Mark shone his torch on the articles of clothing. ‘Do you think they were Hazzard’s?’ He took a picture.
Seb struggled to hear much besides the rush of blood through his ears. His eyes felt as if they had extended from their sockets to become as large as eggs, white and filled with suppressed hysteria. If he heard a noise beyond those of their feet and Mark’s voice, he wondered if his bowels would give out.
In the two larger downstairs rooms at the front, the brownish outlines of missing picture frames were visible. Bookcases covered two walls in one of the large front rooms, but their empty white shelves now foamed with grey dust. The mantles were clear of bric-a-brac.
Dreary spaces, their lines softened by successive layers of cobwebs, the walls stained by the desiccated spore of insects, the floors gritty with rodent droppings; a sense of meagreness and poverty was now suggested along with an incomplete flight.
There were also hints of a Spartan, clinical character to these rooms. It was possible to imagine them being airy once, bright with sunlight, and facing the tremendous view of the moors beyond the closed shutters.
Some furniture had survived in the largest living room: an ancient settee and two large armchairs, the fabric worn on the seats and armrests. One chair had a tartan blanket draped over the headrest, as if it were a ghostly reminder of an old figure who’d once sat there.
After inspecting the first three rooms together, Mark surrendered to his eagerness and began roaming, hurriedly, as if a time limit had been imposed upon their search of the former SPR headquarters. His feet banged about the floorboards and his torch beam excitedly scythed across the walls and doors.
Reluctant to be left behind, Seb followed as best he could, tracking the excessive noise of Mark’s feet into a long dining room in which a table without chairs awaited. The cabinets also offered nothing more than bare shelves behind dirty glass. Beneath the window the indentations of a sideboard’s legs still pocked a threadbare rug that covered most of the floor.
Mark rushed out as soon as Seb arrived. From further along the passage that bisected the width of the building, he called out, ‘Seb! In here! Quick,’ as if he’d found what he was looking for. ‘Check it out. His study? Do you think?’
That room had once been an office for someone. A desk remained, an antique hardwood. A Remington portable typewriter sat uncovered beside two pencils, a large stone paperweight and an empty blue glass. The shelves above the small desk were empty.
‘And look. Still here.’ Mark’s torch lit up a table beneath the shuttered window. Upon it a cluster of framed photographs stood upright. Mark began to raise them and blow away dust. There were nine portraits.
‘That was Prudence Carey when she was younger,’ Mark said. ‘I’ve seen that picture before.’ It had been shot in black and white and featured an attractive woman with dark hair, seated in a stylized pose, looking over her shoulder. Seb guessed it had been taken no later than the thirties.
Two of the colour pictures captured an elderly woman beside a flower bed, and perhaps this was part of the Tor’s now neglected gardens. It had probably been taken in the early seventies. ‘I’m guessing that could be her when she was older,’ Mark offered.
‘There he is,’ Mark said so suddenly he made Seb jump. He held up another picture frame and jabbed his pudgy hand at the portrait of a small, smartly dressed man with a slender face, sharp cheekbones and dark eyes. He was handsome in a way that was pretty. ‘The Master.’
In another photograph the same figure wore a carnation on the jacket of his suit and stared dreamily into the distance, his hair immaculately styled with brilliantine. It looked like a portfolio shot taken some time after the Second World War.
In another gilt frame the same man, though much older, was standing beside an E-Type Jaguar and wore a pale macintosh coat and a small alpine hat. The print was blanched by sunlight, but Seb estimated that it had been taken in the sixties. Gloves and oblong sunglasses also issued signs of a subtle though deliberate concealment. One hand rested on the roof of the sports car. The dandy grown up.
‘So who’s that?’ Seb asked. The final three portraits featured another woman. Slender, near willowy, her face heavily but tastefully made-up in each photograph.