Property of a Lady

Except they were not all closed after all – the second one on the left was ajar. Someone’s standing behind it, thought Nell, her heart bumping. Someone’s watching me through the narrow crack in the door frame. No, I’m wrong, it’s just the shadows. But I’m damned if I’m going to investigate.

She turned to go back downstairs, and her heart leapt into her throat, because there had been a whisk of movement from above – as if something had darted back into the concealment of the shadows. There was a brief heart-stopping image of a figure with a large, pallid face and staring black eyes . . . Nell froze, one hand clutching the banisters, then drew in a shaky breath of relief. The plaster and paper on the wall opposite the window was badly damp-stained, and from this angle the marks formed themselves into the hunched-over figure of a thickset man. Optical illusion, nothing more. Like seeing faces in the clouds or in melting butter on toast.

She went back downstairs and headed for the long room to collect her bag. Probably the sounds had some equally innocent explanation – timbers expanding in the roof, maybe. But as she pushed open the door, she heard a different sound.

The ticking of a clock.

For several minutes Nell tried to convince herself the auctioneers’ men had set the long-case clock going after delivering it, but she knew they had not. The clock had not been going when she first came into the house.

The mechanism had a gritty, teeth-wincing sound which she hated. It sounded as if long, fleshless fingers were tapping a tattoo against a windowpane in the depths of a frozen winter. The pendulum swung from side to side, not quite aligned with the sounds, the bronze disc catching the light like a monstrous glistening eye.

Nell forced herself to think logically. Was it possible there had been some vibration in the house that had set the mechanism going? The sounds she had heard earlier might have been erratic plumbing – the scullery taps had looked pretty ancient, and there might be elderly pipes under the floors that had shuddered and sent a vibration up through the clock’s spine.

She reached out to turn the gilt hasp of the door to see if there was anything in the clock’s innards to account for the movement. A faint drift of old wood and something scented and sad came out, but as far as she could see there was nothing unusual. After a moment she grasped the pendulum to halt it, and the ticking faltered into silence. Nell was not sure if the ensuing silence was worse. She tapped the sides of the casing, hoping the slight vibration would start the pendulum going again, but it did not. How about the base? She tried tapping on the floor of the clock and this time felt something move uneasily. Was part of the casing loose? Nell peered into the narrow darkness. In one corner was a tiny triangle of something pale – a paper? Yes, it was the corner of some paper protruding through the oak strips. It was probably nothing more than the auctioneer’s ticket that had slid down between the oak strips, but it might as well be removed.

But the fragment resisted being pulled free, and when Nell investigated further she discovered that a small section of the oak was loose. Working with extreme care, so as not to damage anything, she finally managed to lever up a tiny section of the oak strips. It was not nailed or glued down; it dovetailed with the other timbers, but the fit had loosened slightly with the years. Thrust into the narrow recess of the clock’s base was a sheaf of brittle yellowing pages. As Nell lifted them out her hand brushed against the pendulum and the old mechanism struggled back into life. The ticking began again, but this time she barely noticed it, because her entire attention was on the retrieved pages.

She spread them out on the floor – there were ten or twelve of them, all handwritten, and, Nell had the sensation of a hand reaching out of the past. The feeling was so vivid that for a moment she could almost feel fingers curl around hers.