Scott stepped into the room, his curiosity piqued. On the opposite wall stood a huge freestanding wardrobe. He admired himself in the mirrored middle section and self-consciously tidied his hair and tucked his shirt in, smoothing out the creases from the long car trip. He pulled open the left-hand side door of the wardrobe; the hinges protesting. Heavy winter coats hung in a line with military precision, sporting tiny holes, the victims of fashion conscious moths. Scott pushed the coats to one side, coughing as the movement disturbed decades of dust. The fabric fibres tickling his nose. He sneezed, the sound unnaturally loud in the room. Aside from an old pair of ice-skates, the bottom was empty. Scott turned his attention to the other side. He didn’t expect to find the lawyer cowering there but instinct told him to check anyway.
Grabbing the tear drop handle of the door, he tugged hard, expecting the hinges to resist as much as the other door’s had. It opened smoothly.
The absence of dust and moth carcasses the most striking thing about this side of the panelled wardrobe. Pairs of polished shoes lined the base and wooden shoe lasts sat like prosthetic feet in every shoe. A line of men’s suits hung smooth on their hangers. A black scarf wound around one hanger the only jarring note.
Scott closed the door and held it shut. For reasons he couldn’t articulate, the suits and shoes struck him as wrong. The winter coats on the other side oozed the scent of decay, and the sleeve of his jersey was peppered with dust from where he’d moved the coats. Yet this side was pristine, cleaner than his wardrobe at home.
He backed away from the wardrobe as the door slowly swung open and hung like a slack-jawed idiot.
Scott froze. His reflected image could well have been a portrait. Like a startled rabbit, he hurried from the room without looking back, racing downstairs, taking them two at a time, he tripped as he reached the bottom and barrelled into the dining room. Heart racing, he grasped the back of a chair for support. He had no words.
Anita looked up from her laptop. The light from the chandelier reflected on the sheen of sweat on Scott’s brow.
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing, just ran down the stairs, thought I was fitter than this,” Scott coughed, covering his discomfort. His knuckles white, he unclenched his hands and stretched his fingers before wiping the perspiration from his forehead.
“Was Alan still asleep?”
“He wasn’t in his room.” Scott said.
“Maybe he was in the bathroom?” she said.
Scott grunted. It was possible that the lawyer had been in the toilet but there was no way he was going to look. Irrational he knew, but he wasn’t going back upstairs unless someone came with him. Not that he’d ever say that to Anita, or to anyone else.
“He’ll turn up I’m sure, anyway I’ve got heaps to carry on with in here,” he said, pointing to the drawing room.
He looked out to the shadowy foyer, before darting back into the drawing room. Anita’s eyes followed him, before she too looked out into the familiar foyer. She couldn’t see, or hear, anything out of the ordinary.
Chapter 23
“What did the lawyer say?” Callaghan asked, dropping heavily into an armchair.
“He wasn’t in his room,” Scott replied, not meeting Callaghan’s eyes.
Callaghan observed his colleague for a moment, noting his flushed cheeks and the throbbing vein at Scott’s temple. “That’s weird.”
“Ah huh,” Scott said, his head bent low over the box of stamps. Stamps he’d not normally have paid any attention to.
“Did you look around?”
“No,” Scott replied abruptly, putting an end to the conversation.
Callaghan’s eyes travelled around the room, taking in the voids on the mantelpiece, and the gaps on the walls where Anita had removed the art. It was an interesting collection. The contents ranged from early Victorian, right through the Arts and Crafts movement. Colonial American was well represented. The silverware seemed to be mainly from Continental Europe. And there was a smattering of Oriental and Islamic pieces — large Cloisonné vases and Persian fritware bowls. He leaned forward in his seat. He recognised a small glass-fronted bookcase in the corner, an oak Craftsman bookcase by Gustav Stickley. It wasn’t filled with books, only half the shelves had leather clad tomes on them. The others, an assortment of tiny ornaments - Japanese netsuke.
