Property of a Lady

‘Who lives in her house now?’


‘Nobody. It’s looked after by people called solicitors. They keep it clean and tidy the garden and make sure it’s all right.’

‘Would she like to live in it if she could?’

‘I don’t know. She was there when she was a little girl. But she’s lived in that place – Brank Asylum – for a very long time.’

‘She has no eyes,’ I said, and he shuddered.

‘No. You heard her say she can pay for people to come in to read to her. She pays people to write letters as well. She asked her solicitor to write a letter to me.’

‘Will she ever get better?’

‘No. She’ll have to live there for always. That’s why she sent the letter – she wanted to meet the people who will inherit her house after she dies.’

‘Is she going to die soon? Is she very old?’

‘Oh, Harriet, she can’t be much more than thirty. That’s the great tragedy.’

Thirty was quite old, though. I said, ‘Is she my aunt? What’s her name?’

‘I’m not sure of the precise degree of relationship,’ said Father. ‘She’s a cousin to me – perhaps a third cousin. So she’d be a cousin to you, as well. Her name is Elvira Lee.’

Elvira Lee. The name seemed to jump out of the page and snatch Michael’s throat. Elvira, who had been commemorated on an old, forgotten grave as a dearly loved daughter of Elizabeth. Elvira, who Ellie insisted was in danger, and Beth said was being sought by the man in her nightmare.

If Harriet’s journal could be believed, Elvira had ended her life, blind and insane, in a place called Brank Asylum.

Michael suddenly wanted to talk to Nell about this, but saw it was after eleven already. He would phone her tomorrow. But he would read some more of Harriet’s journal before going to bed.





FIFTEEN





17th February 1939


9.15 a.m.

Sunlight is pouring into my room at the Black Boar, and it’s almost dispelled the ghosts. But not quite. I can’t stop remembering Elvira Lee, poor haunted creature, incarcerated in Brank Asylum for all those years – thirty years at least. How much of those thirty years did she spend inside that dark madness?

She was fifty-eight when she died – I know that because the solicitor sent me her birth and death certificates. She was born in 1880 at Charect House, and she died in 1938 in Brank Asylum of arterial embolism. I looked that up in Mother’s old Home Doctor reference book, and I think it’s what we would call a stroke.

Even all these years later I can remember how sane Elvira sounded when she talked about her own madness. I can remember her terror of the man she believed searched for her, as well.

After breakfast, I asked at the reception desk for directions to Charect House. The man gave me a slightly startled look, but said it was easy enough to find.

‘Out of the village, and along Blackberry Lane, past the old carriageway to the manor – that’s long since gone, of course – and there you’ll be. It’s a fair old walk, though. I could telephone the local taxi service. They’d be here in a matter of minutes, well, always supposing they’re free.’

A ‘fair old walk’ might mean anything from a mile to five miles, so I’ve accepted the taxi offer, and I’m writing this in my room while I wait for it to arrive. The romantic in me would like to walk by myself to the home of my ancestors, savouring every blade of grass and every breath of atmosphere, but the pragmatist knows perfectly well I should get lost in the bewilderment of lanes around here. So I shall approach my inheritance, Father’s cherished dream, in a cloud of exhaust fumes.

3.15 p.m.