All except one.
Right in the corner, one six-inch section of the floorboards is not quite flush with the one next to it. I shine the light closer and the joins are more visible, the wood cut neatly through just before it met the wall. I grab the broken screwdriver and work the end gently into the join, moving it back and forth until the section of wood starts to lift free of the rest. It comes out cleanly to reveal a small cavity beneath, a few inches deep and lined with thick plastic. Inside the cavity is a rectangular tobacco tin, the old-fashioned kind with a picture of a bearded sailor on the front.Player’s Navy Cut Cigarettes. I ease the lid up and it comes off easily, as if untouched by the passing of the years. Inside is a black Bic lighter, the stub of a pencil, and a half-empty box of Swan Vesta matches. The lighter sparks but there’s no flame; I guess the fuel evaporated long ago.
Beneath the tin is a bed of fine, dark ash. Something else, too.
A half-burned piece of notepaper.
38
What remains of the paper is bone dry, creases set hard with age where it’s been crumpled into a ball, almost as if it will crack into pieces as I flatten it out. It may have been white once but now it’s jaundiced with age like some ancient manuscript that’s not seen the light of day for centuries. The bottom half is gone, the edge browned and uneven, consumed by some long-ago flame. On what remains of the paper, scribbles of black pencil are faded but still legible, a line drawn down the center of the page with a heading written on each side, underlined.
My hopes are dashed when I scan the text: I can’t understand a word of it. The heading on the left reads:Yziild. On the right of the line isKzipvi. Below each of them, more jumbled letters, five on one side of the page but only three on the other above the scorched edge of the paper. I run my eye down the first entries in the left-hand column, trying to discern any kind of pattern or meaning.
xlmurin nvvgrmt
olxzgrlm
zxxvhh
A foreign language? The placement of vowels and consonants seemed too haphazard. It looks more like some kind ofencryption. I take the paper downstairs and set to work at my laptop on the kitchen table.
Perhaps they’re anagrams? On an A4 pad I write out both headings, playing about with the letters, and putting them in a different order. But none of them look plausible, and there are too many of the letters V, Z, and H for them to be real words. Putting each of the headings into Google yields a result I’m not sure I’ve seen before:It looks like there aren’t many great matches for your search. The search engine throws up some random brand names and foreign words that aren’t exact matches. I try some of the other words with the same result. I’m so absorbed in the search that I don’t even hear anyone else in the house until I sense the movement of air behind me. I flinch and turn.
“Leah, you made me jump…”
It’s not my daughter.
Helena, the cleaner, stands in the kitchen doorway with a mop and bucket in her Marigold-gloved hands.
“Sorry,” she says calmly. “Did I startle you?”
“No, it’s fine.” I give her a tight smile. “Just thought you were my eldest.”
“I was upstairs,” she says. “Doing the bathrooms. Didn’t realize you were home.”
That makes two of us, I think. An idea occurs to me. “Actually, I was wondering about something: my wife said you used to work for Mr. Hopkins?”
She nods, moving past me toward the sink. A faint trace of cigarette smoke rises from her housecoat.
“Ten years or more.”
“I would have liked to talk to him about the house. It’s such an amazing old place. So much history.”
“It’s good to have a family here again with young children. Nice for Daisy and Callum to have some space too, I imagine.”
There is a flutter of unease in my stomach at how easily this stranger throws in the names of my two youngest children, but I try to keep my tone to one of casual interest.
“Did Mr. Hopkins do much renovation work, do you know? Rebuilding or… remodeling?”
“He never wanted to change it, not after his wife passed.” She empties the mop bucket into the sink. “After she died he wanted to keep it all the same. Keep it how it was when she was alive.”
“Of course.” I close my laptop. “So he didn’t make changes to the layout, as far as you know? Didn’t alter the floorplan of any rooms?”
Her eyes narrow slightly. “Which room?”
“Any of them.”
“You mean one of the bedrooms?”
