Apart from Toby’s bench, the back stood empty still because they had no use for it – no furniture except for the bench, no shelves, nothing but bare walls and flagstone floors which made his footsteps ring out more loudly. Even his breathing seemed to send echoes round these rooms. And yet that didn’t worry him. Phoebe might feel nervous about coming here, but he found it peaceful and it always left him feeling more relaxed. Perhaps the monks had left some of their peace behind them, embedded in the stones, and it rubbed off on later visitors. Toby pulled a wry face at his own imaginings.
It seemed such a waste to leave it unused, though. Should he try to find someone to rent it? He frowned. He wasn’t sure he really wanted other people living here.
Don’t be daft!
he scolded himself.
Of course you’d rent it if it brought in more money. You need to refurbish the front of the inn
.
When Ross came in for a drink that night, Toby offered him a pot of beer in return for some advice.
His neighbour grinned. ‘I never turn down a free drink.’
Toby explained and watched his companion frown, as he considered the idea.
‘Folk hereabouts don’t like the back place. They think it’s haunted.’
‘Rubbish.’ But a shiver ran down Toby’s spine even as he mocked the idea because he knew there was
something
there.
‘Mind you, I do know of a young couple as are looking to find somewhere to live when they’re wed. He’s the only son of one of the farmers further down the valley on the Lancashire side and they won’t be short of money. I’ll ask the father if they want to have a look. The lass doesn’t get on with his mother and refuses to get wed till they can have a cottage of their own.’
At a nearby table Cully had been listening, scowling at the thought of that bugger getting even more money in his pockets when hard-working men like Cully were scratching to find enough for a single pot of beer. As he considered what he could do to get back at Fletcher, a slow grin spread over his face. It’d take a bit of trouble, but it’d be worth it.
Two days later the young couple came to inspect the rear building.
‘Goodness, this room is huge!’ she exclaimed, but looked over her shoulder uneasily even as she spoke.
‘There are three others as well,’ Toby reminded her. Many young couples managed to live in only one room for years, some for their whole lives, and not rooms this size, either.
Suddenly there was a quavering wail and a barn owl flew down from the rafters, swooping round and sending the girl screaming into her young man’s arms.
‘It must have got in through the air vent above the door!’ Toby exclaimed as he ran to open the side door. ‘Stand still and stop your screeching or it’ll never find its way out.’
After a few swoops the bird flew outside and the girl gave an elaborate shudder, staying within the safety of her beloved’s arms.
‘Bad luck, owls are, when they come inside houses,’ she said. ‘There’ll be a death for someone connected with one of us now.’
‘Nonsense!’ Toby retorted. ‘The poor thing just got in through some hole and couldn’t find its way out again. I’ll go up and check the roof tomorrow, block the hole up. It won’t happen again.’
As they went into the first of the two smaller rooms, there was a low moaning sound from somewhere nearby.
The girl stopped dead, turning white. Even the young man was looking worried now.
Toby went across to the window but could see no sign of anyone. ‘Probably just a lad playing tricks on us,’ he said bracingly.
As they entered the other bedroom there was another low moan and this time Toby went outside to check properly. Someone must be there and he’d give them what for if he caught them.
But there was no sign of any children running away. Indeed, the village children always gave the back place a wide berth during their brief periods of freedom, preferring to run wild across the open spaces of the moor. He couldn’t understand it.
When he went back inside, the young man said, ‘I’m sorry, Mr Fletcher, but my Mary doesn’t like it here, says it gives her the shivers. We’ll have to look elsewhere for a cottage.’
When they’d gone Toby went round the place again, but couldn’t find anything to explain the low moaning noise. It was exactly the sort of sound any lad would make when playing ghosts – or perhaps it was the wind blowing through some twisted hole. The wind could play strange tricks on you, especially up here where it blew fiercely sometimes across the wide spaces of the moors. Only he couldn’t find any holes except for the air vent above the outside door and that had never made sounds before, even in the highest winds.
