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Clare felt Denzil Black’s dark gaze in the driving mirror, but didn’t meet it. She sorted out the large front-door key, slid out of the car, and climbed the steps to the door. This lock turned easily enough, the door swung open with a prolonged creak, and Clare fumbled for the light switch just inside on the panelled walls of the hall.
Light blazed from a chandelier hung high above their heads. Ahead of them stretched the arched vault of the roof, and the panelled walls, hung with an extraordinary mixture of objects—paintings, sketches, prints, armour, photographs in silver frames, weapons, the heads of dead animals mounted on wooden plaques.
The wind blew through the long hallway; a door crashed shut somewhere up above; stained-glass windows further down the hall rattled.
‘It’s monstrous!’ Helen wailed, huddling into her coat, her pale face only just visible above the collar. ‘You can’t be serious about being interested in this place, Denzil! It’s a tomb, not a house.’
It was cold, Clare had to admit, and not simply because it was empty and this was autumn. The house had a deep coldness which was in the very bricks and stones of the building. She had a feeling it would never be warm, even if you lit a fire in every room.
‘Central heating will soon warm it up,’ Denzil Black said, opening the first door leading off the hall. ‘That shouldn’t be difficult to install.’
Clare could see his face now, clearly, for the first time; an austere bone-structure, a wide, passionate mouth, strong nose, those pale eyes with the glittering centres, his black hair growing from a widow’s peak on his high temples. Each feature contradicted all the others; it was not an easy face to read or assess.
‘I like big rooms,’ he said, looking around the main reception room.
‘This is certainly big,’ agreed Clare.
‘Big! It’s enormous!’ groaned Helen.
On two sides of the room windows ran from ceiling to floor, those in the turret bay having deep, cushioned window-seats. All the rooms in the house had high ceilings; from this one another chandelier hung, giving the room a party glitter. There was a wooden fireplace like the prow of a ship, the hearth dressed with Victorian Minton tiles which bore black-line medieval style pictures on their ochre background.
The furniture was old and shabby, the stuffing leaking out of Victorian chairs, the curtains threadbare, the carpets showing signs of wear and tear.
On every possible surface stood silver-framed photographs and ornaments; the walls in here were as lined with paintings and drawings as the hall had been. There were so many objects, in fact, that the effect was mind-numbing; you looked and looked until you could take in no more.
‘Wonderful,’ Denzil Black said.
‘It’s only fit for the garbage truck!’ Helen complained.
Denzil Black asked, ‘Are the entire contents for sale, did you say? If I buy, I’d want first pick of everything in the place.’
‘I’m sure that could be arranged.’ Clare would be relieved if they managed to sell a tenth of the stuff. There were a few antiques of value, but most of the furnishings were in bad repair and would sell for peanuts at auction. Clare often acted as auctioneer at sales; her father mostly did them, but when they were dealing with a large number of objects it took hours, and Dad found it tiring after a while, so Clare usually took over to finish the auction. She had learnt to price objects at sight, and had a very good idea how much money would be raised by the sale of the contents of Dark Tarn.
‘Oh, Denzil, surely you can’t be serious?’ Helen moaned, following him as he strode on down the hall to the next room, a few curled brown leaves blowing along with him from the open front door.
Clare paused to close it, before following the other two. She found them in the gloomy servants’ hall; a long, narrow room with tiny windows, a lot of dull brown paint, and walls which had once been cream-coloured, on one of which hung a row of bells labelled with the names of other rooms. From the ceiling hung ancient hooks, from which hams and herbs had once hung, and a broken laundry pulley, which had been used to suspend washing high above the heads of the servants as they sat around the long, well-scrubbed deal table.
‘It’s so dreary!’ Helen said, staring around the room with unhidden distaste.
‘All it needs is a coat of varnish, a pretty wallpaper, some white paint—it will look wonderful! This dresser must be the same age as the house,’ Denzil said, running a finger along the dust piled up on the shelves which held rows of plates and bowls and jugs.
‘It is,’ agreed Clare. ‘Some of the china is quite good, too. A lot of it’s Victorian, and it will fetch excellent prices at auction.’
