by Sarah Rayne
She hoped this was not a tactless remark, but Rosendale only said, ‘I am quite sure. It’s very nice of you to ask, though.’ He smiled at her.
It was a strange thing, thought Nell, that Leo Rosendale was not a particularly good-looking man, apart from his eyes, which were very nearly mesmerizing. But when he smiled, such extraordinary sweetness touched his face that you wanted to keep looking at him.
He said, ‘It has, you see, rather mixed memories for me, and sometimes one can carry memories around for too long. I believe it’s time to put those memories away for good.’
‘Then I’ll very happily deal with it for you. I think, though, that it would do better at auction. Would you be all right with that?’ He nodded. ‘Good. Then what I’d like to do is sound out an auction house where I’ve got a couple of good contacts. They’re called Ashby’s. They aren’t quite Christie’s or Sotheby’s, but I think they’d do a good job of selling and their commission is very reasonable.’
‘I regard you as my agent,’ he said, and the smile came again.
TWO
Michael spent the first half of the morning with a first-year student who was wrestling with the intricacies of prosody, and the second half rescuing Wilberforce from an attic. Investigation indicated that Wilberforce had got into the attic by means of a decorator’s ladder, from which he had prowled curiously through a hatch inadvertently left open by them. He appeared to have spent a pleasant interval diligently ripping some roofing felt to shreds, most of which fell on still-wet paintwork, then discovered, to his indignation, that the ladder had been carried away, by a tidily inclined painter.
It was unfortunate that Wilberforce’s vociferous demands for assistance reached the ears of the Bursar who had looked in to check the progress of the painting, and who investigated the banshee-like caterwauling. Michael, abruptly dragged out of the world of Elizabethan word-rhythms, reinstated the ladder, and spent ten minutes coaxing an indignant Wilberforce down. He then spent a further fifteen minutes placating the ruffled Bursar, who said Michael should remember that decorators were (a) expensive, (b) booked up for months ahead, and (c) apt to take umbrage if their handiwork was plastered with roofing detritus. He added crossly that the entire wall would have to be sanded down and done again, and demanded to know what use Wet Paint signs were if people paid them no attention.
Michael cursed Wilberforce, bundled him into his own rooms, and offered to foot the bill for the extra painting, to which the Bursar said, well, perhaps they did not need to be quite as penny-pinching as that, but please see it doesn’t happen again, Dr Flint. By this time it was midday and the first-year student had gone off to keep a pressing appointment in the Turf Tavern. Michael went along to Professor Rosendale’s rooms to tell him he was heading for Deadlight Hall and would call back when he returned.
‘And Nell is finding out about an auction sale,’ said the professor. ‘What a delightful lady – so knowledgeable and helpful. I’m very grateful to you both.’ He paused, then said, ‘I’m glad you’re going out to the house. A firm called Hurst & Sons are dealing with the renovations. They’re an old local family firm, I think.’ He hesitated. ‘What will you say if they ask about your visit?’
‘That an acquaintance mentioned the renovations, and I’d be interested to have a quick look round,’ said Michael.
‘Yes, that’s exactly right.’
‘And truthful,’ said Michael, with a grin.
The Hall was, as the professor had said, only about fifteen minutes’ drive from Oxford, on the outskirts of a village, which Michael found after taking only one wrong turning. It was a tiny place, with a little straggle of shops in the main street – including a greengrocer’s and a pharmacist’s, all of them with pleasingly old-fashioned frontages. There was a small square with a green and a stone cross war memorial.
And there, a mile out of the village, was an estate agent’s board with arrows pointing the way, and tempting suggestions about mortgages and part-exchange deals on existing properties. The asking prices for the flats made Michael blink.
Beyond the For Sale board was a short drive, churned up by builders’ lorries and dotted with slumbering cement-mixers. The house was framed by ancient-looking trees, and Michael switched off the engine, and sat looking at it.
