by Sarah Rayne
The electricity was on, but most of the bulbs seemed to have blown. But the hall light worked and provided enough light for her to glance into all the downstairs rooms and then ascend the main staircase to the first floor. Luckily the landing light worked as well. Nell checked the bedrooms, then looked at the small stairs leading to the second floor. She did not need to go up there. Or did she? It was more likely that Benedict had been coming down from that floor when he fell or passed out and that meant Nell had better check up there as well in case he had left something behind. Wallet or keys or something.
She went up to the half-landing where he had been lying. It did look as if he had dropped something which the ambulance men had not noticed – near the skirting board was something small and dark. Keys? No, too big for keys. A mobile phone?
It was not a phone. It was a black carved chess piece, about ten inches high, either the King or the Queen. Looked at more closely it was the King: there was a definite masculine look to the features. ‘And there’s a rather unpleasant snarl about your mouth and slant to your eyes,’ said Nell to the graven face. ‘I hope you weren’t modelled on a living person, but if you were, I wouldn’t want to meet the original.’
She bent down to pick it up, and as her fingers closed around it a small tremor seemed to go through the house. Nell glanced through the small window of the half landing, because it sounded as if a huge pantechnicon had driven past. Or perhaps a plane had flown overhead, a bit low.
She took the chess piece to the window and sat down on the window seat to examine it. It was beautifully fashioned. There was a satiny sheen to the black surface and it felt heavy enough to be ebony. Were the tiny glinting chips scattered over the king’s robes jet? Could they even be black diamonds?
But despite the sheen, the figure felt dry and rough against her skin and Nell found it rather repulsive. Still, a complete, undamaged chess set in ebony and jet would fetch a terrific figure. Ebony and black diamonds would send it into a much more rarefied category. And what would the white pieces be made from? A longing to know if the rest of the set was here seized her and she glanced at her watch. It was already after five. It would be mad to go up to the top floor – she would almost certainly have to grope around in the dark – but she looked back at the carved figure and thought: What if the whole set is up there? It would not take more than a few moments to go up these stairs and if none of the lights worked she really would call it a day. She dropped the figure into her shoulder bag. She would tell Nina what she had found and say she would like to get the piece examined by a specialist.
She went back up the stairs. As she reached the fourth stair the floorboards above her creaked loudly and Nell’s heart jumped, then she reminded herself that old stairs often had the way of creaking erratically.
The second-floor landing was bigger than she had expected, and although the bulb had blown here as well, a narrow window overlooked the side of the house and slivers of light came in from a street lamp. There were four more rooms; Nell, who was starting to feel distinctly uneasy, thought she would just glance into each one. She was annoyed to realize she was glancing over her shoulder every few minutes, but she was starting to have the feeling that someone had crept up the stairs after her, and was standing just out of sight.
The light switch did not work in the first room she opened, but it was possible to see several large packing cases stacked against the wall. She eyed them longingly, then put her bag down on the floor. If the lids came off she would take the briefest of looks at the contents, then she really would leave.
It was disappointing to discover the tops of all the cases were firmly nailed down although it was not really surprising. Next time she would bring pliers to prise out the nails. She was about to go back out to the landing when there was a movement at the other end of the room – blurred and indistinct but unmistakably a movement. It was almost as if something that had been standing in the shadows had stepped forward.
Nell stood very still and turned her head slowly. Standing at the far end of the room, half-hidden by the packing cases, was the outline of a dark figure. She gasped, one hand going to her mouth in the classic fear gesture, then saw with a rush of relief that the movement came from within a big oval mirror over a dressing table. All she had seen was her own reflection in the dusty glass. Stupid.
She bent down to pick up her bag, expecting to see the reflected figure move with her. But it did not. It remained motionless. Nell straightened up slowly, her eyes on the indistinct outline, her skin starting to prickle with fear. Most likely she had simply missed seeing the reflection move with her, but—
Slowly and deliberately, facing the mirror head-on, she lifted her right hand above her head. Please move with me, she said silently. Please be an ordinary reflection.
