‘So, this is where the children were taught,’ he says. ‘The drawers were full of paper and textbooks and exercise books.’
‘Who taught them?’
‘We don’t know. It wouldn’t have been Henry Lamb. He failed all his O levels and didn’t go into higher education. Martina didn’t have English as her first language, so it was unlikely to be her. So, one of the mystery “others”, we imagine. And most likely a woman.’
‘What happened to all the schoolbooks?’ Libby asks.
‘I have no idea,’ says Miller. ‘Maybe they’re still here?’
Libby looks at the big wooden table in the middle of the room with its two sets of drawers on each side. She holds in her breath and pulls them open in turn. The drawers are empty. She sighs.
‘Police evidence,’ says Miller. ‘They may well have destroyed them.’
‘What else did they take as police evidence?’ Dido asks.
‘The robes. Bedclothes. All the apothecarial stuff, the bottles and trays and what have you. Soap. Face cloths. Towels. Fibres, of course, that sort of thing. But really, there was nothing else. No art on the walls, no toys, no shoes.’
‘No shoes?’ Dido repeats.
Libby nods. It was one of the most shocking of all the details in Miller’s Guardian article. A house full of people and not one pair of shoes.
Dido glances around. ‘This kitchen’, she says, ‘would have been the absolute height of kitchen chic back in the seventies.’
‘Wouldn’t it just?’ agrees Miller. ‘Top of the range, too. Virtually everything that had been in the house – before they sold everything – was bought from Harrods. The archivist in their sales department let me see the sales invoices, going back to the date Henry bought the house. Appliances, beds, light shades, sofas, clothes, weekly flower deliveries, hair appointments, toiletries, towels, food, everything.’
‘Including my cot.’
‘Yes, including your cot. Which was bought, if I recall, in 1977, when young Henry was a newborn.’
‘So I was the third baby to sleep in it?’
‘Yes. I guess so.’
They head towards the small room at the front of the house and Dido says, ‘What’s your theory? What do you think happened here?’
‘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.’