Even in bright sunshine, Deadlight Hall would have looked grim, and there was no sunshine today – in fact huge storm clouds like purple bruises were massing, as if the gods had decided to provide a traditional gothic backdrop. Michael studied the harsh dark stonework and the frowning eaves. The renovations looked as if they were well under way, but they had not quite managed to dilute the Hall’s sinister appearance. Approaching the front door, he thought that although any ghosts had probably long since left, an overlooked shade might remain: a leftover spirit who still wrung its hands and clanked its chains in hopeful, but futile, competition with the twenty-first century sounds invading its territory – stereos and iPads and the constant trill of mobile phones.
Several of the windows were circular – thick-glassed and rather unpleasantly suggestive of single lidless eyes. Were they the deadlights of the house’s name? Michael had a vague idea that a deadlight was a small window or a skylight intended never to be opened and therefore ensuring permanent darkness.
Four shallow stone steps led up to large double doors at the house’s centre, and as he pushed open the doors, the first faint growl of thunder reached him. The big hall beyond the doors was filled with the scents of paint and sawdust, and with the sounds of cheerful voices from somewhere outside, along with the tinny musical crackle of a radio. And yet just beneath all this were other scents and sounds. The sensation of a fetid darkness, of air old and stale, of extreme loneliness … And a far-off voice, echoing slightly, calling for something or someone … Were they real sensations, or was Deadlight Hall’s past seeping through, like charred bones?
As Michael looked about him, a chubbily built man wearing overalls and wielding a chisel came in, and enquired amiably if he could be of any help.
‘A colleague mentioned the renovations here,’ said Michael. ‘And since I was passing, I thought I’d like to take a look at the flats. I hope that’s all right. I haven’t spoken to the agents or anything.’
‘No, that’s all right,’ said the man. ‘I’m Jack Hurst, and my firm’s doing the work here. No reason why you can’t take a look inside. We haven’t finished the flats by a long chalk, but the first floor ones’d give you a reasonable idea of what they’ll eventually be. Up the stairs and to your left. I’ll leave you to find your own way, if you don’t mind. I need to sort out some of the electrics, before the storm arrives.’ He looked through one of the narrow windows. ‘Coming in from the east, if I’m any judge, and it’s difficult to work in a thunderstorm. Feel free to look round the whole house if you want – although I’ll ask you to avoid the basement. There’s not much to see there anyway, but we’re ripping out pipes and an old furnace, so it’s a bit of a mess. Health and Safety stuff – it’d be easy to trip over something.’
‘I’ll remember. Thank you very much.’
The stairs were wide and shallow, and there seemed to be four flats on the first floor, one on each corner of the house. Michael ventured into the first one. It was strewn with builders’ implements and dust sheets and coils of electrical cable, and he picked his way carefully through these. The flat was larger than he had expected, and the windows had views over trees and fields, apart from a side window which was one of the circular thick-glassed settings.
He came back to the main landing and started down the stairs to the hall. Jack Hurst had said amiably that he was welcome to explore the place, with the exception of the basement. Michael tried not to think that there was a faint sinister echo there of Bluebeard’s chamber.
‘You can have the keys to all these rooms in the castle, my dear, except this one, and that you must never enter … ’ And as if the warning was a trigger, the ingenuous bride-heroine or the gallant knight must
then yield to the sinister treacherous temptation, and instantly open the forbidden door by hook or by crook, by picklock or jemmy, to find the room did not contain priceless treasure or the elixir of life at all, but something far more macabre …
Michael paused on the half-landing to look through the narrow windows, which were slightly open. It looked as if Jack Hurst was right about the storm. Huge clouds like purple bruises were gathering in the east, and a faint growl of thunder rippled the sky. From the ground he could hear the rap of hammering and cheerful voices. Someone was calling out to Darren to make a brew, they were all spitting feathers, and someone else wanted to know had anyone thought about a bit of a fry-up before the storm got going.
