Deadlight-Hall(56)

Leo smiled. ‘They were strict and rather severe, but they were kind in their own way. But when Mildred Hurst died, she left the contents of the farmhouse to me. Furniture and china and so on. I sold most of the furniture – it was nearly all Victorian and rather florid, but one of the things I did keep was that old blanket box.’ He indicated an oak box beneath a latticed window. ‘It stood outside my bedroom at Willow Bank, so it felt like a bit of my childhood. The Hursts used it to store odd papers and photographs. None of them were relevant to me, but it seemed wrong to destroy them.’

‘Are they still there?’ said Michael, hardly daring to hope.

‘Oh, yes. I’ve never really looked at them, but I always felt they were a fragment of a particular era of history, so I kept them.’

‘Professor, when you say papers …?’

‘Mostly old letters and photos and the odd newspaper cutting, I think. It’s a bit of a jumble.’ He was already crossing the room to the carved box. Sunlight filtered through the window, laying chequered patterns on its surface.

‘It’s been under this window … well, ever since I’ve been here,’ said the professor. ‘I’ve used it as an extra shelf.’

‘So I see.’ The grain of the lid showed dark oblongs where books had lain for years, and where the sun had gradually faded the rest of the surface around them. Michael knelt down and lifted the lid. It tipped back smoothly and with only the faintest creak of old hinges. He waited for the scents of age to engulf him – old paper and forgotten memories – but there was nothing. Was that because there was nothing of the past in here? No, he thought. It’s because the darkness is too dense. This is dead light in every sense.

He became aware of the professor explaining that the papers might go quite far back.

‘Even as far back as Maria Porringer and John Hurst,’ he said. ‘So take as long as you like to look through them. But if you wouldn’t mind, I’ll leave you to do it on your own.’ He stared into the trunk for a moment. ‘I don’t know what there might be in there,’ he said. ‘And I’m not sure if I want to find it. I don’t mean there’ll be anything criminal or damning or scandalous – at least, I shouldn’t think so – but whatever is there is a link to some very mixed memories for me. I think, you know, that’s why I decided to sell the silver golem.’

‘I understand,’ said Michael.

‘So I’ll walk along to the Radcliffe for a couple of hours. That coffee’s still hot, so help yourself to a refill.’

Left to himself, Michael carefully lifted out the top layer of the contents. And now, finally, the stored-away aura of the past did reach out to him. These were not letters and documents efficiently and neatly stored on computer hard drives or microfiche screens; this was the faded fabric of the long-ago – the curl-edged photographs, the ink-splodged missives, the cobwebbed, candlelit writings that were dim with age and that might even be illegible …

And there’s something here, thought Michael. I know there is. By the pricking of my thumbs … With the thought came another image – a half-memory of something he had seen very recently, something to do with cobwebs and a dim old place where there had been a shelf holding old books or documents … He waited, but the memory remained annoyingly elusive, and he left it alone and focused on what lay in front of him.

There were two or three shoe boxes filled with black and white photographs – even some that were sepia. Michael glanced at these briefly, seeing self-consciously posed gentlemen wearing wing collars and Sunday-best suits, and ladies with flowered frocks and shady hats. Nell would seize on these with delight, of course; he would ask the professor if she could see them. But for the moment he put them to one side, and reached for two large packages, virtually parcels, both wrapped in the old-fashioned way, with brown paper and string.

The knots in the string parted easily after so many years and, his heart starting to beat faster, Michael unfolded the contents.

At first look there did not seem to be anything of particular interest, and nothing looked likely to relate to Deadlight Hall. On the top was a handwritten note, addressed to ‘Dearest Mildred’. That’s Miss Hurst, thought Michael, remembering what Professor Rosendale had told him. Mildred and Simeon Hurst. He smoothed out the letter, trying not to split the paper where it had been folded for so long.

It was undated, and there was no address. Michael had the impression of a quickly written note, either delivered by hand, or thrust into a parcel.