‘In a nutshell? Strange people move in with wealthy family. Strange things happen and everyone dies, apart from some teenage children who are never heard of again. And of course, the baby. Serenity. And there was evidence that someone else lived here once. Someone who developed the herb garden. I spent an entire month tracking down every apothecary in the UK and abroad who might have been living in London at that time. Nothing. Not a trace.’
The room in which they stand is wood-panelled and wood-floored. There is a huge stone fireplace on the far wall and the remains of a mahogany bar on the other.
‘They found equipment in here,’ Miller says gravely. ‘The police thought it was torture equipment at first, but apparently it was homemade callisthenics equipment. The bodies of two of the suicide victims were found to be very lean and hyper-muscled. This was clearly the room where they exercised. Possibly to mitigate against the negative effects of never leaving the house. So again, I spent a month hunting down every teacher of callisthenics I could find, to see if anyone knew about this technique being used in Chelsea in the eighties and early nineties. Again – nothing.’ He sighs, and then turns suddenly to Libby. ‘Did you find the secret staircase? To the attic?’
‘Yes, the solicitor showed me when he brought me here.’
‘Did you see the locks? On the children’s doors?’
Libby feels a tremor pass through her. ‘I hadn’t read your article then,’ she says, ‘so I didn’t look. And last time I came …’ She pauses. ‘Last time, I thought I heard someone up there and freaked out and left.’
‘Shall we go and look?’
She nods. ‘OK.’
‘There’s one of these secret staircases in my parents’ house,’ says Dido, clutching the handrail as they ascend the narrow staircase. ‘Always used to give me the heebie-jeebies when I was little. I used to think that a cross ghost was going to lock both doors and I’d be trapped in there forever.’
At this, Libby quickens her pace and emerges slightly breathlessly on to the attic landing.
‘You OK?’ Miller asks kindly.
‘Mm,’ she murmurs. ‘Just about.’
He puts his hand to his ear. ‘Hear that?’ he says.
‘What?’
‘That creaking?’
She nods, her eyes wide.
‘That’s what old houses do when they get too hot, or too cold. They complain. That’s what you heard the other day. The house complaining.’
She contemplates asking him if houses also cough when they get hot, and decides against it.
Miller takes his phone from his pocket and fixes the camera ahead of him, filming as he goes. ‘God,’ he says in a loud whisper. ‘This is it. This is it.’
He angles his camera towards the door of the first room on the left. ‘Look,’ he says.
She and Dido both look. There is a lock attached to the outside of the room. They follow him to the next door. Another lock. And another and another.
‘All four rooms, lockable from the outside. This is where the police think the children slept. This is where they found some traces of blood and the marks on the walls. Look,’ he says, ‘even the toilet had a lock on the outside. Shall we?’
He has his hand on the handle of one of the rooms.
Libby nods.
When she’d first read Miller’s article, she’d skimmed over the paragraphs about the attic rooms, unable to stomach the thought of what it suggested. Now she just wants to get it over with.
It’s a good-sized room, painted white with flashes of yellow around the skirting boards, bare floorboards, tattered white curtains at the windows, thin mattresses in the corners, nothing more. The next room is the same. And the next. Libby holds her breath when they get to the fourth bedroom, convinced that behind the door there will be a man. But there is no man, just another empty, white room with white curtains and bare floorboards. They are about to close the door behind them when Miller stops, takes his camera to the furthest end of the room and aims it at the mattress.
‘What?’
As he nears the mattress, he pulls it away from the wall slightly and zooms in on something wedged there.
‘What is it?’
He picks it up and shows it first to his camera and then to himself. ‘It’s a sock.’