Storm rain was starting to spatter the windows, and Michael, who often suffered from a severe headache in a thunderstorm, was aware of needle-points of pain starting to jab at his temples. He thought he would make a quick tour of the rest of the house, then beat it back to College and take a couple of paracetamol. He closed the window against the rain, and he was about to go down to the hall when he heard footsteps behind him, and then laboured breathing, as if someone was carrying something heavy. He turned, expecting to see one of Jack Hurst’s men, but there was no one there. Had the sound been simply an echo? No, there it was again. Footsteps – slow, rather uncertain ones, coming from a second, narrower flight of stairs at the far end of the landing. Second floor? Yes, of course. And muffled thudding or hammering from up there.
Then a voice called softly, ‘Are you here?’
The words were ordinary, the words of someone looking for somebody, but Michael found them extremely sinister. He took a step towards the second stair.
‘Hello? Are you looking for someone?’ His words echoed in the empty space, and although he could still hear the difficult breathing, there was no response.
Two, then three flickers of lightning tore into the house, and in those split-second flares of brilliance, Michael saw a figure standing on the narrow stairs – a small figure, not exactly deformed, but hunched over …
A child? Frightened by the storm? Maybe it was the child sought by the owner of that voice he had heard. There was a blur of movement, and the sound of the footsteps again – this time going away, back up the stairs, not exactly running, but scuttling away. Michael hesitated, then started forwards.
‘Don’t be frightened,’ he called. ‘It’s only a thunderstorm. Wait for me and we’ll go downstairs – I think someone’s looking for you, anyway.’
The stairs wound sharply to the right, decamping on to a second landing, strewn with more builders’ rubble and tools. It looked as if two smaller flats were being created up here. A sullen light came in through the windows, but there was no sign of the figure. The thudding was still going on – it sounded as if someone might be hammering somewhere under the roof, but Michael’s headache was throbbing against one side of his head, and his vision was blurring slightly, as if he was seeing underwater.
But he was sure he had seen a figure, and he was equally sure it could not have gone back downstairs without passing him. It must still be somewhere here, perhaps hiding fearfully from the thunder, or even from Michael himself. Nell’s small daughter, Beth, hated thunderstorms, and always shut herself into a narrow storeroom at the back of the shop.
He looked into the partially built flats, finding nothing, and began to have the feeling of having fallen into the kind of nightmare where the dreamer embarks on a panic-stricken chase for something he never reaches. Was there anywhere else he ought to check? Yes, a further flight of stairs at the end of this landing, small, half-hidden, dusty-looking. Attic floor? It seemed to be where the thudding was coming from.
The movement came again, no more than a blurred outline, but more substantial than the shadows that clustered there. It was small enough to be a child, but there was something about it that was not entirely childlike. Michael hesitated, then went up the stairs, which swayed slightly, and creaked like the crack of doom. They had not done so when the small figure went up them.
The attic floor was dim and warm and there were huge pools of shadows and a thick smell of dirt. Michael had the sensation of the immense old roof pressing down on him.
Massive beams spanned the open space overhead; stringy cobwebs dripped from them, and thick swathes of roofing felt hung down in tatters. Shreds of light trickled through in those places. It was to be hoped that Jack Hurst and his men would make the roof sound before the flats were actually sold.
Items of discarded household junk lay around – old bits of broken furniture including several dismantled iron bed-frames. They were small beds – children’s beds?
The attic looked as if it had once been split into two or three separate rooms; there were vague outlines of door posts and of a couple of piles of rubble that might be a collapsed wall. At the far end a door looked as if it opened on to an inner room that must be situated on the corner of the house, almost under the eaves. Servants’ rooms, thought Michael. Cramped and airless. Cold in winter and stiflingly hot in summer. There was an unhappy feel to the place, but there was no sign of the small figure, and the strange hammering had stopped. He would go back downstairs and find one of the workmen to ask if a child was known to be in the house.
