It was very quiet, probably because this was the back of the house, although when she went through to the main part of the house, the creaking of the mirror came again from overhead. She would wedge the hinges in place later. For the moment she would finish listing the dining-room furniture in company with a cup of tea. There was tea and dried milk in the cupboards; Benedict would not mind if she took a spoonful of each.
As she filled the kettle, she was glad that she had not fallen into the trap of listening for a knock at the door or the crunch of footsteps or tyres on the drive. Declan, whoever he was, had simply been playing a game that day. Come on the eighteenth – for pity’s sake, did he think he was a character in a slushy romance or a teen magazine story? Perhaps somebody had told him he had hypnotic eyes, or perhaps there had been some sort of squiffy bet at a Christmas party.
She switched on the kettle and left it to boil while she carried one of the table lamps into the hall, which was in semi-darkness. The shadows were raggedly edged with the deep red of the stained-glass fanlight over the door, but the lamp, plugged in and switched on, chased the shadows back to their corners. She glanced up at the stair, and tilted the lampshade slightly so that it shone up the stairs. That was better. She glanced towards the front door, then opened it and peered out. The gardens were drenched in gloomy January greyness, and it must have rained earlier, because the shrubs were dripping with moisture. But it was a perfectly ordinary, unthreatening garden with an entirely normal London street beyond. Nell closed the door. She would finish in the dining room, then make a start on the upper floors. She was not expecting to find a great deal in them, but the packing cases on the second floor must be gone through thoroughly. Would she find the rest of the chess set in one of them? She had just started to go up the stairs when a whispered voice came out of the darkness on the half-landing above her.
I’m glad you came, Nell . . .
He was there, standing on the half landing, lit from behind by the narrow window, looking down at her. Nell’s heart performed a somersault, and excitement laced with apprehension coursed through her.
In as normal a voice as she could manage, she said, ‘Hello. How did you get in?’ Then, as he did not reply, she said, ‘You were here the day Benedict was taken ill, weren’t you? You were with him when I found him.’
Still he did not say anything. Nell waited, seeing that even standing outside the lamp’s glow, he was exactly as she remembered him. The eyes, the dark hair, the way he had of tilting his head as if he was listening very intently. If he would come down just two or three stairs, she would be able to see him properly.
But he stayed where he was, and from feeling uneasy, Nell began to feel frightened, because she was in an empty house with a complete stranger, and she had no idea how he had got in. Did he have a key? Had he been hiding somewhere, waiting to creep out? That was surely not the action of a sane person and clearly it would be as well to make a polite, but swift retreat. Trying to avoid any sudden action that might spark off something unpleasant, she began to move cautiously back down to the hall, feeling for the stairs with her foot, not daring to take her eyes from the man.
There were only a few stairs to the bottom; once she was there she could be across the hall and opening the door – she had not locked it. She held on to the banister with one hand and went down two more steps. Was he going to follow her? No, he was staying on the half-landing. Good. And here was the last step. Now for a quick sprint to the door . . .
It was not the last step. She had miscalculated and there were three more to go. There was a moment when Nell tried to stop herself falling, but she fell hard against the edge of the banister, banging her head with such force that lights splintered across her vision. There was a moment of blurred dizziness, then she was aware of lying in a painful jumble on a hard tiled floor. The world was still spinning, but the jagged lights seemed to have retreated. Nell drew in a shaky breath, but the blow to her head seemed to be still echoing inside her brain, and she was not entirely sure what had happened or where she was. She tried to sit up, but the dizziness seized her again and a sickening pain shot through her ankle. Sprained ankle and bang on the head? Whatever had happened she could not lie here like this – there was something she had to do, only she could not quite pin down what it was . . .
She had been cataloguing some house contents – an old shadowy house – something for Nina Doyle, was it? Yes, Holly Lodge, that was it. Was she still in the house? She must be – she could hear a muddled sound of traffic nearby.
Nell made a huge effort and this time managed to half sit up. She was in a big hall, lying at the foot of a wide stairway with a carved banister. Shadows clustered in the corners, but a table lamp was casting a pool of light – she remembered switching that on. Had she been about to go up to the bedrooms? And fallen down the stairs? Whatever she had done, she could not possibly get to the tube like this – her ankle was sending out waves of wrenching pain and she was not sure if she could stand on it, never mind walk. Could she manage to get out to the street, though? The traffic sounded quite heavy – there would surely be taxis.
Taxis. Traffic.