The Attic Room: A psychological thriller (3 page)

Friday 14th - Saturday 15th July

A search round the first floor of the house revealed a
good-sized bathroom with an electric shower, an airing cupboard with all the
bed things she would need, and a couple more wooden chairs. Nina settled into
the downstairs bedroom quite comfortably. The upstairs rooms, though larger,
didn’t appeal to her. Apart from John Moore’s own room – and no way could she
sleep there – they were poorly lit and smelled musty. Nina spread her things
about the little ‘maid’s room’, then grimaced. Quarter past six, oh, golly –
Naomi would be back at the farmhouse by now, chattering away to Beth about the
day’s ride, or maybe having a bath to get rid of the aches and pains after four
hours in the saddle… if only she were there to see the pleasure and excitement
on her child’s face. Unhappiness washed over Nina. It was years since she’d
been away by herself like this. She wasn’t used to her own company, that was
the problem, and this wasn’t a good time to phone home, either. They’d be busy
with the guests’ evening meal in the farmhouse.

Stop being a wimp, woman, she thought, grabbing her handbag.
Go for dinner, you’re hungry. Things’ll look different when you have a good
meal inside you.

Half an hour later she was sitting at a single table by the
fireplace in an elegant Georgian dining room, a very nice salmon steak in front
of her and thinking that having a solo dinner in a posh hotel was something
else she wasn’t used to. The other diners were all couples or family groups,
but the waitress made her feel at home and Nina arranged to have breakfast
there too. For a few moments she regretted her decision to stay in John Moore’s
uncomfortable house, but then – what would she do stuck in a hotel all evening?
What a weird situation this was. This time last week she’d been on the laptop,
helping Bethany get them started again after the break caused by Claire’s
death. Little had she known then that in a week’s time she’d have inherited a
fortune from a man she’d never heard of and be dining all alone in a Bedford
hotel.

It was still light when she walked back to John Moore’s
house, and the contrast of the pleasant river bank to the dinginess inside hit
Nina like something physical as soon as she opened the front door. She shook
off the feeling of depression. There was a job to be started here. To work,
woman. You can do this.

At the desk she sat staring at the pile of papers Sam had
found, apprehension rising in spite of the brave thoughts. God, it was creepy
here… and if John Moore was her uncle it was entirely possible that she would
come face to face with a photo of Robert Moore, or Claire – or, heaven forbid,
her own younger self. Quickly, Nina pushed the pile away. Something about this
place was giving her the jitters big-style, and faces from the past would be
easier to cope with after a good – she hoped – night’s sleep. She pulled out
her phone.

A long conversation with Beth reassured her that she wasn’t
alone in the world, and one with Naomi made her laugh. The little girl was
bubbling over about her pony ride, in tones of childlike happiness that had
been missing since her grandmother’s death. It was great to hear her so bright
again, though Nina knew that no-one grieved in a straight line. She herself
could be almost content one minute, and then the senselessness of Claire’s
death would hit her yet again. Thank God she was never further than a phone
call away if Naomi needed her. Permanent accessibility had its advantages.

It was well before seven when Nina awoke the next morning.
The curtains in her bedroom didn’t quite meet in the middle, and sunlight
slanting through trees in next door’s garden was creating flickering shadows on
the wall beside her bed. She watched them for a few seconds, then stretched
luxuriously and swung her feet to the floor. Parquet, no less, though a rug for
her toes would have been nice. But never mind, it was a beautiful morning and
even John Moore’s dreary décor looked better when the sun was shining.

Returning to the house after breakfast, she ran up to the
airing cupboard for a couple of towels for the downstairs loo. Heavens, by the looks
of things John Moore hadn’t splashed out on towels since the nineteen eighties;
these were all either threadbare or stiff as boards. What on earth had the man
spent his money on? Nina grabbed two of the least ancient ones and was turning
for the stairs again when the attic doorway caught her eye. Eight or nine steps
above, it was set in the middle of a little landing, a solid, wooden door
painted dingy white, a raised T-shaped panel on the lower part.

