Shiverton Hall (10 page)

Chapter Eight

The bus journey back to Shiverton Hall was tense. Penny felt cold with fear and was still shaking with shock as she recounted in a faltering whisper what had happened in the car park. None of the boys really knew how to comfort her or what to say. Jake put an awkward arm around her and offered his jumper, and they returned to the school in an uneasy silence. The possibilities of this unsettling new development weighed heavily on all of them: it was one thing to have a strange dream in the middle of the night, but it was quite another to see a doll come to life in a pub car park at three in the afternoon.

Penny swore the boys to secrecy – she didn’t want to do anything that might anger Lola – but George persuaded her to let him speak to his grandfather that night. If anyone would know how to handle something like this it was him.

‘Are you sure you wouldn’t be safer at home?’ Arthur asked anxiously.

‘No.’ Penny shivered. ‘If that
thing
can follow me to Grimstone it can follow me home. I don’t want it near my family.’

Later, George sat in Arthur’s room before lights out, dividing his sweets with Arthur and discussing his less than helpful phone call with his grandfather: ‘George, you nincompoop, stop bothering me when I’m watching the golf!’

‘I thought you said he was an expert on this stuff?’ Arthur said.

‘He is, but he’s a bit doddery these days,’ George admitted, sucking on a liquorice twist.

‘Great! So we’re done for then?’

‘I thought you didn’t believe in the supernatural?’ George said smugly.

‘Well, it’s all pretty weird. Even I have to admit that.’

‘Maybe another of Shiverton’s terrible tales will tip you firmly into our camp of believers?’ George said, itching to crack open the leather tome written by his grandfather,
Accounts of the Supernatural and Preternatural at Shiverton Hall and Its Surrounds
, which sat heavily on his knees.

‘Oh, go on then,’ Arthur sighed, pretending to be far less interested than he was.

The Picture

Sir Jack Flipp was hastily buried in the Shiverton Hall mausoleum. While his solicitors scrabbled around to find his heir, they saw no harm in upholding the contract with the family who had agreed to rent the house, though they felt it prudent not to inform them of the circumstances of Sir Jack’s death. The Gordon family were already on their way: it wouldn’t do to scare them off.

The Gordons arrived in a procession of elaborate, gilt carriages, pulled by white horses with plumes of feathers in their manes. An ostentatious display of wealth that they were mildly annoyed to discover no neighbours were there to see. Mr Gordon, a rotund man in a silvery coat and a foot-high powdered wig, helped his wife and four daughters out of their carriages. Having made their money in textiles, it seemed that each member of the Gordon clan felt compelled to wear all of their materials at once; each of them was bedecked in a startling rainbow of colours. Against the severe, grey landscape, a servant remarked that it looked like ‘a cage of parrots had been released
’.

The Gordons were a jovial, excitable lot, still not quite accustomed to the extreme wealth that had poured from their factories like smoke, and they ran through Shiverton Hall in a flurry of silks, squealing and laughing and pointing at all of the staid furniture and pictures. Mrs Gordon planned to paper the walls purple and silver the moment she could hire a specialist from London, and Mr Gordon planned to host an enormous ball as soon as he could get the invitations out. The teenaged Misses Gordon squealed even more loudly at this idea, since it was an opportunity to have new dresses made and to flirt with all the local gentry. As Mr Gordon loved nothing more than indulging his daughters, the date was set and the theme planned before they had even sat down for their first lunch.

The servants, some fresh from London, others experienced hands from Grimstone, were thrilled to have Mr Gordon as their master. There had been some initial mutterings below stairs that the Gordon family were not appropriate tenants for such a large and famous house as Shiverton Hall, but these reservations melted away in the warmth of the Gordons’ good temper. The servants wondered, between themselves and under their breath, whether they should inform the family of the Shiverton curse, but the hall itself felt so light and joyful that after a few weeks they rather doubted that such a thing had ever existed.

The house, for so long a cold, dark place, had become a bustle of happy activity. In one room, a daughter would be hammering away at the harpsichord; in another there would be a raucous game of sardines; in the ballroom someone would be practising their dancing. The hall echoed with Mrs Gordon’s ebullient laugh because Mr Gordon felt obliged to tickle her every time he asked her a question about anything, so that an enquiry as to what they were having for supper was invariably punctuated with Mrs Gordon’s delighted squawking.

One morning, as the Gordon daughters and their mother gossiped over their poached eggs, Mr Gordon appeared at the breakfast table with a rare furrowed brow.

‘Whatever is the matter, my love?’ Mrs Gordon asked, ladling lamb kidneys on to her husband’s plate.

Mr Gordon glanced nervously at the servants and leaned confidentially towards his family. ‘I must admit, my dears, I had not a single wink of sleep last night,’ he said, mopping at his forehead with his napkin.

‘Why ever not, Papa?’ the youngest daughter asked. ‘It takes at least three attempts to wake you most mornings!’

Mr Gordon raised his eyebrows at his daughter, but had to concede that this was true. Usually he would say goodnight to his wife and walk across the hall to his bedroom, where he would immediately fall into a heavy sleep for a full ten hours. But on the previous night nothing could have been further from normal.

‘It was most extraordinary,’ he said, poking at the kidneys. ‘I got into bed, put out the light, and was just beginning to doze off, when I had the peculiar sensation of someone tickling my nose.’

‘Tickling?’ Daughter Number Two giggled.

‘Yes,’ Mr Gordon continued quite seriously. ‘As though I were being tickled by a feather.’

‘Well!’ Mrs Gordon said, eyeing her offspring. ‘That’s easily explained. I expect our girls were playing a trick on you.’