But to make sure there was no one here, he went over to the door in the corner and tried the handle. It resisted, but the second time he tried, a soft voice from the other side of the door – a voice that was within inches of him – said, ‘Are you there?’
Michael leapt back from the door, as if it had burned him, then took a deep breath and called out, as he had done earlier: ‘Hello? Is someone there? Are you trapped?’ His voice sounded strange in the enclosed space. ‘Is someone there?’ he said again, a little louder.
The lightning flickered again, showing up the worn joists and the crumbling floorboards, and thunder growled again. Then silence and blackness closed down once more. Michael, his vision still fuzzy, was momentarily dazzled by the flickers of light. But he waited, and after a moment the voice came again.
‘Children, are you here? I shall find you, you know …’
Prickles of unease tinged with fear scraped across Michael’s skin, but he tried the handle again, this time pushing harder. It protested and creaked like the crack of doom, then it opened.
The lightning tore through the attic again, showing up the small, sad room beyond. At the far end was a pallid figure, its head bowed over, the shoulders hunched. It moved slightly, and Michael gasped. The flare came a second, then a third time, and he let out a deep breath of relief, because after all it was only a swathe of old, pale curtain, tattered and almost in shreds, that had caught in the old roof timbers.
There was no one here. Anything he had seen or heard had been his imagination – tricks played by the storm and the house’s strange atmosphere, and by his thudding headache. With the idea of proving this, he stepped into the room and looked around. It was not too dark to see that it was much the same as the outer attic. The floor was worn and uneven, with what might be burn marks in a line across one corner. There was a dismantled bed and a small table, and an old-fashioned, marble-topped washstand. Beyond the bed was a little stack of books, leaning against one of the roof supports. Michael knelt down to examine them. The livid crackles of lightning and his headache were still blurring his vision, but he was able to make out a row of titles, some of which were vaguely familiar, others which were not. At one end were a couple of battered-looking volumes with rubbed leather covers. He ran a finger lightly along the spines. It did not seem very likely that there would be any valuable first editions amidst this dereliction, but he would mention the books to Nell, who might want to speak to Godfrey Purbles, the antique bookseller at Quire Court.
The lightning sizzled again, briefly turning the thin old curtain into a drooping figure once more. Michael closed the door on it and went down to the second floor, and then the first. He was thankful to see that the oblongs of sky through the windows looked lighte
r. The thunder seemed to have growled into the distance, and he stood on the first-floor landing for a moment, leaning against the cool window pane, feeling fresh air coming in through the small opening at the top. His headache was starting to recede, and in another ten minutes he would be fine to drive home.
Below him were the cheerful voices of Jack Hurst’s men. Somebody was being told to pick up a takeaway order, and never mind about driving through a bit of rain, and somebody else was compiling a list of what was wanted, making the ribald most of the choice of pork balls, and lugubriously wondering how long Darren would take to fetch the food, because they were all starving. The normality of this made Michael feel better.
Several rooms led off the big hall, all of them large with high ceilings and ornate fireplaces. Most were in various stages of renovation, with high stepladders and tubs of paint or cement lying around. If they were intended to eventually form more flats, they would be rather grand ones.
But there was one room that caught Michael’s attention. It led off what he thought must have been the main drawing room, which had got as far as the redecoration stage of its renovation. The smaller room beyond it had not yet received much attention. A squat old stove, probably originally for heating, crouched in one corner, its flue corroded and leprous-looking. The plasterwork around it was dry and flaking, but near to the floor was something that caught Michael’s eye. A sketch? A date? He bent down to examine it, briefly curious. It was not a sketch; it looked as if it had been carved very precisely into the plaster itself. It might be an initial, or a date. Or was it more than that? He moved round, so that the light from the narrow window fell more directly on to the wall, and saw it was an apparently meaningless pattern, perhaps slightly abstract, but not seeming to signify anything. It looked like something a child would draw, without having much regard to its meaning.
