The Body at Auercliff (4 page)

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.”

“I found a body in the other wing of the house,” I tell her, as she turns to look at me again. “Aunt Emily, no-one's suggesting that you've done anything wrong, but the police
do
need to work out who the body is, and how she ended up in one of your spare rooms. She'd clearly been there for quite some time.”

“Why would there be a body in the house?” she asks, seemingly at a loss. “You must be mistaken.”

“The body would appear to be that of a female,” Johnson says, flicking back to an earlier page in his notebook. “We don't have a good estimate on her age yet, but we're thinking somewhere between early twenties and maybe mid-thirties. I'm waiting to hear back from the medical examiner to see whether there are any distinguishing marks.”

“Average weight, average height,” I add. “Aunt Emily, does that sound like anyone you know?”

“Of course it bloody doesn't,” she spits back at me. “I don't even know what you're talking about!”

“There was no sign of any clothing or other personal items in the room with the body,” Johnson continues. “We're going to have to take a look around and see if we can find something in one of the other rooms.”

“Some of the doors are locked,” I tell him. “I can probably find the keys for you.”

“Rot!” Emily snaps. “Absolute rot! There's no reason for anyone to go barging around in my home! I refuse to give you permission! You will not -” Gasping, she seems for a moment to be in pain.

“It's okay,” I tell her, “Aunt Emily, there's no need to -”

“Don't tell me what I don't need to do in my own home,” she hisses, “when there are strange men bashing about the place!” She points at Detective Johnson, as if she's trying to jab him with a finger. “Do you know how many antiques there are in my house? Do you know how much damage you could cause, even if you just chip a tile or scratch a floorboard?”

“I can assure you -”

“Vandals!” she shouts. “That's what you are, all of you! A bunch of vandals, ransacking my house under false pretenses.”

“Aunt Emily, they're just here about the body.” Placing a hand on her shoulder, I try to hold her back in case she tries to physically attack the detective, which seems possible right now. In fact, she seems almost frantic. “They just want to ask you a few questions, that's all. They want to know who that woman was, and how her body ended up in one of your rooms.”

Emily turns, staring straight at me even though I know her milky white eyes are barely able to see anything at all.

“What?” she stammers, with a hint of shock in her voice. “What body? What are you talking about?”

Realizing she seems to have drifted into another cloud of dementia, and that we're going round and round in circles, I decide to try again. “Aunt Emily, a woman has been found dead in one of your rooms. Nobody's accusing you of anything, but the police really need to figure out who she is. Can you think of anyone at all who might have thought they were allowed to come and stay in your home? Have you invited anyone, or maybe heard someone breaking in?”

“In my...”

She stares at me for a moment longer, before slowly sinking back against her pillows as if she's in shock.

“A girl in my...”

Her eyes dart about the room for a moment, as if she's searching for something, and I swear the color has drained from her face. After a few seconds, a tear starts running down her cheek, although she quickly wipes it away.

“We really just need to find out who the girl is,” Detective Johnson says calmly, “so we can let her family know what happened to her. At this stage, there's nothing to indicate foul play. She might have had a medical condition, there were certainly no signs of a struggle or an injury, although we can't rule those out entirely.” He pauses for a moment. “M'am, I'm going to need to take a DNA sample from you. For obvious reasons. It'll just be a mouth swab, nothing invasive.”

Waiting for Emily to respond, I watch as another tear trickles down her face. Staring straight ahead, she seems momentarily too shocked to say a word, although finally she wipes the second tear away and turns to me.

“Aunt Emily?” I ask, feeling as if she's more lucid than before. “Do you know who the girl is?”

Her mouth opens slightly, as if she's about to say something, but then she turns to look over at the window as more footsteps can be heard on the gravel driveway.

“What girl?” she whispers, before turning to Detective Johnson. “Who are you?” she snaps, sitting up again. “Why are there people in my house? Why is there a strange man in my bedroom?” She turns to me. “And who are you?” she stammers breathlessly. “What's going on? Why is my house being invaded?”

“Aunt Emily, it's about the body -”

“What body?” she shouts, interrupting me. “What in the name of all that's holy are you talking about?”

Chapter Seven

“And another one that's unlocked,” Detective Johnson points out, opening the door at the rear of the kitchenette, before pulling it shut again. “That makes at least five entrances to the house that appear to have been left unsecured. Anyone could have walked in at any time.”