‘I may well want to keep it all,’ he said.
‘Oh, my God!’ Helen groaned. ‘It would be like living in a museum!’
Eerily, on the flat top of the dresser, stood a bowl of long-dead flowers, their skeletal shape dusty and dry, wreathed in cobwebs, among which was the mummified body of a spider.
Helen stared at it, dramatically shuddered, wrapped her coat around herself, and gave Denzil Black a reproachful stare. ‘It’s like the Mary Celeste in here! I keep expecting the owners to come back from the dead. I can’t take any more—I’m going back to the car. Hurry up before I freeze to death!’
She stamped out, her high heels clattering along the tiled floor of the hall. The front door creaked open, slammed shut with a booming, echoing sound.
‘I’m afraid she doesn’t like the house,’ murmured Clare.
‘Well, she won’t be living in it,’ Denzil Black drawled, and Clare’s blue eyes flickered thoughtfully.
Oh, wouldn’t she? Well, bang went one theory. Obviously he had not brought Helen here to see her future home! Did she realise that?
Clare didn’t think she did. Helen had been showing an almost proprietorial attitude towards him; Clare was convinced their relationship was not purely professional.
She met Denzil Black’s glossy-pupilled eyes and saw sardonic amusement in them. He had been watching her, reading her thoughts. A faint pink crept under her skin.
‘I wanted her to advise me on the property value,’ he said.
At once, Clare told him, ‘I think the house is a bargain, considering its size and the very large amount of land that goes with it.’
He gave her a dry look. ‘Well, you would say that, wouldn’t you? I was hoping Helen would give me a neutral point of view. Shall we go upstairs and see the rest of the place?’
The house seemed even bigger upstairs, and emptier, too. Every movement they made echoed, their footsteps on floorboards creaked. It was freezingly cold, too.
Clare would have liked to follow Helen out of here, but she kept reminding herself of the percentage the firm would get from this sale, so she followed Denzil Black around from one bedroom to another, forcing herself to make bright, encouraging comments.
He must be mad even to consider buying it, she thought, staring at the four-poster bed hung with ancient, tattered dark red curtains, which dominated the main bedroom. The oak shutters were closed across the high windows, there was only one faint lamp beside the bed, and the light reflected in a narrow Gothic-arched oak-framed mirror hanging on the opposite wall. That would probably sell well at auction. It was small enough for modern houses, and perfectly in tune with the current taste for art nouveau.
As she stared at it, Denzil Black looked round and followed her gaze.
‘That’s charming,’ he said at once. ‘I’ll certainly want to keep that.’
He had very good taste. Curiously, she asked him, ‘What do you actually do, Mr Black? What’s your job?’
‘At the moment I don’t have one.’ He shook a curtain, watched the dust fly up from it. ‘But don’t worry, I’ll be paying cash for Dark Tarn, if I buy it. There’ll be no problem about money.’
That was not what she was thinking about. Her curiosity about him still unsatisfied, she asked, ‘Where do you live at present? I mean, apart from staying at Jimmy Storr’s hotel?’
He gave her a dry, sardonic look. ‘Los Angeles.’
Her eyes widened. She hadn’t expected that. ‘Really? But you’re not American, are you?’ He had a faint accent of some kind, admittedly, but she hadn’t pinned it down as American.
‘No. I was born in Scotland, not that I remember anything about it. I left there when I was two years old. I lived in Manchester until I was twenty-one, but I spent a succession of very good holidays in Greenhowe in my late teens.’
‘Oh, that’s why you’ve come back?’
He looked amused. ‘That’s what you wanted to know, was it? Why I wanted to move to Greenhowe? Well, in answer to your next question, I’ve lived in California for years now, mostly around Los Angeles and Beverley Hills.’
‘Beverley Hills?’ She stared at him, couldn’t keep back the question, ‘You aren’t in the film business?’ She laughed as she asked, expecting him to shake his head.
‘Yes,’ he said, though, calmly.
‘Oh.’ Clare was incredulous. ‘Doing what? You’re not an actor?’ But he could be, she thought; he had the looks for it, and, even more, the charisma; she could imagine how dynamic he would look on film.
