by Faith Martin
‘Please, sit down, everyone,’ Isabel said with a brief smile, indicating the variety of comfortable-looking chairs and sofas that were scattered around the room. ‘I have to confess to feeling a little nervous. Now that you’re all here, I feel like I might have given you a false impression. And I would hate to think that I’d wasted your time. It’s not as if I’ve ever actually seen anything.’
Corwin smiled at her, whilst everyone got settled down. Jean, Effie noticed with a smile, had already got out a notebook and was prepared to write — no doubt in extremely efficient shorthand — anything of interest that the lady of the house might have to say. Gisela was sitting quietly with her eyes almost closed, soaking up the atmosphere — or whatever it was that ‘sensitives’ did, Effie supposed, a shade uneasily. Lonny was openly admiring a painting of a landscape on one wall, whilst Malc simply sat and watched Isabel Cadmund thoughtfully. Mickey’s eyes were darting everywhere, but at least he remained mercifully silent.
‘I’m sure you won’t have done that,’ Corwin reassured their hostess soothingly. ‘And there’s nothing to feel nervous about. I promise you, we won’t do anything without your permission, or without explaining clearly what we’re doing and why. If you change your mind at any time, or have second thoughts, we will leave immediately.’
Isabel nodded, looking visibly more comfortable after that little speech, and Effie found herself becoming more and more impressed by the group’s professionalism. They might, in the strictest sense of the word, be amateurs, but that clearly didn’t mean that they were either inexperienced or clumsy.
Isabel had taken a seat near the fireplace, and was leaning slightly forward in a hard-backed chair with a brocaded seat of pink and grey. Her hands were clenched between her knees, and she looked resolute but pale and rather grim-faced. Underneath it all, Effie had the impression that the older woman felt utterly at sea. Clearly the situation in which she found herself was one that she felt profoundly uncomfortable with. And who, Effie thought a shade wryly, could wonder at that?
What would she do if she ever thought her house was haunted? And who would haunt it except Michael and—
Abruptly and brutally, Effie shut that train of thought down. She really had to get out of this habit of letting her mind wander so.
‘I suppose I should tell you right away that my family — well, the majority of them anyway, are not . . . Well, let’s just say that they don’t agree with me asking you here,’ Isabel blurted the confession out all in a rush. Then she laughed slightly, and looked instantly a good decade younger. ‘My husband thinks I’m potty, to put it bluntly, but he loves me, and so he’s indulging me. But then Jeremy hasn’t been staying here, and I have,’ she added grimly.
At this, Effie felt the others around her perk up with interest, and simply had to hide a smile. They were like a pack of hunting dogs, amiable and friendly enough, but now that they’d scented their quarry, one or two of them were almost quivering with anticipation.
Needless to say, Jean was not one of them. Nor, surprisingly, was Corwin. Effie saw that he was simply watching his hostess with quiet, intense concentration. Today he was dressed in black trousers with a cream-coloured shirt and a black sleeveless waistcoat glinting with silver embroidery. This unexpected and slightly flamboyant style suited him however, lending him a curiously elegant but raffish sort of appearance, which was made even more striking by his long, untamed dark hair. He looked, Effie thought, a bit like an eighteenth-century roué after a hard night’s gambling at some scandalous gentleman’s club or other.
‘And of course my brother Monty doesn’t approve, but then he seldom does,’ Isabel continued, giving another sudden laugh. ‘Growing up, Monty and I always fought like cat and dog — perhaps because Monty, as the only boy, thought he had a right to lord it over me.’
Everyone smiled, anxious to put her at ease.
‘At least Ros isn’t so narrow-minded. That’s my daughter. Mind you, she was fond of her grandmother, and was without doubt Mum’s favourite,’ Isabel confessed. ‘That’s why my mother left her all her jewellery. And she had quite a bit of it — Mum liked to wear diamonds. And emeralds. They suited her,’ Isabel said, a mixture of pride and exasperation in her voice.
Slowly, the personality of the dead woman was becoming apparent, and Effie could feel herself being drawn into the drama. For all her self-inflicted lectures to remain aloof and unbiased, she was beginning to see the allure of what the C-Fits did. And wasn’t it something of a privilege, really, to be let into a stranger’s family secrets and dramas?