But the figure did not move. It’s not my reflection, thought Nell, her heart racing. But I won’t panic: perhaps there’s a long coat hanging from a hook somewhere, and that’s what I’m seeing. She looked about her, but the room was bare, save for the packing cases and the old dressing table. Was someone standing in direct line with the mirror? Where, though? Still moving slowly, she turned her head until she was looking at the half-open door. Through the narrow space she saw with cold terror a dark-clad man standing on the landing.
He’s been watching me, she thought. He doesn’t realize the mirror’s picking up his reflection – he doesn’t realize I know he’s there. And I’m on my own, and there’s no one within screaming distance . . . What do I do? Can I summon help? Police? What if there’s an innocent explanation, though? But surely an innocent person would have called out to make his presence known. Nell slid a hand into her bag, and her fingers closed reassuringly around the phone in its side pocket. As she did so, there was a soft creak from the landing and the door swung slowly inwards. Nell gasped and backed away to the wall, feeling for the nine on the phone’s keypad, but her hand was shaking so much it slipped from her grasp and when she groped in the bag, her fingers only encountered the chess piece.
The door opened all the way, and the figure stood on the threshold, the light from the lower landing and the street lamp behind it. Even so Nell recognized him. It was the man she had seen earlier – the man who had been bending over Benedict Doyle. The man with the vivid blue eyes.
He did not come into the room: he remained on the landing, three-quarters in the shadows. Nell tried to calculate whether she could get past him and down the stairs without getting too close. No. Then the best thing to do was act as if there was nothing wrong.
She said, ‘Thank goodness it’s you. You’re Declan, aren’t you? Benedict said so. I’m Nell West. I didn’t realize you were still here – I thought you had gone with Benedict in the ambulance.’ She thought she would have to get downstairs, even if she had to push him down two flights.
‘I’m about to leave,’ she said. ‘I haven’t managed to make any notes for the inventory, but I can come back another day. After New Year.’
‘When?’ His voice was soft and muffled.
‘Probably the week after. Say the eighteenth,’ said Nell, more or less at random, but thinking that Hilary Term would have started at Oxford, and life would be more or less back to normal.
‘Yes. Come on the eighteenth.’ The words were as insubstantial as if someone had breathed the letters on to a misted glass, but as they died away, Nell stopped feeling frightened. There was nothing alarming or threatening about the man after all. If he would step a little more into the light he would probably turn out to be rather nice-looking, in fact.
She said, ‘The eighteenth. Yes, all right.’
His face was still partly in the shadows, but Nell could see the glint of blue from his eyes. She thought he smiled briefly, then he was gone.
Nell thought she would not tell Michael about the man or the meeting on January 18th, although she would tell him about Holly Lodge and Benedict. He would want to hear what the house was like and whether the contents had been interesting or valuab
le. Beth was spending the night with a school friend who was having a Christmas party, so Michael had offered to cook supper for himself and Nell. She was pleased about this; she liked Michael’s rooms at Oriel College – she liked the untidiness of the books he always had strewn around and the way the window of his study overlooked a tiny quadrangle which was sun-drenched in summer and crusted with icing-sugar frost in winter.
She suspected, though, that they might end up ordering pizzas for their meal, because the last time Michael had tried to cook he had ended in blowing all the fuses on the entire floor, and Wilberforce the cat had decamped in disgust to the buttery where he had disgraced Michael yet again by eating an entire turbot, intended for an Oxford Gaudy lunch.
EIGHT
‘It was a trick of the light,’ said Michael Flint, seated opposite Nell in his rooms in Oriel College. ‘People’s eyes don’t change from blue to brown in the . . . well, in the blink of an eyelid.’
‘It wasn’t a trick of the light. When I first found him, Benedict Doyle had the most vivid blue eyes I’ve ever seen.’
