Her eyes adjusted to the dim light, the soil and broken pottery littering the hallway like the rubbish from a dorm room after party. She righted the wooden plant stand, piling the larger pieces of broken pottery on top. There wasn’t much she could do about the dirt, especially since her heel hurt so much. She limped into the study, sinking into the nearest armchair.
The lamp wouldn’t work because her laptop was using its power point so, unplugging her laptop, she replaced the plug for the lamp. The light was meagre but enough to see the spread of blood on the bottom of her sock. Peeling it off, she checked the wound. It felt worse than it looked despite the blood pulsing from the small puncture.
Pressing on the wound with the bloody sock, she cast her eyes around the room. She’d love a room like this one day. Her parents had bookcases filled with modern thrillers, Clive Cussler, Stephen King, and a few high-fantasy epics her mother preferred. But this was a library, filled with true classics. First editions, rare folios, and, another portrait? How had she missed that? Another one of Alan’s games, moving the art around the house?
She checked her laptop, its full battery bar a reassuring sign that charging it overnight had worked, now she’d be able to scroll through the images until she found the ones where the subjects weren’t missing. She was over being played and arming herself with evidence was the best defence. If it wasn’t Alan, it had to be someone he was in cahoots with. Although god knows why someone would want to stall her or try to scare her. The job she was doing would only benefit the lawyer in the long run and it went against every moral code and business code for him to derail her work.
Speeding through, she couldn’t believe she’d done as much as she had. She’d forgotten how much she’d achieved with all the drama from yesterday. She smiled. There were lots of rooms to do, but she’d broken the back of it. And fingers crossed, her colleagues would arrive today. Hopefully the snow ploughs were going this far out, the farmers still had to get to town.
Image after image flashed by, she tried not to think about the people missing from the portraits. She persuaded herself that those paintings were sketches of the final sitting, done so that the subjects in the portraits didn’t have to sit for too long. She couldn’t concentrate. Her eyes kept sliding around the study. She stabbed at the keyboard again, scrolling, scrolling. Her eyes blurred. Too many photos going past, she must have missed them. She scrolled up to the top, admonishing herself to be slower, when a sudden hammering at the door jolted her from her chair.
The farmer thought Anita, and she limped back to the foyer, laptop under one arm. It sounded like he was trying to break down the door so she hobbled faster, grimacing each time her heel hit the floor.
Awkwardly balancing on one foot, and the ball of the other, she tugged the heavy door open. It wasn’t the ancient-lined face of the farmer who greeted her.
Lined up on the steps, laden with overnight cases and an assortment of grocery bags were the rest of her team from work. Surprise gave way to relief and she flung herself at her colleagues, who laughed awkwardly. None of them had ever seen any form of emotion from Anita. She was a closed book which they’d discussed at length on the drive and the enforced overnight stay at the nearest town due to the heavy dumping of snow.
“Thank god you’re here. You’ve no idea how much there is to do. Although I’ve done a lot, and I was running out of food, and wine,” Anita laughed, before whispering, “And the lawyer for the estate is here. He’s still in bed but he’s an odd one, wait till you meet him. I burnt his legs, but it was an accident, and I finished the milk today, and, oh, thank god you’re here.” Anita tapered off, her hand straying to her ear, twisting the small diamond, round and round.
She didn’t know these people well, about the same way you’d be familiar with a neighbour on the other side of the road. You waved at them, could recognise the car they drove, had an inkling about how many people lived there and noticed they used a cleaner once a week. But Anita knew nothing more than surface facts about her colleagues. She’d never asked. Rarely attended social engagements. Wasn’t part of the work social club, and other than a lukewarm involvement with the once-a-year Secret Santa at work, she didn’t socialise with them. Yet here she was, sharing her thoughts, and feelings, and hugging them. She stepped back.
“Please come in. It’s freezing out there.”
The trio traipsed in, three pairs of eyes scanning the cavernous foyer. Calculating eyes counting the frames stacked against the walls. Judgemental eyes taking in the tray of food Anita had left on the floor outside the dining room and Anita’s dishevelled appearance.