The Misses Gordon denied this vehemently, with the eldest bursting into tears at the accusation. Once Mr Gordon had calmed her down and assured her that he had not for a moment suspected his darling daughters, he described what happened next.

‘I lit the candle and found nothing in my bed or its surrounds that could have caused the sensation. Having made quite sure that nothing was amiss, I settled down to sleep once more, but no sooner had I blown out the flame than something began to tug at my sheets. I struggled to pull the sheets back, but the thing at the other end was quite forceful and whipped the covers clear off the bed!’

‘Who was it?’ Mrs Gordon asked, her eyes widening.

‘Well, that’s the puzzle, my dear – there was no one there. I was quite shaken and dared not sleep afterwards.’

The Gordon women agreed that this was very odd indeed and the two servants who were waiting on them glanced at one another uneasily. Mrs Gordon decided that the best course of action was to have Daniel, the most sensible of the footmen, keep watch in Mr Gordon’s room that night. Mr Gordon thought this a splendid plan and felt at last that he could give full attention to his breakfast.

That evening, Daniel peered behind every curtain and under every piece of furniture to make absolutely sure there were no intruders before his master arrived. Once he had given the all clear, Mr Gordon leapt into bed and, secure in the knowledge that Daniel would alert him to any shenanigans, fell into a deep and grateful sleep.

Spending ten hours doing nothing but watching a sleeping man was a tedious task indeed. Daniel had never learned to read, so he could not pass the time with a borrowed volume from the library, nor was he a particularly imaginative fellow who might have passed the hours daydreaming. In spite of his best efforts, Daniel found his eyelids sagging at three o’clock in the morning and more than once had to haul himself up to stretch, but it was no use, and by four o’clock he was snoring almost as loudly as his employer.

Daniel woke with a jerk, to the uncomfortable sensation of his leg being pulled. He looked down to discover that both of his shoes had been removed, to reveal his holey stockings drooping sadly off his feet. He searched under his chair, hoping that he had flung them off during his slumber, but they weren’t there. He silently crept around his sleeping master’s bed and glanced beneath the rug, but they weren’t to be found anywhere in the room. He flushed at the idea that one of his fellow servants had looked in, caught him asleep on the job and made off with his shoes to teach him a lesson. Yes, Daniel thought, that must be it. It was exactly the sort of thing Mr Gordon’s sly valet would have done.

Daniel settled back in his chair, worrying about how he would explain his stockinged feet to Mr Gordon, when he heard someone laugh mockingly. The sound was muted, but it was definitely coming from within the room. Daniel sprang up and cupped his ear, trying to seek out the location of the laughter. It was emanating from the spot just above Mr Gordon’s head, as though it were travelling through the wall. There was a painting above the bedstead, and Daniel lifted it up in order to see whether there was a peephole behind it.

‘Unhand me, you filthy scoundrel!’ the voice suddenly cried, shocking Daniel into dropping the painting on the floor. Luckily, Mr Gordon wasn’t woken by the clatter – he simply muttered a few nonsensical words and turned over.

The painting had landed face down on the rug and muffled curses were flying out of it. Daniel circled the painting, then tentatively flipped it over, revealing a portrait of a very angry, red-faced gentleman with a flamboyantly feathered cap.

‘You rogue!’ the painting yelled.

Daniel begged the portrait to be quieter, but it continued to swear at the bewildered servant. Daniel noticed that the gentleman was wearing his pilfered buckled shoes, which did not at all match the magnificence of his own clothing or the period to which he belonged.

‘I beg your pardon, sir,’ Daniel said, wringing his hands, ‘but are those my shoes?’

‘Of course they are!’ the man scoffed. ‘I thought I’d give you a fright. Not a very good lookout, are you?’

‘Does that mean you can leave your portrait?’ Daniel stammered.

‘Of course it does! Normally I don’t have to, but that fat wretch who sleeps below me snores so abominably loud that I’ve been forced to wake him so that I might get some sleep myself.’

Daniel admitted that this must be most unsatisfactory and vowed that he would find a solution, if only the portrait would agree to give his shoes back.

The next morning, Mr Gordon sat, open-mouthed, in his bed as Daniel related his encounter with the moving portrait sitter. Mr Gordon examined its every brush stroke, but the painting remained stubbornly still. The solution that Daniel proposed, and that Mr Gordon sensibly seconded, was to hang the painting in one of the uninhabited rooms and replace it with another picture.

It was decided not to tell the ladies, as Mr Gordon feared for their delicate constitutions, therefore at breakfast he told them that he had slept wonderfully well and that Daniel had seen nothing. The portrait was removed to the furthest reaches of the house, and replaced by a still life of a bowl of fruit.

For weeks, Mr Gordon slept as soundly as he had ever done. The ball was held with great success, the Gordon daughters attracting much attention from the local gentry. Shiverton Hall was beginning to feel very much like home. Christmas approached, and the entire house was threaded through with sprigs of holly and filled with the scent of warm spices.

Christmas morning with the Gordons was a sight to behold, and the Gordon family lavished gifts upon one another. Mrs Gordon received a sapphire necklace, and each of her daughters had new bonnets sent up from London. When it came for Mr Gordon to receive his gift, he was beside himself with excitement and tore at the paper like a child.

‘Well,’ he cried, ‘how wonderful!’

The gift was a small portrait of a smiling, rosy-cheeked girl carrying a basket of flowers. It was undoubtedly the sort of painting that only five ladies could pick out, and most men would have cringed to look on it and hidden it away, but Mr Gordon thought it delightful, and vowed to hang it in his room so that he was always reminded of his beloved family. A maid was dispatched to replace the still life of the bowl of fruit with the portrait of the girl, while the Gordons spent the rest of the day playing games and feasting.