by Nunn, Kayte
Fenella nodded, wrapped her dressing gown about her and quickly found her slippers while Thea waited.
They went down the stairs together and she ushered Fenella in the direction of the ground floor before going along the corridor to make sure the other girls were up.
The alarm was still incessantly beeping.
All of the girls had by now been woken by the loud noise, and when she was certain they were all safely out of the house, Thea hurried after them. When she reached the front door, she realised that she had not seen the Dame. She ran to the back of the house and knocked on the Dame’s door but there was no answer. She rattled the doorknob, calling out to her. Finally, she opened the door and peered in. The room was in darkness, but she could see the bed. It was empty. And unslept in. There was no time to be annoyed that she hadn’t stayed to ensure the girls’ safety.
When Thea stepped out into the high street, she noticed lights on in a number of neighbouring windows. As a siren wailed, she turned to look back at the house. There was no sign of fire, no obvious smell of smoke. She saw the Dame, standing at the back of the group of girls, and waved, but the Dame gave no indication of having seen her.
After calming the girls down and ensuring that everyone was accounted for, Thea went to speak to the firemen, who had climbed down from their truck and begun to investigate. ‘The power’s out,’ said one of them. ‘A surge and then an outage might be what triggered the alarm.’
‘Is it only out in the house, not the street?’ she asked.
‘It seems that way.’
‘There’s nothing wrong with the fuses,’ said another. ‘But you might want to call an electrician in the morning, in any case.’
She nodded and noticed that dawn had begun to lighten the sky.
‘It’s safe to go back in now anyway,’ he added.
‘Thank you. Come on girls,’ she said, ushering them back to the house. ‘I don’t think any of us will manage to get back to sleep after all that kerfuffle, but you can at least go and rest until it’s breakfast time.’
As she stepped through the door after the girls, her mind swam with thoughts. Dodgy electrics, doors unlocking themselves and a possible infestation, not to mention the strange dream: Thea began to worry that something was very wrong with the house.
TWENTY-FIVE
Now
‘Cappuccino, please. Extra strong.’ Thea needed something to wake herself up after the night’s broken sleep. The power was still off and she’d been able to arrange for the girls to have breakfast at one of the boys’ boarding houses before school. She’d invited the Dame to join her at the cafe a few doors down from the house, but the older woman had declined, saying she would wait in for the electrician. ‘You know how it is. The moment you turn your back, they arrive.’
Thea had suggested that the electrician had her number and they could return to the house with a minute’s notice, but the Dame would not be persuaded, and as ever her countenance did not invite argument. Nor was Thea game to raise the matter of the Dame leaving the house in advance of the girls during the false alarm the night before. The last thing she needed was to get the Dame offside; the headmaster already thought she was incompetent, and she needed all the allies she could muster.
As she reached into her bag for her wallet to pay for the coffee, Thea’s fingers encountered something soft. She pulled it out, staring in confusion as she realised that it was the fabric from the book in the school library. How on earth had that ended up in her bag? A flush of shame rose within her that she might have stolen it, even unwittingly.
She gathered it up, glancing furtively around to make sure that no one had seen her, though the other occupants of the cafe – two elderly ladies, one of whom was feeding bits of muffin to a small Pomeranian partly concealed in a shopping bag – paid her scant attention. She refolded the fabric and placed it between the pages of a notebook, the best way she could think to keep it safe, and promised herself she would return it to the library as soon as she got the chance.
After she paid, she left the cafe, glancing at her watch and hurrying as she saw the time. Lessons started in fifteen minutes and she had another job to do first. Clasping her bag tightly, she started to run.
She went to the school’s main entrance and found the porter scowling at a piece of paper on the desk in front of him. She had to cough to get his attention, though she was certain he’d heard her come in. ‘Mr Battle, have you got a moment?’ she asked.
‘A moment? I believe I can spare one, Miss Rust.’ His voice dripped acid.
‘You are doubtless aware of last night’s fire alarm at Silk House,’ she said. ‘An electrician is on his way there this morning.’
‘Indeed, Miss Rust.’
‘Well, there’s another problem, and the Dame suggested I take it up with you. The floor in my study is covered with piles of dirt. No sooner do I clean it up than more take its place. It’s been going on since I arrived. I’m not sure whether we need pest control or a structural engineer.’
‘I see. Are you certain it is not merely mud from your shoes?’
She looked at him mulishly.
‘Well, a structural engineer sounds a little excessive, wouldn’t you say?’
‘I don’t know; does it?’ Thea stood her ground.
‘Very well,’ he sighed heavily. ‘I shall arrange an inspection.’
‘Thank you, Mr Battle.’ It was a start.
‘I really have nothing better to do.’
She refused to rise to the jibe, letting his sarcasm wash over her. They arranged to meet at the boarding house later that day.
On her way to class, Thea found the address of the local records office and calculated that she had just enough time after lunch and before meeting Mr Battle to spend a couple of hours there trying to find out more about the history of the house. She also wanted to do some more research on the Handsel sisters and see if there were any other stories about local witches that could tie in with theirs. She rang the number listed and gave Helen, the woman who answered the phone, a few brief details of the area of her research.
