Chapter Seventeen
The two women checked the sheds, ending up at the one near the edge of the grounds, but they didn’t find any intruders or signs of them anywhere.
‘I don’t intend to waste my time checking what’s inside all those old bags and bundles,’ Miranda said firmly as they stood in the doorway of the final shed. ‘Not yet, anyway. You couldn’t fit any adult human being into a small sack and therefore these bundles and boxes are no danger to us.’
‘I agree. Ugh, I wonder where all these rags have come from. Some of the ones in the previous shed were utterly filthy. These are cleaner but I do wonder why so many useless bits and pieces are being kept at all.’
‘Some of the older generations were brought up to use and reuse everything, and that was better for the environment, surely?’
As she led the way out of the shed into the fresh air again, Miranda wrinkled her nose in disgust at the memory of that penultimate shed. Smells like that could linger mentally as well as physically. ‘So, dare we go and look inside the house now, Auntie dear?’
‘Definitely. You’re not the only one who’s dying to see what it’s like inside.’
Arm in arm, they strolled back round to the front of the building, where Libby unlaced her arm from Miranda’s, gave a sweeping gesture towards the double front doors and stepped back out of the way. ‘It’s your house so you should go into it first, but take it slowly and be on your guard, in case there are any problems.’
‘I’ll just open one of the doors.’ She didn’t really need reminding about that when it was something organised by her great-aunt Phyllis but she took a deep breath and told herself to stay particularly alert and braced for trouble, then inserted the key and turned it. The mechanism worked smoothly with only the faintest of clicks, then she used the old-fashioned handle to open the door. The other door had a bolt that tied it to the ground, so she left that one alone.
The air inside was markedly stale and musty after the fresh air outside, causing them both to grimace, but the sight that met them was pleasing enough. It was no surprise to find the spacious hall lit in part by multicoloured light streaming into it from the narrow, ceiling-high stained-glass window panels on either side of the front doors.
They felt immersed in bright colours and both stopped instinctively to stare round, smiling and enjoying it.
Libby still stayed slightly back from her young friend, enjoying watching her reactions as well as staring round the attractive hall and enjoying it too.
Inside the house there was silence but outside birds were singing, several different birds pouring out a delicate chorus of notes.
‘That’s our welcome choir,’ Miranda said softly. ‘Don’t they sound lovely? I think I saw a bird table somewhere at the back. I’ll put food out for them regularly.’
‘Good idea.’
As she took a step forward and prepared to follow her inside, Libby said, ‘Just a minute.’ She stopped and reached out to remove the key from the outside of the door and hold it out to her friend. ‘I think we should lock the front door behind us before we go any further.’
‘I suppose you’re right but it’ll make this entrance area darker, won’t it? And we did check that there was no one around.’
‘We still ought to continue taking every precaution.’
Miranda held up the front door key. ‘I’m sure I saw a couple of keys like this one in that bundle, so we’ll find you one to keep for yourself, Libby.’
‘Thank you.’ She waited for Miranda to slip the door key into her pocket. Her friend was clearly more cautious in new situations than she would have been. Well, poor Miranda had told her about one or two nasty experiences she’d had in the past. That old aunt must have been a madwoman!
Miranda tugged her sleeve. ‘Let’s explore the rooms on the ground floor first.’
‘Lead the way, dear. You don’t have to say anything unless you want to, just enjoy exploring your new home. I’ll follow your lead and I’m quite happy if you want to move slowly or even stop to look more carefully at something.’
She wasn’t surprised when Miranda nodded and led the way in silence, moving slowly and pausing every few steps to stare into another room, or open a door in the hall to reveal a cupboard full of coats. You never knew what you’d find next in a house abandoned as suddenly as this sounded to have been. There seemed to be little order or sense internally about how the place had been built and extended, even though it’d looked good from outside. Various contents were stored or displayed equally haphazardly.
But it could become a pleasant home if Miranda wanted to take the time and trouble to set things to rights, she felt sure.