Blushing, Anita realised she’d not had a wash or brushed her teeth since the day before. She wasn’t vain but her hands fluttered to her hair and clamped her lips over her teeth, mortified she’d gushed over her colleagues with sour morning breath.
“My god, I never realised there were so many paintings,” said Yvonne Hamilton, her high pitched voice at odds with her age and appearance. Yvonne peeled off her coat and scarf, hanging them on the hall stand. “Such a shame these are ruined,” she said, holding up one of the damaged paintings. The same paintings Anita suspected Alan of standing on, which was why he was hiding in his room, because he didn’t have the courage to face her wrath.
“This is half of them,” Anita said, closing the door behind them. Not that it made much difference to the temperature.
“Christ, it was tropical in the car compared to here,” said Scott Jacka, shivering in his lightweight crewneck jersey, his jacket on the backseat of the car still.
Anita nodded. Scott was around her age. Good looking, the sort who knew he was, so made no effort to be friendly. He didn’t have to, for all his vanity, he had an encyclopaedic knowledge of books, stamps, coins and other such collectibles, and travelled the country at the beck and call of wealthy collectors and institutions.
“Sorry, I’ve not been able to figure out the heating. Come through to the kitchen where it’s warmer and I can make coffee, as long as you’ve brought milk?” Anita limped off towards the kitchen, trusting they’d follow her. The third member of the team hadn’t bothered to say anything, he stood there taking it all in. Callaghan Webb, Furniture Division. Stocky, silent, his hands stained with furniture polishes, stains and dyes. Anita had rarely spoken to him at work other than the usual morning greetings and small talk in the office kitchen, so wasn’t surprised he’d held his tongue in the foyer.
“I don’t know when Alan will appear,” she burbled. “He’s the lawyer,” she added. “Where’s Warren?” Warren Taylor, her manager. He’d told her he’d come too. A friendly face who was missing.
“Something came up, a great aunt died. He’s the closest relative, so had to arrange the funeral and things. He left you a message, didn’t you get it?” Yvonne flittered about the kitchen, peering in cupboards, drawers, and out the frosty window. “This place is a time warp,” she said, stroking the wooden bench and fiddling with the bakelite knobs on the transistor. Roaring static filled the room as she turned it on. “Doesn’t even work,” she said, flicking it off.
“No coffee machine?” Scott asked, watching as Anita coaxed the old stovetop into life to boil the kettle.
Anita buried her frustration at the mirrored questions Scott was asking, so like Alan, it was unsettling. Where Alan was pasty and overweight, Scott had a runners physique. She’d seen him taking off from work, backpack on, jogging home. He’d no more end up as unfit as Alan Gates as she would become the President of the United States.
“No coffee machine,” she replied, busying herself with mugs and spoons, amused by the look of anguish on Scott’s face.
Callaghan fished out the milk, unscrewing the lid before handing it to her, all without catching her eye. His eyes flicked over the kitchen, homing in on the little pot of change on the bench. Callaghan tipped it out, discounting the coins which skittered across the table and onto the floor.
With his finger, he pushed through the pile. Intermingled among the coins were
milk tokens, a tin Saint Christopher’s medal and a cufflink. The matching cufflink to the shirt stud Anita had found in the dining room.
“This is a nice one Yvonne,” Callaghan said, pushing the lone cufflink across the table.
Yvonne pulled a loupe from her cavernous handbag, fitting it into her eye socket with precision, freeing her hands to hold the cufflink.
“Such a shame there’s only one, such a lovely piece, the enamel work is in perfect condition. Usually you’d see tiny chips, but there aren’t any,” said Yvonne, her face a mask of concentration.
“May I look?” Anita asked.
Yvonne’s loupe slipped from her eye, and she caught it expert-like before handing over the cufflink.
Anita examined it, “I found a shirt stud last night which matches, in the dining room, where I’ve been working, wedged under the table.”
“Marvellous,” Yvonne gushed. “Where is it?”
Anita blushed. She’d left it on the tray amongst dismembered broccoli and stagnating rashers of bacon adorned with fluff and detritus from the floor.
