The Body at Auercliff Read online

  “Can you see this?” I ask, holding up my left hand and waving it toward her.

  She doesn't respond, not at first, but after a few seconds she tilts her head slightly.

  “It's a hand,” she tells me.

  “How many fingers am I holding up?”

  She pauses. “I can see a shadow,” she admits finally, turning her head as if she can see better out of one side of her eyes. “That's all I need. I can see when someone's nearby.”

  “How long has your eyesight been this bad?” I ask, pulling the old bandage away entirely and immediately squeezing some antiseptic gel from the tube, filling the wound directly.

  “Oh, I don't know,” she says with a sigh, before forcing a faint smile. “There's no need to fuss, Becky. What do I really need to see, anyway? I've never been one for the television, and I have my radio right here by the bed.”

  “You shouldn't be living alone in such a big house when you can't see to get about,” I tell her. “What if you fall?”

  “Well I'll get back up again, won't I?” she replies as if it's the most obvious thing in the world. “I've never -”

  She lets out a sudden, pained gasp as I wipe the edge of her wound. After that, she mutters something under her breath, as if she's annoyed at herself for betraying any sign of pain or weakness.

  “Do you sleep properly?” I ask.

  She looks almost directly at me, though not quite. I guess to her, I'm just another shadow.

  “I sleep as much as I need,” she says cautiously. “I certainly don't want to sleep away what little -”

  Before she can finish, there's a sudden, brief clunking sound from elsewhere in the house, as if something hit one of the many pipes that run along the walls. I immediately look toward the open door that leads out into the corridor, but of course there's no sign of anyone. When I turn back at Emily, however, I see that she's also looking toward the door, and I swear there's a hint of concern in her eyes. Almost fear.

  “Noisy place, huh?” I say with a smile, hoping to make a joke of it all.

  She doesn't reply at first, instead watching the door as if she expects to see someone, but finally she turns to me again.

  “I see as much as I need to see,” she replies finally. “And that's about all that matters, wouldn't you say?”

  “How did you get that bruise on your wrist?” I ask.

  She immediately reaches down and slips her left hand under the bed-sheets, as if to hide it from me.

  “Aunt Emily -”

  “That was a while ago,” she says firmly. “There's no point fussing.”

  “I'm sure you didn't have that bruise when I left last night,” I tell her. “Did you get up in the night and -”

  “I don't need minding like I'm some kind of baby,” she continues, snapping just a little. “What would you prefer, that I just sit in bed all night and rot?”

  “I'd prefer that you -”

  “Aren't you done yet?” she adds testily. “There's nothing wrong with my legs, you know. You're fussing over nothing!”

  ***

  “She's blind,” I mutter, sitting downstairs at the piano as I carefully dust the keys. “There's no way she'll let me examine her properly, but I doubt she has much more than 5% of her vision remaining.”

  “So get her into hospital,” Scott replies, his voice sounding a little tinny over my phone's speakers. “If she's blind and she can't get about properly, there's no way she should be living alone.”

  “It's not as easy as that. She's lived at Auercliff all her life, and she's the most stubborn woman I've ever met. I honestly think...” I pause, before lowering my voice so that there's no chance I can be overheard, even though I'm certain Emily's still up in bed. “I honestly think she's the kind of person who'd rather die in her home, instead of setting foot in any kind of hospital or residential home. She's probably scared that if she leaves, she'll never come back.”

  “But you can't force her to go to hospital.”

  “I know.”

  “She's still capable of making her own decisions.”

  “I know that too.”

  “So maybe you have to let her get on with it,” he adds. “I know it's harsh, but what else are you gonna do? Stay there forever in case she changes her mind?”

  “I can't leave her,” I tell him, getting up and heading over to the mantelpiece. Sure enough, there's a thick layer of dust covering every surface. “The house is in a terrible state. She's clearly confined herself to just a few rooms, and the rest of the place is covered in dust. She can't manage by herself, but she won't accept help. She wouldn't even let me stay the night last night!”

  “Maybe she just doesn't like you,” he suggests, with a laugh.

  “I'm serious! I hate to think of her bumping about the place in the dark and -”

  “What does that matter if she's blind?” he asks, interrupting me.

  “You know what I mean,” I reply, dropping the cloth into a nearby bucket and then heading through to the hallway, on my way to the kitchen. I need more cleaning supplies. “She has no children of her own, she doesn't talk to my mother, she has no-one to look out for her. She's been managing by herself all this time but now -”

  Stopping suddenly at the foot of the stairs, I realize I can hear Emily's voice in the distance. I pause for a moment, and although I can't make out any of the words, I'm certain she's talking in her bedroom. Which is odd, since I know for a fact that the land-line is down, and I seriously doubt she has a mobile phone.

  “I get where this is going,” Scott says after a few seconds. “You're determined to save the old -”

  “Quiet!” I hiss, taking a couple of steps up and then stopping again. I can still hear Emily chatting away, and she even seems to be leaving regular pauses, as if she's giving someone else a chance to speak. “She thinks she's talking to someone,” I whisper.

