The Sin Eater(70)

Here was the road and the house, slightly shabby, and with the same sad feeling of neglect, and the faint smell of damp. She went systematically into each of the rooms before starting work, opening cupboards and drawing back curtains. This was not being neurotic; it was sensible to make sure an empty old house really was empty. It was certainly not that she was visualizing a ravening axe murderer ready to erupt from the linen cupboard. Or, said her mind cynically, expecting a mysterious man with vividly blue eyes to walk out of the shadows . . . ?

But despite her resolve, she found herself standing on the upper landing, her heart skittering with half-fearful, half-hopeful expectancy. There was no one here, of course . . .

Or was there? Standing on the second-floor landing, she had the impression that something moved in the room at the far end – the room where she had been working when she saw Declan. As she hesitated, there was a soft creaking sound from within the room. Nell jumped, then realized the sound was too rhythmic to be man-made; it was more the kind of sound the house itself might make – such as a door swinging to and fro on sagging hinges. But what would cause a door to move by itself in a silent and still house?

‘Declan . . . ? Are you here?’

Nell had not intended to say this aloud, but the words whispered into the shadows of their own volition. Her skin prickled with apprehension, then common sense kicked in, because she was behaving like some wimpish heroine from a bad horror film – tiptoeing ingenuously round the haunted house, artlessly enquiring if anyone was here. And what would you do, my girl, if your sinister blue-eyed Declan whispered back at you from the shadows? Here I am . . . I’ve been waiting for you . . .

‘Rubbish,’ said Nell very loudly, and went noisily and decisively towards the room, opening the door wide. And of course there was no one there, only the same packing cases as before and the old dressing table with the oval mirror. Nell touched the mirror’s frame lightly, and it moved. At once the creaking came again, and Nell let out a breath of relief. That was what she had heard.

She went down to the long sitting room and started listing the contents. Anything she could not identify or evaluate herself would be photographed so she could check with colleagues. Like the chess piece? Measuring a Victorian bureau, Nell allowed herself a brief daydream in which she found the entire set, and made a killing at Christie’s or Sotheby’s.

The morning was very dark and towards midday she hunted out the table lamps and screwed in the light bulbs she had brought. There was an old-fashioned standard lamp lying in a corner, as well, which cast a friendly pool of light. Nell worked on. Three quarters of her mind was absorbed in what she was doing – categorizing what was clearly junk, setting question marks against stuff that might be worth placing with a good second-hand dealer, trying to put a figure against items that would be sellable in her own shop. There was a beautiful desk that had the elegant lines of the late 1700s, and a set of very nice dining chairs with petit point covers. Nell wondered if Benedict’s grandfather had bought them, or if previous owners had simply included them when selling the house. However they came to be here, she would certainly like to have the desk and the chairs in the window at Quire Court.

In a room overlooking the back garden were four framed charcoal sketches of local scenes: two views of Highbury Fields, a church, simply labelled as ‘St Stephen’s’, and a detailed drawing of an old music hall called Highbury Barn. Nell liked these and she liked the links they provided to an older Highbury. The sketches were dated 1863 and 1864, and looked as if they had been done by an amateur artist. They would not be worth a massive amount, but a local dealer might take them because people living in the area would like them.

She worked for another half an hour, then went through to the kitchen where she ate the ham rolls and the apple at the big table. The kitchen was a large room, and although it did not have the newest designer cupboards or fittings it was perfectly acceptable. While she ate, she looked through the notes she had made so far, then fetched her Filofax so she could write names of one or two contacts against a couple of the items, for possible consultations. There was a large mahogany dining table that was too big for most people’s houses, but might sell as a boardroom table.

It was very quiet, probably because this was the back of the house, although when she went through to the main part of the house, the creaking of the mirror came again from overhead. She would wedge the hinges in place later. For the moment she would finish listing the dining-room furniture in company with a cup of tea. There was tea and dried milk in the cupboards; Benedict would not mind if she took a spoonful of each.

As she filled the kettle, she was glad that she had not fallen into the trap of listening for a knock at the door or the crunch of footsteps or tyres on the drive. Declan, whoever he was, had simply been playing a game that day. Come on the eighteenth – for pity’s sake, did he think he was a character in a slushy romance or a teen magazine story? Perhaps somebody had told him he had hypnotic eyes, or perhaps there had been some sort of squiffy bet at a Christmas party.

She switched on the kettle and left it to boil while she carried one of the table lamps into the hall, which was in semi-darkness. The shadows were raggedly edged with the deep red of the stained-glass fanlight over the door, but the lamp, plugged in and switched on, chased the shadows back to their corners. She glanced up at the stair, and tilted the lampshade slightly so that it shone up the stairs. That was better. She glanced towards the front door, then opened it and peered out. The gardens were drenched in gloomy January greyness, and it must have rained earlier, because the shrubs were dripping with moisture. But it was a perfectly ordinary, unthreatening garden with an entirely normal London street beyond. Nell closed the door. She would finish in the dining room, then make a start on the upper floors. She was not expecting to find a great deal in them, but the packing cases on the second floor must be gone through thoroughly. Would she find the rest of the chess set in one of them? She had just started to go up the stairs when a whispered voice came out of the darkness on the half-landing above her.