The Case of the Haunted House Read online

  4. The House on Hunting Hill

  Ned pulled once more at her strawberry-shaped earring. ‘I probably shouldn’t be nearly as shocked as I am. I mean, everyone knew the details of her husband’s death. As if Jim McGinty tripped over some carpet and fell down the stairs. Stupid Wayfarers!’

  My nose was feeling itchy, all of a sudden. It was because I was about to be dishonest again, I knew it was. ‘Stupid Wayfarers,’ I scoffed in agreement, scratching my nose. ‘So em …. are you going to tell them what Jim’s ghost is saying?’

  ‘What?’ She let out a snort of laughter. ‘Why would I tell them? I mean, if this doesn’t prove that they’re idiots, then I don’t know what does. I’ll bet Wanda was on the original case. She always struck me as being absentminded. More concerned with where her next vegan burrito is coming from than solving murders.’

  Oh dear. The itch just wouldn’t go away. Now probably wasn’t a good time to tell her that I’d enjoyed a (secret) breakfast-meeting with Wanda Wayfair just the week before. A meeting during which we’d eaten burritos cooked by Wanda herself – they were filled with tofu scramble, baked beans, fried mushrooms and tomatoes, and they tasted like heaven on earth. Sure, the girl liked her food, but she was also an amazing detective.

  ‘Well, yes … now that you mention it, Wanda does seem a little on the ditzy side,’ I said. ‘And I’m guessing Mrs McGinty doesn’t want to get the law involved, either.’

  ‘Obviously not. I mean, this is Samhain Street. Debbie McGinty might live in a bigger house than most, but she feels the same about the Wayfarers as the rest of us do. Even if I told them what she said, she’d deny it. Anyway, until I see the ghost for myself, it’s all just a load of who shot John. Or a load of who threw Jim down the stairs, I guess.’

  She laughed darkly. ‘But even so, I’m feeling on edge about it. And so is Debbie, as it happens. She wants to get rid of her husband’s ghost, but she’s also afraid that whoever murdered him might kill her next. That’s why I want you to get involved. Just … have a look around the house. Question the staff. Find out if there’s anything more going on that dopey Wanda and her Wayfarer buddies might have overlooked.’

  I balled my fists, willing myself to stop scratching. Now my head was itchy, too, and I could feel a tickle on my right ankle. ‘Total dimwits, that lot,’ I said. ‘And em … if I do find evidence that Jim McGinty was murdered? What then?’

  Ned stood up, shrugging. ‘Well, I dunno. We’ll sort it out ourselves, I suppose.’

  ‘Oh, of course.’ I followed her back to the reception area. ‘That’s a totally sensible suggestion. Sure what else would we do?’

  By the time we returned, Debbie McGinty was giggling happily and sipping her tea. ‘Oh, you!’ she said to Hamish. ‘If you weren’t stuck as a dog, I might just make you husband number two!’

  Hamish gave her a cheeky wink. ‘And I might just let you.’ He turned to us. ‘So? I don’t think I’m speaking out of turn to say that Debbie would like to have you and I on the case, Katy. But what do you think?’

  I took a deep breath. ‘I would love to work on this case, Debbie,’ I said. ‘So how about we all go to your house?’

  ≈

  Debbie McGinty lived in a house on Hunting Hill, a row of expensive mansions on the east side of the Hanging Green. Debbie clicked her fingers at the same time as Ned, so we all arrived at the front gate together.

  ‘I wanted you to get a full view of the house,’ she said, looking towards the property, a dark expression on her face. ‘It was my husband’s pride and joy. He liked to stand here and look at the place. As for me …’ She shuddered. ‘I’ve always hated this place. I’ll be glad to see the back of it all.’

  The grounds were enormous, as was the house itself. There were numerous greenhouses and outbuildings, and also what appeared to be an enormous swimming pool. A few metres away from us, to the left of the gates, there was a smaller residence. It probably belonged to a gardener, I supposed. There was a large forest behind the house, too. It looked like it adjoined the Hanging Green.

  As we all looked on in amazement, Ned frowned.

  ‘Are you sensing him already, Nedina?’ Debbie clutched at Ned’s arm.

  ‘No. And once again, it’s Ned, not Nedina. It’s just that I recognise your house, Debbie. I didn’t put two and two together at the time of Jim’s death, but … didn’t this place used to belong to the Lodge?’