“Did you see the bookcase?” Callaghan asked, pulling on the arrowhead drop handles to open the doors.
Scott didn’t answer but Callaghan didn’t care, entranced not only by the oak bookcase but by its contents. He’d spied netsuke carved from amber, ivory and nephrite jade. Running the gamut from stylised animals to simpler pieces, there must have been over two dozen carved pieces on display.
Reverently he held the first one up to the pale light, turning it over in his hands. Smooth to the touch, cool, the amber fox radiated an ethereal light, beautiful. Laying it to one side, he picked up the next one. Pale jade, it was in the form of a dog, torturously twisted upon itself. The workmanship exquisite despite the grotesque nature of the piece.
“These are amazing, Scott. I’m surprised you haven’t looked at them yet,” Callaghan said. Again there was no answer. “Scott?” Callaghan turned around. Stamps lay across the coffee table where Scott had been working, but there was no sign of his colleague. Weird. He hadn’t even noticed him leaving the room. Shrugging it off, he emptied the bookcase of the netsukes and lined them up on the mantelpiece, moving the old clock to one side, smudging the empty dust rings.
Out of the bookcase, the exquisite sculptures captured the light and glimmered with life. What a collection, not his particular area of expertise, but he could appreciate the skill which went into crafting these collectible pieces. Scott would know more. They’d fetch good prices at auction given the quality of the carving, garnering better prices if signed, which, in this light, he’d never be able to discern.
“Scott?”
Callaghan walked into the dining room, one netsuke clasped in his hand. Anita was where he’d last seen her, the pile of frames stacked around her testament to her work ethic.
“Where did Scott go?”
Anita looked up from a portrait of a woman kneeling in a wooden pew, hands in supplication. For a moment, Anita’s face mirrored the haunting features of the woman in the painting. Callaghan blinked, and Anita returned to herself.
“Sorry, I wasn’t paying attention. Did he go to make a coffee?”
Callaghan murmured under his breath. Leaving Anita to her task, he walked towards the kitchen. Yvonne had based herself at the kitchen table, in the warmest room in the house, and the one with the best lighting — natural and electrical. The table covered with baubles and trinkets, covering the spectrum from precious metals to fairground kitsch. She’d come prepared with hundreds of various sized zip-lock bags, and a stack of small boxes which she assembled as required. She had a particular left-to-right arrangement going, and for only having been at work for a couple of hours, she’d made huge headway.
“Looks like you’ve got things under control here,” Callaghan said.
“This is from a quick once round downstairs. I’ve not even bothered going deep yet. Nothing too spectacular, more plate than silverware, but still some nice pieces. Mind you, it was the art we’re here for. Anita has a big job ahead of her. I don’t envy her that.”
“Have you seen Scott?” Callaghan asked.
“No, I thought he was with you?”
“He was, but now he’s not. I thought he’d come in here for lunch.”
“It’s just been me in here. Has the lawyer shown his face yet? Maybe Scott’s found him and they’re upstairs having a chat?”
Callaghan nodded, fingers dancing over the carving of the dog, the smoothness unnatural yet calming, soothing.
Yvonne caught sight of the jade in Callaghan’s hands.
“What have you found?”
Yvonne scraped back her chair and reached for Callaghan’s hands. In the briefest of momen
ts as she fought to open his hand, the tiny jade creature fell through his fingers and the pearls on Yvonne’s finger flashed like lightning. The jade dog tumbled in slow motion through the air before its tortuous body crashed to the kitchen floor. The second it hit the ground, a howling rent the air.
Chapter 24
The sound echoed through the house causing Anita to look up from her work. The lawyer had mentioned a dog. Checking the window she saw nothing but snow outside. Walking through to the drawing room, ignoring the stamps, she crossed to the patio doors. Outside was a mess of paw prints in the snow, large paw prints, heading past the house towards the mausoleum. Was that where the dog was sheltering?
