Property of a Lady(45)

I don’t have very much knowledge of houses or what goes wrong with them, but anyone can recognize when age or rot has caused window frames to crumble, and sprawling grey-green patches of damp on walls. There was, in fact, a particularly unpleasant patch on the main landing wall. As I went up the main stairway I had quite a scare because it looked for all the world like the figure of a man, rather stocky, standing there watching me. I didn’t quite scream, but it was several minutes before my heart resumed its normal rate.

But even with wallpaper peeling from the walls, and plaster mouldings fallen from the ceilings – even allowing for the army of invisible creatures undoubtedly nibbling industriously at the woodwork – the house is lovely. Someone has at least had the housewifely good sense to cover most of the furniture with dust sheets. I dragged them off because I wanted to see everything, and clouds of dust rose up nearly choking me. But when the dust settled it was worth it, because the furniture is beautiful. And valuable as well, I should think. If I really do need money (and it’s looking as if I shall), I may be able to sell some of the better pieces. But I’d like to keep most of it: there are deep armchairs with faded rose-patterned fabric, a writing bureau, a round rosewood table, a long-case clock . . .

What daunted me far more than the elegant dereliction, though, were the boxes and trunks stuffed with papers and letters and fabrics and household miscellany. They’ll all have to be opened and properly investigated. For all I know poor old Elvira might have murdered half a dozen people and secreted their remains in the two big cabin trunks. I don’t really think she did, and I know that, just as anything of any value will have been destroyed or sold, every scrap of boring minutiae will have been diligently preserved. But there’s always the faint chance that Great Uncle Somebody squirrelled a few Holbein sketches among the rubbish, or that great-grandmamma tucked a first-folio Shakespearean manuscript between the leaves of a cookery book.

All the time I was in the house I had the feeling of being watched. I do know that’s quite common in empty houses though. It felt strongest in the library – that’s a rather grand term for a house of that size, but the room is lined with books that nobody thought to pack away. There are rows upon rows of them, floor to ceiling. There’s a big, leather-topped table and several deep chairs, and a long-case clock in a corner. It’s long since stopped, of course, so winding it and setting the time is another task for me.

When my self-appointed hour was up, I locked the doors and went out to Blackberry Lane to meet the taxi.

I have no idea how much actual money (if any!) comes with this legacy or the likely cost of the work needed at the house, but tomorrow I shall ask the solicitor.

In the meantime, it’s almost midnight and I’ve retired to bed. Charect House’s atmosphere is somehow still with me though – and I don’t mean the smell of damp or rot. It’s that impression of being watched that’s stayed with – that, and that persistent dripping tap. And – let’s be honest in these pages if nowhere else – it’s Elvira’s tale about a nameless man who sings that macabre song – it’s from the Ingoldsby Legends, that rhyme, I found that out years ago – but whose mind touched a deep, unwholesome core, like the old apple tree’s roots. On balance, I really could wish I had never heard that story, and I certainly wish I had never met Elvira herself.





18th February Midday


Today I’ve brought my diary to Charect House with me. It will provide a welcome respite from all the sorting out, and it will be company in the silence of the place.

It isn’t entirely silent, of course. No house ever is. And there’s still the constant drip of water somewhere. It started to annoy me after a while, but although I’ve explored the sculleries – grim, badly-lit caverns – all the taps were dry. I hope it isn’t something in the roof – I should think roofs cost the earth to mend – but if rain has got in and is leaking into the house somewhere, it will need to be dealt with.

I never realized before what a huge responsibility a house is! Harry and I used to talk about how we would have a cottage in the country after the war. We visualized log fires and latticed windows and chintz. We didn’t get as far as leaking roofs and rusting taps, or crumbling window frames. If Harry was here now, he would laugh my fears away and probably trace the source of the lonely dripping tap or pipe quite easily, either mending it himself or arranging for a plumber to do so.

But it’s an unsettling sound, that rhythmic drip-drip. I really do not like the thought of something dripping away somewhere in a dark, unreachable space . . . I don’t like, either, how regular the sound is – it’s almost like a small mechanism, or like someone lightly tapping a tattoo on the very tiny drum, or small, thick wings beating against a glass pane.

But whatever it is, I shall try to ignore it. I’ve made the library my headquarters. The Black Boar can provide a Thermos flask of coffee, together with a pack of sandwiches each day, so I shan’t have to return there for lunch. It’s bitterly cold in the house, of course – the cold of a house unheated and unlived-in for forty years – so I have arranged for a small delivery of logs (the taxi driver has a brother-in-law who can supply them). Providing it doesn’t smoke out the entire house, I shall build a fire in the library hearth.

20th February 2.30 p.m.

I’ve had a very useful morning, and quite soon I shall lock everything up and go out to meet my friend the taxi driver who is going to pick me up here at four o’clock.