On the following Monday Edmund gave himself a half day’s leave of absence, issued his staff with instructions as to how various clients should be dealt with were they to turn up or phone, and set off. It was barely two o’clock, but it was such a grey rain-sodden afternoon that it was necessary to drive with full headlights on. This meant he almost missed the Ashwood sign, which was obscured by overgrown hedges. But he saw it just in time and turned off on to a badly maintained B-road, so narrow it was very nearly un-navigable. Edmund winced as the car’s suspension protested, and frowned as bushes scratched against the doors and painted sappy green smears on the windscreen.
A couple of miles further on he came to some tall rusting gates, sagging on their hinges but with the legend ‘Ashwood Studios’ still discernible. Edmund, peering through the car’s misted windows, thought he had never seen such a dismal place. Astonishing to think that London was only about twenty minutes’ drive from here.
There was a small security guard’s booth on the right of the gates, and on the other side were what appeared to be a series of neglected airfields strewn with single-storey, corrugated-roofed buildings. Edmund sat for a moment, the car’s engine still ticking over, and stared at the straggling dereliction. So this was Ashwood. This was the place that once upon a time had spun silvered illusions and created celluloid legends.
Trixie Smith was waiting for him, in a weather-beaten estate car. Edmund reached for his umbrella, switched his car’s engine off, and shrugged on a quilted rainproof jacket before getting out to walk across to her. She was wearing a long mackintosh that in the damp atmosphere smelt slightly of dogs.
‘I hadn’t realized it would be quite so tumbledown,’ said Edmund, peering through the grey curtain of rain.
‘It looks to me,’ observed Ms Smith as they plodded across the squelching mud, ‘as if the whole lot’s about to sink into the mud anyway.’
‘It’s a mournful place,’ agreed the person propped against the inside of the security booth, clearly waiting for them. ‘Practically the end of the world, and myself I wouldn’t waste petrol on coming here. Still, that’s your privilege, and I’ve brought the keys to let you in as you wanted.’ He came out of the sketchy shelter of the booth and introduced himself as Liam Devlin. He was dark and careless-looking, and he looked as if he took the world and its woes very lightly indeed. He also looked as if he might be wearing yesterday’s clothes and had not bothered to take them off to go to bed last night.
‘I thought,’ said Edmund severely, ‘that your firm acted as site agents.’
‘So we do. But if,’ said Mr Devlin, ‘you can find a reliable contractor who doesn’t mind the ghosts, and who’s prepared to tidy this place up and keep it tidied, you’ll have done more than I ever could.’
‘Ghosts?’ said Edmund sharply.
‘Lucretia von Wolff. Who else did you think I meant?’
‘Oh, I see. You know Ashwood’s history, then?’
‘Everyone in the western world knows Ashwood’s history, Mr Fane. This is the place where the baroness killed two people and then committed suicide.’
‘She wasn’t a baroness,’ said Edmund, who was tired of telling people this.
‘You believe the official version, do you?’ demanded Trixie of Liam Devlin.
‘Isn’t it what most people believe?’
‘I don’t. I’ve been doing some delving,’ said Trixie. ‘And I’m becoming less and less convinced of Lucretia’s guilt.’