The hauntings and the nightmares persisted, although the ghost gradually became less dense, as if it were losing power, and the dreams became less vivid, but nevertheless still harrowing. Over time he learned to accommodate both. But eventually a strange compulsion to see Crickley Hall once again nagged at him and he could not understand why. It wasn't sentimentality: he still feared the place and was unable to erase the memory of that last terrible night from his mind. He felt that his own guilt lay there, waiting for him to return and acknowledge it.
One year, when he was in his mid-thirties and on a summer break from the library, he took the early-morning train and went back to Hollow Bay. He caught the bus from the station to the harbour village and stared hard at Crickley Hall when he went past. It was as grey and grim as ever, but he felt no sensation whatsoever: good or bad, it was just a sombre unprepossessing pile standing on the other side of the river with the gorge rising sheer behind it. He alighted from the bus at the bottom of the hill, then walked back up. Crossing the short wooden bridge, he took the path to Crickley Hall's front door and, without hesitation, knocked the gothic door knocker loudly.
There was no answer, nobody came. When he knocked once more and still no one came to the door, he looked through all the ground-floor windows, even those at the back of the house where the gorge wall, with its thick vegetation, rose dramatically just feet away from the building itself. The house appeared unoccupied, for dustsheets covered the furniture and the kitchen's counters and tabletop were bare. Pyke was disappointed that no emotion was aroused in him; yet somehow he felt drawn to the place, even though there seemed to be no answer for him there. The hauntings remained a mystery.
Back at the village, he visited its only public house, the Barnaby Inn, and ordered himself some sandwiches and a gin and tonic. While there, and on his second drink, he got chatting to an elderly, roughly dressed man who looked like a local, the kind of regular customer who had nothing better to do than spend his lunchtime and evenings in a pub, a solitary drinker who welcomed conversation with anyone who would give him the time. When Pyke enquired about the village, the old boy inevitably mentioned the great flood that had engulfed it during the war, the biggest and most awful event in Hollow Bay's history. Sixty-eight folk were killed that night, eleven of 'em orphans, who'd been evacuated from London to Crickley Hall, the big house up the hill. Their guardian drowned with 'em as well. Only person to survive were a teacher, guardian's sister apparently, an' she must've got away before the floodwaters came down the gorge. They say she's never spoke a word since the day she were found. Shock, they reckoned. Shock, because all them kiddies in her charge was dead, as well as her own brother. Couldn't remember her and her brother's name after all this time though.
Keenly interested, Pyke had asked what had become of the woman. Although he hadn't known Magda's true age at Crickley Hall, Pyke guessed she was probably into her sixties by now. That is, if she were still alive.
Last I were told, came the reply, she were put away in the loony bin. Ilfracombe had the only one in them days. Can't say what become of her after that.
Pyke found Collingwood House by journeying to Ilfracombe and making enquiries at the seaside town's main library. He was given directions to the mental home and he walked nearly two miles to get there, his bad leg protesting most of the way. It was an old redbrick building sparse in embellishment and quite unlike the psychiatric hospital he had been confined to as a youth. This was a mental home, a place for lost causes. In the olden days it would have been called a lunatic asylum.
Inside, he could have sworn there was the tragic smell of mental decay, although it was surely a combination of boiled cabbage, detergent and piss. Again he was reminded of his own incarceration all those years ago and he had an urge to flee the building; but he was too curious to leave.
At the reception desk, he enquired if a Magda Cribben was still a patient, and the receptionist checked a list and informed him that yes, Cribben—only surnames in those days—was a long-term resident (she emphasized resident as though patient was an ugly word). He used to be one of her pupils, Pyke told the uninterested girl, and he had only recently learned of the ex-teacher's circumstances. He had been very fond of Miss Cribben, so would it be possible for him to visit her?
He waited while the receptionist conferred on the internal tine with someone of authority and when she finished her conversation she said yes, although it was not strictly visiting hours, he would be allowed to see Cribben, and that was only because Cribben rarely received visitors—in fact never, as far as the receptionist knew, and she had been employed at Collingwood House for the past five years. A male nurse dressed in white jacket and trousers duly arrived and led Pyke down a long corridor on the ground floor. The walls were painted a lifeless grey and there were scuff marks and scratches along its length as if the inmates had struggled all the way when being taken to their rooms or padded cells. As he followed the nurse, whose thick biceps were evident beneath his tight, starched sleeves, Pyke was warned that, frankly, it was pointless to visit Cribben because she was a zombie—the nurse's own appraisal of his patient's condition—and hadn't said a word to anybody since she'd arrived at Collingwood House back in 1943. He knew this because colleagues had passed it on when he himself joined the staff. Pyke wondered if she would recognize him after all this time.
He was startled by her gaunt figure and her ashen face and hands. Magda never had much weight, but now she was skeletal, and although her complexion had been pallid before, now it was almost bloodless. She seemed to have shrunk—but then he had grown taller. The hardness had not retreated from her features with age and the lines on her tight skin were many and deeply etched. Her cheeks were sunken, but her jaw was still strong. She was dressed in black, which was no different from before, and the hem of her skirt ended just above her bony ankles. Her eyes, though, were as black and sharp as ever. Yet they showed no reaction when he entered the tiny cell.
Even when the nurse had left and they were alone there was no acknowledgement. She was sitting bolt-upright on a hard wooden chair beside her narrow bed and there was nowhere else for him to rest except the bed itself. He stood, putting all his weight on his good right leg.
Pyke started by reminding her of Crickley Hall and all the things they had done together, a sly conspiratorial smile on his face, nothing on hers. He talked of her brother and the harsh regime that had governed the orphans' home that was also a school and there was no recognition. But he was glad at last to speak to someone about his hidden past, even though he might just as well have been yakking to himself for all the response he got. Her eyelids did not flicker when he mentioned the murder of the young teacher and how, together, they had disposed of the body. He felt satisfied when there was no response, for this was good, their secret was safe. He had always worried about someone else knowing of his crime, but Magda was not only mute, she seemed to have forgotten the deed. Her mind was blank, she had lost all memory of it. She had even forgotten that last horrendous night that haunted him still because of his own guilt. After all, it was he who had informed on the other children. It was he who had betrayed them.