Property of a Lady

by Sarah Rayne

  By the time a portly constable arrived, the intruder appeared to have got away.

  ‘Very sorry indeed, sir, but it seems he’s escaped us.’

  ‘It’s impossible,’ said Michael as they stood outside the house, staring up at the windows. ‘He was on the stairs, and he went up to the top of the house – I saw him go up there. There can’t be any way for him to have got out. In any case, I locked the front door when I came out – to keep him in there. And I waited in my car until you got here.’

  ‘You saw for yourself, Dr Flint,’ said the policeman. ‘We went in every room and every last cupboard.’

  ‘Yes, we did,’ said Michael, puzzled.

  ‘And the two other outer doors were locked. The scullery door, and the garden door at the side, as well.’

  ‘There were no keys in any of the locks,’ said Michael, frowning. ‘Which means that if he got out that way, he could only have done it by unlocking a door and locking it again behind him.’ He looked at the policeman. ‘And that’s absurd. Unless—’

  ‘Unless what?’

  ‘Unless he’s got keys to the house,’ said Michael slowly and unwillingly.

  ‘Surely not. Likely, he managed to climb out through a window at the back while you were phoning. It’ll have been some tramp looking for a night’s dosshouse.’

  ‘He didn’t look like a tramp,’ said Michael, remembering the round, pallid face and the black-pit eyes. ‘I think I’d better have the locks changed while I’m here. Is there a locksmith who’d do an emergency job at the weekend?’

  ‘No one in Marston Lacy, sir, but I can give you a couple of numbers a bit further afield.’

  Michael wrote down the numbers and drove back to the Black Boar, puzzled and vaguely disturbed.

  It was not until he was showering before dinner that he realized there had been something else that was even more disturbing. All the time he was in the house he had heard the ticking of a clock – at times quite loudly, at other times fainter, as if the ticking was coming from behind a closed door.

  But he and the policeman had searched Charect House from cellar to attic, and every room had been empty. There had been no clock anywhere.

  TWO

  Charect House, seen in Sunday morning sunshine with the faint sound of church bells somewhere across the fields, had emerged from its semi-haunted state, and it presented a bland, innocuous face to the world. It was elegantly derelict and appealingly battered, and Michael suddenly liked it very much.

  He had borrowed a colleague’s camera, which the colleague had said was the easiest thing in the world to operate, but which Michael found confusing. It was fortunate that the locksmith, summoned from a nearby town, turned up and helped out. Michael was grateful, and while the man was cheerfully fitting new locks, he managed to get what he thought were several reasonable shots of the house’s outside, which should give Jack and Liz a fair idea of the place. Encouraged, he ventured inside, pressed a series of buttons for the flash, one of which seemed to work, and captured the long drawing-room and also the wide hall and staircase. He stood in the hall for a moment, looking up at the stairs, remembering the face that had seemed to stare out through the banisters of the attic stair. Could it have been a freak of the light? Could the loud knocking sounds have been the old timbers after all, or an animal? Such as squirrels with hobnail boots, demanded his mind cynically, at which point he went back outside, closing the door firmly on Charect’s ghosts. He paid the locksmith’s modest bill there and then, added a substantial tip for the twofold service of Sunday call-out and photographic advice, and drove back to the Black Boar, leaving the locksmith promising to deliver the keys to the solicitor’s office on Monday.

  Sunday lunch at the Black Boar consisted of something called Chicken á la King, which, as far as Michael could tell, was a chicken portion immersed in chicken soup from a tin. He ate it without tasting it, declined something called Death by Chocolate by way of pudding, and had a cup of coffee in the bar. After this he drove back to Oxford, relieved to be heading for familiar ground. That evening he managed to find the camera-owning colleague, who was reading a batch of second-year essays, and persuaded him to download the Charect House photos on to the computer so they could be emailed to Jack and Liz. Yes, he said, he knew it was the easiest thing in the world – of course he did – but since he was not familiar with the camera . . .

  Maryland, October 29th

  Michael,

  That’s a great batch of photos you sent. Liz is thrilled with every last one. It looks a beautiful old place, despite the neglect – and a whole lot grander than we expected! We’ll hide the photos from all the cousins!

  Liz is already working out color schemes for that long room with the windows looking over the gardens. She says Wedgwood blue and ivory, whatever Wedgwood blue might be. Beveled bookshelves in the window recesses, and cream silk drapes. (And probably Ellie’s grubby fingerprints all over them to add a touch of avant-garde.)

  We’re having a survey done next week, and we’ll try to send in local builders and electricians once we’ve got the surveyor’s report. It’ll be difficult from such a distance, but we want to get the really disruptive work done by Christmas. Wiring and plumbing and roof work – oh God, is there going to be roof work? Wouldn’t it be great to spend Christmas in the house? Assuming there’s still money in the bank for food by then. But you’d be part of the festivities, even if it had to be bread and gruel round a single candle, like a scene from Dickens.

  The efficient Ms West just emailed to say a rosewood table’s being offered in the same sale as the long-case clock, and the provenance indicates it also belonged to Charect House. (One day you’ve got to tell me what that word charect means, because I can’t find it in any reference books here and for all I know it could be anything from one of those old Edwardian after-dinner games to an obscure English law nobody’s used for a thousand years. I’m kidding about the after-dinner game, but I’m not kidding about a thousand-year-old law). Ms West said would we like her to bid for the rosewood table at the same time as the clock, and Liz said yes before I could so much as look at a bank statement.

