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The sleepy village was as beautiful as she had first thought it would be. The street was lined with an assortment of quaint little cottages of various indeterminate ages, complete with little window boxes beneath the windows and brightly painted front doors.
Unfortunately, given that he was unfamiliar with Marchwell Bishop, Ben was forced to stop and ask for directions from a man who was walking along the path. When he asked where to find Browning’s house, the man stared at them for several moments as though they were completely mad. They looked at each other in concern when he seemed to give himself a visible shake before he pointed down the road behind them.
“Turn around. Go back up there. At the end of the road go right and follow the road. The house is down the narrow lane at the end of that, but is barely visible from the road.” His voice had trailed off and he had stared hard at Ben for a moment before his gaze wandered to Beatrice. His mouth opened as though he wanted to say something else but, at the last moment, he closed it again with a snap and hurried off.
“Thank you,” Ben called and studied the hurried stride of the man who seemed to be eager to get away from them. He turned to Beatrice and lifted his brows. “Was it something I said?”
She shook her head and began to feel more than a little doubtful that they were doing the right thing. While Ben turned the carriage around, she studied the houses a little closer, but couldn’t detect anything amiss. Children played in some of the front gardens, and out in the street. Lines of washing were strung between the houses. People hurried this way and that as they went about their daily business. Everything appeared perfectly normal.
“Why did he stare at us like that?” Beatrice glanced at the road behind them, but there was no sign of the man, who had vanished completely. She turned to face forward with a frown and was suddenly very glad that Ben was right beside her.
“There is nothing as strange as folk,” Ben sighed and took the turn to the right as instructed.
The directions took them onto a cart track that was barely visible through the grass. If it wasn’t for the stone walls that ran along either side of them, Ben would have thought they had been given wrong directions on purpose. They came to the end of the track several minutes later and, sure enough, to the right lay a narrow lane which disappeared into a small copse of trees. Beatrice shivered and drew her shawl higher on her shoulders.
“I don’t like this, Ben,” she whispered.
“Me either, but I can’t turn the carriage around,” Ben sighed worriedly as he studied the narrow lane. He had no choice but to keep the carriage going, right into the thick copse of trees. The temperature suddenly dipped, and the air around them grew still and quiet. The silence that greeted them was so unnatural that even Ben started to wonder if they were doing
the right thing.
“Good Lord,” Beatrice whispered when they suddenly emerged from beneath the canopy of trees, and discovered a house that seemed to be the reason for the creepy atmosphere. “I thought Richard Browning was supposed to be wealthy?”
The huge Edwardian mansion would have been beautiful – when it was built. Unfortunately, it was now old, decrepit, and dark. Moss covered every inch of the stonework, and was only broken by the dark voids of empty windows. It was evident that nobody had maintained the property for a very long time; if ever and could, quite conceivably, be uninhabited.
While the carriage was still in motion, Ben took the opportunity to swing it around in a wide circle until it faced away from the house. Although he would never say so to Beatrice, if they needed to make a swift exit, he didn’t want anything to hinder their escape.
Minutes later, he tugged on the bell pull which was nestled in some ivy beside the door, and stood back to wait. Tension hovered over them as they studied the peeling paint on the door.
When nobody answered his summons, Ben knocked loudly.
“Shall we go?” Beatrice asked softly after several moments of silence.
Ben nodded and took her elbow, only for the sound of the bolt being slid back inside to suddenly shatter the silence.
Beatrice immediately sidled closer to Ben, who gave her a gentle smile of reassurance. He tipped his head to see though the narrow, six inch gap that suddenly appeared between the door and the frame but at first, to his consternation, couldn’t see anybody inside.
“What?”
His looked down at the small, bird-like woman who was glaring out at them with black, beady eyes full of suspicion.
“We are here to see Mr Browning. Richard Browning.”
“Ain’t ‘ere. Go away.”
When the woman went to slam the door, Ben wedged his foot in the narrow gap and put his hand on the door. He knew that if he gave it one firm push he could get in, but didn’t want to force his way into the house unless he absolutely had to. Rather than argue with the woman, who he assumed was the housekeeper, he scowled darkly in warning.
“Do you intend to tell him that someone called for him?” Ben growled. “If so, what name do you intend to give him?”
“He ain’t ‘ere,” the woman repeated.
“Are you deaf?” Ben snapped. “Where are your manners, woman? I shall have a word with Browning myself about your incompetence. I will leave him my card so he is aware that I have called, and shall wait for him to contact me.”
He could understand why Browning didn’t have that many friends with this old harridan protecting the battlements. A small part of him wondered if the man was cowering behind a desk somewhere in fear of her.
“What’cha want?” The woman demanded as she glared down at Ben’s foot.
“I want you to tell him that Mr Benedict Addison called. I spoke to Mr Archibald Harrington at the university. He told me to speak to Mr Browning about a rare orchid. Tell him I called.” Ben shifted his weight to remove a card from his pocket and quickly handed it to the woman through the narrow gap.