Libby would have done the same as Miranda was doing now if this house had been hers. She’d have moved round slowly, not wanting to chat so as not to miss a single detail. If you hadn’t grown up in a place, you had to catch up with what it was like as quickly as you could in order to settle in. She’d found that even when moving house from one small flat to another.
It’d be lovely to live in such spacious rooms, but she wouldn’t fancy being responsible for maintaining and cleaning a house as big as this, and it certainly hadn’t been looked after recently. Most of it was dusty and the furniture left out was scattered around any old how, or if not left out, merely piled haphazardly under dust sheets, except in the rooms the owner had clearly occupied.
Downstairs there were two large rooms on either side of the hall, then another room and a kitchen further back at one side. The latter was old-fashioned but still an attractively large space to do your cooking in, with a big window looking out onto the back garden.
Beyond and slightly to one side of it was a separate scullery and sticking out even further back were the more recently built extensions they’d noticed as they walked round. These looked to have been used as a small flat, with a sitting room and bedroom, a cloakroom and a rather cramped shower room squeezed in behind the house.
‘Servants’ quarters?’ Miranda guessed.
‘Probably the housekeeper’s.’
There was also a door leading outside but that was locked and there was no sign of a key, even though Libby, who was the taller, felt all along the top of lintel, a frequent hiding place for keys to outer doors in old houses.
‘The key might be in that bundle of old keys I have, but it’ll be a long job sorting them all out and finding which one fits each lock. Why on earth were the spares not labelled?’
‘Who knows? I bet your great-aunt didn’t want anyone except herself and that horrible housekeeper of hers to know where anything was.’
‘You could be right. But this will probably give us a second bathroom. Toss you for it.’
‘You seem very sure of that.’
‘I’ve been round a lot of older houses. The main bathroom is very old-fashioned, as dated as the kitchen, but they’re both clean at least, if dusty at the moment. I don’t mind taking this one if there’s a better main bathroom upstairs for you. You are, after all, the owner, ma’am.’ She bobbed a mocking curtsey and they both chuckled.
‘All right. Thanks, Libby.’
‘And since there are only the two of us to cater for, we can eat simply and you can take your time modernising the kitchen and main living areas. We’ll need to clean the bedrooms we’re using first to give us a start. Let’s go and choose them now.’
She waited till Miranda had started up the main staircase, smiling to see how slowly she was moving and how she was still stopping every few paces to look at something. She let her friend get nearly to the top before following her, then they walked along the landing in silence with Miranda opening the doors and staring into each room revealed, but not going inside any of them.
‘You were right, Libby. There is a big old-fashioned bathroom. I’ll miss having a shower, though.’
They came back to stand near the top of the stairs and discuss what they’d seen.
Libby grimaced. ‘There might be six large bedrooms but only one of the beds has been used and the rooms are all horribly dusty.’
‘But at least there are a couple of mattresses that look new and unused.’
‘I shall examine them very carefully indeed before I sleep on either of them.’
‘I wonder if the elderly water heater that’s set over the upstairs bath works and if so, whether it’s safe to use it. I think we’d better get it checked by a plumber before we even try to light the gas.’ She looked round. ‘There aren’t nearly enough amenities here for a modern family, are there, even though there are a lot of rooms?’
‘Not nearly enough bathrooms and dedicated storage areas. And the bedrooms may be large but most don’t feel as if they’ve been used for many years.’
‘Yes, they feel like that to me too. And before I can sleep comfortably in one of them, I shall need a bolt on the inside of the door to feel safe at night. I’ll have to make do with a chair under the door handle at first. Let’s take a proper look round the largest bedroom now, the one at the other end of the landing. That must surely have been the one Phyllis slept in and who knows what we’ll find in there?’
Libby rolled her eyes in mock fear. ‘A big bad wolf hiding in the wardrobe probably! Or the old lady’s ghost.’
Miranda didn’t bother to answer, just smiled and led the way into it. The smile soon faded. Someone had stripped the bed and stuffed the dirty bedclothes into a laundry basket in one corner.
‘No one has attempted to come up and collect the dirty bedlinen to wash it, not during all the weeks the main house has stood empty,’ she said in disgust.