He wandered round, running one hand along the wall and counting his paces – fourteen one way, eight the other. Such a fine, big room!
He looked at the four doors along the wall, three of them leading to smaller rooms in the lean-to section along the back, which had been built at least a hundred years later than the main part, Mr Pickerling said. The second door from the left opened on to a big cupboard. He paced out the smaller rooms as well, thinking to have all the facts at his fingertips next time he talked to someone about renting it. But he stopped dead as the sums came together in his head and looked round again, whistling in surprise that he hadn’t realised it before . . . ‘They don’t fit!’ He thumped his clenched fists against the sides of his body. ‘Those damned rooms don’t take up the whole space on this wall. Why the hell did I not see that before?’
He walked slowly along the wall again, counting his paces with even more care and trying to make them all the same length. Then he went into each of the rooms and counted once more. No, he hadn’t been wrong. The three little rooms didn’t take up the whole space. They were about two paces short. He peered inside the cupboard and even thumped the back wall, but it seemed solidly built.
When he opened the door that led to the front part of the inn, he nearly bumped into Phoebe.
‘I heard they didn’t want to rent the place,’ she said.
He ignored that in favour of the more important subject. ‘Why didn’t you tell me about the secret room, Phoebe love?’ He cocked one eyebrow at her and waited, watching tears well in her eyes then overflow.
‘I didn’t want to deceive you, Toby,’ she said in a rush. ‘Truly I didn’t. But I was afraid to say anything. I know you say you’re not a Greenhalgh and you’ve been kind to me, very kind indeed, but it could be dangerous for us both to speak about that room. So I thought: better to let sleeping dogs lie.’
‘
Dangerous?
’ That was the last word he’d have expected her to use.
She nodded.
‘Why dangerous?’
‘Because it concerned old Mr Greenhalgh. I don’t know what his son’s like, but his father was a ruthless man, fair used to terrify everyone. My Hal took care how he dealt with him, that’s for sure, and my Hal wasn’t afraid of many people.’
Still trying to digest this information, Toby said firmly, ‘Show me the hidden room.’
‘We’ll need a candle.’
‘I’ll fetch one.’ He ran to fetch it, lighting it at the kitchen fire and guarding the flame carefully as he walked back through the building. Phoebe was still standing near the door and hadn’t moved any further inside.
Sighing, she walked across to open the cupboard, taking down a key from on top of the inside lintel of the door, a very small, narrow key. ‘I was afeared you’d find it sooner or later. Hold the light so that I can see inside. The holes aren’t easy to find.’
What he at first took to be a knot hole in the wood at the top of the door turned out to be a keyhole; there was a similar keyhole near the bottom. When she’d unlocked them, Phoebe hesitated, then pushed open the back of the cupboard.
As she went inside he followed her, holding up the candle so that he could look round. He thought for a moment that she was laughing softly but it must have been the sound of the wind outside. ‘Do we need to prop the door open?’
‘Hal never did. Said it was the best-made door he’d ever seen, perfectly balanced and not inclined to swing about.’
The hidden chamber was as deep as the other rooms, but only two paces wide. Furniture and other objects lined one wall, piled one on top of the other. The air inside felt stale and some of the contents were covered in dust and cobwebs, as if no one had touched them for a very long time. Others had clearly been moved but not in recent months, he’d guess, because the dust was starting to build up on them again.
‘When Hal was sick, I came in and looked at some of the things, which he’d never let me do before. Then I thought I heard noises and ran out. I didn’t come back again.’
Phoebe was whispering, though there was no need. Who was there to hear them?
‘These are some of my husband’s things – well, his family’s things really. I heard him talk about them when he was delirious. He kept saying he should have burnt them, that it’d have been safer, but he never could bring himself to do it.’
‘Why should he have burnt them?’
‘Because . . . I think he wasn’t entitled to them. They belonged to his sister and when she died he just took them. Hal wasn’t always – well, honest.’
Toby looked round again, frowning as he tried to take this in. He didn’t like the thought of having stolen goods around, that was sure.