“Is that what you think happened?” I ask, horrified by the idea that my aunt might have unwittingly shared the house with a stranger. “Some random person just wandered in and made themselves at home, and then died in one of the bedrooms?”

“It's certainly possible,” he replies, heading over to the other side of the kitchenette and looking through the empty cupboards. “There's no other sign of life, but some homeless woman could have twigged that the place was mostly unguarded. Your aunt's eyesight is bad and she seems to be mostly bedridden.” He turns to me. “What about her hearing?”

“I haven't noticed any problems,” I tell him.

“Still, it's a big house, if the intruder was quiet and kept mostly to this wing...” His voice trails off for a moment. “The postmortem'll tell us if there's any sign of foul play, but I'm not expecting anything. Are you sure that there's no-one else in your aunt's immediate family who might have been here?”

“I'm sure. She's basically all alone.”

“Well someone was here,” he points out, “at least for a while. Even if your aunt had no idea.”

“She goes through phases of lucidity,” I reply. “It's entirely possible that she'll remember something at some point, but I can't predict when.”

“How long are you staying here with her?”

I pause, not really knowing what to tell him. “I've been trying to get her into hospital,” I explain finally, “but so far she's refused. I wasn't even supposed to be here at all, but there's no way I can leave her alone. She's barely able to get out of bed. I don't know if you noticed, but she has some cuts on her legs from where she fell some time last week. I could never forgive myself if I left and then something happened to her.”

“There's one other thing I need you to do for me before we take the body away,” he replies. “I'm afraid it won't be very pleasant.”

***

“I've honestly never seen her before in my life,” I say after a moment, staring down at the face of the dead woman. “At least, I don't think so. It's a little hard to...”

My voice trails off as I see the way her flesh seems to be clinging to the contours of her skull, while her mouth is wide open in a kind of perpetual dead scream.

“Do you still not know her name?” I ask, turning to Johnson.

“We haven't had much luck so far,” he continues, as an officer pulls a sheet back over the body to hide its face. “We haven't been able to find any of the woman's belongings. I mean, she can't have walked into the house naked and without at least
some
possessions. She's too badly decomposed for fingerprints to be any use. We'll try DNA next, but I'm not exactly holding out hope. Something tells me this woman didn't leave many clues behind.”

“One, two, lift,” says one of the officers, as he and some colleagues lift the stretcher and carry the woman out of the room.

Looking back at the bed, I see a faint brown stain on the white sheets, left behind by the woman's rotting body.

“Exactly how far gone is your aunt?” Johnson asks.

I turn to him.

“Maybe that came out wrong,” he continues, “but... I'm wondering whether the problem is that she wasn't aware of the woman being here, or whether she simply doesn't remember right now. Maybe later, when she's feeling a little better, she might realize... I don't know, maybe she'll realize she agreed to let someone kip here for a while.”

“Are you abandoning your theory about someone wandering in from outside?” I ask, stepping around the bed and heading to the wardrobe, figuring I might as well take a look.

“I'm just trying to cover all the bases.”

Opening the wardrobe door, I'm surprised to see some kids' toys at the bottom. Reaching down, I pick up a wooden dog on wheels, complete with a string around its neck.

“I doubt those are hers, somehow,” Johnson suggests.

“I came here a couple of times when I was younger,” I tell him. “This side of the house was always so empty, even back then. Every time we visited, a little more of the house seemed to have been closed off, like it was dying one room at a time. And my aunt... Even back then, there were early signs that something wasn't quite right in her head.”

He looks down at the stained bed for a moment. “It's hard to think someone just lay there rotting all this time, and your aunt was getting on with things and didn't have a clue. I mean, when you think about it like that, the whole situation's a little creepy.” Heading over to the window, he peers out at the lawn for a moment. “Then again, I guess having the window open meant there wasn't too much of a smell. The flies just came in and out here, and never spread to the rest of the house.” He turns to me. “I couldn't live by myself in a big place like this. All those empty rooms and -”

“Do you need anything else?” I ask suddenly. “Sorry, I don't mean to be rude, but I'd like to get back to my aunt. She seemed quite distressed earlier, and I don't think she should be alone.”

“Sure.” Sighing, he wanders back over to the door. “I might need to talk to her again, though, depending on how our inquiries go. As things stand, she's the only potential witness to whatever happened here.”

“She's blind and she suffers from dementia,” I point out. “I'm not sure she can be much of a witness for anything.”