empty staleness breathed into his face. Ghost-breath, thought Benedict. No, itâs more likely to be damp or mice. But the sensation that something inside the house was breathing and living increased. Declan, he thought, and unease stirred his mind, like hundreds of glinting needle-points jabbing into it.
The furniture in most of the rooms was shrouded in dust sheets, making them seem eerie and slightly menacing. Benedictâs footsteps echoed as he walked through them, recognizing them from that long-ago afternoon. Here was the big drawing-room where Aunt Lyn had dispensed sherry and coffee that afternoon, and people had speculated as to why his parents had been driving through the blizzard that last day. Behind the drawing room was the study where he had seen his grandfatherâs calendar and diary, with the 18th marked so vividly and so strangely. He had always thought he would one day try to find out what that appointment had been, but he never had.
He went up to the first floor. As he reached the main landing there was a blurred movement at the far end, as if someone who had been standing there had darted back into the shadowy recess of a deep, tall window. The curtains moved slightly, and Benedictâs heart came up into his mouth. Someone here? Maybe it was an ordinary, down-to-earth burglar. Given a choice, Benedict would rather meet a housebreaker than a ghost. He took a deep breath and went forward, reaching out for the curtains, and snatching them back before he could beat a cowardly retreat down the stairs.
There was nothing there. There was just the window, smeary with dust and damp with condensation. Or was there the faint imprint on the faded window seat, as if someone had been crouching there? And had someone traced a faint âDâ in the moisture on the glass?
Benedict looked down at the monochrome gardens, then stepped back from the window. The doors of the main bedrooms were all open, and nothing stirred within any of them. He would look at them in more detail later; for now he would go up to the second floor, where the solicitors had stored the valuable contents of the house. They had sent Benedict an inventory, along with the keys for the two locked rooms. Initially, they had wanted all valuables to be removed; however much care was taken over tenants, there was still a risk that valuable contents might get damaged, they said. But no one in the family had room to store them, and professional storage for the years until Benedict was twenty-one would have been ruinous, so this compromise had been agreed. The solicitors visited the house two or three times a year to make sure none of the tenants had loaded the entire contents on to a van at dead of night and made off with it to the nearest fence.
There were four rooms on the second floor, including the one where Declanâs photograph had been. Benedict had intended to leave Nell West to explore the roomâs contents and take whatever might be valuable to sell in her shop, but now he was here, he was aware of a strong compulsion to see what the room might yield. There might be clues to his great-grandfatherâs life â things that might prove, or disprove, those details about Ireland and the ancient watchtower on the Cliffs of Moher. As he unlocked the door his heart was beating furiously; he thought if he had been seeing Holly Lodge as Tolkienâs Mount Doom all these years, he had certainly been seeing this room as Bluebeardâs seventh chamber. Or would it turn out to be Looking-Glass land after all?
But the room was bland and ordinary and, if there were any ghosts, they were keeping a low profile. There were five or six large boxes and tea chests, and a few pieces of furniture. He would go through the boxes with Nell when she got here, but he already knew he would not want any of the furniture â he particularly would not want the big dressing table with its triple mirror which had given that disturbing