The Secret of Cold Hill Read online

  ‘It’s an important consideration,’ Emily Danes said. ‘Germs.’

  ‘Ah, of course, indeed. In the catering business, you cannot be too careful, I’m sure. Old buildings can be full of bugs and all kind of things. Yechh! All of them lying beneath the floorboards and in crevices for years, decades, centuries even, waiting to pounce! Here, in addition to hygienic switch activation, we have the very latest in state-of-the-art insulation. I tell you what, if I found a cockroach in here, I’d name it Houdini.’ Behind him, he heard the sound of running water.

  ‘It’s actually more for my husband,’ she said. ‘He doesn’t do germs, bugs, dirt.’

  ‘Quite right, who does, eh?’ Jordan turned to see his client running his hands under a tap in one of the twin sinks and washing them with liquid soap from an electronic dispenser. ‘Germs, eh, Mr Danes – nasty little buggers.’

  Absorbed in the ritual of cleaning his hands, Jason did not appear to notice the comment.

  Jordan frowned. There was something different about the man, something that was pushing him, just a little, out of his comfort zone. But at the same time, he genuinely did love that painting of the old man with the dog. Every time he looked at it, he wondered what the man was thinking, what his life was – and had been. Clearly Mr Danes was a genius, and weren’t all geniuses just a bit eccentric? But would an artistic genius really want to live in a sterile, new-build house?

  ‘The houses on either side of this, Mr Jordan – are they sold?’ Emily asked.

  ‘No, not yet, although I believe a couple – a very nice couple, with two children – are going to buy number forty-five – that’s the house to the east – if the sale of their house goes through.’ He crossed his fingers.

  ‘Children?’ Jason said, dubiously. ‘What age?’

  The agent smiled. ‘I know what you’re thinking; what a nightmare when you’re trying to paint, having screaming children next door. I don’t think you need to worry – they are twelve and fourteen. We’ve not had any couples with young, screaming children looking at any of the properties so far. And there’s quite an elderly couple, retired, who are very interested in number forty-nine. They’re moving down from Yorkshire to be closer to their daughter, who lives just outside Lewes.’

  ‘How many other people are living on the estate at present?’ Emily asked.

  ‘Well . . .’ he hesitated, smiling uncomfortably. ‘At this moment, there’s just the very nice couple diagonally opposite – they’ve been here a month or so now – and there’s a family due to move in opposite you, in number thirty-four, soon. Elsewhere, no one at the moment. But the properties are selling like hot cakes – it’s just such a fine development; so near to Brighton and to Lewes, close to rail links to London – just fifty minutes on the Brighton line. And surrounded by beautiful countryside. This is a very special position – quite unique.’

  Jordan glanced at his watch again. ‘Look, I’m very sorry, but I have another couple arriving for a viewing. If you’d like to have a think about it and come back to me, we can always book a further appointment. But I do have to warn you, we have so much interest in this property – indeed in the whole estate. We’ve already sold over half the properties off-plan, and this one, which is the real jewel in the crown, is not going to be on the market for long, I can tell you. And of course, I can help you with a mortgage, should you require. But I really would advise you, if you are interested, to move quickly. The couple I’m waiting for now are coming for their second viewing, and I’m told they don’t have any property to sell – they are cash buyers.’

  ‘We’ll take it,’ Jason said decisively, rinsing his hands then soaping them once again. ‘We’ll pay the full asking price.’ He looked at his wife, who nodded.

  Jordan beamed. ‘Well! What can I say? I don’t think it is a decision you could ever possibly regret. This is the finest house in the best property development I’ve ever been privileged to handle – and I’ve handled many, I can tell you. The location, the sheer build quality. The views. You could not have a better investment!’

  ‘So, what do you need from us to take it off the market, immediately, this minute?’ Jason Danes asked. ‘We’re cash buyers, too. We sold our previous home and we’re currently renting, and we don’t need a mortgage.’

