Property of a Lady(8)
‘I think I’ll find it,’ said Nell. ‘I know more or less where it is.’
‘It’s a weird old place. Right in the middle of nowhere. There’re a good few stories about it, if you take my meaning.’
‘I’ll pack the bell, book and candle,’ said Nell, and she went out to collect her car from the square of waste ground next to her shop.
Probably, Charect House would look very pleasant and welcoming in sunshine, Nell thought when she arrived, but seen through a curtain of rain, with moisture dripping from the branches, it was depressing in the extreme. The garden was a tangled mass – nodding seed heads of rosebay willow-herb, rose hips from ragged-headed wild roses, and immense bushes of lilac and lavender. In summer the lilac would scent the air for miles around. On the other side was surely the remains of a herb garden: was that rosemary there? Rosemary, that’s for remembrance. Nell and Beth had planted a rosemary bush on Brad’s grave, Beth’s small face solemn and absorbed in the task. Had Charect’s rosemary bush been planted in memory of someone? A former owner? Presumably not William Lee though; from the way the local people shied away from his memory, deadly nightshade would be likelier.
Nell parked the car and went inside. There was a large hall with a staircase – at some time the boards would have resembled new-run honey with the sun on it, but they were dull with scratch marks where the auctioneers’ men had dragged the packing cases. Nell followed the scratches into a room on the right. The rosewood table had been placed under the window, and the clock was against the far wall. She stood in front of it for a moment, wondering whether to wind it up and set the elaborate pendulum going. Better not. Something might be delicately balanced in the mechanism, and she might damage it.
This was a beautiful room, although it needed furniture – deep, squashy armchairs and sofas, books lining the alcoves that flanked the fireplace, and a fire crackling in the hearth . . . She and Brad had had a tall, old house in North London; it was a bit battered, always needing more work done to it than they could afford, but they had loved it.
It was at this point Nell realized she was not alone in the house. Someone was walking around upstairs.
She was not immediately concerned, although she was slightly startled, because she had thought the only set of keys was the one she had borrowed half an hour earlier. But it was most likely someone preparing an estimate for the Harpers or the friend they had mentioned. Whoever it was, she had better call out to say she was here. She crossed to the hall and stood at the foot of the stairs. Yes, there was certainly someone there – it sounded as if something was being dragged across the floor.
‘Hello!’ called Nell, her voice echoing in the empty house.
The sounds stopped at once, and absolute silence followed. Perhaps all she had heard was something on the roof. A bird? If it was, it was a very large one.
‘Who’s there?’ Nell said and was instantly annoyed with herself because this was the classic bleat of every person in an empty house with a ghost legend.
She went cautiously up the first few stairs, her footsteps ringing out, uneasily aware of Charect’s isolation. At the top of the stairs was an L-shaped landing, with doors opening off it. All the doors were closed and, at the far end, a small, secondary staircase wound upwards. Had the sounds come from up there? The attics? Or was someone hiding behind one of those closed doors?
Except they were not all closed after all – the second one on the left was ajar. Someone’s standing behind it, thought Nell, her heart bumping. Someone’s watching me through the narrow crack in the door frame. No, I’m wrong, it’s just the shadows. But I’m damned if I’m going to investigate.
She turned to go back downstairs, and her heart leapt into her throat, because there had been a whisk of movement from above – as if something had darted back into the concealment of the shadows. There was a brief heart-stopping image of a figure with a large, pallid face and staring black eyes . . . Nell froze, one hand clutching the banisters, then drew in a shaky breath of relief. The plaster and paper on the wall opposite the window was badly damp-stained, and from this angle the marks formed themselves into the hunched-over figure of a thickset man. Optical illusion, nothing more. Like seeing faces in the clouds or in melting butter on toast.
She went back downstairs and headed for the long room to collect her bag. Probably the sounds had some equally innocent explanation – timbers expanding in the roof, maybe. But as she pushed open the door, she heard a different sound.
The ticking of a clock.
For several minutes Nell tried to convince herself the auctioneers’ men had set the long-case clock going after delivering it, but she knew they had not. The clock had not been going when she first came into the house.
The mechanism had a gritty, teeth-wincing sound which she hated. It sounded as if long, fleshless fingers were tapping a tattoo against a windowpane in the depths of a frozen winter. The pendulum swung from side to side, not quite aligned with the sounds, the bronze disc catching the light like a monstrous glistening eye.
Nell forced herself to think logically. Was it possible there had been some vibration in the house that had set the mechanism going? The sounds she had heard earlier might have been erratic plumbing – the scullery taps had looked pretty ancient, and there might be elderly pipes under the floors that had shuddered and sent a vibration up through the clock’s spine.