Nell was curled up in her favourite chair, sipping wine with apparent composure. But there was still a faintly scared look around her own eyes and, seeing this, Michael was glad he had suggested cooking supper. He had laid the small drop-leaf table and had opened a bottle of sharp white wine which they were sharing. The meal would be ready in about half an hour; he thought it was as foolproof as it could be. He had bought salmon steaks, which he had wrapped in foil with a sliver of butter and lemon juice, and had bought salad ingredients to go with them. This surely could not go wrong, although it was remarkable how often cooking did. If things did not burn they came out nearly raw, or something fused or blew up within the cooker itself.
Michael had once tried to make vichyssoise and had put a number of ingredients in a blender, which had exploded halfway through the process, showering half-mushed potatoes and leeks everywhere. Unfortunately, Wilberforce had been sitting on the window sill at the time and had received most of the contents. He had been so disgusted he had vanished for two days, but, as Nell’s Beth had said afterwards, this would be a really cool thing to include in the new book about Wilberforce, didn’t Michael think so? So Michael had dutifully written a chapter in which Wilberforce, wearing a chef’s hat slightly too big for him, attended a series of cookery lessons, until the mice, with whom Wilberforce waged ongoing and unsuccessful battles, gleefully tipped the pepper pot into the stew.
At the moment, the real Wilberforce was in the kitchen, keeping a watchful eye on the cooker, where the salmon was cooking according to schedule. The bowl of salad was in the fridge, and Michael could give his attention to Nell’s odd experience in Benedict Doyle’s house.
‘Will you go back to the house to draw up the inventory?’ he asked. He liked seeing Nell here; he liked the way she always kicked off her shoes and curled her feet under her in the deep armchair by the fireplace. She still had on the jacket she had worn for London – it was golden brown and it brought out the copper lights in her hair.
‘Yes, I think I’ll have to. Apart from anything else, there’s this,’ said Nell, producing the chess piece.
‘That looks valuable.’ Michael did not say he didn’t much like the slightly sneering face on the carved figure. He set it down on a low table and considered it.
‘It does, doesn’t it? I’ll have to get it looked at properly, though. I found it after Benedict was taken to the hospital. It’s the reason I went up to the second floor – to see if I could find the rest of the set. I didn’t, though.’
‘No, and from the sound of it, it’s probably as well, in fact— Oh bother, that’s someone at the door.’
It was Michael’s friend Owen Bracegirdle from the History faculty.
‘Sorry, I didn’t realize you had a guest – oh, it’s Nell. Hello, Nell, how nice you look. I won’t intrude, I see you’re about to eat, I’ll just say hello and vanish into the night like a . . . Well, if you insist, I’ll have a quick glass of wine, thank you very much.’
Owen had come to find out if Michael was going to the Dean’s Christmas lunch tomorrow, and who Michael was supporting for the election of Professor of Poetry.
‘I am going to the Dean’s lunch, and Nell’s coming as well this year,’ said Michael, who was looking forward to walking into the Dean’s long dining room with Nell. ‘But I’m not supporting anyone for the poetry professorship; in fact I don’t even know who the nominees are.’
Owen knew, of course, and he knew all the details of each candidate. He loved college gossip and entered into it as enthusiastically as a Tudor courtier swapping backstairs intrigue. But tonight, probably in deference to Nell’s presence, he forbore to launch into one of his mildly scandalous speeches. He drank his wine, observed that Michael always had good taste in plonk, and got up to take his leave.
‘I’ve got to read some first-year essays on the First Jacobite Rebellion, scrubby lot.’
‘The Jacobite rebels?’
‘The first years. So I’ll melt into the ether and . . . Where on earth did that come from?’
He was staring at the chess piece, which was still glaring from the low table with disdainful malevolence.
‘It’s a chess piece,’ said Nell a bit defensively.
‘I can see that.’
