Property of a Lady

Michael, ignoring the oblique reference in this last sentence, said he was very glad to hear there was no evidence of bats and he thought his friends would agree. ‘They’re wondering about moving in for Christmas,’ he said tentatively. ‘Would the work be finished by then?’


‘Bit tight,’ said the builder. ‘New Year, more like.’ He walked along the wall due to be demolished, while two men, armed with fearsome-looking sledgehammers and pickaxes and wearing yellow site-helmets, awaited his verdict. When he tapped the wall, the sound, in the small space, was shockingly loud, and Michael jumped because it was exactly the sound he had heard on his first visit.

The builder produced a stub of pencil and drew esoteric-looking symbols on the far wall. ‘All yours,’ he said to the two men. Then, to Michael, ‘Stand well clear, squire. In fact, you’d better stand on the stair outside.’

In the muted light from the two small windows the massive sledgehammer swished through the air and, with a boom of sound, landed squarely on the pencil marks. The whole of the wall shivered, and a myriad of spider-cracks appeared in its surface, as if a giant hand had crumpled a sheet of paper. The sledgehammer whirled a second time, and at the second blow, the thin cracks deepened and spread, and plaster dust showered everywhere. As the dust clouds billowed upwards, a small room, shut away for countless years, gradually became visible. At first look it did not seem as if it would add much to Ellie’s playroom – it was barely six by eight – but at least it made the attics lighter, because a tiny window had been behind the wall, a small oblong of glass, framed by crumbling wood. The window was cracked and thick with the dirt of decades, but if you stood on tiptoe and leaned forward you would be able to see down into the gardens below. That’s what she did, thought Michael. One day, a long, long time ago, she stood there, that dark-haired woman, and in some way I can’t begin to understand, years later, the image came out on the photo I took.

But if anyone really had stood in this room and looked down from the window, there was no trace of that now. Michael was conscious of a stab of disappointment. But he stepped through the jagged pieces of wall and into the dusty space beyond. Was there a faint imprint of a hand on the grimed window, as if someone had pressed against it? But there seemed to be nothing except the encrusted dirt of years. He looked out, seeing the outlines of the old shrubbery below, then turned back into the room. The plaster and brick-dust was starting to settle, and the builder and his assistants had gone in search of implements to clean it up. Michael could hear them calling to one another as to the whereabouts of the heavy-duty vacuum cleaner, asking which daft bugger had used it last and not put it back in the hall.

He was about to go back downstairs when he saw that a small section of wall near the window had crumbled away. Fresh plaster dust had showered out, together with some kind of packing, which must have been thrust into the cavity of the partition wall.

It was not packing. It was a sheaf of yellowed papers, covered in writing. Michael’s heart began to race. Even from here he could see that the writing was erratic, the ink faded to sepia, but it looked as if it was just about legible. Was this something more from Alice Wilson?

The men were coming back up the stairs, dragging the vacuum cleaner with them, grumbling good-humouredly about the narrowness of the attic stair.

Michael bent down, picked the papers up and slipped them into an inside pocket.

It was almost three o’clock when Michael got back to the Black Boar, and he suddenly realized he’d had nothing to eat or drink since breakfast at seven. Bar lunches had finished, it seemed, but some sandwiches and coffee could certainly be made up for him. What would he like?