Property of a Lady(47)

I’m no braver and no more cowardly than anyone else, but I’m a modern female, and I refused, categorically and absolutely, to be frightened of something that had most likely been a dream. So I crossed the room and pulled the door open.

The hall was silent and still. Or was it? I glanced uneasily at the stair, then resolutely opened all the doors downstairs and looked inside. Nothing. So I went through to the back of the house, to the big stone-flagged scullery and the smaller scullery off it, which must have been a kind of laundry room. Lying across the cracked stones of the floor was a man-shaped shadow, and as I stood there, frozen with fear, it moved slightly. My heart leapt into my throat, and I thought – he’s here! He’s standing behind the old copper. He’s watching me – I can feel that he is . . .

And then a tiny breath of wind stirred the ragged curtains hanging at the small low window, and I saw that it was only the shadow of the copper itself, squat and thick, and that the movement I had seen had been the curtain.

I went back into the hall. The stair was wreathed in shadow, and as I hesitated, I heard a faint creak of sound above me. Someone stepping on a worn floorboard? Someone creeping across the landing? From where I stood I could see the huge damp stain on the far landing wall – the place where the wallpaper had blistered and formed the outline of a thickset man, his head slightly inclined forward. Tomorrow, in the bright daylight, I would tear that paper off. For now I would collect my bag from the library, lock the house up, and go back to the Black Boar. My friendly taxi was not due for another hour, but I no longer cared. I would walk back to the village.

I dived back into the library, slung my bag over one arm, and pulled on the jacket I had been wearing. The fire was burning quite low, but I dragged the old fireguard in front of it, although at that stage I believe I wouldn’t have cared if the whole place had burned to a cinder.

As I locked the door and prepared to go down the overgrown drive towards the lane, it was raining – a soft, thin rain that would drench me within a dozen yards. I didn’t care. I would rather catch a chill than remain in that house.

I reached the end of the drive and started along Blackberry Lane. Through the rain I heard, like a fading piece of music, the distant singing again. With the sound came the long-ago memory of Elvira in Brank Asylum, telling me there are some things human ears are never meant to hear.

Midnight

I’ve managed to eat a meal with reasonable normality at the Black Boar, and I’ve even made light conversation with one or two of the local people. It’s a very friendly place, this. I wish I could live here, I really do. But I know I can’t. Every time I entered that room I should feel those searching spider-fingers over my face, and I should see the man with the macabre shadowed face. Was he the one Elvira talked about all those years ago? The one she said had touched a black core of mankind’s knowledge?

Whatever he was – whatever I saw or heard today – I’ve made a decision. I shall put the house into as good order as I can manage. Tomorrow I’ll ask the solicitor to arrange for a local builder to inspect the place as soon as possible and tell me what needs doing and how much it will cost. Then, once the work is done, the house can be put up for sale. There’s sure to be a firm of estate agents who can deal with it, and they will advise as to what price to ask.

I feel guilty when I think of Father, who had that lifetime dream of owning this house, but I know I shall never be able to live in Charect House. I’m glad to think I need only stay here another two or three days before I return safely home to Cheshire.





SIXTEEN



Michael came up out of Harriet’s story with the feeling that he was emerging from a deep lake. Harriet’s story was absolutely classic ghost-tale material: it had every ingredient, right down to the ticking clock in the corner of the firelit room. Still, if you were going to discover a ghost, you might as well do so in the grand style.

It also struck him, very forcibly, that Alice and Harriet, both around the same age when they came to Charect, had each lost a lover to war – Alice’s fiancé had died in Hiroshima, Harriet’s in the Somme. Had that created some kind of bridge for whatever was in the house? And how about Nell, whose husband had been killed in a motorway pile-up? Did that put her in the same category?

It was twenty past two. Michael switched off the bedside light, hoping the images that had haunted Harriet all those years ago would not haunt him. But there were no troubling images or dreams, and he set off after breakfast next morning, reaching Oxford and his rooms just after eleven. He put Harriet’s journal in a desk drawer where Wilberforce could not wreak havoc with it, then looked for Jack’s mobile number. Now that he thought about it, he was not at all sure he actually had it, and an hour’s search finally convinced him he did not, unless Wilberforce had eaten it in an absent-minded moment. Jack and Liz would have long since left for the cousins’ house in New Jersey, but he dialled their home number anyway. It rang four times, then the voicemail cut in:

‘Hi, this is Liz and Jack Harper’s number. Sorry we can’t take this call, but leave a message and we’ll get back. Here’s the cellphone number.’

Michael almost toppled backwards on to the floor trying to find a pen to write the number down, finally scribbling it on the back of an envelope. But when he called, it, too, went to voicemail. He left a careful message saying he was sorry to hear about Ellie and hoped the stay in New Jersey would put things right. He was just reinforcing an email sent last night, he said. Charect House had hit one or two unexpected problems, so it wasn’t really going to be practical for anyone to live in it for a while.