes of furniture, when a face, the eyes looking straight into his, suddenly swam out of the shadows. Charmery.

Theo’s heart gave a great leap and he felt as if he had been plunged into a vat of ice. For several seconds he could not move and could scarcely breathe for the sudden constriction round his chest. Charmery could not be here, she simply could not, not unless he was really going to accept Guff’s premise of ghosts. He forced himself to reach for the lamp’s switch and reassuring light sprang up.

It was not Charmery herself, of course, nor was it a ghost. It was a framed sketch of her, head and shoulders, almost life-size, done in a smudgy charcoal. In the uncertain light it had been disconcertingly lifelike. Theo had never seen it before and it must be fairly recent, because it was not the Charmery he had known: this was the teenage cousin finally grown-up. The tumble of copper-coloured hair did not show up in charcoal, of course, but the long narrow eyes with the thick dark lashes were there. The artist had given an impression of a low-cut gown of some kind so that the shoulders were bare and she was wearing what looked like a rather elaborate Victorian pendant, which Theo did not recognize.

The sketch did not seem to be signed, but Theo reached up to unhook it. Cobwebs floated down, ghost-strands from the past. He turned the picture over, to see if there was any signature or date on the back, but there was only a layer of dusty backing paper. Theo turned it round and studied it closely, noting the differences again. Hair and clothes were all unfamiliar, and the expression… The expression was the most unfamiliar thing of all. Whoever had drawn this had caught a side of Charmery Theo had never seen. A softer side. Had something happened to her in those years he had not shared? Someone who had come into her life after he left it? There had been a series of lovers – the family had reported that with gleeful disapproval, of course – but towards the end had there been someone who had wrought this extraordinary change? Or had it been someone who had been going to give her the things Theo could not? Marriage, a child… An old pain stirred – a pain that after ten years ought to have been safely buried under thick layers of scar tissue but which still had the power to claw painfully into his mind.

He went blindly out of the room.

After he had put together a makeshift meal and eaten it, he began to feel better. He carried his laptop into the dining room and set it down on the table. He could not decide whether to put Charmery’s portrait completely out of sight, but to shut it in a drawer or cupboard seemed like shutting her in her coffin all over again. He had dreamed about Charmery’s coffin for weeks after the funeral. It had been smothered in roses – two of the aunts had sent Charmian roses because originally she had been christened Charmian Marie, although Theo did not think anyone had ever called her that.

He surveyed the room, and thought he would work at the dining table, facing the French windows. In those long-ago summers, these windows always stood open to the gardens; now they were closed and bolted and the gardens were wreathed in river mist.

Theo stood at the window for a moment, looking towards the smoky outline of the old boathouse. Charmery’s death house. He would have to go inside it at some point, but he could not face it yet. He still had dreams of how her beautiful face must have looked when she was found there, bloated and grotesque, her hair matted with river weed. He frowned, pushed the image away with an effort, and switched on the laptop.

Reading the chapter he had been working on during the summer he was not knocked out by it, although neither was he disgusted. It was not mind-scaldingly brilliant; it would not set literary-award ceremonies alight or cause film directors to fall over their feet in their haste to offer six-figure sums for the film rights, but it was not bad. He could polish it and make it shine a bit.

He opened a new document, typed Chapter Five at the top, and plunged into the world he had been working to create. The main storyline centred on a young man trying to cope with the aftermath of his experiences in the Iraq war. Theo intended it to be modern and biting: a self-examination by the central character, with flashbacks to the war-torn Iraqi cities and a few excursions into the difficulties the character had with renewing his relationships.

‘Don’t neglect to put in a bit of bonking,’ his agent had said on reading Theo’s outline of the plot. ‘I don’t mean heaving and grunting. Classy bonking.’

‘Can you have classy bonking?’ Theo had demanded.

‘I can,’ said his agent, with the grin that made her look like a patrician cat.

It was four months since he had been able to write anything, and he had expected to find that re-entering the story with the nightmare-ridden ex-paratrooper and the searing bomb-explosion flashbacks and the classy bonking in deference to his irrepressible agent, would be difficult. What he had not expected, however, was for a whole new story to thrust its way into his mind and find its way onto the computer screen; nor had he expected to type several pages of this new and unknown story almost without realizing it.

But when he leaned back from the table-top and reached for his drink, there it was. A totally new plot, apparently told from the point of view of a child. A child who lived in a dark remote house, and who had some nameless menace threatening him. A child whose only escape was into imaginary worlds of his own creating.