  ‘Good, excellent.’ The agent was pensive for a moment. ‘It’s Saturday, nothing can happen until Monday when solicitors are back at work. If you would like to go to my office and put down a ten thousand-pound deposit – entirely refundable – as a show of good faith, I’ll tell the couple who are coming that the house is under offer. I’d be prepared to give you a four- to six-week window to exchange contracts. How does that sound?’

  The Danes looked at each other. ‘We might be able to move in before Christmas!’ Emily said.

  Rinsing then soaping his hands again, Jason Danes nodded enthusiastically and said, ‘Very fair.’

  ‘I’ll even throw in some containers of soap!’

  Neither of them smiled.

  After an awkward moment, Jordan beamed again. ‘In which case, Mr and Mrs Danes, I look forward to handing you the keys and to formally welcoming you to your new home. You won’t regret this, I can assure you. This is a very special house. You are going to find it very creative, very creative indeed.’

  3

  Friday 14 December

  Maurice and Claudette Penze-Weedell peered out through the slats of the blinds of Arden Lodge, 36 Lakeview Drive, watching the activity going on across the street at number forty-seven. They were happy that, after two months, they would no longer be the only people living in the Cold Hill Park development. They were also very curious to catch a glimpse of their new neighbours.

  ‘Not too wide, dear,’ Maurice said. ‘They’ll notice, and we don’t want to seem nosey.’ Maurice had originally suggested changing to net curtains, like the ones they’d had in their previous home, which prevented passers-by from seeing in while still enabling them to see out. But Mrs P-W – as he referred to his wife – had put her foot down, saying net curtains were far too common. As owners of the grand show house – and the first residents of Cold Hill Park – she insisted they had to set standards. Blinds it had to be, and vertical ones, in her view, were so much more elegant than horizontal ones.

  Maurice agreed with Mrs P-W, or ‘High Command’, as he called her when with his friends. He always agreed with her. It was, he had learned over their years together – the very many years – the route to a happy marriage. ‘Happy wife, happy life,’ he had already told all the regulars, several times, at his new local the Crown, down in the village. Well perhaps more accurately, he reflected, a tolerable life. Although his joke at their housewarming party – which, coincidentally and economically, had doubled as their thirtieth wedding anniversary celebration – that he would have got less than thirty years for murder, had fallen somewhat flat.

  ‘It’s a rather grand design for a not very grand-sized house, don’t you think, Maurice?’

  ‘I think it’s quite attractive.’

  ‘Quite attractive? It’s like a sort of bonsai stately home. Gables in the attic and that ludicrous chimney, like the house is wearing a top hat – it’s just sooooo pretentious. And with the lake behind it and all. Honestly!’

  Unlike its rather uninspired neighbours on both sides, which were rather squat, red-brick houses with pantiled roofs, like a million others on new-build estates, number forty-seven stood proud and aloof. It was a Georgian-style house on three storeys, with large, gabled dormers. The exterior walls were fawn-coloured and the door, framed by a handsome porch, navy blue. The front garden was a compact lawn behind black railings, with a wide drive and parking area and attached double garage to one side.

  ‘I think the estate agent said the house was a nod to the original ruined mansion that was here – that the architect had taken his inspiration from it.’

  ‘So, which grand house did the architect take his inspiration from for ours?’

  ‘I d
on’t know, my love.’

  A removals van the size of an ocean liner had pulled up outside the house some ten minutes earlier and the removals men were milling around, two of them smoking, one on his phone. But it was when a silver BMW drove onto the driveway and pulled up in front of the garage that both the Penze-Weedells had taken up position by the window. The driver remained in it, seemingly talking on his phone.

  ‘That car’s just like ours!’ Claudette Penze-Weedell said with relief in her voice. ‘Identical!’

  ‘I’m afraid not,’ her husband said, gloomily. ‘Ours is a 520; that one is a 540i.’

  ‘Is that more expensive?’

  ‘Much.’

  Claudette stared at the car across the street venomously. ‘It’s probably time to upgrade, isn’t it, Maurice?’

  Only weeks after moving in, Maurice Penze-Weedell had been made redundant by the insurance company in Brighton which had employed him for twenty-eight years. He had risen from the post-room to become its Chief Operating Officer. Although given a substantial pay-off, a new car for either of them at this moment was out of the question.