Before lunch, Thea ducked into the staffroom to collect the keys to Claire’s car; she found them in her pigeonhole together with a note giving directions to where the car was parked. She nodded hello to a few of the teachers whom she’d begun to recognise, and breathed relief that Gareth Pope seemed to be nowhere in the vicinity.
She slid into a parking space near the records office as the church bell sounded twelve. She was greeted with recognition by Helen when she gave her name. ‘I’ve retrieved everything we’ve got on the house,’ she said. ‘There are a number of folders.’ The woman’s eyes lit up and Thea felt an answering excitement rise within herself. She was anxious as to what had happened within its walls, wanted to know more about the man who had the vision to build it and the families who had lived there over the centuries.
Helen asked for her bag. ‘Nothing allowed except paper and a pencil,’ she explained, taking it from her and handing her the writing tools. She ushered Thea into a small room furnished with a wide table and an office chair. The only items on the desk were a number of small white silk-covered beanbags. Helen held out a pair of pale cotton gloves. ‘Some of the material is rather fragile,’ she said. ‘It can be damaged by the oils on your skin.’
‘Of course,’ said Thea. ‘Thank you.’
‘I’ll be back in a jiffy.’ She left the room, then returned a few minutes later with several bulging foolscap folders and a cardboard tube.
‘There’s a copy of the house plans in the tube,’ she said as she placed the folders on the table. ‘They weren’t listed as part of the archive, but I acted on a hunch and managed to find them among a number of other plans for houses on the high street.’
Thea’s eyes widened. This was more than she had been expecting.
‘I’ll get it out for you.’ She opened the end of the tube and gently removed the paper from within it, weighting the curled ends down with the
beanbags to hold them flat on the table. ‘I took the liberty of doing a little preliminary research,’ she said. ‘It was one of the town’s grandest residences in its day. Commissioned by Thomas Bayly and completed in 1763. He was a local landowner, I believe. It was a wedding present to his daughter, Caroline, and her new husband. Well, more to her husband because women weren’t allowed to own property in their own right then.’
A bell pinged from the reception area.
‘I’ll leave you to it.’ Thea could hear the reluctance in her voice as Helen went to see what was needed outside.
Thea leaned forward and peered at the paper in front of her. It might have been a copy, but it seemed almost as old as the original, yellowed and speckled with age. The ink had faded to a pale sepia and the writing was looped and scrawled across the page, but it was possible to make out the different floors, each of which had been drawn separately. She found the kitchen, the drawing room, which was now the girls’ dining room. The Dame’s room was once the scullery, she noted. And there had been a shop on the ground floor, she saw, now the sitting room. There was the narrow back staircase that went all the way from the kitchen to the attic – used by the servants, as the Dame had explained.
On the second floor were a number of large rooms, and she guessed that they must have been later divided into the smaller bedrooms and bathrooms that now existed.
On the attic floor was Fenella’s room, and Thea’s too, and then another room, now her study she guessed. She looked closer to see another doorway off that room that led to what appeared to be a small cupboard. If Thea was right, this was where she had felt the plaster give way when she leaned on it. But why had this space since been blocked off?
The plans showed the gardens, including a sketch of the parterre garden in the shape of a pentacle. A pentacle, she was well aware, was a shape linked with witchcraft, a symbol alleged to be employed in magical evocation, to foretell the future, or to have power over the devil, though it was also often associated with the element of earth. So, it had been there from the very beginning. She felt her stomach twist; her instincts told her that this was significant, though she wasn’t sure exactly how yet.
Thea had kept her phone on silent in her pocket, and she now pulled it out and surreptitiously snapped a couple of pictures of the plans before moving further along the table to where the archivist had left the folders. She checked her watch as she opened the first page. Twelve-thirty. An hour before she would have to leave.
The first folder showed more recent artefacts: newspaper advertisements from a couple of decades ago for ‘Silk House Hotel’ as it had once been known, a poster for a dance to be held there, a bill of sale. A listing taken from a local estate agency described it as a ‘Grade II listed house of historic importance and note’. There was a 1980s magazine feature, its faded colour photographs showing a grand room laid for dinner and a bedroom decorated with swags and festoons of fabric. She hardly recognised the place.
Then, a black-and-white print of the exterior, dated 1931. It showed the same gable roofline and wide front door. Little had changed, on the outside at least, in the following eighty-something years.
As she leafed through the first folder, it seemed that not much of note had taken place there in the past century. But she was more interested in going back further, though she knew there was likely to be far less material that related to the house’s early days.
There was a knock on the door and Helen popped her head around it. ‘You’ve got everything you need?’
Thea nodded, conscious that time was running short and she still had a great deal to read through.
Helen left her in peace again and Thea opened the second folder. It seemed more promising. But it was also much slower going, as there were handwritten pages from a ledger, letters, and then, as she turned the page, a wadded piece of plain white cotton. She hesitated, then unfolded it. Placed between the folds was a strip of silk fabric.