“I’ll go grab it, you guys drink your coffee, and I’ll be right back.” Anita fled, skidding on the foyer’s tiles as she reached the tray. She couldn’t carry this into the kitchen. What would they think of her? She never once considered that they’d arrive so early, counting on them not arriving till after lunch at the earliest. She’d have to hide it until later, when they were all in their rooms.
Casting about for a suitable hiding place, she felt like an utter ninny, and didn’t want word getting back to Warren that she was lazy. She was already embarrassed by the pile of dishes in the sink. God, they must think she’s an uncouth slob. She shot up the stairs with the tray. She’d leave it in her room and would clean it later. Swiping the stud off the tray, she gave it a good rub with a handkerchief from the top drawer. The faint smell of talcum powder still clung to its pressed cotton folds. Closing her bedroom door, she hammered on Alan’s door, telling him the team from Nickleby’s had arrived, complete with provisions.
There was no answer. Fine, let him sulk. At least they’d be able to get a start on things without him interrupting. He could stay there all day for all she cared. She felt a touch of anxiety as she walked away from his room. A touch which she shrugged off. She needed to show Yvonne the enamelled stud.
Chapter 21
“Could this house be any creepier?” Yvonne exclaimed, the coffee kick-starting her brain. The others in the kitchen nodded their agreement. “Did you hear about what happened here? Do you think Anita knows? Did anyone tell her?”
“Warren didn’t want to tell her while she was here by herself,” Callaghan replied, sipping the bitter brew. It wasn’t the best coffee he’d had, but then again he hadn’t made it and it was the only coffee on offer. Beggars can’t be choosers, his life motto.
“Warren wasn’t going to tell me what?” Anita replied, walking back into the kitchen.
Callaghan subsided into his mug, mute once more. Scott took up where Yvonne left off, his social skills as lacking as his modesty.
“The children who went missing, murdered probably. Their bodies never found. Complete scandal. Family claimed they drowned in a pond, but come on, a pond? They would have floated to the surface, or someone could have jumped in and saved them. If you read the local history pages, there’s loads of theories about what happened. Murdered by the mother’s boyfriend being one of them.”
“That’s not helpful conjecture,” Callaghan commented, watching Anita’s face pale. It was interesting observing her process this information. He felt a little sorry for her. She wasn’t the most social of colleagues, but even being in this house the short time he’d been was unsettling. He’d no idea how she’d coped for the last few nights. Idly, he wondered how well she was sleeping.
“How many children went missing?” Anita asked, the gold stud held tight in her hand, its sharp sides cutting into her flesh.
Scott pondered the question a moment, “No idea, I remember reading it was children and not child. Still, tragic. Have you heard them wailing at night?” he waved his fingers in a poor attempt at imitating a spooky Halloween ghost.
“Stop it Scott,” Callaghan said, tiring of Scott’s childish play. “Have you finished your coffee? Good, lets get unpacked and finish cataloguing this house. The weather forecast is for more snow at the end of the week. We need to be done before the truck arrives to take everything back for the auction.”
Scott, immune to the warning in Callaghan’s voice, drained his coffee, grimacing at the artificial taste. It would be a long week if this was the standard of coffee he’d be drinking every morning.
The scraping of chairs, the rinsing of coffee cups and congenial chatter filled the kitchen. There was no way anyone would have heard the muffled cries from elsewhere in the house. Cries cut short with the sweep of a sable brush.
Chapter 22
The team of appraisers worked like a well-oiled machine; each had their speciality and knew where the boundaries between each discipline were and they weren’t above helping each other either. Even Scott, for all his foibles, was a good team player, expert not only in his field but with passable knowledge in a dozen different areas.
“Hey Scott, can you come and look at this?” Yvonne called from the dining room.
Scott left the shoebox of stamps he’d discovered on a shelf in the drawing room. It amused him how people stored their stamp collections in shoe boxes. Of all the boxes ever designed, shoe boxes were the most common sort of storage repository he handled. Some of his clients kept thousands of dollars worth of stamps in boxes held together with yellowing tape.
“What have you got?”
“What do you think this mark is? I can’t read it, and I don’t want to take a stab at guessing,” Yvonne passed over the small silver salver.