‘So at least Ros doesn’t altogether dismiss my . . . What do I call them? Fears? Doubts? Experiences?’ Isabel shrugged her shoulders helplessly. ‘Well, let’s just say that she’s not willing to write me off as a hysteric just yet. Besides, she knows her grandmother was one very strong-willed — and some might even say cantankerous — old woman. And if it’s possible to, well, come back and haunt a place, I suppose Mother would be an ideal candidate to do just that.’ Isabel laughed. ‘She would certainly have been very angry about dying, and it would have been just like her to decide that she wasn’t going to actually leave the premises until she was good and ready!’ Isabel smiled and shook her head.
‘She sounds as if she was a formidable lady,’ Corwin agreed.
‘And it’s often people like that who are most reluctant to pass over,’ Gisela said softly. ‘When they find themselves suddenly dead, it can make them feel very cross and cheated. And I can already feel that a very strong personality indeed lived here.’
Isabel Cadmund looked at the tall redhead with a start of surprise, and then, after a brief hesitation, nodded uncertainly. Like Effie, it was clear that she didn’t quite know how to react to Gisela’s ‘insights.’
‘Your mother, she had set ideas, am I right?’ Gisela asked, looking towards one of the large windows, where a green leather seat faced the glass, overlooking the pavement outside. ‘And once she’d made up her mind to do something, nothing would convince her to change it?’
‘Yes,’ Isabel said, staring at Gisela with growing fascination. ‘And that chair you’re looking at was her favourite spot. She’d spend hours reading a book there, or just watching village life go by.’
‘Yes, I know,’ Gisela said simply.
Effie blinked.
‘She could be very old-fashioned too, which as you can expect, led to a certain amount of tension,’ Isabel carried on. ‘And not just in the family, either — although she never approved of Celia, Monty’s wife, and made no secret over it. But then, Celia has a hide like a rhinoc— Er, she took it all in good part.’ As if suddenly aware that she might be letting more slip than she’d meant to, Isabel visibly pulled herself up short. ‘But, as I was saying, Mother didn’t always restrict her opinions on how things should be done to just the immediate family, unfortunately. Poor Geoff, for instance, was beginning to feel at his wits’ end . . .’ Isabel’s voice wavered as it suddenly occurred to her that she had been about to be indiscreet, yet again — and with people she had only just met. Which was a very un-British trait.
‘Geoff?’ Corwin encouraged her softly. Whilst he might be sympathetic with her instinctive need to guard her privacy, he also obviously needed Isabel to be open and honest. And it made sense that the more he learned about the possible source of the phenomena, the easier his job would be.
‘Mother’s head gardener,’ Isabel replied. ‘Well, that sounds much grander than . . . I mean, Geoff’s worked here for nearly thirty years now, but mostly alone. Although in the spring, he has a few of the older, retired men in the village come in to help him out for a few hours a week.’
‘Yes, I noticed the grounds were lovely.’ Effie felt she needed to do something to earn her keep, and if she could help Corwin put Isabel at her ease, then she felt she ought to do so. ‘Was that a walled garden in the back that I saw?’
‘Yes.’ Isabel looked at her eagerly, clearly relieved to be talking off-topic, as it were. ‘
Geoff’s marvellous with growing the fruit and vegetables, mowing the lawns and keeping the shrubbery under control. But Mother, right up until she died, would insist on overseeing the flowers. She always cherished her roses and peonies especially.’
‘And did their ideas not match?’ Effie asked with a smile. And when Isabel looked at her, a shade puzzled, she added gently, ‘You said your mother’s strong will caused some friction with him? Did they argue over the begonias?’ she added with a grin.
Isabel instantly grinned back. ‘Oh! Yes, I see what you mean. No, it wasn’t to do with the flowers. I’m afraid it was just another notion that Mother had got into her head. She was prone to having ideas that were set in stone, you see. There seemed to be no rhyme or reason to them — let alone logic. But once it was implanted in her head, she wouldn’t be moved on it. And one of them happened to be that, once Geoff had reached his seventieth birthday, he simply had to stop working and fully retire. Of course Geoff, who’s as fit as a flea and loves the grounds here like they were his own, had no interest in giving up work. So they argued about it all the time.’