  Debbie’s expression turned even darker. ‘Yes. It did.’ She sucked in some air. ‘My husband was a member of the Lodge, as a matter of fact. The club lost most of their members and donations after they changed the hunting laws. So Jim took the house off their hands, and he did up the old gate house and gave that to the Lodge for their little meetings.’ She nodded to the house I’d assumed had been the gardener’s residence. ‘They didn’t have as many members anymore, so they hardly needed an entire mansion at their disposal.’

  As she threw open the gate and led us up a long, winding driveway, Hamish and I lagged behind. ‘Hunting laws?’ I questioned. ‘What kind of club is this Lodge or whatever it’s called?’

  He moved closer to me and lowered his voice. ‘This side of the Hanging Green is called Hunting Hill for a reason. These days, the Lodge is just a club for rich old witches who drink too much brandy and talk about the “good old days”. But those days weren’t so good for anyone who didn’t happen to be a witch. The Lodge members used to get their kicks hunting weredogs and werewolves. Some say they hunted wizards, unempowered witches and goblins, too.’

  Debbie had wiggled her fingers, her magic opening the imposing front door of the mansion, so Hamish and I scurried to keep up. As soon as we entered the hall, I heard her call out, ‘Larson! Larson!’

  A second later, a slim young woman appeared. She had dark brown hair, neatly scraped off her forehead, and she wore jeans and a T-shirt. There was a gold chain around her neck, one of those ones which spelled out the wearer’s name in scrawling letters. This one said ‘Sophie.’

  ‘Sophie, what are you doing here? I told you that you could have the day off. Larson’s supposed to be working today.’ She shivered. ‘Not that I wanted him to. You know how he is.’

  ‘Believe it or not,’ Sophie said. ‘Larson finally quit about an hour ago. I’m the only servant left now, so I figured I’d better cover his shift.’

  Debbie sighed. ‘Oh, you don’t need to do that, Sophie. I mean, I might not have liked Larson, but it’s not as though I can blame him – or any of the others – for quitting. I do owe all of you an awful lot of money. One of these days I’ll find out where my husband hid it all.’

  Sophie grinned. ‘I’ve been working on it today, in fact.’ She glanced at the three of us. ‘I’ll tell you about it later, though.’

  ‘It’s all right, Sophie. You can speak freely.’ She turned to us. ‘My husband pulled all of his money out of our bank account a while before he died. He said he didn’t trust the manager of Mutual Magic anymore. He hid it somewhere in the house, but he obviously didn’t tell me where. Sophie and I have been hunting for it ever since.’ She gave us a gloomy look. ‘It’s a darned sight more pleasant than the hunts that used to take place here, that’s for sure.’

  ‘Well, I’ll get back to the money hunt in a few minutes,’ said Sophie with a wink at her employer. ‘But first, I’m sure you’d all like some refreshments. How about some of those pink macaroons you like so much, Debbie? And a nice pot of tea to go along with them?’

  Mrs McGinty gave the maid a grateful smile. ‘You’re an absolute wonder, Sophie, do you know that? As soon as I can, I’m going to give you an enormous bonus.’

  As Sophie walked away, Debbie led us to the staircase. Like everything inside this hallway, it looked like it had seen better days. The handrail was handsome, but now the paint was chipping off, and the red carpet which ran down the centre of the stairs was faded and frayed.

  ‘That,’ she said, pointing to a rug at the bottom of the stairs, ‘is where we found my husband’s body.’

  I stared at the rug. It was an enormous werewolf skin, complete with its head and its teeth.

  ‘He cracked his head on that wolf’s tooth when he hit the bottom,’ Debbie continued. ‘It was … unpleasant. Anyway, I’ll take you up to where the Wayfarers said he tripped, and then you can see if you sense him at either location, Nedina.’

  This time, Ned didn’t bother to correct Debbie McGinty. She was visibly shivering, though the hallway was uncomfortably warm. Was she sensing something, I wondered?

  As we followed them up the stairs, Hamish nodded back towards the rug. ‘Smacking his head against a werewolf tooth? Some might say that was poetic justice.’

  I breathed in and out slowly, trying to stop myself from throwing up. ‘I thought werewolves became human again when they died,’ I managed to say. ‘How can there be a pelt?’

