Property of a Lady

That’s where they say they found me. Huddled on the attic floor, exhausted and severely dehydrated, my fingernails torn and bleeding.

I think I tried to tear down the wall – when they found me I was sobbing and insisting someone was trapped there. But after the ambulance people had given me some fluids intravenously and got me a bit warmer before trundling me off to a hospital, I understood that it was impossible for anyone to be behind the wall. It was part of the house – the plaster was cracked, old and discoloured. What I thought I had heard would have been a bird or a rat in the roof void, they said. And it’s the logical explanation, of course.

My memory of that night isn’t absolutely clear, even now. It’s blurred, like trying to see through one of those Victorian fogs where insubstantial shapes, fuzzy at the edges, come and go. The memories come and go, and sometimes they’re startlingly – frighteningly – clear, but at others I can’t make out what they are at all.

But one thing remains stubbornly clear. I’m convinced that the figure I saw inside Charect House – the man who tapped at the window and who walked through the dark rooms with that grisly lump of flesh casting its horrid light – is still there.

Brank House. Asylum for the Incurably Insane.

County of Shropshire

Patient’s record.

Name: Alice Wilson.

Address: Goldsmith Mansions, Peckham, London.

Date of Birth: 8th June 1925.

Date of admission: April 1963.

Next of kin: No relatives believed living.

Religion: Church of England.

Diagnosis: Delusional.

Admission: Patient was admitted to Brank Asylum under the Mental Health Act 1959 as emergency case. Later, she became a voluntary patient.

Released into care of: Family connections in New Jersey, USA. Notes forwarded to State of New Jersey Division of Mental Health Services.

The part that leapt from the page and burned into Nell’s consciousness was not Alice Wilson’s macabre experience. It was not even the fact that it really had been Alice who wrote the account for the local history publication.

It was that Alice had apparently gone to live with family connections in New Jersey.

New Jersey was where Liz Harper’s cousins lived.





NINETEEN



Michael’s study felt rather dismal when he finished the call to Nell.

It was just after ten o’clock. He considered seeing who might be in the Senior Common Room, but his room was warm and snug and he thought he would make a stab at deciphering some of the remaining pages of Harriet Anstey’s journal. He had already decided to enlist the help of someone in the history department. They had astonishing methods for enhancing old documents – Michael had only the vaguest idea of how it was done, but he knew surprising results could be achieved.

But it would not hurt to spend an hour or so seeing what he could make of the faint, faded scribble. Two or three of the pages looked as if they were still reasonably legible.





23rd April 1939


The builder’s report was delivered to the Black Boar’s reception desk shortly after breakfast. It’s so pleasant when people do what they promised, and the report is a properly itemized list of all the work needed, along with estimates of the cost of each individual task. When I read the total I blinked though, because it’s a shockingly large sum. But I think I could manage it – Father did not leave a great deal of money when he died, but he left a little, and Mother did too. And there’s the undoubted fact that Charect House, put into reasonable order, should sell for a very comfortable price.