The Turn of the Key(8)
There was no click to tell me that a receiver had been replaced, or any other indication that the conversation was over, but the panel faded back to blank and I stood waiting, feeling curiously both watched and ignored.
Finally, after what felt like a long time but was probably less than thirty seconds, there was a sudden cacophony of barking and the front door opened. Two black Labradors shot out, followed by a slim honey-blond woman of perhaps forty, laughing and snatching ineffectually at their collars as they ran rings around her, yelping joyfully.
“Hero! Claude! Get back here!”
But the dogs paid no attention, leaping up at me as I took a couple of steps backwards. One of them shoved its nose into my crotch, painfully hard, and I found myself laughing nervously, trying to push its muzzle away, thinking of my one spare pair of tights in my bag and gritting my teeth in case the dog ripped the ones I was wearing. It jumped up at me again, and I sneezed, feeling an itching begin in the back of my skull. Shit. Had I brought my inhaler?
“Hero!” the woman said again. “Hero, stop it.” She stepped out of the shelter of the porch and towards me, holding out her hand. “You must be Rowan. Calm down, Hero, honestly!” She managed to clip the lead she was holding on to the dog’s collar and dragged it back beside her. “Sorry, sorry, she’s so friendly. Do you mind dogs?”
“Not at all,” I said, though it was only partly true. I didn’t mind dogs exactly, but they triggered my asthma if I didn’t take my antihistamines. Besides, asthma or no asthma, I didn’t want their noses shoved between my legs in a professional situation. I felt my chest tighten, though out here it couldn’t be anything other than psychosomatic. “Good boy,” I said, with all the enthusiasm I could muster, patting it on the head.
“Good girl, actually. Hero’s a bitch; Claude is the boy. They’re brother and sister.”
“Good girl,” I amended half-heartedly. Hero licked my hand enthusiastically, and I stifled the impulse to wipe my palm on my skirt. Behind me I heard a door slam, followed by Jack’s feet crunching across the gravel, and it was with some relief that I watched the dogs turn their attention to him, woofing happily as he retrieved my case from the back of the car.
“Here’s your case, Rowan. Pleasure meeting you,” he said as he set it down beside me, and then, turning to Mrs. Elincourt, “I’ll be getting back to fixing the mower, if it’s all right, Sandra. Unless you need me for anything else?”
“What’s that?” Mrs. Elincourt said distractedly, and then she nodded. “Oh, the mower. Yes, please do. Can you get it working again?”
“I hope so. If not, I’ll call Aleckie Brown in the morning.”
“Thank you, Jack,” Sandra said, and shook her head as he walked away round the side of the building, his silhouette tall and square-shouldered against the evening sky. “Honestly, that man is such a treasure. I don’t know what we’d do without him. He and Jean have been absolute rocks—it’s what makes the whole nanny business all the more inexplicable.”
The whole nanny business. There it was then. The first reference to the odd fact that had been at the back of my mind all the way up here: four women had already walked out of this post.
In the initial flush of exultation I hadn’t really worried very much about that part of Sandra’s letter. In the context of getting an interview it hadn’t seemed very important, but as I reread the emails and travel instructions on the way up to Carn Bridge, I had stumbled over it again, and this time the remark had stuck out—its strangeness and faint absurdity. I had spent some time thinking about it during the long, boring hours on the train, turning her words over in my mind, torn between a desire to laugh and something more puzzled and uneasy.
I didn’t believe in the supernatural—I should say that up front, Mr. Wrexham. And so the legends of the house didn’t bother me at all; in fact the whole idea of nannies and servants driven out by mysterious spooky happenings seemed more than a little ridiculous—almost Victorian.
But the fact was that four women had left the Elincourts’ employment in the last year. Having the bad luck to engage one nervous, superstitious employee seemed quite likely. Getting four in a row seemed . . . less so.
Which meant that there was a strong chance that something else was going on, and all sorts of possibilities had run through my mind on the long journey up to Scotland. I had been half expecting to find that Heatherbrae was a draughty ruin of a house, or that Mrs. Elincourt was a very difficult employer. So far, at least, that didn’t seem to be the case. But I was reserving judgment.
Inside Heatherbrae the dogs were, if anything, more boisterous and excited to find a stranger admitted into the house, and at last Mrs. Elincourt gave up trying to control them and dragged them both by their collars through to a room at the back to shut them up.
As she disappeared, I hastily fumbled my inhaler out of my pocket and took a surreptitious puff, then waited for her just inside the front door, feeling the atmosphere of the house settle around me.
It wasn’t a big house, just a family home. And the furnishings weren’t ostentatious, just incredibly comfortable and well-built. But there was a sense of . . . of money. That’s the only way I can put it. From the polished wooden banister and deep peat-colored carpet runner that curved around the long, elegant flight, to the squashy bronze velvet armchair squeezed beneath the stairs and the frayed Persian rug spread across the worn flagstones in the hall. From the slow, sure tick of a beautiful grandfather clock standing beside the long window, to the deep patina of age on the refectory table against the wall, everything conspired into an almost overwhelming sense of luxury. It wasn’t that it was neat exactly—there were piles of newspapers scattered by the sofa, and a child’s Wellington boot left abandoned by the front door. But there was not a single thing that felt wrong. The sofa cushions were plump with feathers, there were no drifts of dog hairs in the corners of the room, or muddy scuffs on the stairs. Even the smell was right—not a trace of wet dog or stale cooking, just beeswax polish, woodsmoke, and the faintest hint of dried rose petals.