Free Unhallowed Ground by Gillian White

pointers would make it clear the cottage was occupied again.
    And how could anyone live in this tiny insular hamlet and not be aware that a stranger had arrived?
    The morning slowly meandered by, and she, who had grown to loathe the phone, wished there was one in this house. She smiled wryly when she realized she was already talking to herself; it was more of a little hum she supposed, just to relieve the silence. She took Lola for a short walk, but turned back, puffing and out of breath, unable to cope with the slippery hills. She must be well out of condition. She’d done far too much sitting around and moping miserably of late. There was no point in drying the dog, there were no carpets to be ruined, no piece of furniture she could jump on and make damper than it already was. So, blowing hard on cold fingers, Georgie shut Lola inside and firmly resolved, despite some qualms, she set off down the road to call on Stephen’s friend, on the man who had found his body, on the man who could be the last person on earth to have seen her brother alive.
    The sunlight glittered on crests of snow as she tramped determinedly up the path. A miniature bridge had been built over this section of the stream that dissected the house from the road, so much more sensible in light of the struggle she’d faced on arrival at Stephen’s cottage.
    She pressed the bell, half expecting to hear nothing, suspecting she would be forced to raise the fox-head knocker, when she heard an encouraging soft burr echoing through the house. She composed her face and waited.
    The door was opened softly by a long, straggling, powerful man with the face of an undertaker, gaunt and pallid. Well over six foot six, he stared at her morosely, and his eyes, sunk deep in his head, were almost obscured by his low-hanging eyebrows. The original Mr Munster. His thick tweed jacket was stained and his voice was deep and sepulchral.
    ‘Yes?’
    But before Georgie could answer, the tall, burdened man was pushed aside by a quick-moving, spinning creature aged around sixty and dressed in trainers and a tracksuit which bagged badly at the knee. There was a fiery light in her eyes. ‘We thought it was being sold on. We thought you would sell it, didn’t we, Horace?’
    ‘Mr and Mrs Horsefield?’ asked Georgie nervously, not knowing which to address.
    ‘We kept an eye on him, you see. He knew he could count on us, did Stephen. Didn’t he, Horace?’
    Horace looked down on his coiled-up wife fondly. While she talked she plucked at herself and no part of her very rouged face was still. Was this St Vitus’s dance? She seemed to be wearing a hairnet, her grey hair was so flat to her head, but that was the way she wore it, so cropped, so short it seemed it was netted. But her features were free and made the most of it, wrinkling, twisting and contorting as she went on.
    ‘Yes, yes, we used to pop in. I made you call on him, didn’t I, Horace? Well, it wouldn’t have been fitting for me to go, what with the way he was and that, and nearing the end it was three times a day. Sometimes four or five. Oh yes, and I sent little treats, even when he sent them back saying he didn’t want them. Not a friendly man, your brother, Miss, no, a troubled soul, I would say…’
    The inside of this house wreaked of Glade air freshener. It reminded Georgie of her childhood home after Daddy died. Those mornings Mummy spent cleaning the silver, brightening the medals and trophies, rubbing, rubbing, rubbing. If she rubbed hard enough, sprayed hard enough, they might go away.
    ‘I am his sister.’
    ‘We guessed as much, didn’t we, Horace, when we saw your car and you called at the farm. But Selby, the solicitor, said he thought the place would be sold. Nobody much interested in keeping it, he said. We never expected anyone to come looking, we never expected anything like this, did we, Horace?’
    These were not farming folks, or locals, that much was clear. Nor were they the kind of people