  “What's that?” Scott asks. “If she's lost her mind, shouldn't that make it easier for you to -”

  “I'll call you back,” I tell him, cutting the call and slipping the phone into my pocket as I make my way up the stairs.

  When I reach the top, I stop again and listen to the sound of Emily's voice, and now I'm close enough to hear what she's saying.

  “Barbara and I never got along,” she mutters. “I could never deal with how uptight she is all the time. She ground Daniel down, too. He used to be a rather carefree young man when they first met, but she got her claws into him and before long he had bags under his eyes and a kind of worried, hangdog expression all the time. That's the thing about Barbara, I'm sure you're aware of it by now. She just wears people down and tries to make them bend to her will.”

  Realizing that she seems to be talking about my parents, I make my way cautiously along the corridor. God, I really, really hope she's speaking to someone on the phone, even though I saw no sign of a phone in her room earlier. If she's talking to herself or – worse – having imaginary conversations with people, there'd definitely be no way I could let her stay alone at Auercliff, and by the time I get to her bedroom door I've already started to wonder whether her dementia might be far more advanced than I'd realized.

  Just as I look through and see her sitting on her bed, my left foot presses on a floorboard that shifts slightly and lets out a loud creaking sound.

  Emily immediately turns and looks toward me.

  “Who's that?” she asks, with a hint of fear in her voice. “Who's there? Becky, did you hear someone?”

  “It's me,” I tell her. “It's Becky.”

  “But what...” She turns and looks back over toward the far side of the room, and then she turns to me again. For a moment, she seems genuinely flustered.

  “Were you talking to someone?” I ask, stepping into the room.

  “Well, I just...” She pauses, before starting to chuckle. “Oh, you'll think I'm so foolish,” she says finally. “It's not the first time, either. With my, you know, my blurry vision and what-not, sometimes I lose track of
where people are in the room. I thought you came back in several minutes ago, I was busy grumbling on about your mother and the way she drags your poor father down. I thought you were right over there by the dresser, but I suppose I must have been nattering away to myself.”

  “Aunt -”

  “And before you go saying anything,” she adds, raising a finger as if she thinks she's admonishing a naughty little girl, “I am not losing my marbles! It's not my fault that you young people always move so quietly, always tip-toeing around the place. When I was a girl, we all knew to make some bloody noise wherever we went, to announce our arrival. That way, you know if there's someone in the bloody room with you or not!”

  “Okay,” I reply, hoping to calm her down a little, “I'm sorry if -”

  “I'm tired now,” she grumbles, turning away from me slightly and gasping as she settles against her pillows. “If you insist on being here at all, at least let me sleep.”

  “Sure,” I reply, figuring I can get on with some cleaning work. “I should get on with cleaning downstairs anyway. We'll talk later.”

  “There's a pub in the village,” she adds as I head to the door. “The King's Head, it's called. They'll have rooms if you need one for tonight. You can't stay here. It's a decent place, though. I'm sure they'll have rooms going, so long as you get there nice and early.”

  Glancing back at her, I can't help thinking that she's struggling to cover for her failing memory. In fact, I think she might be in far more trouble than I realized.

  ***

  “Becky punched me!” Nathan yells, running through the patio doors and almost clattering straight into the sofa, where my parents are sitting. “On the sunburn!”

  “I didn't!” I shout, stopping at the doors with tears in my eyes. “Not hard!”

  Carrying a cup of tea through to the study, I swear I can almost see and hear my younger self. Last time I was here, I was just a kid, brought here against my will because my parents thought it'd do me good to get out into the countryside. Actually, that's not entirely true. Years later, I found out that my mother's real plan was to make Aunt Emily so fond of me that she'd end up leaving Auercliff to me when she died. My mother was basically using me – and to a lesser extent my brother Nathan, too – in an attempt to manipulate her sister. And that's one of the many, many reasons I cut all contact with that toxic woman years ago.

  It's also the reason I stayed away from Auercliff for so long. Guilt. Well, that and a general sense of fear. My last visit here wasn't exactly smooth sailing.

  Hearing a bumping sound from the next room, I wander into the conservatory and see that the door to the garden has been left open. I take a sip of tea as I make my way over, but before pulling the door shut I can't help looking out at the huge, sunlit lawn. I know it's none of my business to question why Emily and Martin never had children, but it's impossible to deny that Auercliff would have been the perfect place to raise kids. Even now, it's so easy to imagine a bunch of little girls and boys playing on the lawn, or maybe running down to the river where they can explore the ruins of the old abbey. Maybe it's wrong of me to think that the potential of Auercliff has been wasted, but I can't shake the thought that this could have been such a happy house, filled with -

  Suddenly I hear the sound of breaking glass from somewhere upstairs.

  “Aunt Emily?” I call out, before realizing that the sound came from the other wing of the house, which seems to have been left shuttered and abandoned for years.

  Making my way through to the pantry, I stop at the foot of the back stairs and listen for a moment. I'm in the part of the house that used to be reserved for servants, back in the day when Emily's great-great-grandparents were the kind of people who employed maids, cooks and butlers. This was the part of Auercliff that was most fun to explore as a little girl, mainly because I always knew that there was no chance of getting interrupted. I used to get lost for hours and hours in the narrow corridors and abandoned rooms of the old wing, and for some reason it was the servants' histories that always interested me more than the tales of my family's grandiose exploits. Perhaps the reason was that no-one seemed to know much about the servants. Even their names were lost to history.