Isabel sighed and shook her head. ‘Mother was a wonderful woman, don’t get me wrong. She was intelligent and passionate about the things that mattered to her. And generous to those who were in her favour. But she was always strong-willed. As a girl of just seventeen, she ran off and married my father, Walter Watkins, a feed and grain merchant. Her own parents were landowners in Berkshire and had been hoping she’d marry the son of a neighbour who was set to inherit half of the Downs. As you can imagine, her elopement didn’t go down too well.’
‘Good for her,’ Gisela said approvingly, and Jean went so far as to nod her head in approbation as well.
Isabel got up and went to a sideboard where she retrieved a silver-framed photograph. ‘This is Mother when she was in her thirties. Although her marriage was very successful, and Father surprised everyone by buying out his bosses and turning the company into a real money-making enterprise, thus setting up the bulk of the family fortunes, unfortunately he died young.’
She handed the photograph to Corwin, who studied it intently for a few moments, before passing it around.
‘Mother had to raise me and my brother all alone. She’d been widowed for well over fifty years before she died,’ Isabel explained.
‘She never remarried?’ Effie asked quietly.
‘Oh no. She was fiercely loyal to my father’s memory.’
Effie nodded. Having defied her family and ‘married down’ as the saying went, the old lady had probably had too much invested in him to let go of him easily.
Malc leaned across and handed Effie the photograph, and she took it, looking down at the image of a woman dressed in a chic form-fitting skirt and jacket of some dark colour. The photograph, being black and white, probably didn’t do justice to the face that gazed implacably back at her. Dark hair had been swept to the back of her head in an elegant and elaborate chignon, whilst a strong jaw and a slightly pugnacious chin stopped her just shy of being truly beautiful. But fine dark eyes captured the viewer’s gaze, and Effie could well imagine that this woman had probably still been striking to look at, even if age had weakened her heart, turned her hair to silver, and slightly bent that once rigid-looking spine.
She passed the photograph on to Lonny.
‘She looks very imposing,’ Effie said with a smile.
‘Oh, she was. Everyone in the village knew her of course. Even the influx of new people in recent years recognized the fact that she ran the village, even if she never sat on a council committee in her life, and never could be persuaded to join the WI. Still, somehow, nothing ever got done unless Claudia Watkins gave it her seal of approval. Clive said she treated the village like her own personal fiefdom — and that everyone was either too bemused, too busy, or too entertained by it to really care.’
‘Clive?’ Corwin queried.
‘Ros’s husband — my son-in-law. He and Mother never really got on. In fairness to Clive, I don’t think anyone short of Prince Harry would have been good enough for Ros in Mother’s eyes! And a self-made man definitely wasn’t looked on favourably. Funny, when you think about it — you’d have thought that she, of all people, wouldn’t have looked down on him for that. But she always said that he was no Walter. Perhaps if he’d been in a different business . . .’
She sighed and broke off, again aware that she might have been about to say something less than complimentary about her own daughter’s husband to comparative strangers.
‘I’m sure he’s perfectly respectable, Lady Cadmund,’ Jean spoke up for the first time.
‘Oh, he is! He owns a construction company — you’ve probably heard of them.’ She named a firm that had recently built a vast building estate on the outskirts of Banbury. ‘He’s currently negotiating with a local farmer to build thirty houses on his land near Bloxham,’ she added. ‘And that didn’t help, of course. Mother said that the countryside would be paved over entirely if people like Clive had their way. Oh, the arguments they had . . . But that was just Mother. To be honest, I think she rather liked to argue with people.’
‘Yes. I can sense that,’ Gisela said. ‘And you feel as if she’s still here? I can understand why. She’s such a strong presence, isn’t she?’
Perhaps it was something about the matter-of-fact way that Gisela spoke, or the ease with which she said it, that made Isabel finally open up.
‘I suppose she is,’ she admitted. ‘Would you like to see her room?’
