The Whispering: A Haunted House Mystery Read Free

It’s important that you do … I must get into the house, before they catch me …’
    It seemed inconceivable that this totally strange young man could be addressing these words to Michael, but there was no one else about. Uneasily aware that this might be some local ruffian, fleeing from the police – he said, ‘It’s all right. I understand they mustn’t find you.’
    The boy did not look like anyone’s idea of a ruffian. He put up a hand in what might be a gesture of acknowledgement, then turned and went back around the house’s side. Michael waited, but nothing else happened, and whoever the boy had been, and whatever his reasons for getting into the house were, it was nothing to do with Michael. He would mention it to Miss Gilmore, though, and there would probably be some perfectly innocent explanation. But by now he would have given a great deal to be able to get back into his car and drive as far away as possible from this house. It was not just that it was bleak and remote, or that elusive young men whispered sinisterly in its gardens; it was that he was finding it unpleasantly easy to visualize dark echoing rooms beyond those walls – rooms that might hide decaying memories or cobwebbed humans, or in which forgotten tragedies might still linger and sigh. Nell would look at him quizzically if he said that to her, and tell him the place was nothing more than a slightly run-down old house, and what did he expect in a house standing in the most waterlogged part of the country?
    The thought of Nell’s sharp bright logic brought a semblance of reassuring reality back, and Michael stepped up to the massive old front door, and reached for the heavy door knocker. It fell against the thick oak and echoed sonorously inside the house. Michael waited and was just beginning to wonder if Fosse House was empty after all when there was the sound of footsteps from inside. They were slow, rather uneven footsteps, and he remembered that Luisa Gilmore was in her seventies.
    The door opened, and a thin lady stood in the doorway. A dusty light illuminated a large hall behind her.
    With only a faint question in his tone, Michael said, ‘Miss Gilmore? I’m Michael Flint.’
    â€˜Dr Flint. Come inside,’ said Luisa Gilmore, and, as if conforming to all the opening lines of sinister ladies dwelling in remote mansions, added, ‘I’ve been expecting you.’
    She stood back, and Michael stepped over the threshold.

Two
    T he inside of Fosse House was much as he had expected. It was vaguely shabby and run down, and there was a faint dimness everywhere – not so much from lack of care as gradual decay from the damp that must seep through the walls and stones and lay a quenching bloom on mirrors and bright surfaces.
    But if the house was run down, its owner was not. Luisa Gilmore was certainly in her seventies and she leaned slightly on a walking stick, but as she led Michael across the big panelled hall, although she limped slightly, her movements were sharp and coordinated. She did not appear to subscribe to modern ideas about preserving youth or keeping up with modern fashion; she wore a dark-blue dress of the style Michael thought was referred to as classic, and there was a shawl around her shoulders – although that might be against Fosse House’s coolness. Her hair, which was silver, was brushed in a general style that, like the dress, might have belonged to any era.
    She ushered him into a room which she referred to as the small sitting-room but which was still twice as big as Michael’s own sitting room in Oxford. It was not very well lit, but when she sat down in a wing armchair, gesturing him to a seat facing her, the light from a low lamp fell across her face and he thought that she must have been very good-looking in her younger days. But he also thought her pallor was more than the pallor of age – that it might be the pallor of illness. Or