The Talking House's Deadly Secret

We were house-hunting to get married, and the agent, working from our budget, showed us a thirty-year-old dump.

Percy Harding blew up on the spot, said the guy was sizing us up and looking down on us.

All his buddies lived in big open-plan places, and he threatened that if I dared buy an old dump as our wedding home, we were through.

I was just about to smooth it over, say we'd keep looking, when an old, aged voice popped into my head:

"This boy's got no eye for value. I hid a hundred pounds of gold in that wall. Enough to buy ten of those big open-plan places!"

"Hand him a treasure chest and he'd turn it down. Serves him right to be poor his whole life!"

...

I froze, staring at the wall between the living room and the bedroom, sure I was hearing things.

That wall really was a good bit thicker than the others.

A hundred pounds of gold, at the current price of over eight hundred a gram, came to more than forty million!

Percy shoved my shoulder. "What are you spacing out for? What's so great about this dump?"

I came back to myself. Rupert Lambert, the agent, was still standing there with a placating smile. "It's a little old, sure, but the location's unbeatable. About a third of a mile from the subway, a decent school district, and best of all, it's cheap—"

Percy cut him off. "A thirty-year-old dump, five hundred square feet for eight hundred grand, and you call that cheap?"

Rupert's face went stiff with embarrassment.

Percy shot me a glare. "I'm telling you right now, if you buy this dump as our wedding home, we're done. I'm not humiliating myself like that."

I was about to talk him down when the old voice piped up again:

"Hmph. A bunch of blind fools. I've got three million in cash hidden in the ceiling too. Add the hundred pounds of gold in the wall, that's tens of millions in this place, and you call me a dump?"

"One bed doesn't make two different kinds of people. The man's blind, the woman's a spineless pushover with no mind of her own. A match made in heaven!"

My knees buckled and I nearly dropped to the floor.

Three million in cash in the ceiling too?

I couldn't help glancing up.

The place was an old prefab-panel building with a cheap plaster drop ceiling. Nothing looked off about it.

Rupert hurried over. "Ma'am, you're thinking it's not bad either, aren't you? The old man's anxious to sell. His late wife was an accountant at a foreign firm before she retired, a really nice woman, she just passed suddenly, didn't even leave any last words."

"It's not convenient for the old man to live here alone, and he's going overseas to join his son, so he listed it this low. Market price is at least one point one million."

An accountant at a foreign firm, where would she get a hundred pounds of gold? Why hide it in the wall?

"What about the owner's other family?"

"Just the one son, already settled abroad, and flying back isn't easy. The old man said everything in the place comes with it. Furniture, appliances, do whatever you want with them, he's not taking a thing."

Something lurched in my chest.

The gold in the wall, the cash in the ceiling, those came with it too?

Pretending to look the place over, I wandered up to the thick wall and rapped it twice. The sound came back dull. Hollow.

Rupert said, "The great thing about these old dumps is you can move the walls however you like. See this wall between the living room and the bedroom? It's got to have gone up later, it's not load-bearing. Knock it out, redo the layout, and the living room's twice as big. No worse than a new build."

Afraid he'd catch on, I pulled my hand back and turned toward the bathroom, pretending to check the pipes.

"Can the price go any lower?"

Rupert's eyes lit up. "Eight hundred grand is already the floor, but if you really want it, ma'am, I'll go put in a word, see if they'll come down another two or three grand."

Percy stared at me in disbelief. "Lydia Dickerson, have you lost your mind? You seriously want to buy this dump?"

"Have you not seen how the paint's peeling off the walls? The bathroom's tiny, the kitchen doesn't even have a window. Have you lived poor so long you think this is all we deserve?"

Percy and I had been together six years, and I'd always been the one managing our savings.

He'd said when we got married, we'd use that money for the down payment on our wedding home.

Where we bought was up to me.

I opened my mouth to explain, but I couldn't very well tell him there was gold in the wall with the agent standing right there.

Just then the old voice came again, plainly mocking:

"Tch. Haggling, are you? Do you have any idea how many people out there have their eye on this place?"

"That shrew from the Jennings family next door, the one with two kids. Back in the day she wanted to marry Bill's son and land herself this place, and when that scheme fell through and Bill passed, she started coveting it again. She's coming to see it tomorrow. When the place gets snatched out from under you, don't come crying!"

My mind went blank, and the words were out before I could stop them. "I really like this place. Why don't we just sign the contract today?"