Deadlight-Hall(5)

And there, a mile out of the village, was an estate agent’s board with arrows pointing the way, and tempting suggestions about mortgages and part-exchange deals on existing properties. The asking prices for the flats made Michael blink.

Beyond the For Sale board was a short drive, churned up by builders’ lorries and dotted with slumbering cement-mixers. The house was framed by ancient-looking trees, and Michael switched off the engine, and sat looking at it.

Even in bright sunshine, Deadlight Hall would have looked grim, and there was no sunshine today – in fact huge storm clouds like purple bruises were massing, as if the gods had decided to provide a traditional gothic backdrop. Michael studied the harsh dark stonework and the frowning eaves. The renovations looked as if they were well under way, but they had not quite managed to dilute the Hall’s sinister appearance. Approaching the front door, he thought that although any ghosts had probably long since left, an overlooked shade might remain: a leftover spirit who still wrung its hands and clanked its chains in hopeful, but futile, competition with the twenty-first century sounds invading its territory – stereos and iPads and the constant trill of mobile phones.

Several of the windows were circular – thick-glassed and rather unpleasantly suggestive of single lidless eyes. Were they the deadlights of the house’s name? Michael had a vague idea that a deadlight was a small window or a skylight intended never to be opened and therefore ensuring permanent darkness.

Four shallow stone steps led up to large double doors at the house’s centre, and as he pushed open the doors, the first faint growl of thunder reached him. The big hall beyond the doors was filled with the scents of paint and sawdust, and with the sounds of cheerful voices from somewhere outside, along with the tinny musical crackle of a radio. And yet just beneath all this were other scents and sounds. The sensation of a fetid darkness, of air old and stale, of extreme loneliness … And a far-off voice, echoing slightly, calling for something or someone … Were they real sensations, or was Deadlight Hall’s past seeping through, like charred bones?

As Michael looked about him, a chubbily built man wearing overalls and wielding a chisel came in, and enquired amiably if he could be of any help.

‘A colleague mentioned the renovations here,’ said Michael. ‘And since I was passing, I thought I’d like to take a look at the flats. I hope that’s all right. I haven’t spoken to the agents or anything.’

‘No, that’s all right,’ said the man. ‘I’m Jack Hurst, and my firm’s doing the work here. No reason why you can’t take a look inside. We haven’t finished the flats by a long chalk, but the first floor ones’d give you a reasonable idea of what they’ll eventually be. Up the stairs and to your left. I’ll leave you to find your own way, if you don’t mind. I need to sort out some of the electrics, before the storm arrives.’ He looked through one of the narrow windows. ‘Coming in from the east, if I’m any judge, and it’s difficult to work in a thunderstorm. Feel free to look round the whole house if you want – although I’ll ask you to avoid the basement. There’s not much to see there anyway, but we’re ripping out pipes and an old furnace, so it’s a bit of a mess. Health and Safety stuff – it’d be easy to trip over something.’

‘I’ll remember. Thank you very much.’

The stairs were wide and shallow, and there seemed to be four flats on the first floor, one on each corner of the house. Michael ventured into the first one. It was strewn with builders’ implements and dust sheets and coils of electrical cable, and he picked his way carefully through these. The flat was larger than he had expected, and the windows had views over trees and fields, apart from a side window which was one of the circular thick-glassed settings.

He came back to the main landing and started down the stairs to the hall. Jack Hurst had said amiably that he was welcome to explore the place, with the exception of the basement. Michael tried not to think that there was a faint sinister echo there of Bluebeard’s chamber.

‘You can have the keys to all these rooms in the castle, my dear, except this one, and that you must never enter … ’ And as if the warning was a trigger, the ingenuous bride-heroine or the gallant knight must then yield to the sinister treacherous temptation, and instantly open the forbidden door by hook or by crook, by picklock or jemmy, to find the room did not contain priceless treasure or the elixir of life at all, but something far more macabre …

Michael paused on the half-landing to look through the narrow windows, which were slightly open. It looked as if Jack Hurst was right about the storm. Huge clouds like purple bruises were gathering in the east, and a faint growl of thunder rippled the sky. From the ground he could hear the rap of hammering and cheerful voices. Someone was calling out to Darren to make a brew, they were all spitting feathers, and someone else wanted to know had anyone thought about a bit of a fry-up before the storm got going.