The Hunting Ground Read Free Page B

actually,’ Dad admitted. ‘The whole estate’s been lying idle, boarded up for a couple of generations.’
    ‘They just left it like this?’ Elliott asked.
    ‘Reading between the lines there was some kind of tragedy here,’ Dad said. ‘Whatever happened, the latest owners didn’t want anything more to do with the house afterwards. Even now they just want to sell it as fast as possible, get it off their hands. It’s such a waste. There are genuine antiques all over this estate that have just been left to rot. I suppose the current owners have their reasons for abandoning it this way but, well, anyhow, it’s half a century since it was last used as a home.’ He stared thoughtfully out over the gardens. ‘
Something
happened here. I just don’t know what.’
    ‘Could have been illness in the house, I suppose,’ Elliott suggested.
    ‘Or somebody died,’ Ben murmured.
    Dad and Elliott both turned towards him.
    ‘What makes you say that?’ Dad asked.
    Ben shrugged. ‘Dunno. But it’s possible, isn’t it?’
    *
     
    After breakfast, Elliott decided that he’d been patient enough. It was time to take Ben for a walk in their giant new garden and find out what had happened last night.
    ‘Come on. Shoes. Now,’ he said, from the door of Ben’s bedroom.
    ‘I’m not going out,’ Ben announced. ‘No chance.’
    ‘No chance, eh?’
    A bit of mindless pestering later, Elliott had Ben reaching for his trainers.
    ‘All right, but I’m not talking about it,’ Ben growled, ‘and I’m not going out for long.’
    ‘Ten minutes.’
    ‘Ten minutes max.’
    They walked side by side through the vast oak front doors of the house and out into vivid morning sunshine. Elliott was guiding Ben southwards, towards the open pit where the lake used to be, when he spotted the woman.
    She looked to be around sixty-five years old. Slim, with white, shoulder-length hair, she was on the otherside of the perimeter fence, heading away from them, but Elliott felt a flutter in his stomach when he saw her dress. It was covered in flowers. Not printed flowers, but real ones. Dozens were pinned to the dress’s pleats and folds: daisies, peonies, chrysanthemums, roses. Some were fresh. Others, more disturbingly, were withered, their petals dried or fallen out altogether. The woman’s face was in profile, so he couldn’t properly see what she looked like at first. But then she turned to gaze at them.
    Elliott was drawn straight to her eyes. Even from this distance he could see that they were strikingly twilight-blue.
    For several seconds the woman held each of the boys in an unsettlingly sharp regard. Then she acknowledged them with a curt nod of her bird-thin neck, smelled one of the fresher roses near her collar and stepped smartly on towards the graveyard at the edge of the estate.
    ‘Who was
that
?’ Elliott wondered, once she’d gone.
    Ben shrugged. ‘Must be one of the crazy locals,’ he said, crossing his eyes.
    They walked further into the grounds. To their left, the jutting East Wing spread across the lawns like an unsightly growth. It was by far the largest structure on the estate – a vast, hexagonal-shaped building three times the area of the main house. Elliott didn’t like it. To him its irregular blank walls looked as if they had been erected with maximum ugliness in mind.
    Ben didn’t once look towards the building. Instead he headed steadfastly away from it, listlessly kicking sods of grass.
    ‘So what happened, then?’ Elliott asked at last. ‘Look, if you need me to keep it secret from Dad, I will. You know that. Just tell me what went on in there.’
    ‘You promise you won’t say anything to Dad?’
    ‘I promise.’
    Elliott waited expectantly, but Ben fell silent again. No, it was more than silence. He looked upset, couldn’t get his words out. Elliott had never seen Ben look so vulnerable before, and instinctively he stood a little closer to him. What was going on? If he was in trouble, Ben was