Haunted (5 page)

Nanny Tess walked ahead of him along the dim corridor, her small shoulders slightly hunched, her footsteps unusually loud on the wood flooring. There was a dampness to the air, and a smell of dust, as though windows in the house had remained closed for a long time. Curtains at the far end of the corridor were only partially drawn so that light scarcely penetrated.

The woman in front paused to tell him that the bathroom was further down on the right before opening a door on her left. She allowed him to go through, then stood in the doorway as he dropped his luggage onto the bed. ‘I’m sorry I wasn’t there to meet you at the station . . .’ she began to say.

He shook his head, tired of apologies. ‘That’s okay – really.’

‘Christina can be very wilful.’ Regret seemed to taint her smile. ‘She hid my car keys so that I couldn’t come and fetch you myself.’

Ash was surprised. ‘She was that keen to meet me?’

The tone was almost wistful, as though Nanny Tess were thinking of other times. ‘She enjoys her little games. They all enjoy their games.’ She suddenly straightened, dismissing the reverie, her manner abruptly brisk. ‘If you need anything, just let me know – my living quarters are on the floor above this one. We have dinner at seven, so you’ll have plenty of time to look over the house.’

‘And the gardens,’ he added.

‘Yes, the gardens too.’ She left the room, quietly closing the door behind her.

Ash scanned the room, relieved that at least it was brightened (albeit dismally at that moment) by light from a south-facing window. The bed was large, with sturdy head- and endboards; he tested its softness with a hand and was satisfied that it was more comfortable than it appeared. A bulky oak wardrobe stood against the wall facing the bed, and a high chest of drawers was by the door. Bedside table with lamp, huge rug covering most of the floor, a small writing bureau, this too with lamp. It’ll do, he told himself; for a couple of days, at any rate. Ash saw no reason for the investigation to take longer, even though he had warned the Mariells it might. For some obscure reason, he hoped it wouldn’t.

He opened up the suitcase after throwing his overcoat onto the bed, and began to unpack equipment he would use in the investigation: magnetic tape recorder, two cameras, one a Polaroid, both with flash and capacitance detectors, extendable tripods, thermometers, magnifying glass, measuring tape, graphite powder and flour, strain gauge/spring balance, as well as other items that might prove helpful such as graphite paper, compass, voltmeter.

He placed the smaller pieces inside the drawers of the chest and the cameras on top, tripods by the side. A microtape recorder he put in his jacket pocket, a small notebook in the other side. Ash rolled up the heavy cloths that had separated and protected the contents and closed the suitcase, snapping the lock shut. Stretching, he hoisted the case on top of the wardrobe, then returned to the bed and unzipped the holdall.

He removed underwear and a change of clothing, transferring them to the wardrobe and the drawers not already occupied, then took out toiletries, laying them on the bed for the moment. The last item lying at the bottom of the bag was a vodka bottle. As he reached for it the faint sound of laughter came in through the closed window.

Breaking the cap’s seal, he went over to look out at the grounds below. He took one swallow of vodka only, then replaced the cap. Ash frowned when he saw someone skulking through the shrubbery outside.

It was Simon Mariell and he was grinning as he crouched among the bushes. Ash caught sight of another figure approaching. She was dressed in white and, although she had her back to him, he recognized Christina’s auburn-coloured hair, the curls where it touched her shoulders. He heard her call Simon’s name as she searched. She laughed aloud and her brother sank lower in the bushes, a hand over his mouth to suppress his own mirth.

Ash edged closer to the window, bemused by the childish game being played below.

Something else moved, not far from the other two figures. Someone by a tree, watching the players too. A younger girl . . .

Simon was creeping from his hiding place and for a moment Ash was distracted. When he looked back towards the tree, the third figure had disappeared.

His attention went back to Christina and, foolishly, he almost called out to warn her that Simon was now stalking her. He stopped himself, his knuckles already poised at the glass. He smiled, amused that he had almost been caught up in their game.

Yet the girl was beginning to turn towards him as if she had sensed she was being observed.

He held his breath without knowing he was doing so.

Her head was tilting upwards towards the window, the motion slow and, feeling embarrassed, Ash wanted to step back out of sight. But he was held there in a kind of fascinated paralysis, wanting their eyes to meet.

Her profile was swinging into view so slowly that he realized his mind had strangely accelerated his own thoughts, creating the illusion of languor in her movement. It gave him time to wonder whose unguarded moment had been invaded – hers or his own? Who was the voyeur – Christina or himself?

Her face was almost in view, one shoulder pointing at him – when there was a sharp knock on the bedroom door.

He blinked, startled. In reaction, he turned from the window.

The door opened. Christina peered in.

‘Are you ready to see around the house now?’ she asked, smiling brightly.

Ash was too surprised to answer. He looked back through the window.

The other girl had gone. The garden was empty.

There was a coldness about Edbrook which only in part was to do with the shift in season. In certain rooms and corridors there was a dankness of air, in others a sense of emptiness that suggested they had not been used – nor, perhaps, even entered – for some years. It was a large house though, and of a type Ash had investigated more than once before: it was not unusual for such homes (mainly due to inheritance taxes if the property was passed down through the family) to be frugally managed. It was not as though Edbrook had been neglected so much as that its upkeep appeared to be economically directed.