“Looks like London, there’s an F, is that a crown on the top? Can’t work out the second initial, an H or K. Sorry.”
“It’s a K, with a crown and definitely the leopard’s head, but can’t make out the year, 1770 or 1772?”
“Could be. Who’s the maker then, if it’s an F and K?” Scott asked.
Yvonne tilted her head, like a squirrel determining the best way up a tree. “Fred Knopfell? His work is standard run-of-the-mill stuff, but this is a nice piece. He was a journeyman for Paul de Lamerie, but with none of his flair, unfortunately. Still it’ll fetch a fair price at auction, because of Knopfell’s link to de Lamiere.”
Coding it with a sticker, Yvonne moving the small piece onto the table, to join the pile of other treasures she’d catalogued. It was easier to describe marked silverware than a stylised signature on an obscure piece of art.
Scott returned to the stamp collection. A glance showed a standard assortment of twentieth century stamps, all postally used. It wasn’t worth his time sorting through the collection. He’d auction it as a box lot and good luck to the person who bid on it. There wouldn’t be a Penny Black hidden amongst them, there never was. In his early years he expected every bulk lot was hiding a gem and that if he looked carefully enough he’d discover that rare postage frank or stamp and make his millions. But those days were long gone.
Callaghan joined him in the drawing room. As the resident furniture expert, his job was the easiest of the group. Older furniture is bulkier than modern pieces and more likely to come in pairs or suites, so it was faster to describe a set of twelve Gothic Revival dining chairs than it was to itemise the contents of a jewellery box or a box of stamps.
“Have you seen the lawyer yet?” Callaghan asked, taking a seat on the couch.
Scott shook his head before standing and stretching. Hunching over the shoebox had given him an uncomfortable crick in his neck.
“One of us should get him out of bed. It would be a courtesy to us showing his face,” Callaghan said. He had no time for laziness.
Scott abandoned his stamps, the gleeful little boy inside jumping at the chance to take a break. Walking
through the dining room, he noted Anita hunched over a corner of a wooden frame. She was an odd one that one. Quiet, but intense at the same time. Aside from the ridiculously enthusiastic welcome she’d given them when they’d arrived, she’d pretty much not said a word since.
Giving Anita no more thought, he bounded up the stairs. They’d not even ventured upstairs yet, having got straight to work after the coffee conscious they had limited daylight hours. The hall stretched for miles, interrupted at intervals by tightly shut doors. He hadn’t asked Anita which room was the lawyer’s, so tried the first one. The door opened revealing clothing strewn across the floor and bed. A tray of what looked liked last night’s dinner sat on the dressing table and the large bed was unmade, covers thrown back, pillows clumped together like a feathered nest. Ah, Anita’s room. Unlike the rest of the house, these walls were empty. He didn’t blame her for starting here. He hoped like hell she’d emptied his room too as he didn’t fancy sleeping in a room full of long-dead, dour-faced portraits like the ones downstairs. God knows the dreams they’d conjure up. He pulled the door shut and moved on to the next one.
He raised his hand ready to knock. Something didn’t feel right and his hand fell to his side. Scott looked down the hall. He could have sworn all the doors were shut, but now the one at the end was open. Mind you, it was an old house and these things happened. Probably when he opened Anita’s door, the air pressure changed or... Jesus, now he was being paranoid.
Ignoring the open door, he knocked on door in front of him, which was bound to be the lawyer’s room, a forceful no nonsense knocking. The sound rang out through the house and the fronds of the nearest fern quivered with the reverberations. There was no answer. Scott tried again. Nothing.
Gripping the brass handle, he turned it and the door opened silently. He’d been right, this was obviously Alan’s room. Placed on the floor at the end of the bed were the lawyer’s ruined brogues and his trousers lay folded across an ancient wooden trouser press. Loose change and a cellphone the only adornments on the heavy mahogany campaign chest which served as the dressing table. Of the lawyer, there was no sign. He’d slept here at some stage, the covers loosely pulled up, as if he’d attempted to make the bed, but had lost interest halfway through.
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