‘I did some acting, many years ago—I was an extra once. But I wanted to be on the other side of the camera. I’ve worked at a number of jobs in the industry—stills photographer, cameraman, set designer. My ambition was to be a director, and I finally got there, but I’m out of a job at the moment, and wanted to get away, which is why I’m back in Britain.’
‘And you picked Greenhowe because you remembered it better than Scotland?’ she worked out, and he nodded.
‘I had very happy memories of Greenhowe; summers on the beach, walks across the moors. A travel agent booked me into Jimmy Storr’s hotel, so here I am.’ He dusted his hands with a handkerchief, grimacing. ‘This whole house is filthy.’ He leaned against the wall, those dark eyes cool and steady. ‘Well, let’s talk business, Miss Summer. The price is ridiculous, considering the state of the house, as I’m sure you realise. I shall have to spend a fortune renovating it before I can move in. I’ll tell you what I’m prepared to pay, and you can talk to the owner and let Helen know his decision. I won’t bargain. I’m making one offer and that’s it. If he turns it down, I won’t want to discuss the matter any further.’
Clare watched him calmly, nodding.
He named the price he was prepared to pay. It was far less than she had hoped and her blue eyes hardened.
‘Well, of course I’ll put your offer to my client,’ she said flatly. ‘But I doubt if he will be ready to agree to such a low amount.’
‘How long has the house been on the market? Some years, isn’t it? Empty houses deteriorate quickly; this one is falling to bits. In another two years the roof will go, kids will smash the windows, the garden will be completely wild, and then it won’t take long to become a total ruin.’
He was right, but Clare wasn’t admitting it. ‘I’ll talk to my client,’ she said in a cold, remote voice, and turned to walk back down the stairs and out of the house, with Denzil Black behind her.
The storm was deepening outside, the wind howling around the house like a wolf. There was a crash of thunder and a white zigzag of lightning split the sky, then the chandelier lights flickered and went out, plunging the whole house into darkness. Clare was halfway down the wide, elaborately carved staircase, and she stopped dead, blind in the unexpected blackness.
Denzil Black was right behind her. He put a hand on her shoulder, and she jumped about ten feet into the air. ‘Have you got a torch?’
‘In the car,’ she told him, her voice a mere thread of sound.
He sighed. ‘Never mind, I can see in the dark. Give me your hand.’ His fingers slid down her shoulder to her arm, down her arm to entwine around her hand; Clare would have liked to pull away—he had the strangest effect on her—but she didn’t like being here alone with him in the dark, she urgently needed to get out of this house, so she let him lead her down the stairs.
When they got to the car Helen was standing beside it and ran towards them, flung herself at Denzil Black, close to hysteria. ‘All the lights went out! There was a terrible flash of lightning...didn’t you see it? The storm’s right overhead; I was afraid it would hit the car, then I saw this flash...and the lights all went out. I called and called—didn’t you hear me? How could you leave me out here all by myself in the dark, all this time?’
‘You shouldn’t get so upset!’ soothed Denzil Black, his head bent over hers. ‘I can hear your heart beating like a drum!’ He lowered his head, Clare thought she saw him kissing Helen’s neck and hurriedly looked away, very flushed. They might remember she was there! She didn’t want to be an audience for their lovemaking!
Helen gave a long, ragged sigh, winding her arms around him. ‘Oh, Denzil...’
‘Shh...you’re safe now,’ he soothed. ‘We’ll drop Miss Summer off and then I’ll take you home. Get back into the car now. You’ll feel better when you’re warmer.’
Languidly, Helen obeyed, settling down into her seat without another word. As Clare got back into the car she noticed that Helen had her eyes shut and was apparently half asleep.
As they drove away from Dark Tarn Denzil Black asked, ‘Where do you live, Miss Summer?’
‘Just around the corner from the office, in York Square. You probably know it; it’s a Georgian square behind the Town Hall.’
‘I know. Very handsome houses; they’ve been well preserved, too. Has your family lived there long?’
