Deadlight-Hall(28)

If you wish us to undertake a search for the figure, under the arrangement we have agreed with you in the past, we would be happy to do so. To this end, we enclose a note of our charges and commission fees.

Assuring you of our best intentions at all times, and with our very best wishes,

Yours sincerely,

for and on behalf of Ashby’s Auction House.

Hand delivered note to Ashby’s Auction Rooms

New Scotland Yard,

London

March 1944

Dear Sir

Thank you for letting me have sight of the letter from Mr Bensimon. I return it herewith for your records.

It now seems as if two sets of people are trying to trace either these silver figures or (more likely) the present owners of them. My department will continue to look into this.

Our initial investigation accords with your information, and suggests that Mr Bensimon’s enquiry is indeed genuine. Indeed, our intelligence hints that he is part of a certain discreet network in that part of Europe – a network which we have no wish to disrupt or endanger.

With kind regards,

Yours sincerely

Inspector Geo. Fennel.

The soft chimes of one of Oxford’s many churches broke into Nell’s absorption. Ten o’clock. She slid the letters back into their envelope, forced her mind into the present, and went through to the front of the shop to unlock the doors. She stood for a moment, looking out into the court.

She liked Quire Court at this relatively quiet time of the morning. Michael, when he was caught up in one of his romantical flights, sometimes said this was the hour when any lingering ghosts were whisking themselves back to their shadowy half-worlds, shamefaced and rather apologetic, like guests who suddenly realized they had stayed too long at a party. If you had opened your door a few seconds earlier you would have seen them, he said, spinning one of his stories for Beth, who loved them. And they were not ghosts you would ever have to be afraid of, he explained; they were all the people who had once lived in Quire Court, and who liked to occasionally pop back to see how it was getting on.

Beth, round-eyed, had wanted to know more about this. ‘Do dead people sometimes come back like that? Might my dad?’

Nell had paused in the act of serving out food, trying to think how best to answer this, but Michael had been ahead of her. He said, ‘Yes, certainly he might, Beth. Don’t expect to ever see him though, will you? But he could be around now and again. Just briefly, just to know how you’re getting on. And I’ll tell you something else. If he does, he’ll be so pleased to see you doing well at school and being happy. He’ll be really proud of you.’

‘Um, well, good,’ said Beth, with the awkward shrug she accorded to most emotional topics and particularly to anything to do with her father.

Without missing a beat, Michael had merely said, ‘Yes, it is good. Nell, is that casserole ready, because if so I’ll open some wine to go with it, if you want. Beth, shall we chunk up some of that French bread, as well?’

Nell, looking out at Quire Court, remembering that conversation, suddenly wished, deeply and painfully, that she could have talked to Brad about extending the shop into Godfrey Purbles’ premises. But whatever I do, I can make the decision myself, Brad, she said, in her mind. And if you do ever nip back, like the ghosts in Michael’s story, you’ll be able to see I’m doing all right. I really am.

Across the court, Henry Jessel, the silversmith, was unlocking his door. He waved to Nell, and pointed skywards, turning up his coat collar and miming a shiver. Nell grinned, and went back inside to hunt out soft cloths and beeswax to give the curled and carved walnut frames of the Regency sofas an extra buffing before the Japanese customers arrived. There was a small inlaid table of around the same date: she would set that alongside the sofas with something tempting on it. There was a really beautiful Feuillet workbox with enamelled painted panels, which might be sufficiently unusual to attract them.

She might bring one or two things in from the small workshop at the back of the shop as well, in preparation for the weekend. Saturdays were often busy in Quire Court.

But her mind was still filled with the 1940s, and that strange, sinister enquiry about the owner of the silver golem.

There was no point in wondering, all these years later, if the anonymous person had been successful.





EIGHT


There were three emails in Michael’s in-box on Monday morning. The first was from Owen Bracegirdle in the History Faculty, responding to Michael’s request for help in tracing Deadlight Hall’s past.