  Liz is upstairs with Ellie – Ellie’s got herself really upset over her beloved ‘Elvira’ this last couple of days. She had fierce nightmares last night and, after breakfast, we found her huddled into a corner of her room crying to herself. Liz is keeping her off school today. It’s fine for kids to have imaginary friends, but we might have to find a way of ditching Elvira. Maybe she could go off to do missionary work in Indonesia or to rescue the rainforests? I don’t think Ellie would accept anything less altruistic. She wants to save the world, can you believe that? Seven years old and already she’s a philanthropist.

  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 ge
t 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.

  On a purely practical level, she was surviving. There was enough money to live on – not a massive amount, but enough – and she was even starting to have a modest social life in Marston Lacy. Last month the Chamber of Commerce had issued a rather stately invitation for her to join their ranks. That was the kind of thing that would have made Brad smile in the way he always smiled if she achieved something new. She wondered if she would ever get over the knowledge that she would never see him smile again, and whether she would ever be able to stop thinking about his car skidding out of control on the icy road that night. But I’m coping, thought Nell, determinedly. It’s over a year now – it’s one year and nine months to be exact. And I’m all right.

  The Harpers had emailed to say a friend of theirs, Michael Flint, was driving into Shropshire to take photos of the house – they were really keen to see what it looked like. Their daughter had drawn a bunch of pictures of how she thought it would be, but she had a crazy idea that all English houses had either thatched roofs, Elizabethan beams, or ghosts. They were not mad about thatched roofs, which might harbour rats, said Liz, or about old beams that might harbour infestation, and they certainly did not take kindly to the possibility of a resident ghost.

  Nell was looking forward to meeting the Harpers. Liz Harper’s last email said they would love to know a bit about the house’s past and its occupants; if Ms West had time to do a little local research, they would happily cover her expenses. This was an intriguing idea – Nell had not seen the house yet, but she would love to find out more about it. She had already asked Cranston & Maltravers about the clock’s history, but they had only been able to tell her that Brooke Crutchley had been the last of a locally famous clockmaking family whose work had been considerably sought after in the county. You came across Crutchley clocks in any number of local National Trust or English Heritage houses in this part of the world, and this particular one was believed to have been made for William Lee in or around 1888. They did not know anything about William Lee, they said firmly, and Nell gave up on them and looked at land registers and transfers of title in the archives department of the local council. She wasted a lot of time trying to find Charect House until she found it had been known as Mallow House until 1890.

  There was not very much to discover about William Lee or any of its owners, but early in 1940 it had been requisitioned by a rather obscure Ministry of Defence department. Nell glanced rather perfunctorily through a sheaf of letters clipped inside the file, thinking they would relate to the requisitioning of the house.

  But they did not. The letters had apparently insinuated themselves under a paper clip on one of the MOD memos and been misfiled. They bore dates from the early nineteen sixties. Nell skimmed them, then began to read with more concentration.

  THREE

  Letter from: Joseph Lloyd, Planning Department, Council Offices.

  To: Dr Alice Wilson, Special Investigator for Psychic Research.

  Dear Dr Wilson,

  I am in receipt of your letter dated 10th ult. and will try to answer your questions to the best of my ability.

  Charect House was built around 1780–1800, but its ownership is complicated and the Council is in a difficult situation. The last known owner vanished in 1939. However, in February 1940 the Ministry of Defence requisitioned the place, and it was not decommissioned until 1950. Those ten years ensured the fabric was kept in good condition, but since then the house has fallen into considerable disrepair. There are no funds to maintain it – National Trust and English Heritage were approached, but both declined, primarily because
of the absence of a legal owner.

  The title deeds cannot be traced – it’s believed they may have been destroyed in WWII bombings – but since the place cannot be allowed to deteriorate further, the County Council have appointed my committee to act in a caretaker capacity. We have passed a resolution that Charect House be leased to small business concerns on short-term tenancies until the legal owner can be found. The income can be utilized for repairs, and any monies remaining can be placed on deposit.

  However, because of its reputation as the local ‘haunted house’, currently no suitable tenants can be found. We feel it is therefore necessary to quench the persistent and damaging rumours that surround the house, and for that reason I have (most reluctantly) agreed to an investigation by your organization.

  I must tell you that I believe a normal explanation will be found for the reports of so-called ‘supernatural’ activity. The evidence all indicates that the problems are caused by one of the following:

  Settlement in the foundations.

  A fault in the plumbing, which admittedly dates to around the time of WWII.

  A fault in the electrical wiring, which dates to the Abdication of Edward VIII.

  No doubt you will bear these points in mind when conducting your investigations.

  Yours sincerely,

  J. Lloyd

  From: Dr Alice Wilson to J. Lloyd

  Dear Mr Lloyd,

  In 20 years of scientific research into the paranormal I have never heard of settlement, plumbing, or electrical wiring that caused psychic disturbances of the kind being reported to your council.

  Please let me have copies of the reports of all sightings, and advise whether the culprit house is actually empty. Of living people, that is.

  Yours,

  Alice Wilson.

  From: J. Lloyd to Dr A. Wilson

  Dear Dr Wilson,