‘My father was born in the house; I’ve lived there all my life. It’s a warm, family house; we love it.’
‘But you’re planning to move out, all the same, when your cottage is fit for occupation?’
‘There are quite a lot of us,’ Clare unwillingly explained. Why did he ask so many questions? ‘I’d like to have more room to myself.’
‘You have a lot of brothers and sisters?’
‘Two brothers and a sister,’ she said. ‘And there are only four bedrooms between all of us. Dad has one to himself, so do my brothers, because Robin is a student, and needs somewhere private to study, and so my little brother, Jamie, has the tiny boxroom to himself, and I share a bedroom with my sister.’
‘How old is she?’
Helen stirred resentfully. ‘Do stop asking her questions, Denzil! You sound like a TV chat show host!’
He laughed, but Clare saw his long hands tighten on the wheel, the knuckles briefly showing white, and suspected he hadn’t liked being pulled up by Helen in that way.
For a while he drove in silence, then they reached town and began to navigate a way through the one-way-street system until they came to York Square. The early nineteenth-century houses ran on each side of the square with well-cared-for gardens in the centre, set back behind green-painted Victorian railings. It gave the square a feel of the country, especially in summer, when the trees and bushes were in full leaf, and there was a scent of flowers on the air.
‘Which house?’ Denzil Black asked and Clare leaned forward to point.
‘That one, by the street-lamp, with the holly trees in the garden.’
He parked under the street-light, and Clare politely thanked him. ‘I’ll let Helen know my client’s decision as soon as possible,’ she promised. ‘Goodnight, Helen.’
Helen sleepily murmured, ‘Night.’
Denzil Black got out of the car and came round to open Clare’s door. ‘Thanks,’ she said, avoiding his hand as he tried to help her out. ‘Goodnight, Mr Black.’
Before she could walk away, the front door of the house opened and in the yellow light from the hallway a girl was outlined, her face framed in a cloud of long, smooth silvery fair hair.
‘Who’s that?’ Denzil Black’s voice had altered. Clare shot a look up at him and frowned, not answering.
There was a long silence, while the girl began walking towards them.
‘Is that your sister?’ asked Denzil Black slowly, and Clare answered him in a chilly voice.
‘Yes.’ She wished Lucy hadn’t come out just now. Clare was intensely protective towards her sister, and she was also deeply intuitive; her intuition told her now that it wouldn’t be a good idea for Lucy to meet Denzil Black.
‘Goodnight, Mr Black,’ Clare said, willing him to get back into the car and drive away.
He didn’t. He stood there, watching Lucy stroll down the garden path towards them, his face intent. Clare gritted her teeth. She would have loved to know what he was thinking.
As Lucy came into the circle of lamplight at the gate she paused, smiling, her oval face taking on a shimmering quality. She wasn’t wearing make-up, and yet her skin was perfect, smooth and clear.
She and Clare shared the same colouring, yet there was an immense difference between them. Clare knew that she herself was very attractive, and men always liked the look of her, but Lucy was, quite simply, beautiful.
More than that, she had a mysterious radiance which was partly due to her very fair skin, the long, flowing golden hair framing her face, her eyes, which were a deeper blue than Clare’s, and partly to a childlike nature.
Perhaps because her family had always spoilt her, Lucy had never quite, it seemed to Clare, grown up, yet she was so lovable that it didn’t matter. Lucy was kind-hearted, loving, generous. Clare had always worried over her, afraid that some day someone would hurt Lucy. It had been a great relief to her when Lucy got engaged to someone who, she knew, would never make her little sister unhappy.
‘What a fabulous car!’ Lucy said as soon as she was within earshot. ‘It’s a Lamborghini, isn’t it?’ She gave Denzil Black a fascinated look. ‘Is it yours? Hello, I’m Lucy, Clare’s sister. We haven’t met before, have we?’
‘I’d remember if we had,’ he said, his jet pupils glittering as he took the hand Lucy held out to him. He bent and kissed it and Lucy gave a startled gasp, then laughed.
‘You aren’t French, are you?’
He laughed. ‘I had a French grandmother—does that count?’