Her heart skipped a beat.
It was exactly the same design as the one she had in her notebook. The colours were brighter, the silk whiter, but the pattern was identical. She took a quick snap of that too, to compare it to the other piece of fabric that was still hidden in her handbag.
Then, a church bell began to chime again. She had to leave right away if she was to make it back to the house to meet Mr Battle.
‘That’s it?’ The porter knelt down awkwardly near where Thea was pointing. In the time she’d been away from the house the piles had grown larger, until they were now several inches high. He’d brought a pest inspector with him, a tall, unsmiling man wearing khaki overalls and safety glasses.
‘What do you think, Jim?’ Battle asked.
The inspector bent down next to him and rubbed the dust between his thumb and forefinger. ‘Hmm,’ he said. ‘It’s extremely fine, almost a powder.’ He looked back up at Thea. ‘Unlikely to be rodents,’ he said, pressing the wooden floor with his hands experimentally. ‘Looks as though it’s coming up between the floorboards.’
‘And next to this wall,’ said Thea. ‘Do you think there are borers or something under the floor?’
The inspector straightened up. ‘Whatever it is, it’s not dry rot, so that’s good news. I’ll need to inspect the outside of the building as well, and take some samples.’ He got out a couple of small clear plastic cylinders and scooped some of the dirt into each one, before screwing the lids on tightly. ‘Is it only in this spot that you’ve noticed it?’ he asked, scrawling details on a couple of labels and affixing them to the cylinders.
Thea nodded.
‘We’ll run some tests and get back to you if there’s anything to worry about. It could just be general dust, or mud from your shoes? Perhaps a breeze sweeping it into piles.’
Thea didn’t believe that explanation for a second. ‘But the piles are getting larger,’ she said, frustrated at his apparent lack of concern. ‘And I nearly always leave my outdoor shoes downstairs.’
‘D’you know, the last time I saw dirt like this was at my grandfather’s funeral,’ Battle mused. ‘They don’t really go in for it anymore. It’s all cremations and memorial services these days, no respect for tradition.’
‘What?’ Thea had no idea what he was on about.
‘Ashes to ashes, dust to dust … it looks almost exactly like the fine dirt that moles throw up when they are digging; it was traditionally gathered and used at funerals.’
‘But that’s impossible here; we’re three floors up,’ said Thea.
‘We’ll get to the bottom of it, don’t you worry,’ the inspector reassured her. ‘A good spraying will likely do the trick, if it’s needed at all. But don’t worry about the house – it’ll outlast all of us.’ He gave a dry bark of laughter that did little to alleviate her growing anxiety.
When Mr Battle and the pest inspector had gone, Thea went in search of a drink. There was a kettle at one end of the dining room, and she grabbed a teabag from the canister next to it while she waited for the water to boil. As she poured the hot water into the mug, several black specks rose up from it. Annoyed that she must have ripped the bag, she went to tip it out and start again, but just before she did, movement in the water caught her eye. She took a closer look. The black specks weren’t tea leaves. They were tiny beetles. She flinched. Ugh. What had got into the tea?
She checked. The whole thing was crawling with them.
Thea wasn’t especially squeamish, but the sight of the moving mass of tiny insect bodies turned her stomach and she gagged at the thought she might have unwittingly drunk them. As she went to the kitchen and tipped the lot into the bin, she wondered briefly if someone was playing a trick on her and the girls. Oh, stop being paranoid, she scolded herself as she set about brewing a pot of coffee instead. Who would do something like that? She knew that infestations were a fact of life, particularly in old houses, and not something to read anything untoward into. She could only hope that a proper fumigation would get rid of all the unwelcome creature
s inhabiting the place.
The coffee was hot and strong and thankfully unaffected, and so she sat at one of the dining tables, placing her mug to one side before taking out the strip of fabric to compare it to the one she had photographed in the records office.
She set the fabric down and turned to the photos on her phone. There was no doubt: it was from the same weaving. There was even a tiny notch on her piece of cloth that was missing from the one she had photographed. She clicked her phone off.
‘Where did you get that?’
Thea jumped.
‘Get what?’ she asked, sounding foolish as she turned to see Dame Hicks standing behind her. Sometimes the woman made her feel twelve years old and as if she were about to be told off. And how did she always manage to move so silently? Please at least cough as you sneak up on me, Thea wanted to say but didn’t dare.
The Dame pointed to the cloth, her eyes alight with curiosity.
‘Er …’ Thea decided to come clean. ‘Actually, in the school library.’
The Dame pinched her lips together, as if trying to decide whether or not Thea was being straight with her. ‘Witches’ weeds,’ she crooned to herself, reaching out a gnarled finger and gently stroking the fabric.
‘What?’
‘Poisonous plants. Henbane. Or nightshade as it’s more commonly known. And that’s a black lace-weaver spider, or something similar. Amaurobius ferox. The young devour the mother after hatching,’ she said, a smile playing about her thin lips.