‘Perhaps the housekeeper stripped the bed earlier but wasn’t allowed back to finish clearing up and remaking it.’
Miranda scowled at the bare, stained mattress. ‘Perhaps the police took on the job of locking the place up but the lawyer told me they’d changed all the locks straight away to make sure it would be secure, because they didn’t know who had had copies of the old ones and felt responsible for security till the heir took over. They told me not to give a copy of any of the new keys to anyone unless I trusted them absolutely.’ She immediately presented Libby with a key. ‘Here you are, then. I definitely trust you.’
They smiled at one another and both raised one thumb in triumph, then they carried on looking round.
There was a pair of wardrobes – pieces of furniture, not built-ins. One stood at either side of the door in the big bedroom. These were huge, old-fashioned things. Like the rest of the interior, everything looked old and dusty. There was a tallboy to one side, the small cupboard at the top of which seemed to have been used as a medicine cabinet. It was full of half-used potions and lotions.
‘I’m chucking every single item out.’ Miranda said with a shudder and disapproving flick of the fingers in that direction.
Then she moved across to open the doors of the wardrobes, flinging them open and ducking well back to make sure nothing fell out or worse, shot out at her. ‘I feel stupid looking round like a timid child,’ she muttered.
‘Don’t feel like that. It’s better to be too careful with that woman than not careful enough.’
Both wardrobes were huge with a tower of narrow drawers running up one side of each. These were absolutely crammed full with clothes, some of them in one wardrobe clearly from decades earlier and all of them women’s clothing, no sign of a man ever living here.
‘There will be a lot to throw out,’ Miranda said quietly.
‘Yes. But some of the clothes may be worth money as historical artefacts, they’re so old. And they don’t look badly worn, so they’ll bring top prices. Don’t throw anything away till I’ve checked its value online.’
Miranda looked at her friend in surprise. ‘I never thought of that aspect, Libby.’
‘I’ve bought old clothes from car boot sales sometimes when they were just being sold cheaply, and made a good profit on them. But then, I do know what to look for.’
Before Libby could say anything else, someone hammered on the front door downstairs and they both jumped in shock.
Miranda peeped out of the window. ‘Darn. I can’t see who it is properly, except that it’s a woman. We’d better answer it.’ She led the way quickly down, wincing as someone used the door knocker even more loudly before anyone was likely to have reached it in such a large house.
Libby decided to keep out of sight till they were sure who this was because for some reason she felt uneasy. Whoever it was certainly had very bad manners and she’d not be surprised if they were violent as well, hammering on the door like that.
Had this woman seen her and Miranda arrive and waited till they’d gone inside to knock or was it by sheer chance that this unknown visitor had found people in what had previously been a deserted house? Neither possibility seemed likely, somehow.
Whoever it was hammered again, really violently.
‘It’s downright rude to bang so hard on the door for a third time without giving people time to respond in a house as large as this one,’ Libby said sharply. ‘I don’t like whoever it is already.’
‘I’ll open the door,’ Miranda said.
She did that before Libby could stop her and found a gaunt, middle-aged woman standing outside. She scowled so fiercely at the sight of Miranda that Libby didn’t move forward to stand next to her friend but stayed out of sight. She could see the woman quite well through the tall stained-glass panel next to the door and was close enough to come to her friend’s aid if necessary.
What an ugly, vicious expression the stranger had! It was as if she hated the younger woman, but how could she when they’d never met before? Libby was quite sure of that from her friend’s expression.
She didn’t understand why but she wanted to watch the visitor carefully before she showed herself. The woman would probably reveal more about herself and her attitude to the house’s new owner if Libby didn’t attract attention to her own presence immediately.
She stood perfectly still, surprised at herself for feeling so instantly mistrustful of a complete stranger! Well, who wouldn’t when faced with someone who had such a hostile expression on her ugly bony face as she glared at your best friend? The woman was certainly radiating what could only be described as fierce hatred. Why?
When the visitor didn’t speak but continued to study the person who’d opened the door to her as if furiously annoyed by what she saw, Miranda asked in her usual quiet way, ‘How can I help you?’