Nina stood motionless, staring at the door. That T-shape…
what was it reminding her of? Something was jumping up and down just beyond
memory, and she couldn’t pinpoint it. Nina shivered, and ran on downstairs. It
couldn’t be anything important, an old door…

Sam’s documents in the study were all bank-related, apart
from receipts for medication that John Moore had bought online. He’d worried
about his thinning hair, apparently, and was prone to heartburn. A lump came
into Nina’s throat as she leafed through them, sorting the photos into a
separate pile. How pitiful it all felt. Poor sick John Moore, with no-one to
care.

Now for the photos. She took them to the window where the
light was better, dismayed that most were of places, not people. Two she put
aside to look at again. One showed a woman and a small boy standing in a
doorway, too far away to be recognisable, but maybe a magnifying glass would
help with that. The other was a terraced house with a tiny patch of grass in
front, the same small boy and a cat sitting on the garden wall.

Nina shrugged – these wouldn’t help solve the mystery. But
surely there must be more photos – Sam had been searching the desk, so these
were probably floating around the drawers, as photos had a habit of doing.
There could be albums somewhere too, and John Moore might have kept more recent
images in his computer. According to the receipts there must be one somewhere.

She stared round the study. There was no computer in sight,
but between the windows was a rather nice secretaire and when she opened the
cupboard part underneath, lo and behold there was a laptop. Great – if she
could get on the internet here it would make life much easier. Sending emails
with her phone was plain fiddly.

Happier, Nina went to see if the kitchen would reward her
find with a hot drink. A rummage through the food cupboard produced a packet of
coffee well within its sell-by date, and the two cartons of long-life milk on
the bottom shelf were okay too. She rinsed the old-fashioned filter machine and
set it brewing.

The smell made the kitchen seem more homelike, and Nina
checked the remaining cupboards while she was waiting. There was a large
selection of plates and glasses, but no perishables anywhere and the fridge was
switched off. John Moore must have known he would never come back here. Did
someone help him clear the kitchen, or had he done it himself? Dear God, what a
depressing thought that was. She found a roll of bin bags in a drawer and
dropped most of the remaining food into one. There was a small supermarket
along the road; she would buy a few necessities later, to tide her over the
weekend. With any luck she’d be able to go back to Arran on Monday or Tuesday.

Or – no. There would be a funeral, and under the
circumstances she would have to stay for that. Come to think of it, she might
even have to organise it. Something else to talk to Sam about. Nina’s heart
sank. The island with its lush green hills and healthy sea breezes seemed very
far away today.

Soberly, she tied the bin bag and took it to the outhouse in
the back courtyard where the dustbin was. It was only when she was back inside
that the thought struck her – she’d gone straight out to the bin without
thinking about it; she’d known where it was. She hadn’t noticed it yesterday –
or had she? Of course it was the logical place for a dustbin to be, but hell,
how spooky that was.

The doorbell bing-bonged, and Nina hurried to let Sam in.
Thank God, another human being. He was wearing jeans and a dark grey T-shirt
today, and Nina was startled to see appreciation shining in his eyes as he grinned
at her. Help – the last thing she needed here was an appreciative man, nice as
he was. And the very fact that she’d thought of him as ‘nice’ said everything,
didn’t it? She smiled briefly and led the way into the study.

‘I found John’s laptop, but that’s about all,’ she said,
resuming her search in the secretaire.

‘Great. This model is pretty new, a mate of mine has one,’
said Sam, booting the machine up on the desk. ‘Shit, we need a password to get
in here.’

Nina scowled at the screen, where the white field was
blinking mockingly. There was no way to guess what John Moore’s password was.

‘We’re going to need one of those geeky IT people,’ she
said.

Sam closed the laptop. ‘I’ll get onto that on Monday. You
can still have guest access to the Internet, might be useful. What do you want
to do now?’

Nina glanced round the room. The tall bookshelves housed
only ancient paperbacks and travel books. The secretaire was a dead loss, and
Sam had been through the desk already.