Christina guided him through the upstairs rooms, including those in the attic, then downstairs through the library and drawing room, sitting room, kitchen, scullery, dining room and study. He tested floorboards and panellings, fireplaces and chimney breasts, sometimes rapping against the walls, often just listening for natural sounds, occasionally standing still to feel draughts and determine from where they came. He hesitated at the top of the cellar steps, remembering the
Bouvier
had been ushered down there. But Christina, already descending, laughed and chided him for his faint-heartedness. She assured him that Seeker would not harm him unless it sensed he was a threat, and that was extremely unlikely, wasn’t it? Ash followed her, albeit cautiously. The dog grumbled from somewhere in the shadows, but did not show itself.

The cellar contained rows of half-filled wine racks, a fine coating of dust matting the bottles. Oddments littered the area – pieces of furniture, some covered by dustcloths, broken statues, empty picture frames – and on one side there were gloomy alcoves with shapes inside that Ash could not discern. The chill here was acute, which rendered the basement a fine wine cellar; more important to him, though, it indicated that there might be subterranean springs close by or fissures in the immediate strata causing freezing draughts to seep in through the aged and cracked brickwork. An interesting location in terms of the investigation but, mainly because of the unfriendliness of the Mariells’ dog, not one in which he wished to linger for too long.

Ash and the girl climbed the stone steps and he was uncomfortably aware that Seeker had wandered from its resting place to follow.

It was with a mild sense of relief that Ash left the cellar to walk through the kitchen and scullery out onto the garden terrace. Although he found it difficult to be caught up in Christina’s overt enthusiasm for the house and its grounds, he could easily imagine that at one time Edbrook had provided a grand home for the Mariell family; what was lacking now was difficult to define, but it had something to do with ambience, a distinct lack of warmth (and not necessarily of the physical kind). A fine place for a haunting, he surmised.
If
one believed in such things.

He looked out over the gardens, disappointed that on close inspection they were not quite as tidy as at first appeared. Nevertheless they were magnificently laid out in formal yet interesting lines and curves, the dense bordering woodland providing a perfect backdrop. He breathed in deeply, as if to rid his lungs of stale air collected inside the house.

‘How long have you been searching for ghosts, Mr Ash?’ Christina asked with a hint of mischievousness in her smile.

He answered her seriously. ‘I don’t search for ghosts: I look for causes of unusual disturbances. And my name’s David – I’d rather you called me that.’

‘All right, David – how long have you been seeking out mysterious causes?’

He grinned at her. ‘Man and boy, it seems. The phenomena always interested me to some extent, but it was only when I went to my first seance that I really got hooked.’

‘How old were you then?’

‘Oh . . . early twenties.’ He shook his head reflectively. ‘I was a trainee engineer at that time, believe it or not. God knows what prompted me to attend a seance – curiosity, I guess, and a natural progression of my interest. You see, although I could never understand people’s belief in such things, I couldn’t help wanting to know more. That first seance really opened my eyes.’

Christina came to a stop. ‘You actually made contact with the spirit world?’

Ash laughed. ‘Just the opposite,’ he told her. ‘I was almost fooled for a little while – the medium was that good. He had us all convinced we were seeing the ghost of one of the sitters’ long-lost relatives, a dear-departed granny who began to tell the woman next to me all the illnesses she had suffered over the last ten years. The woman’s illnesses, that is, not the granny’s –
she’d
never been so healthy since she’d arrived on the other side.’

Ash shook his head again, amused by the memory. He continued to walk across the broad, stone-flagged terrace, Christina keeping pace with him, glancing up at his face from time to time.

‘The whole scene was bizarre,’ he went on. ‘I could see a kind of misty form hovering in the gloom behind the medium, and I must admit there was a cold, creepy feeling running up my spine. But it was the trivia granny was coming out with through the medium that set me giggling.’ He chuckled at the thought. ‘I expected something profound, maybe something deeply moving, an insight into this spiritual world on the other side of our own life, if you like.’

‘And . . .?’ she prompted when Ash fell into a thoughtful silence.

‘Uh, all we heard was that Uncle Albert’s false teeth were lost somewhere in the drains beneath his house – he’d flushed them down the toilet after an evening’s heavy drinking, along with most of what he’d drunk. Yet the woman next to me looked as though she’d just learned the whereabouts of the Holy Grail. I glanced around at all those faces, and oh God, they were so
serious
. That started me laughing like a hyena.’

Although still smiling, his tone was grim. ‘I don’t know, it was somehow a huge relief to me, a weight lifted off my shoulders. Because the whole business was farcical. My attitude didn’t go down too well with the medium, of course. He ordered me out, and I was pleased to go. But before I went through the door, I flicked on the light switch – call it malice, or maybe it was genuine curiosity.’

They passed the French doors to the drawing room of the house, the room empty as far as Ash could tell. Edbrook rose above them, louring in its greyness, sullen in its silence. He consciously moved away from the edifice, uneasy in its shadow.

‘With the light, everyone in the room was able to see that “granny” was no more than an old photograph back-projected onto fine muslin. Just to help the effect, steam was coming from a tube in the wall and swirling through the material to move the image. Pretty impressive in the semi-darkness, but not so hot in the light.’

Christina’s eyebrows had arched. ‘But the things she told the woman . . .’

‘Useless information that could easily be gained from a friend or relative of the client – probably whoever introduced her to the circle in the first place. You see, the medium only had to find out about one or two of the sitters to amaze everyone else around the table.’