Lethal Whispers by Oliver Davies

Author:Oliver Davies [Davies, Oliver]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2022-04-30T16:00:00+00:00

True to her word and without any objection from me, Mhari accompanied me as I made my way briefly round the upstairs rooms again. I couldn’t blame her for wanting to stay away from downstairs, and I certainly wasn’t going to be the one to send her back down into Evelyn’s path. The only thing I really wanted to see was which other rooms had vents in, and whenever we came across one that did I made a mental note of where each room was in relation to the downstairs of the house.

There were only a handful of them to find in the end, a couple in guest bedrooms which, like Skye’s, I guessed must have once been used for something else other than a bedroom, and one in each bathroom to be found upstairs. The only room I excluded from the check was Mr Cross’s, as I didn’t see that there was any need to disturb the man just for the purpose of this exercise. Mhari said she didn’t think there was a vent in his room, and I decided to take her word for it.

As I felt all around the wallpaper of one of the guest rooms, just as I had in all the others, in search of any bumps or dints that might suggest something hiding underneath, I thought I might as well give it one more go, and try once more to dig a bit deeper into Mhari’s formidable great aunt.

“So, like I was saying before, I imagine it must be quite tough living here with your aunt Evelyn. I don’t mean to sound rude, but she seems quite forthright. That must have been a lot to get used to when you moved back in? Especially now you’re grown up.”

“Yes, I suppose so,” she admitted freely, sitting watching me from the end of the bed. “I’ve always known that she can be hard work, of course, so I had prepared for it. But still, it does tend to wear you down day after day. Mostly I try to stay out of her way if I can.” She met my eyes and then glanced down at the carpet bashfully as if she had said too much. She then attempted to let out a little laugh, but it was not at all convincing, especially while her face remained so sad. “That sounds awful. She’s not that bad, not when it comes down to it. She’s just, like you say, very forthright.”

“Why did it fall on you to come back and look after your Granddad?” I asked then.

“It didn’t fall on me exactly,” she said. Her face twisted slightly in reaction to my choice of word. “I chose to come back. I don’t mind helping to look after him. It’s more the house and the situation in general that can start to feel like quite a grind.” I assumed that the ‘situation’ was in reference to Evelyn again.

“It must still have been hard to get used to. You said yourself it doesn’t leave you with much time for a life of your own.

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