  He hadn’t yet told his wife just how serious their financial situation was and that – heaven forbid – she might actually have to get up off her backside, which seemed to widen every day like the flow of volcanic lava, and get a job. They only had sufficient reserve funds to cover the mortgage for another twelve months, and he had been finding out to his dismay that the jobs market for a fifty-five-year-old in twenty-first century Britain was pretty shitty. ‘My dearest, our BMW is only eleven months old. It’s fine, we don’t need to upgrade it for a few years.’

  ‘In that case we should upgrade my car. I think the Lady of the Manor should have a dignified motor car and not a child’s toy. Really, I feel like Noddy every time I get in it.’ She was referring to her little Japanese runaround, currently in the garage, plugged into the charger. It was a regular bone of contention between them.

  ‘I hardly think we’re the Lord and Lady of the Manor, dear. We’ve bought the very nice show house on a very nice estate, but I don’t think the other residents are going to be queuing at our front door to pay their annual tithe of chickens, bushels of corn and God knows what else.’ He hesitated and smiled. ‘Although I suppose, of course, droit du seigneur might be rather nice.’

  ‘Droit de what?’

  He smiled again. ‘The ancient right of the Lord of the Manor to deflower any local virgin.’

  ‘Dream on, you wouldn’t know what to do with a virgin.’ She tried to stop herself in mid-sentence, but it was too late, it came out.

  ‘Quite right – I never had that experience, my dear.’ He delivered the trump card she could not defend against. She’d lost her virginity to his original best man three weeks before their wedding. Maurice had caught them himself, in flagrante. It was a hold over her that had served him well for three decades.

  ‘Anyhow,’ he added, defensively. ‘You hate parking and your car has self-park. You said you liked that feature.’

  ‘Only because I can do it when I’m outside the car, so no one can see me in it.’

  Across the road, a tall, gangly man in his late-thirties climbed out of the BMW and tossed his head, shaking his mop of fair hair from his eyes. Dressed in a leather jacket over a black polo-neck jumper, skinny jeans and boots, and arty glasses, he stood looking approvingly up at the front of his house, which was bathed in winter sunlight, then around and across the street. He clocked the twitch of the blinds in the large, rather ugly house over the road, with the flashing blue and green Christmas lights adorning the porch and the hideous Santa’s grotto that covered most of the garden.

  ‘That must be him,’ Mrs P-W said. ‘The painter!’

  ‘Could come in handy when we need to redecorate.’

  ‘Ha ha,’ she said. ‘Jason Danes is famous. He’s the talk of the village shop.’ She smiled, coquettishly, at her husband. ‘Just a thought – why don’t you commission him to do a portrait of me for my birthday?’

  ‘Why would I want that? I’ve got plenty of photographs of you.’

  ‘That’s not the same. God, you used to be so romantic, Maurice! Don’t you think a portrait would be a romantic gesture?’

  He looked at her. She wasn’t quite the svelte beauty he’d first dated, although if he was honest, neither was he still the dashing cavalier of his youth. Both of them now sported double chins that were visual testament to the laws of gravity.

  ‘Hmmm,’ he grunted. ‘I imagine he charges a fortune.’

  ‘And I’m not worth it?’ She peered through the blinds again, very cautiously this time. Then she gasped. ‘Please tell me that belongs to the removals company and not to these . . . these people?’

  A small, bright-pink refrigerated van, emblazoned with the legend TASTE SENSATIONS – EMILY’S PANTRY, the words separated by a floral logo, pulled up alongside the BMW. An attractive, red-headed woman in her early thirties got out, wearing a baggy crimson parka over black tights and calf-length boots.

  ‘What does she have in there, then, Danish pastries?’ Maurice said.

  ‘Huh?’ his wife said blankly.

  ‘The Danes. Danish pastries. Geddit?’

  ‘You’re full of humour today – you been on the sauce or something?’

  The Penze-Weedells watched as the couple kissed, then hugged, then kissed again before heading towards the front door. Then Claudette turned to her husband.