  Hamish winced. ‘Well, there’s two ways. I won’t make you even sicker than you already look by detailing the first. The second method is a spell. Illegal, of course, just like everything involving hunting werewolves is these days. They’re forced to remain in their wolf form, even when they die. Werewolves are bigger than the average wolf, so there’s a lot of fur to be had for those who want it.’

  The house was still far too warm, but now I was shivering just as much as Ned was. As we climbed further up the staircase, I discovered more and more reasons to continue feeling ill. There were heads mounted all along the wall, their dead eyes still and staring. I recognised most as werewolves and weredogs. And even though I’d never seen a goblin before, I also recognised their leathery heads, thanks to my aunt’s notebooks.

  When we finally reached the landing, Debbie pointed to the carpet. It had come away completely up there, and no one had bo
thered to stick it back down. ‘This is where he tripped and fell to his death,’ she said matter-of-factly. ‘I know I should have fixed it, but you know how it is – when your husband’s haunting you, you get a little bit afraid to pull up the ugly old carpet and replace it with something pink. So what about here, Nedina? Is he communicating with you now?’

  Ned shook her head and said no, but I wondered if she was telling the truth or just playing for time. ‘Nothing just yet. But now that we’re here, at the place where he died, I think it’s time we started going over the details. Is this where he appears to you, Debbie?’

  She shook her head, her blonde curls swaying. ‘The place he appears to me most is in the drawing room. Upstairs, the only place he ever appears is the attic. Although I haven’t actually seen him up there. That’s where his office is, so I avoid it like there’s an outbreak of Peader’s Plague up there. I just hear him, thrashing about the place. That’s usually around midnight, and it can go on for a good hour or two.’

  She pointed to the end of a long hallway. ‘There’s stairs behind that door, leading up to the office. He spent half his time up there, so I’m not surprised he still haunts the place.’ She looked at Ned. ‘Do you want to see it?’

  ‘Not just yet. Maybe we ought to head to the drawing room next, seeing as that’s where he openly communicates with you.’

  We followed her downstairs, and down a long hallway, finally entering one of the rooms. It was as spacious as all of the other rooms we passed along the way, but spaciousness was the only thing this room had in common with the rest of the house. The drawing room was most definitely Debbie’s.

  Yes, there were a few boxes filled with what looked like yet more goblin heads and werewolf pelts, but other than that, the room was devoid of death. There was pink wallpaper, pink carpeting, pink curtains, pink cushions … basically, it was all very, very pink. The coffee table was laid with a large plate filled with pink macaroons, and a pot of tea.

  Sophie was nowhere to be seen. Presumably she’d returned to her money hunt.

  ‘I must say, this room is rather different to the rest of the house,’ said Ned, as Debbie began to pour the tea.

  She smiled. ‘It’s my refuge. Jim wouldn’t let me have anything the way I liked it when he was alive – not even my own bedroom or drawing room. I know it makes me sounds heartless, but he was barely in the ground before I started redecorating.’ Her smile fell away. ‘Of course, I didn’t get any further than this.’

  Hamish nodded gravely. ‘You said he appears to you here. Is this where he first appeared, by any chance?’

  ‘It is,’ she confirmed. ‘I had the whole room done in a day – that was before I knew he’d hidden the money, of course. I now owe the decorators a fortune. Anyway, as soon as they were gone home, and I was sitting on this couch admiring it all, he appeared. He was incredibly gauzy, but it was Jim all right. Cut me right down to size, so he did.’

  ‘Well, he sounds like a right piece of work,’ Hamish remarked. ‘I mean, how dare he? It’s your house. You can paint it and decorate it any way you want.’

  ‘You’d think so, wouldn’t you? But even if I did have the money, I’m far too scared of Jim to carry on. That’s why I want to get to the bottom of this. Yes, I want to find out who murdered him so I can be sure they don’t come after me. But mostly … mostly I want to get rid of his ghost so I can sell this place. I’ve given up on it now. I shouldn’t have bothered trying to make this house mine. And I doubt I’ll ever find where he hid the money either, so selling up is the only way I can pay off the staff and the decorators.’

  She picked up one of the macaroons. I was still full after my pancakes, which was lucky, since I doubted I could have stomached something so pink at the moment. Debbie seemed to feel the same. She didn’t eat the macaroon, just held it limply in her hand. Every other second she’d stare at a corner of the room, as though afraid her husband might suddenly appear.