‘Later on, when he was too weak to move much, I asked Hal what I should do with this stuff if anything happened to him. He said to keep it because we could sell it if we fell on hard times, in case he never got better enough to run the inn. There was a certain person who might pay a lot of money for some of the items to prevent them from falling into the wrong hands, Hal said. He always thought he was going to get better, right till the very end, though I knew he wouldn’t.’
Toby went to inspect a gate-legged table in dark wood. ‘It’s old-fashioned furniture but good quality.’
Phoebe hesitated then said, ‘There’s a picture and a sketch done by a travelling painter. They’re not very good but Hal said they were the most valuable pieces of all – and the most dangerous.’
‘Did you ever find out why he said that?’
Another hesitation while she avoided his eyes. ‘Better you don’t know, Toby love, for your own safety.’
‘I think you should tell me.’
‘No. I won’t do it, not even if you throw me out for it.’
He could make a fair guess, though, given who had set Hal Dixon to run the inn. The pieces must be connected with the Greenhalghs.
Phoebe’s lips quivered and she asked fearfully, ‘Are you angry with me? Are you going to turn me out?’
‘Of course not. How would I ever manage without you?’
‘You’ll get married one day, then I’ll have to leave.’
‘If I do marry – and I’m in no hurry – it won’t make any difference to you.’ He put an arm round her shoulders. ‘You’re like an aunt to me now, Phoebe. I’ll never turn you out.’
She reached up to pat his cheek. ‘You’re a kind man, Toby Fletcher.’
‘You’ll tell me the rest of the secret one day, though.’ He didn’t know why he believed this so strongly, but he did.
She pushed him away. ‘No, I won’t. I think too much of you. You’ll
never
persuade me to tell you. And if you try to force me, I’ll run away.’
She was so agitated he patted her shoulder and spoke soothingly. ‘Well, give me the key and go back to the public room. We don’t want customers helping themselves to the beer, do we?’ A thought occurred to him before she’d gone more than a few paces and he stuck his head out of the secret room to call, ‘Wait a minute. Would you let me sell a piece or two of this furniture in Halifax? We need money to pay for proper refurbishments so that the inn can flourish again. I’ll pay you back later, I promise.’
She looked at him and shrugged. ‘I don’t mind what you do with it, Toby love. It’s doing no good here, is it?’
‘Thanks.’
He watched her go, then went back to study the contents of the secret room. This could help a lot. Not that he was doing it to make his damned father proud, no, it was because his mother would have liked to see him do well. And because of his own pride in doing everything as well as he could.
As Toby walked slowly down the narrow storeroom, he lifted dust covers to reveal small pieces of furniture, old-fashioned but beautifully made, with inlay work on some pieces. These were definitely the sort of things rich people owned. He could have used them in the rooms set aside for the gentry, only . . . someone might recognise them.
He found the pictures Phoebe had mentioned, hidden under a pile of table linen. They were quite small, so how could they be the most valuable things here? The painting showed a young man and woman, arm in arm, dressed in their best finery. The man was tall and dark-haired, but the artist couldn’t have been very good because in Toby’s opinion neither of the faces looked like real people’s. The sketch showed a young woman sitting staring across the moors, and he guessed it must have been done by someone else because it was much better than the painting. She was pretty and smiling, younger than he was now, perhaps even the same woman as in the painting. He’d have liked to meet her.
Well, he’d probably never find out who she was so no use wasting his time staring at her. With a shrug he put the pictures back and closed up the storeroom. As he came out into the big room the wind seemed to blow more loudly, rattling the window panes and whirling dust and debris about outside. Maybe there was a storm brewing up.
On second thoughts he decided to leave the things where they were for the time being. There must have been some good reason for Phoebe’s husband to hide them here and until Toby knew what it was, he would do nothing.
Ben was jubilant when he found out about Meg’s condition. ‘Eh, we’ve done it, lass! We’ve made our first babby. When will it be born?’
‘In July, near as I can work out.’
He paused, counting on his fingers. ‘Why didn’t you tell me afore?’