She was hungry and couldn’t see the dog, so gave it no more thought. Checking the clock on the mantel she was surprised it was already two o’clock, it was no wonder she was starving.
Carrying the pile of completed art into the foyer, she stacked them with the rest. The stacks were growing at a satisfying rate. The damaged pieces stared at her from their resting place by the wall. She picked up the mutilated painting of a child, one of the boys. Hard to tell now which one. Turning it over to check the name, and a tiny bundle fell out. A lock of blonde hair, tied together with a thin black ribbon. A lock of the boy’s hair? Unusual for something like this to be hidden between the canvas and the sarking.
Anita fingered the hair and looked back to the damaged frame. The two needed to be together, but if she tucked the small bundle back into the edge of the frame, it might come adrift again when the packers turned up. Slipping the package into her pocket, she’d find a bag in the kitchen for it, and would tape the bag to the back of the frame. She doubted the auction house would pay for restoration, but someone had gone to the trouble of keeping the child’s hair with his portrait, so the least she could do was to ensure that they stayed together.
She found Yvonne and Callaghan, heads peering out the window.
“Are you looking for the dog?” she asked.
They spun around.
“Did you hear it too?” Yvonne asked.
“I heard it from the dining room. I think it’s gone down the back of the property. Its footprints are outside the patio door, in the snow.”
Relief flooded Yvonne’s face. “So there really was a dog?” she said.
Anita started to reply when Yvonne laughed. A laugh which didn’t quite make it all the way to her eyes which were directed towards Callaghan, who hadn’t moved from the window.
“Alan said there’d been a dog here before the owner passed away. He said he hadn’t seen it. My guess is that someone else has been caring for it and it’s run off and has finally found its way home.”
“Sounds reasonable,” Callaghan said, bending to retrieve a tiny piece of jade on the floor, adding it to a small pile on the counter.
“What’s that?” asked Anita.
“I broke a netsuke,” Yvonne replied. “Bloody stupid of me. A netsuke shaped like a-”
Callaghan interrupted, “It was an accident, and doesn’t matter now. I’ll clean up and then we can have lunch.”
Yvonne pursed her lips and retook her seat at the table.
Anita sensed something was unsaid in the room, but asking those tricky social questions had never been her style. Brushing it off, she asked “I’ll track down Scott then, and Alan. They’re probably upstairs in the turret. Okay?”
The two other people nodded, the silence uncomfortable.
After Anita had left the kitchen, Yvonne turned on Callaghan.
“Why’d you interrupt me? It doesn’t matter that it was a carving of a dog, I was making an observation.”
“Anita doesn’t need your observations, the dog was a coincidence that’s all.”
Callaghan thrust his hands into his pockets and caressed the undamaged dog head he’d pocketed when he’d cleaned up the broken netsuke. It remained a piece of exquisite carving and while the rest had shattered, he couldn’t let this fragment go in the bin. He returned to the window.
Yvonne interrupted his musings by announcing her gnawing hunger pains. Callaghan stepped back just as a dark shape shot through the undergrowth at the end of the garden. Catching movement from the corner of his eye, he turned an instant too late. Whatever it was he’d seen had gone. Outside everything was still, the landscape was silent. Even the gulls were absent from the skies.
Chapter 25
Anita limped upstairs, her heel aching more now. She joked to herself that she’d have supermodel thighs if she did this for a few more days. Ignoring her own door, she paused outside Alan’s. It was ajar, but still she knocked before pushing the door open. The room was empty. Alan had laid out a suit on the bed. She hadn’t realised he’d brought a change of clothes with him. Maybe that’s what he’d been doing today; grabbing clean clothes from his car, having a bath, trying to be a better companion given how long they’d been forced to stay together?
She wandered along the hall, pausing at the bathroom door. She knocked, then turned the knob. The door opened to the bathroom she’d come to love. The empty bathroom, her toiletries poised by the basin and beside the porcelain bath. If he’d had a bath, he’d cleaned up after himself. There were no telltale damp patches on the rag rug nor was the mirror fogged with steam.