  ‘Well, hopefully Ned, Hamish and I can sort him out for you,’ I said. ‘But … what does he say and do, exactly? When he visits you, I mean.’

  In her hand, the macaroon crumbled to dust. ‘I’d rather not say.’

  Hamish approached her, sitting at her feet and looking up at her with big brown eyes. ‘We understand this is hard, Debbie. But if you want to keep the Wayfarers out of this, then you need to trust Katy and me. We can get to the bottom of your husband’s death – and we can make sure the same thing doesn’t happen to you. But only if you’re honest with us.’

  She looked adoringly at him. ‘You are a tonic, Hamish. Oh, yes, I suppose you’re right. But it’s hard, you see. Because the truth is, when my husband’s ghost visits me, he says exactly the same things to me as he did when he was alive. He criticizes my hair, my clothes, my choices in décor. He’s told me that if I continue to turn the house pink, he’ll make me suffer in unimaginable ways.’

  Good gravy, he sounded like a horrible man. No wonder she was refusing to honour the Decree of the Deceased. If I were her, I’d ask Ned to get rid of him, too.

  She sniffed back a tear. Although he was trying very hard to keep a steady face, her chin began to tremble. ‘I know you need to know more details about the fact that he says he was murdered, but honestly, I don’t have them. All he’ll say is he was pushed down the stairs. No more, no less. I’ve asked him if he knows who pushed him, of course. But he says that it’s for him to know and me to find out. He says that when Nedina brings him back from the dead, the first thing he’s going to do is strangle his murderer.’ She sniffed again. ‘He’s also told me that if I continue to date Denton, he’ll hurt us both.’

  ‘That sounds frightening,’ I said softly. ‘But you’re safe right now, Debbie. He can’t hurt you. Or this Denton you’ve started to date. We won’t let him. Who is Denton, by the way?’

  A small smile began to form. ‘Denton Montrose. He was my husband’s friend. A fellow Lodge member. He lives in the gatehouse and runs the club from there. He’s been my rock since Jim died. I don’t know what I would have done without him. He’s even trying to help me find a buyer for the house, so I can pay my staff the money I owe them. You see, Denton is the bank manager at Mutual Magic. He’s the one my husband no longer trusted. It’s all nonsense, of course. Denton’s a wonderful man. He–’

  She looked towards the door, as all of us heard Sophie call out, ‘Debbie! Debbie I found something in the attic. You won’t believe this until you see it!’

  Debbie’s eyes lit up, and she rose from her chair, the rest of us following her out into the hallway. Sophie’s voice was coming from somewhere upstairs, by the sound of things. As we headed to the staircase, I saw her standing at the top.

  As soon as I spied her, my stomach began to churn. Because Sophie was no longer shouting about whatever she’d found. Instead, Sophie was tumbling down the stairs, her eyes wide with fright. ‘Debbie!’ she screamed. ‘It’s time to stop being pink!’

  There was no time to ask what that meant. While Hamish and I rushed towards the staircase, Ned sent a freezing spell the maid’s way, in an effort to halt her fall and move her to safety. But all of our attempts came too late. Hamish and I skidded to a stop as Sophie crashed to the hallway floor, smashing her head on the very same wolf tooth that killed Jim McGinty.

  5. Jam on the Brain

  Ned moved quickly, pulling out healing wands and telling Debbie to call the Wayfarers.

  Debbie was just as surprised about Ned’s instructions as I was. ‘No need to get the Wayfarers involved. I’ll just call the family healer.’

  Ned narrowed her eyes. ‘Dead girls don’t need healers, Debbie.’

  Debbie’s face fell. ‘But … she can’t be dead. She’s so young. And why would you be trying to heal her if she’s dead?’

  A tear streaked down Ned’s face. ‘Because I don’t want to believe it’s true, even though I know it is.’

  She looked at me and, as our eyes met, I saw the conflict within Ned. She was a healer at heart. I was sure of it. The only thing keeping her running that shop was her guilt over her mother’s death. ‘Katy, call the Wayfarers,’ she ordered. ‘And Debbie, what did she mean by that? What Sophie said as she was falling? She told you it was time to stop being pink.’