Property of a Lady (4 page)

When the bidding opened, the room fell silent. Nell had no idea which way this would go: bidding might go through the roof and beyond her budget, or no one would bid at all and the Harpers would get it for a song.

The reserve price was declared, and Nell made a nod of assent to the auctioneer.

‘Three thousand pounds on the table,’ said the auctioneer. ‘Three thousand five-hundred, anyone?’ He looked round the room invitingly. ‘Come on, this is a nineteenth-century clock from a well-known workshop. Solid mahogany, with brass. Once the property of a lady. Three thousand five-hundred, anyone?’

The silence stretched out. Nell discovered she was gripping her catalogue so tightly that she had dented the corners. This was absurd. She would like to get the clock for the Harpers, even though she did not like it herself, but it would not be the end of the world if she was outbid. She would be annoyed not to have the £600 commission, but she could find other pieces for them. There was still the rosewood table to come.

‘Once, twice, third time,’ said the auctioneer with the air of one washing his hands of such a lacklustre audience. The gavel smacked down on the desk, and at once a faint thrumming came from the clock, as if the force of the blow had disturbed something deep inside its mechanism. For a moment the sly moon-face seemed to pulsate, then the moment passed, and there was only the sound of the next piece being carried in. Nell thought she must have imagined that glimpse of eerie movement. But as she sat back in her seat, she could feel people looking at her. William Lee, she thought, what on earth is the legacy you’ve left behind you?

The rosewood table came up shortly before three o’clock, and bidding went briskly up to £2,000, with Nell and three other dealers competing. At £2,250 one of the dealers dropped out, and at £2,500 another went. Nell was within £250 of Liz Harper’s budget, but she kept her nerve and in the end got the table with £50 to spare. Making out the cheque, she thought it had been a very good afternoon’s work.

Liz and Jack Harper had authorized the solicitors to lend Nell the keys of Charect House, but she had not yet needed to borrow them. She did not really need to do so now. Yes, she did, she wanted to make sure the rosewood table and the clock had reached their destination safely and undamaged.

The solicitor’s secretary confirmed that Cranston & Maltravers’ delivery men had been out to the house that morning and had returned the keys. She handed them over and asked if Nell needed directions.

‘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.

She reached out to turn the gilt hasp of the door to see if there was anything in the clock’s innards to account for the movement. A faint drift of old wood and something scented and sad came out, but as far as she could see there was nothing unusual. After a moment she grasped the pendulum to halt it, and the ticking faltered into silence. Nell was not sure if the ensuing silence was worse. She tapped the sides of the casing, hoping the slight vibration would start the pendulum going again, but it did not. How about the base? She tried tapping on the floor of the clock and this time felt something move uneasily. Was part of the casing loose? Nell peered into the narrow darkness. In one corner was a tiny triangle of something pale – a paper? Yes, it was the corner of some paper protruding through the oak strips. It was probably nothing more than the auctioneer’s ticket that had slid down between the oak strips, but it might as well be removed.

But the fragment resisted being pulled free, and when Nell investigated further she discovered that a small section of the oak was loose. Working with extreme care, so as not to damage anything, she finally managed to lever up a tiny section of the oak strips. It was not nailed or glued down; it dovetailed with the other timbers, but the fit had loosened slightly with the years. Thrust into the narrow recess of the clock’s base was a sheaf of brittle yellowing pages. As Nell lifted them out her hand brushed against the pendulum and the old mechanism struggled back into life. The ticking began again, but this time she barely noticed it, because her entire attention was on the retrieved pages.

She spread them out on the floor – there were ten or twelve of them, all handwritten, and, Nell had the sensation of a hand reaching out of the past. The feeling was so vivid that for a moment she could almost feel fingers curl around hers.

It was not unknown to her, this impression of the past taking her hand – she had encountered it several times during searches for particularly old pieces of furniture or china. It was a feeling she had always rather liked, finding it friendly and reassuring.

But as she began to read, sitting cross-legged on the bare, dusty floor, she knew there was nothing reassuring about the hand that was reaching out of this particular fragment of Charect House’s past.

FOUR

Entries in Dr Alice Wilson’s working diary

Tuesday:

A
rrived in Marston Lacy this morning. It’s a fragment of a village, a tiny place that slipped between a crack in the industrial revolution and got forgotten.

To the south are grey-roofed factories, with iron and steel foundries silhouetted against the skies. It’s like stepping into a painting by Lowry, with the poor ant-workers scurrying in at eight a.m. and out again at five. But on the east and north, the rolling meadows and farmhouses are like something from a Van Gogh landscape.

That man from the Council, J. Lloyd, is a fool, but at least he has arranged for me to stay in reasonable comfort at the Black Boar. It’s pretty ancient. The floors all slope, and the ceilings are so low that you have to walk about like Groucho Marx. But I shan’t be there very much; I’ll be camped out in Charect House. It’s an odd feeling to think I’m finally going to see it.

3 p.m.

Unpacked and had a wash and brush-up (a very brisk process these days; I lost any vanity I had years ago). Then I drove out to inspect Charect House. I’ll admit to feeling nervous. I must have seen more sinister houses than most people do in a lifetime, but this one is special.

It’s a remarkable old place. Romantically-inclined folk would sigh poetically, and think it beautiful and sad, but I didn’t think it was either of those things. I thought it was in a shocking state of dereliction and that it was a crying shame nobody had found money from somewhere to mend the gutters or shore up the sagging roof. I’ll bet that cheapskate, Joseph Lloyd, and his committee tried to duck responsibility for it for years.

There are Victorian cobwebs in the corners of all the rooms, and under one window ledge is an anonymous insect that looks as if it reached the chrysalis stage, died, and became petrified. I can’t say I’m surprised. It’s as cold as a fridge in here, and if I have to spend any length of time here I’m likely to end up petrified myself by breakfast-time. (
Note to self
: don’t forget to take along the whisky tonight).

There’s mould growth around the windows and great swathes of damp on some of the walls – in fact when I went upstairs I had quite a bad moment because I thought someone was standing at the head, watching me. But it turned out to be the formation of the damp patches, and my heart returned to its normal rate. It wouldn’t surprise me if that particular damp patch isn’t one of the things that’s given this house its reputation, because just for a moment the illusion was alarmingly vivid – a thickset man, his head turned towards me in a listening attitude . . .

Where there’s no damp, there’s graffiti. It’s remarkable how most of today’s wall-writers seem unable to spell even the most basic Anglo-Saxon epithets. There are piles of distasteful rubbish in corners, as well: greasy papers that once enclosed hamburgers, and foil trays of curry, and smashed beer bottles and used contraceptives. You could make a good case for the things the human race regard as necessary to survive by study-ing the detritus in a derelict building. Shelter, food, drink, and sex.

Still, Charect House hasn’t fared too badly. I’m pleased about that, although its condition isn’t my concern. What is my concern is whether there’s a genuine presence here. That’s why the council contacted the society and why I’m here. (It was a considerable feather in my cap to be given this assignment, because investigations for local authorities usually go to one of the directors. The fact that I intrigued a bit – well, more than a bit – to get it, is neither here nor there.)