  ‘Maurice,’ she said, sternly. ‘You are not going to permit them to leave that van parked on their driveway, are you?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘You know exactly what I mean. We’re not going to sit here and allow the value of our house to be diminished by a hideous van parked outside a neighbour’s property.’

  ‘I really don’t see what business it is of ours. It’s advertising her business, surely?’

  ‘Yes, well, there’s an awful lot you don’t seem to see these days. Perhaps you should go to Specsavers and check you don’t have cataracts.’

  ‘Don’t be absurd, my love. My vision is perfectly good – 6/6 at my recent check-up.’

  Releasing the blinds again, she said, ‘Don’t you remember when we bought this house, the restrictive covenants? One of them said that no commercial vehicles were permitted to be parked on the estate overnight.’ She pointed across the road. ‘That is a commercial vehicle.’

  ‘It’s only a small van.’

  ‘Small? It’s hideous.’

  ‘I’m getting a little bit confused.’ He stroked his threadbare dome with his right hand. ‘Do you want me to ask him to paint you, or to put his wife’s van inside their garage?’

  ‘Both!’ she said emphatically.

  ‘I think we need to be a little diplomatic. I’m not even sure that covenant applies to vehicles owned by residents.’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous. Of course it does. Let me tell you, I do not intend to spend the rest of my life staring out of my drawing room window at a pink van. If you’re not man enough to tell them, I certainly will. I’ll go over tomorrow and tell them, very politely of course.’

  ‘Perhaps give them a few days,’ he suggested.

  ‘A few days?’

  He turned and pointed at their Christmas tree. Gaily wrapped presents lay around the base, and fairy lights twinkled in the branches of plastic pine needles. ‘Isn’t this meant to be the season of goodwill?’

  She again parted the blinds, peering at the removals men, who were starting to carry furniture towards the front door of the Danes’ house. ‘Yes, Maurice, goodwill. Which means respecting what this estate is all about. Aspirational homes. There are people with a tatty camper van moving in at the end of our road soon – probably travellers – and now we have a pink van opposite. This is all just ghastly. I don’t care if he is bloody Rembrandt reincarnated, they are not leaving a pink van on their driveway.’ She paused. ‘Oh look, a piano, well that’s something, I suppose.’

  ‘The people
at the end of the road are not travellers,’ he said.

  ‘No?’ she rounded on him. ‘They came in a Volkswagen camper with a yellow roundel in the rear window saying, Nuclear Power – Nein Danke! They’re not travellers?’

  ‘No, they’re New Age people. Probably lovely and very gentle. You have to remember, my love, that this whole estate will have a mix of people, which is no bad thing.’

  ‘Yes, well, I’m beginning to think we’ve made a terrible mistake moving here.’

  All the warmth drained from the room. Maurice and Mrs P-W shivered, suddenly. Inexplicably.

  A woman stood right behind them, watching them. She was wearing a long blue dress with yellow shoes, and had an angry, shrivelled face.

  Parvenus.

  She did not like them, or their ridiculous name.

  Penze-Weedell.

  Both of them, as if drawn by a magnet, turned their heads.

  All they saw was the flashing Christmas tree, and the cards on the mantelpiece above the electric dancing flames of the simulated coal fire in the fake grate.

  ‘Has the heating gone off?’ she said, giving her husband a sharp look. ‘Are you economizing again?’

  He shivered again. ‘No, it’s set for all day.’ He hurried through into the kitchen and then into the utility room. The boiler was blazing away.

  4

  Friday 14 December

  ‘Oh my God!’ Emily Danes said. ‘I hadn’t realized just how hideous it is – daylight sort of masked it!’ She stared out from the front window of the living room, through the falling darkness, at number thirty-six. At the illuminated Santa’s grotto in the front garden, complete with Santa rocking from side to side and with flashing lights for eyes, and a string of elves frozen in mid-dance. ‘Can you imagine, we’re going to have to look at this until – the sixth of January, isn’t it, the date when you have to take decorations down or it’s unlucky? God!’