Of course, everyone said they would. Even Effie. After hearing so much about her, she was curious to see Claudia’s private rooms, as well as more of the lovely old house.
Isabel led them back into the hall and up the stairs, which were made of oak and had been worn smooth over the years, as feet had climbed the treads and countless generations of fingers had clutched at the banisters.
At the top of the stairs the landing divided, with a set of doors leading off to the left and the right. Isabel turned right, and led them to the very end of the corridor, where a master suite had obviously been created — complete with a dressing room and walk-in wardrobe.
Quietly looking around, they all stepped into a large, comfortable bedroom, decorated in tones of blue and green, with the odd apricot accent. A large four-poster bed, with sheer white gauzy curtains tied back with tassel-ended ropes of twisted apricot silk, dominated one wall. An unlit fireplace on the far wall bore mute testimony to the days before central heating. Heavy, gilt-framed paintings hung around the walls, depicting various rural landscapes and one or two anonymous people — probably family ancestors.
‘The bathroom she always used is directly opposite,’ Isabel said, pointing through the still open door, but making no move to go inside herself.
‘This is where you’ve often felt inexplicably cold?’ Corwin asked.
Wordlessly Isabel nodded, but her hands went up to the tops of her arms and rubbed briskly, as if she was experiencing the chill all over again.
‘Would you mind if Malcolm and Lonny went in there?’ Corwin asked, and Isabel smiled and shook her head.
‘Please, feel free. That’s why you’re here, isn’t it?’
The two men quickly left, both of them clearly eager to check it out, with Mickey quickly following after them. Gisela drifted towards the bed as if fascinated by it. Jean and Effie, however, both moved to one of the two windows, drawn by the light filtering in from outside and the view over the village.
Because Claudia’s bedroom was located at the far side of the house, Effie realized, as she leaned out of the window and looked down, the wall right next to where she was standing didn’t actually belong to the house, but to the inn next door. A rather prosaic, black-painted drainpipe marked the demarcation, and as she followed it down with her eyes, she noted that it ended in an unlovely and modern concrete square with an iron grate inside, denoting a drain.
But the inn’s front garden was every bit as colourful as Claudia Watki
ns’s own, and beyond the pavement and pretty horse chestnut trees, which were about to burst into candles of white and pink bloom, the village scene could have graced any box of chocolates or jigsaw puzzle.
‘Lovely scene, isn’t it?’ Jean murmured beside her. ‘I live in a bungalow in Kidlington with a view of a supermarket car park. Still, it’s convenient for the shops.’
Effie, a shade taken aback, didn’t quite know how to respond to this abrupt and totally unexpected confidence by the rather remote former schoolteacher, and found herself grappling for something non-committal to say in response.
‘Do you suppose the village has any shops?’ she heard herself ask politely. ‘Nowadays they seem to be rather rare, don’t they?’
‘I think we might have a cold spot in the bathroom, Corwin,’ Malc’s cheerful and definitely excited voice brought any small talk to an abrupt end, and both women turned back automatically to the centre of the room.
‘You felt the cold in there too?’ Isabel asked, her voice understandably hopeful. ‘It’s not just me then? I’m not imagining things?’
Malc looked at Corwin and nodded. Lonny smiled happily. ‘We both felt that it was definitely colder in one particular spot, but we need to make sure. We should definitely set up some temperature monitors in there, chief,’ he said. ‘I recommend at least five — that way we can pinpoint the cold spot very accurately.’
Corwin nodded and turned to Isabel, but as he began to explain what his fellow C-Fit members meant by this, Effie saw his gaze flick her way too, and knew she needed to pay attention as well.
‘It’s important that our findings are clear and open to outside scrutiny and evaluation, Lady Cadmund. Simply taking one temperature reading of a room, even if it does show it to be colder than the rest of the house, doesn’t really prove anything. It could be down to ventilation — it is a bathroom, after all, and probably has some form of air filtration going on. Or it could be down to a draught or an ill-fitting window. But if we set up multiple temperature gauges, and it can be demonstratively proved that one small area within the room is significantly lower than the rest of the room, then that’s a different thing altogether. Because, logically, there is no reason why it should be so.’
