It had started to rain, and the thick old laurel hedge that Trixie had never got round to trimming this autumn was tapping gently against the window. Fran got up to draw the curtains across the darkening afternoon and flipped the blind down over the upper part of the garden door. The kitchen immediately felt friendlier and safer. But you don’t feel at all friendly or safe, she said to Alraune’s photograph. And where on earth did Trixie get you, I wonder? Were you just part of her research into Ashwood? Or did you instigate the entire project? Meeting the child’s uncompromising stare, Francesca was inclined to think the latter might be more likely, because if ever a face would print itself on your mind…
It was already almost six o’clock, and although she had never felt less like food, if she ate something it might stop her from thinking about ghosts and imagining them peering in through the windows. She was about to turn the gas up to heat the soup when she heard something outside that was certainly not the rain or the wayward laurel hedge and that was too substantial for a ghost. Footsteps. Footsteps coming down the gravel drive, moving slowly, as if the owner either was not sure of his or her welcome, or did not want to be heard.
Fran stood in the middle of the kitchen, staring out into the half-lit hall and the old-fashioned Victorian stained-glass panels of the door. Silence. No one there after all. And then a dark shape – unmistakably that of a man – stepped into the porch and a hand came up to lift the door-knocker.
This time Fran’s heart leapt into her throat, even though logic was already pointing out that it was most likely someone from school wanting to know if there was any news about Trixie’s killer, poor old Trixie, or even the Deputy Head inquiring how the packing up of Trixie’s things was going. But before she went out to answer the knock, some instinct made Fran snatch up a teatowel and drop it over Alraune’s photograph.
‘I could have thought up an excuse about you having left something at Quondam yesterday and that I was returning it,’ said the man standing on the step. ‘But I won’t bother with that. The truth is that I wanted to see you again.’
His coat collar was turned up against the cold and his hair was lightly misted with the rain. But his eyes were the same: grey and clear and fringed with black lashes, and the smile was the same as well; outwardly reserved but with that faint promise of something that was not reserved at all.
‘Hello, Michael,’ said Francesca. ‘Come in.’
It was as easy to be with him as it had been at Deborah Fane’s house, or at Quondam’s offices yesterday. There was no awkwardness; it was like meeting up with an old and trusted friend; one with whom you were always on the same wavelength even when you had not met for years. Francesca thought this was probably something to do with that appalling experience inside Ashwood, and then she glanced at Michael again and thought it was nothing to do with that.
He sat at the kitchen table while Fran made coffee, and talked a bit about yesterday’s film, and asked how she had coped with the police interviews.
‘Reasonably well. The police were more courteous than I expected. I had to make a statement and give them as much information as I could about Trixie. Which wasn’t so very much when it came down to it. You?’
‘Much the same. Questions about when and where and how, and can anyone verify that, sir. In the main, nobody could verify anything about my movements,’ said Michael. ‘I live on my own.’