  Figuring I should check to see whether a window has been broken, I head up the stairs, while taking some more sips of tea. Before I manage more than a couple of steps, however, I freeze as I hear another piece of glass getting smashed.

  “Hello?” I call out, although I immediately feel a little foolish.

  I wait.

  Silence.

  “Aunt Emily?”

  Figuring that maybe a bird has got into the house, or some other wild animal, I make my way up to the next floor, where I find myself in the old corridor that links the servants' part of the house to the larger, grander part. Heading toward the servants' old rooms, I tread carefully, listening in case I hear the sound of more breaking glass. I look through each of the open doors, glancing into bare and forgotten rooms, until I reach the old kitchenette and see that two glasses appear to have been knocked off the counter, sent smashing to the tiled floor.

  I glance around, but there's no sign of any movement nearby.

  “Aunt Emily?” I call out again, just in case she might have wandered through.

  I spend the next few minutes tidying the broken glass away. I hear a couple more bumps from nearby, but I don't really pay much attention. After all, I know Auercliff is an old house, and I remember that when I was a little girl I used to spend hours and hours letting myself get spooked silly by creaks, bangs and other little noises. Plus, there was the time my brother freaked himself out by getting locked in a room.

  Just as I've gathered up the last pieces of glass, I glance at the side of the wooden table next to the window, and I see some letters carved into the edge.

  “Here died the prisoner of Auercliff,” I read out loud, squinting as I try to make out the words. “Neglected and... Neglected and forgotten by all.”

  I pause for a moment.

  “Huh,” I mutter finally, realizing that I've read this once before. I'd forgotten until now, but many years ago I found this exact same table. I remember being quite caught up, at the time, in the mystery of it all.

  Once I've tidied the glass away, I head through to the next corridor and wander from room to room, remembering all the places I used to hide away on the rare occasions when my snotty-nosed little brother used to come searching for me. The smell is a little fusty in here, almost sweet, but apart from that nothing much seems to have changed. I became an expert at squirreling myself into tight corners, and then I used to hold my breath so that he wouldn't find me. I always knew how to get left alone, and even when -

  Stopping suddenly, I feel my heart skip a beat as I look at a half-open door and see a pair of legs resting on a bed.

  My first instinct is to tell myself that it's Emily, that she's somehow made it through to this side of the house, but it only takes a fraction of a second for me to realize that I'm wrong. The feet are bare and discolored, strangely dark but with lighter patches too, and I can see far enough along the ankle and lower-leg to be quite certain that there are no bandages.

  I stay completely still for a moment, trying to work out who could possibly be here in this part of the house.

  “Hello?” I say cautiously.

  No reply.

  Forcing myself to step closer, I can't help noticing that the flesh on the feet seems very tight, almost as if it's hugging the bones beneath. In fact, in the pit of my belly I already have a horrible suspicion about what I've found, although I can't quite bring myself to believe that it's true.

  Once I reach the door, I'm able to see the entire lower half of the body, which turns out to be completely naked and almost mummified.

  I have a sinking feeling in my chest now, but I force myself to push the door open until, finally, I see the withered, open-mouthed face of a dead girl, with several flies crawling around the edges of her lips.

  Chapter
Six

  “I'd like to be there when you talk to her,” I tell Detective Johnson as we stand in the corridor outside Emily's bedroom. “She gets easily confused, and she can barely see at all.”

  “But she's already told you she has no idea how the dead body came to be here, or who it is?”

  “No idea at all,” I reply, feeling a shudder pass through my chest as I think back to the sight of the dead woman's face. “It looked like it had been there for a long time, though. I'd estimate a couple of years”

  “What makes you say that?”

  “I'm a doctor,” I explain. “Please, my aunt is very frail. I understand that you need to ask questions, but I'm worried that she might get very upset if you push too hard. That's why I'd like to come in with you. To mediate a little.”

  ***

  “No-one's accusing you of anything!” I say firmly, placing a hand on Emily's arm as she sits up in bed. “Detective Johnson just wants to ask you a few questions.”

  “Why are there people outside my house?” she splutters, looking over toward the window.

  Sure enough, several sets of footsteps can be heard heading across the grave driveway.

  “They have to examine the body I found in the other wing,” I tell her.

  “The what?” She turns to me, and for a moment she seems almost to have forgotten everything I've already told her. “Tell them not to damage anything,” she adds finally. “This house is over five hundred years old, for God's sake. I won't have a bunch of heavy-footed plods banging around and knocking everything over!”

  “I can assure you,” Detective Johnson says calmly, “that my team will be very careful. They just need to examine the scene before the body is removed.”

  “Body?” Emily turns to him and stares for a moment. Her pale, arthritic hands are resting on her belly, and her fingers are twitching furiously, as if she's on the verge of panic. “I don't know what any of you people are talking about,” she continues finally. “You come in here, disturbing me and talking about a body, but there's no body! You're just making things up.”