That only left the turret room. Anita hesitated. She reached the door and pulled it open and heard the quiet tones of someone’s voice. Too soft for her to make out who was talking, but loud enough to boost her confidence.
Taking a deep breath, ignoring her memories of the last time she was up here, she mounted the stairs. And there, lolling on the window seat, legs stretched out, was Scott on his cellphone. He held up a finger so Anita paused on the top step. The rest of the room was empty. She wasn’t disappointed but there was something peculiar about Alan hiding from them.
“Hey sorry, you know what girls are like. Had to call her and couldn’t get any reception anywhere else in this place.” Scott shoved his phone into his pocket and stretched.
“We were going to eat lunch,” Anita said.
“Excellent I’m starving. Has your lawyer appeared yet?”
“No, I thought you were with him,” she said. “Up here.”
“Nope, just me,” he said. “Come on then, let’s eat.”
Shooing her downstairs, Anita never had time to see the painting on the easel. Flexing her fingers, she tried to ignore the peculiar tingling in her fingertips, pinched nerves she thought.
When Scott and Anita joined the others in the kitchen, the tension between Callaghan and Yvonne dissipated. With the coffee brewed and the bread sliced, the tangy scent of pickle and yeasty bread filled the room.
Anita joined in with the light-hearted banter. She still felt somewhat like an outsider, the youngest on the team and the least experienced but at least the others treated her as an equal and for that she was grateful, and together they would shoulder the mammoth task ahead of them.
The main topic of conversation was the whereabouts of the lawyer. Scott’s contribution muted. He wouldn’t be drawn on theorising about where the lawyer might have gone. Callaghan had stood at the bottom of the staircase with his coffee mug bellowing out the lawyer’s name, before returning to the kitchen and shaking his head.
“We should check outside,” Yvonne suggested.
“He’s been outside, because he’s laid out clean clothes on his bed,” said Anita.
Scott looked up from the crumbs on his plate he’d been playing with.
“There was nothing on his bed when I looked,” he said.
“So he went out to his car, came back in and then went back outside to grab something else. I’ll look. He could have slipped over.” Callaghan said.
Yvonne leapt up and made to join him.
“It’s freezing outside Yvonne, you stay here. I’ll just go get my coat.”
Of the three people in the kitchen, only two were talking. Scott sat silently at the table, his leg twitching under the table. There had been no suit on the bed. S
uits were hanging in the wardrobe, but they weren’t laid out on the bed. Mind you, he’d been upstairs talking to Shelby so could have missed the lawyer going back into his room.
Somewhere in the house a door banged shut.
Scott jumped as if shot. Yvonne laughed at his reaction.
“Come on Scott, it was just a door,” she said.
Anita looked at Scott, unnaturally reserved, pale even. A bead of sweat appeared on his brow. Fascinated, Anita watched it quiver before it slipped down his face and fell unheeded to the table.
“What’s wrong?”
“Huh?”
“What’s wrong? You look like death warmed up,” Anita observed.
Scott shrugged, before finding his swagger. It wasn’t his style to be morose but this house had that effect.
“Ah, it’s nothing. This fresh air is getting to me. I’m a city boy, give me a polluted city with free flowing espresso, and I’ll be fine.”
“Do you think Cal locked himself out?” Yvonne asked. “When the door slammed?”
“It was probably a door upstairs. The front door is far too heavy, anyway the doors here swing open left, right and centre and none of the windows seal properly,” said Anita.
“Come on, lets see what’s going on out there.” Scott was full of bravado now, concealing his true anxiety. Persuading himself that the lawyer had laid out the suit on the bed.
Yvonne and Anita exchanged bewildered glances as they hurried behind him.
The front door was open, ushering the subzero temperatures into the house. Callaghan was stomping around outside in the snow, head down like a bloodhound, hands deep in his pockets. The trio trooped out onto the steps to watch.
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