Adam Nevill - House of Small Shadows

Edith was not to be flattered. ‘They are not for sale. They were like children to him and they are not for strangers.’

‘Of course. But just in this room, from what I can see, we’d have enough for an exhibition.’

The old woman glanced about herself. ‘These are mine. He made them for me when I was a child. And they will accompany me to the grave, my dear. So you’d do well to keep your hands off them.’

Then why am I here? she wanted to ask.

‘They keep me company in my room here. They help me pass the time. And there has been much time spent here. More than you can imagine.’ She sounded sad now. ‘Don’t you, darling?’ Edith Mason reached one spidery hand down to touch the dog’s head. But the red setter seemed more interested in their guest and continued to stare at Catherine with what looked like sympathy for her predicament. She offered the dog a weak smile in acknowledgement.

Edith issued a sudden unpleasant laugh that rang off the china and glass. ‘Still fooling people, brave Horatio. He was my uncle’s favourite hound. His champion rat catcher. But poor Horatio caught his last rat in 1928. My uncle left him to me, to look after. And he’s still waiting for his master to return. Day and night. Aren’t we all, my brave darling?’

Catherine stared at the dog. It wasn’t possible the animal was preserved. The expression and the posture, the glossy lustre of its fur, a wet nose, moist eyes… how? She stood up and approached the squirrels who watched her from the piano. Looked at them quickly, but with an expert’s eye, and wouldn’t have been surprised if one of their noses twitched, or if one of their red-coated bodies leapt up the curtains to hang from the pelmet.

These weren’t the tatty and patched horrors of junk shops, nor what sat in the darkness of attics, only to be brought back to light in house clearances. And Mason had crafted at least fifty gifts for his little niece in one drawing room. As a child, Edith must have slept in a room full of dead kittens wearing party dresses made of taffeta, chiffon and delaine. No wonder she was mad.

But what else pounced, sat up, stalked and pranced out there in the many rooms of this vast building, perfectly preserved by a grand master? It was a big house and the last original Mason diorama sold for eighty thousand pounds at Bonhams in 2007. An individual piece, of the quality displayed about her, could fetch up to ten today. Mason had been the best of them all and the market had been starved of new pieces since the 1970s, when there were few takers for taxidermy. She knew only too well that less than five per cent of Victorian taxidermy had survived until the next century, the rest had fallen apart or been destroyed. But not here. Not inside the Red House.

What was she even doing here? If this room was an indication of the treasures within the building, one of the big London firms should have been notified. This was a job for Sotheby’s, not small fry like Catherine Howard of Leonard Osberne, Valuer and Auctioneer. She fought to conceal her excitement; revealing it might be a mistake.

The American museums paid a lot for birds too, the ones the Victorians had stuffed into extinction after enclosing their habitats. ‘No birds?’

Edith’s head trembled in a brief palsy of rage. ‘Birds! My uncle was no plumassier. He had no time for feathers! These,’ she wafted a thin white hand in the air, ‘are trifles. He mostly composed with rats. Animals like us. He had his Damascene moment during the war. At the front. I recall him once telling my mother, his dear sister, that we were all just “vermin under the stars and nothing more”.’

‘I see.’ Catherine gazed around herself again. ‘He did so much. I never knew.’

‘My uncle only considered commissions when the house required it of him. Some of those pieces you may have seen in your grubby trade. It was all that ever got out. He had no interest in fame, competing, or exhibiting, like the others. When the demand for his work dried up, he sold land so the Red House would survive. We have been prudent, but we need to be maintained, dear.’

‘He did all this… for its own sake?’

Edith smiled. ‘I think you begin to understand a little. He only began his great works when interest in his craft had gone. It was out of vogue, dear, for most of his working life. My uncle was no scientist, and no worshipper of nature. He was an artist. A magician! And now… now we get letters coming to the house. People want to know if there are any more animals? Are they valuable, dear?’

Catherine suppressed a smile. ‘Could be. To collectors. That is what I’d like to find out.’ The door clicked open and Maude shuffled in, burdened with a tray laden with what looked like one grand’s worth of original Wemyss ware.

‘And you might, Miss Howard. In good time. I’ve decided I like you enough to show you a little more. You have respect for his work. I can see it in your lovely eyes. But we must take tea first. The cakes are home-made. Will you pour? My hands are not so good.’

‘Of course.’ Suddenly glad she never fled, Catherine smiled at the dog and thinking nothing of it, she said, ‘I must say old Horatio is very well trained. He never even sniffed at the cakes.’

What little warmth existed in Edith’s face slipped away, and her bloodless features stiffened into a grimace. ‘If you are trying to make a joke, please don’t. You are not to make fun of my uncle’s things. Not ever. Am I understood?’

‘Go in, go on, go inside.’

‘But…’

‘ In. In .’ Edith’s insistence carried the threat of anger.

‘Lights?’

‘We keep them in the dark. We don’t want them damaged.’

‘Then how do you see them?’

‘Oh, will you get inside, you silly girl!’

Catherine stood inside the doorway and stared into total darkness. Behind her, in the narrow passage where she had been instructed to wheel and position Edith Mason, the footplates of the wheelchair touched her heels, as if the elderly woman had managed to roll her chair forward a few inches by herself to add emphasis to her demand. ‘The ceiling light has not been replaced in years. You will have to open the curtains. Would you have me draw the curtains with these hands? Are you afraid, dear. Afraid of the dark?’ Edith tittered.

Catherine took a step inside as though the floor was ice, her hands outstretched, her eyes so wide they stung in their sockets. The air was close, humid, thick with the scent of polished wood and the chemical taint. Which was stronger, more pungent the further she moved through the darkness.

‘Stay on the left. The left!’ Edith warned, though a stern tone did not disguise her mirth, if not glee, at Catherine’s discomfort.

The low heels of Catherine’s sandals clattered and scraped across the floorboards, the sound rang hollow in what she sensed was a large room. There was nothing soft inside the space to cushion the noise or to protect her.

Catherine looked back at the grotesque but featureless silhouette of Edith Mason, framed by the faint ruddy light of the ground-floor passage. The figure was motionless, propped upright, the outline of the head ungainly and vast upon wizened shoulders.

Groping through oblivion in the unfamiliar room of a sinister house suddenly felt like a test combined with a childish dare and a horrible prank designed by a cruel mind. She was doing this for the contract and she loathed herself for it, her actions were suddenly unacceptable to her. She was allowing herself to be goaded, to be manipulated, to be bullied for some illusory promise of advancement. Was that not part of the reason she left London? She’d not even been here an hour and she was frightened in the dark and Edith Mason was inside her head. She grimaced at the elderly woman’s silhouette and despised it.