‘What we need to find is where John Moore kept his birth
certificate and so on. Let’s go through the rest of the house. There might be
something useful in his bedroom.’

In John Moore’s room the bed was made up, the duvet cover
and sheet newly-washed and un-slept-in. Sam opened drawers in the tallboy, and
Nina saw piles of folded underwear and jumpers.

She plumped down on the bed, frowning and thinking aloud. ‘This
is seriously weird. John Moore was terminally ill. He lived alone, and went
into a hospice to die. So why is his bed freshly made up? The kitchen was
cleared of anything that might go off, but there were half-empty boxes of rice
etcetera. There’s nothing personal lying around, and all his correspondence has
either gone, or been put away where we haven’t found it yet. And absolutely everything
was unplugged.’

‘You’re right,’ said Sam. ‘You know what I think?’

Nina sat pondering, then nodded. ‘He’s had someone in to
clean the place; someone who didn’t know he was never coming back. He was rich,
he might have had a regular cleaner. But Sam, that doesn’t explain the lack of
bank cards, passport, that kind of thing.’

‘Maybe there’s a safe somewhere,’ said Sam, going back out
into the passage. ‘And what about his post? Was it redirected to the hospice?
Or somewhere else?’

‘I could ask at the post office,’ said Nina. ‘And hang on –
let’s look in the case they gave me at the hospice. There might be something
among his stuff there.’

The case revealed a small pile of correspondence consisting
of a handful of circulars, a car magazine, and two bills, one of which was from
a cleaning company.

‘Bingo,’ said Nina. ‘I’ll call them and see what they can
tell us. This says they were here on the eighth.’

Poor John Moore. He’d gone into the hospice and arranged for
a cleaner to depersonalise his house. And now she thought about it – where were
all his friends? As far as she knew there was no one clamouring for a funeral.

She keyed in the number on the cleaner’s bill while Sam went
to fetch more coffee. Fortunately, the company worked Saturdays, and when Sam
came back with a fragrantly steaming mug in each hand she waved a page of notes
at him.

‘If you ever need cleaners, these are your guys. I spoke to
Joanne who was very cooperative but she can’t really help us. The company have
been cleaning the house once a week for five years now, but they hardly ever
saw John Moore. Joanne said she’d only spoken to him a handful of times since
the start. He phoned them a couple of weeks ago and said he was going away, and
told them to do the place and then close it up until further notice, and -’ She
paused and pulled a face at Sam. ‘There were two large bags of shredded paper
to be disposed of. Of course they’re long gone now, and she has no idea what
they were.’

Sam handed over her coffee and perched on the edge of the
desk.

‘Okay. So he got rid of all the stuff he didn’t want anyone
to see after his death. But he’d hardly have shredded his birth certificate,
would he? Of course he might have a safe deposit box at the bank, but that’ll
have to wait till Monday too.’

Nina sat sipping. It was beginning to sink in that this was
her house now. She would have to decide what to do with it. Sell it? Keep it
and rent it out, or live in it?

I don’t want to live here, she thought. It was an absolute
gut feeling. This wasn’t a happy house, with the dim ground floor rooms, those
closed-up bedrooms upstairs, and the long, dark attic room on the top floor.

… and the long, dark attic room on the…

‘Shit!’ she whispered, horrified, and buried her face in her
hands. She hadn’t been up to the top floor yet. How had she known about the
room there?

‘Nina? What’s wrong?’ Sam was bending over her, his hand on
her back.

Nina could hear the panic in her own voice. ‘There’s one big
room on the top floor of this house, with a wooden floor and a sloping roof and
rafters. It’s dim and spidery and scary, and Sam, I haven’t been up there yet,
how do I know that?’

He rubbed her arm and Nina fought to regain control. If
nothing else, the sudden memory showed that she and John Moore were in some way
connected. She must have been in this house as a very young child. It was the
only explanation –and that was how she’d known about the dustbin too. She took
a shaky breath. Now that the first shock had gone, she could see that it was
logical – John Moore was a relation, so naturally she would have been here to
visit. Maybe she’d even played up in the attic. Rainy day games or whatever.