Alice smiled again, that special smile which denoted that she was in touch with deep elemental forces. It gave Professor Hartley the creeps, but Michael was new to it and it thrilled him down to his toes. His big right toe, less controlled than the others, gave an excited little twitch and the pantechnicon leaped forward.
‘Don’t worry,’ Alice said. And Michael could do nothing but smile back at her.
He had a bit of trouble turning the van into the narrow gateway which was marked with a lopsided sign – Rithering Manor. The furniture clanked and shifted ominously as the van bumped up the potholed gravel drive. Low hanging boughs of slowly falling trees banged on the roof of the van and roses run to briar scratched at the windows and the paint-work. The house itself was dark; it looked uninhabited, standing alone among tall trees on the outskirts of the village, the high gable ends pointing at a sky which had grown suddenly cloudy.
Michael stopped the van in front of the house and went up the shallow steps to the large double wooden doors, dusty with peeling paint. He pulled at the bell-knob. It came off in his hand with the promptness which normally only happens when these things are arranged by a good special effects department. He looked back towards the van for help from Alice.
She shouldered her rucksack and, wrapping an extra scarf or two around her head, came up the steps.
‘Try the door,’ she advised.
It yielded at once to his touch. Feeling for Alice’s hand, Michael stepped over the threshold into the darkness of the hall.
‘Who’s that?’ came a voice. A strong and hearty male voice from the front room on their left.
‘It’s Michael!’ squeaked Michael. He got a firm grip of himself and tightened his hold on Alice’s hand. ‘Michael Coulter,’ he said. This time he had gone too far in the other direction. He sounded as if he were auditioning for the bass part in Figaro. ‘I’ve come to see my Aunt,’ he said in a pitch midway between the squeak and basso profundo. ‘My Aunt, Miss Sarah Coulter.’
‘You’ve left it a bit late,’ came the reply. The door opened and a thick-set, grey-haired man stood in the doorway looking them over. ‘She’s dead. Are you the lad from the university?’
‘I am her nephew, Michael,’ said Michael, trying for a little dignity.
‘And you must be Mrs Coulter?’
Alice flushed scarlet with pleasure at being mistaken for Michael’s wife. Michael’s grip on her hand tightened. It was a tender moment for them both.
‘I didn’t know you were staying with your son or I’d have contacted you direct, Mrs Coulter,’ the man said.
Alice’s flush went redder but she abruptly lost her smile. ‘I am a friend of Michael’s,’ she said icily. ‘I came over with him today to keep him company.’
‘Oh aye,’ the man nodded. ‘Well I’m Doctor Simmonds, I sent the message to you. I’m afraid you’re too late. She’s dead.’
‘Oh,’ Michael said blankly. ‘Oh dear.’
Alice put the rucksack sulkily down on the tiled hall floor. A large green-eyed, thick-coated black cat came out of the shadows and sniffed at it.
‘I’ve just written out the death certificate,’ the doctor said cheerfully. ‘Natural causes of course. She was eighty-eight. I think it was the Beaujolais Nouveau, I warned her not to drink it after Christmas but she was always stubborn.
‘I’ll send the undertakers around later. But they won’t be able to fit her in for at least a couple of days. She’ll be all right here as long as it doesn’t get too hot.’
Michael gulped, his face went greenish in the shadowy hall.
‘You’re the only heir, you know,’ the doctor said chattily. He came out of the sitting-room with his black bag, waving the death certificate to dry the ink. ‘I see you brought your things to move in at once. Bit precipitate of you I would have thought; but young people today have very little sense of etiquette.’
Alice’s grip on Michael’s hand tightened.
‘Anyway, I’ll leave you to unload,’ he said cheerily. ‘Don’t block up the hall with anything till they’ve got the coffin out.’ He paused for a moment. ‘We’ll be neighbours,’ he said without much pleasure. ‘It’s a quiet village this; expensive. We like it like that.’ He looked hard at Michael’s young gormless face and then glanced at Alice’s flowing bright gown and coloured scarves. ‘Nothing that brings down property prices will be tolerated in this village,’ he said abruptly. ‘No hippies here thank you. G’day!’
His confident footsteps echoed on the loose tiles of the hall. Alice and Michael stood in silence, still hand-clasped. The big black cat backed up to Alice’s bag of herbal remedies and shot a spray of yellow urine directly and accurately all over it.
There was a long silence. Not even the hissing noise of the peeing cat distracted Michael and Alice from their thoughts.
‘Should we see her?’ Michael asked in a hushed tone.
Alice nodded. She went towards the uncarpeted stairs and led the way, one hand trailing along the sticky banister, the treads of the stairs creaking beneath each step. The stairs swept around a half-landing beneath a cobwebby high window and then arrived at the main landing. To left and right were doors closed on empty bedrooms, the door to the master bedroom was straight ahead. It stood open. Alice crossed the threshold and then paused.
The old lady was dressed in a perfectly white nightgown with a nightcap tied neatly around her white head. She was propped high on clean white pillows trimmed with lace. She looked like everyone’s idea of a sweetly dead old lady. She looked like Whistler’s Mother; only supine. On her bedside table were two empty bottles of Beaujolais Nouveau, and on the coverlet of her bed were price lists from wine merchants and yesterday’s Sporting Life.
Alice started to hum, a deep rhythmic buzz of sound from the back of her throat like a massive, tuneful bee. She went over to the sash window and flung it up to welcome the sunshine into the shaded room. Michael, who dimly remembered seeing Alice hurling furniture from the spare bedroom window the night before, shot an anxious look at her as if she might be planning to toss Aunty Sarah out into the rose beds. But Alice was communing with the forces of Nature and freeing Aunty Sarah’s aura and essence and incorporeal body to mingle with the warm sunshine and be transported to a higher plane.
‘Hummm…’ she droned.
Michael dipped his head in an awkward little bow to the still figure in the bed and stepped softly out of the room. From his previous visit he thought he remembered that the kitchen was at the back of the house. He had not eaten since yesterday afternoon, and last night had been the most active of his life. He badly wanted a cup of coffee. He was also thinking that he should telephone his parents at once and tell them of Aunty Sarah’s death and his rich inheritance. Michael’s brain, under-fed and over-excited, spun with dreams and hopes.
The kitchen was as immaculate as Aunty Sarah’s bedroom. Michael filled the kettle and put it on to boil, noting that Aunty Sarah’s cleaner had let the rest of the house accumulate dust as long as the kitchen, Aunty Sarah’s room and the bathroom were as perfect as they had been in the roaring twenties when Aunty Sarah’s exacting standards had been set.
Just as the kettle was boiling, Alice came in.
She was wearing her dreamy look which sent a shiver of anticipation down Michael’s spine.
‘Tea, if there is any,’ she said with flute-like sweetness. ‘Coffee is a poison, you know, Michael.’
Michael nodded obediently, and looked for the canister of tea instead.
‘So you are the heir?’ she asked.