Property of a Lady(5)
It looks as though you sneaked a romantic weekend into the schedule somewhere. Except that if you were trying to keep your girlfriend a secret, you should have told her not to stand at the window while you photographed it. I couldn’t see much detail, but I hope she’s a cracker. Maybe we can meet her when we come over. When I think of all the knockout girls who’ve lain siege to you over the years, and how you’ve never even realized it . . . Well, I could just spit, that’s all.
Till soon,
Jack.
Michael hardly registered Jack’s last sentence, because by this time he was scouring the computer to retrieve the photos of Charect House. It was astonishing how difficult it was to find things on a computer: he opened several files which appeared to contain nothing but incomprehensible hieroglyphics; lost himself amidst technical folders, alarmingly labelled ‘System File Do Not Delete’; but finally ran the photos to earth.
Blown up on to the computer monitor, Charect House looked benign and bland. The first three or four shots showed the frontage and views of the back. Michael remembered taking those to the sound of the locksmith’s cheerful whistling.
It was the fifth photo that caused an icy hand to twist into his ribs. He had moved a little way back into the garden for that one, hoping to get a good shot of the roofline and the chimneys. People worried about roofs and chimneys in old houses, and Jack would appreciate shots of them.
Almost all of the windows were splintered with sunlight, but the top row – the small attic windows directly under the eaves – were in shadow. At the very smallest one was the clear outline of a female figure pressed against the glass, obviously looking down into the gardens. One hand was raised as if she might be waving.
Or as if she might be banging on the glass.
Michael sent a non-committal email to Jack, saying he was glad the photos had been helpful, that he would of course go back to check the progress of the various work, and that he hoped Ellie would get over her spell of nightmares. It upset him to think of the small Ellie with her heart-shaped face and bright hazel eyes suffering nightmares and crying. He would send her a light-hearted email as if Wilberforce had written it, making up a Tom-and-Jerry-type story about the family of mice who lived under the stairs at Oriel College and who always got the better of Wilberforce, jeering and blowing raspberries at him from holes in the skirting boards. He sometimes did this, and Ellie always loved the stories and wanted more of them.
He made several attempts to respond to Jack’s veiled questions about the face at the window, but the first draft sounded as if he was discussing a silent horror movie, the second had an air of worried apology, and the third appeared to have been written by a too-eager estate agent trying to sell Borley Rectory or the Bloody Tower . . . (‘You get a lovely view of the river by night and the only ghost who’s in any way troublesome is Ann Boleyn and that’s only once a year on the anniversary of her beheading . . .’)
In the end he did not comment about the photo at all. He would prefer to let Jack and Liz suspect he was having a secret (and therefore presumably illicit) fling, rather than plant the idea that their house had a ghost. It did not, of course, because there were no such things and, even if there were, Michael was not going to believe in them. As for the meaning of charect, he would wait until Jack saw the house before he disclosed that it was a kind of rune – an ancient spell for warding off evil.
The photo apparently showing a female at the top window would have a rational explanation, and if Michael understood more about cameras and computers he would no doubt be able to provide that explanation. The obvious explanation was a freak reflection from a cloud. He looked at the photograph again, and this time he managed to increase the size to 150 per cent. He instantly wished he had not done this, because if it was a cloud, it was a very unusual one. It appeared to have a mass of dark hair, a slender neck and a garment with striped sleeves, and it could not be anything other than a human female form. Or could it? How about it being the remnant of an old curtain inside the room – or a piece of striped fabric that had blown against the window? He seized on this idea gratefully and was able to end the email to Jack by saying he hoped the house did not consign Jack to a debtors’ gaol and the rest of them to gruel by candlelight at Christmas.
Nell West hoped she would manage to buy the long-case clock for Jack and Liz Harper without it breaking their budget. They gave the impression of being fairly prosperous, but Charect House was said to be in such a tumbledown condition that it would probably bankrupt a Texan oil millionaire.
It seemed vaguely unfair that the Harpers had to pay for things that had once belonged to Liz Harper’s family, but business was business and their loss could be Nell’s gain. She had quoted a buying commission of twenty per cent of the eventual purchase price, which was pushing it a bit, but Liz Harper had said that was fine and they would love to have the clock and the table and pretty much anything else that could be found.
Nell had not been in Marston Lacy very long, but most people knew her quite well already because her shop was in the main street and she tried to have really striking displays in the bow window.
In the main, life was still bleak without Brad, but occasionally something pleasant or amusing happened and at those times Nell felt as if she had stepped out of the darkness into an unexpected splash of sunlight. And there were a number of things to be grateful for – it was important to remember that. Beth seemed to be getting over the loss of her father; she liked her school and had made friends there. This was a huge relief, because after his death Beth had woken sobbing each morning, because her daddy had been in her dream, alive again and smiling. Nell did not say Brad was in her own dreams as well.