Page 35 of Murder Most Haunted


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‘All of them are flat?’ Midge frowned. ‘Didn’t you notice earlier?’

Harold stared at her. ‘It’s only just happened. And I’ll tell you another thing, it’s no accident either.’

Of course. Midge didn’t believe it would be, not all four of them.

‘What do you mean?’ asked Gloria.

‘Some bugger has slashed them,’ said Harold. ‘And now we’re all stranded here.’

‘Stuck here?’ said Rona, her eyes as wide as saucers. ‘With a dead body?’

‘How exciting!’ breathed Noah. ‘Phantom Fileswill never compete with this.’

‘It’s ridiculous,’ snorted the doctor. ‘You probably drove over something on the way here, bouncing around all over the place. Who would go out of their way to sabotage the coach?’

‘The White Lady, of course!’ said Noah, smacking his forehead with an open palm. ‘I’m telling you, we are witnessing a classic example of a psychic attack.’

‘Are you sure you looked everywhere for the phones?’ asked Dr Mortimer, changing the subject abruptly. ‘I mean properly, with your eyes.’

‘I’m not aware of any other way to look.’ Midge sucked in her breath. ‘We couldn’t find them.’

‘What do you mean, you can’t find them?’ asked Rona, her face pale. ‘My entire life is on that phone. It’s not just the photos. My agent was supposed to be getting back to me about a new gig, some sort of comeback... I need my phone!’

‘I mean exactly that – we can’t find them. They’re not where Harold saw Rendell put them.’ That was assuming, of course, that Harold was telling the truth.

‘I don’t understand,’ said Gloria. ‘Are you saying we’re stuck in this house with that... thing in the bath... until someone notices that we’ve not come back?’

‘Everybody just calm down,’ said the doctor, although in Midge’s opinion it was only Gloria who looked mildly worked up. In fact, Noah and Harold both looked positively joyful at the prospect of being stranded.

‘I’m sure Harold’s wife will raise the alarm when she realizesthat he’s not turned up,’ pointed out Midge, who was struggling to find somewhere to sit that wasn’t taken up by Gloria’s varied medicinal paraphernalia.

‘I told you, she’s away,’ said Harold.

‘Surely someone at your office will notice that the coach hasn’t returned, then?’ said Rona, twisting a strand of pink hair around her finger. Harold just shrugged.

‘And in the meantime, there’s still the mystery of the hauntings to investigate,’ said Noah, who seemed to have forgotten about Rendell already. ‘So we may as well settle back and make the most of it.’

‘Exactly!’ smiled Harold.

Chapter21

Extract fromThey Do It With Stringspodcast

‘The Tin House’: Episode Two

[Sound of shovelling]

Noah:In this section, we dig a bit further into the historical records of the area that surrounds Atherton Hall, our motto being ‘authenticate, don’t titillate’.

In my research at the local land registry office prior to the visit, I was able to discover early records indicating that the abandoned tin mine on the estate was originally opened in the 1700s by the forefathers of Charles Atherton. The Athertons quickly sought to expand the mine, and there soon followed a flurry of eviction notices for their tenants housed nearby. In 1850, Lord Charles Atherton constructed an engine house for the mine to lessen the chances of flooding and to further increase production. This led to further damage to the landscape and issues for the local community, with toxic slag heaps and run-off chemicals such as arsenic, cyanide and sulphides used in the tin-ore separation process entering the water supply.

Chapter22

‘Poor Rendell, lying there dead and us just thinking he had a hangover,’ said Gloria.

Apart from Harold, all of them were gathered in the kitchen again.

‘Gloria, eat this and then remember to check your levels.’ Dr Mortimer passed a sandwich to his wife. ‘So, we’re completely stuck here with a dead body and without any chance of contacting someone. This excursion has been a shambles from start to finish.’