The Secret of Crickley Hall Read Free Page A

all these past months. Too much trying to live a normal life, not for her own sake, but for the girls, for Gabe. Relentless grief and… and guilt. It was those spiteful shards that caused her to shiver, spiking her whenever she forgot for a moment.
    'I just felt a draught,' she lied.
    Unconvinced—it was plain in his expression—Gabe left her to go to the open front door.
    'Hey,' she heard him say behind her. 'What's up, fella?' Eve turned to see him squatting down in front of a shivering Chester. The dog stood in the open doorway, his rear legs still on the outside step.
    'Come on, Chester, get in here,' Gabe coaxed easily. 'Your butt is gonna get soaked.' It had begun to rain in earnest again.
    Cally trotted over to the dog and patted his head. 'You'll catch a cold,' she told Chester, who shuffled his front paws and gave a little whine.
    Gabe lifted him gently and stroked the back of his neck. The puling began again but Gabe carried Chester across the threshold and used a foot to nudge the door shut behind them. The trembling dog began to struggle.
    'Easy, Chester,' Gabe soothed. 'You gotta get used to the place.'
    Chester disagreed. He tried to get free, squirming his wiry body in Gabe's arms, so that Gabe was forced to put him back on the floor. The dog scuttled back to the front door and began to scrabble at it with his paws.
    'Hey, quit it.' Gabe pulled him away from the door but did not attempt to pick him up again. Cally and Loren looked on with concern.
    'Chester doesn't like it here,' Loren said anxiously.
    Eve slipped an arm round her daughter's shoulder. 'It's just a bit strange to him, that's all,' she said. 'You wait, by tonight he'll be treating Crickley Hall like he's lived here all his life.'
    Loren looked up at her mother. 'He's afraid of this place,' she announced gravely.
    'Oh, Loren, that's nonsense. Chester's always been skittish about new things. He'll soon get used to it.' Eve smiled, but it was forced. Maybe Chester sensed something that she, herself, had sensed the moment she'd set foot inside. The something that had made her shiver a few moments ago.
    There was something not quite right about Crickley Hall.
    •
    The rest of the house was a disappointment. The girls explored with enthusiasm, but Eve followed distractedly when Gabe gave them the full tour. It was as he had said—the other rooms, apart from the drawing room, which was impressive only because of its length (it was once used as a schoolroom according to the estate manager who had first shown Gabe around)—were functional. Certainly the large kitchen fitted that description, with its old-fashioned electric cooker, deep porcelain sinks next to a scarred wooden worktop, plain but deep cupboards, walk-in larder, linoleum floor covering, and the black iron range (a fire had already been laid and Gabe wasted no time in putting a match to it). Gabe had already bought and installed a cheap washing machine and tumble-dryer on his last visit to Hollow Bay, so that was one less problem for them to contend with.
    On the first floor there was, as promised, a choice of bedrooms, and she and the girls went along with Gabe's original thought (oddly, Loren did not complain about having to share with Cally and Eve guessed that she, too, was a little intimidated by the very size of Crickley Hall). Although they had not climbed further on this first exploration, their tour guide informed them that the top floor obviously had once been a dormitory: there were still skeletal frames of cotbeds up there, but from the dust that had gathered and the weather-grime on the row of dormer windows along the sloping section of ceiling, the room had not been used for many, many years.
    Most of Crickley Hall's furniture was old but not antique and Eve was quietly relieved: children and pet dogs did not go very well with valuable antiquities, so it was another thing less to worry about
    Another area that went unexplored for now was the cellar which, according to Gabe,