‘I found it when I was doing an inventory of the contents of an old house earlier today. I’m hoping I’ll unearth the rest of the set.’
‘It’s not something I’d want to have sneering from the mantelpiece,’ said Owen. ‘Can I look at it? Thanks.’ He picked it up, turning it over in his hands. ‘Admit it, it really is a bit sinister, isn’t it?’ he said.
‘A bit.’
‘Wilberforce didn’t like it much,’ said Michael. ‘He glared at it, spat like a demon, then decamped to the kitchen.’
‘That was because he could smell food cooking,’ said Nell. ‘And if it’s valuable, it doesn’t matter how sinister it is, or how many times Wilberforce spits at it.’
‘I’ve got a feeling I’ve seen something a bit like it somewhere else,’ said Owen. ‘But I can’t think where.’ He put the chess piece back, then said, ‘Michael, I hate to say this, but there’s a smell of burning coming from the kitchen.’
‘Oh God, it’s the salmon.’
The salmon was not a complete lost cause because Wilberforce scoffed it in one sitting. Michael and Nell had salad and bread and cheese.
‘I’m sorry,’ said Michael, helplessly.
‘It’s fine, honestly. I love bread and cheese anyway.’ As if to prove the point, Nell sliced another wedge of Double Gloucester and reached for the butter dish.
‘Yes, but I wanted to give you a really nice meal and . . . Well, anyway, there’s fruit for pudding and one of those squidgy cakes from that bakery in the High,’ said Michael.
‘Blow the fruit and squidgy cakes, let’s take the remains of the wine to bed.’ Nell said this with such abruptness that Michael, who had been cutting more bread, looked up, startled.
‘You’re being very direct tonight, you shameless hussy.’
‘D’you mind?’ She looked at him from the corners of her eyes as if suddenly unsure of his response.
He smiled at her. ‘Refill the wine glasses and come here, and I’ll show you how much I mind.’
‘Michael,’ said Owen’s voice on the phone next morning, ‘are you immersed in something Victorian and romantic at the moment – or even in something twenty-first century and romantic?’
Michael was not immersed in anything remotely Victorian or romantic. He had just received an email from his editor at the publishing house to say they were about three thousand words short on the new book, so they would like Michael to come up with an extra adventure for Wilberforce. There was no immediate panic, she said, italicizing the word ‘immediate’. Perhaps he could put together something over his long Christmas holiday.
When Owen phoned, Michael was trying to think what Wilberforce could d
o in three thousand words that he had not already done in the first book. He said, ‘I promised to meet Nell at the porter’s lodge at twelve fifteen so I can take her in to the Dean’s lunch, but I’m free for the next hour. Why?’
‘Can you come along to my room? I can’t explain this over the phone.’
Owen enjoyed believing that phone conversations were insecure, despite everyone telling him it was only royalty and football stars whose phones were tapped. He said he spent most of his days studying nests of intrigue at Tudor courts and secret societies plotting to restore the Stuarts (if not the Plantagenets) to England’s throne, so he was allowed to be slightly neurotic about eavesdroppers. Last year a group of his students, gleefully influenced by this outlook, had written a satirical sketch for the OUDs, in which the concept of telephones was discovered three hundred years early, resulting in the foiling of the entire French Revolution by a text message and the subsequent continuation of the Bourbon line to the present day, and also in Guy Fawkes managing to blow up Parliament after all because somebody’s number was engaged.
‘Can’t you give me a clue?’
‘I’ve found something about that macabre chess piece Nell had last evening,’ said Owen, and the image of the malevolently sneering chess piece rose up vividly in Michael’s mind. Something seemed to prickle across the back of his neck, and he thought: I don’t want any part of this. I don’t want Nell to have any part of it, either.
But this was absurd, so he said, ‘I’ll be there in ten minutes.’
‘I knew I’d seen that chess king before,’ said Owen, opening the door. ‘And I was right. Sit down, if you can find a space in this muddle.’