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31
Lettie snuggled under the covers and tried to get back to sleep. She’d fallen into an exhausted slumber the minute her head had hit the pillow in Florence’s spare room. But now it was – she glanced at the luminous hands of the small alarm clock on the bedside table – half past three in the morning and she felt wide awake.
She closed her eyes again but was transported back to the rocks with salt spray hitting her face, and the thunder outside sounded like water booming as it smashed into the cliffs.
‘Oh, for goodness’ sake,’ said Lettie as a streak of lightning lit up the small room. She swung her legs out of the narrow bed and her toes sank into the soft rug on the floorboards. This cottage was hundreds of years old and she wondered how many people had slept in this bedroom before her. People now long dead. Like Cornelius.
He was gone but an old coat that had most likely belonged to him was still hanging on the back of the door. And Lettie wouldn’t be surprised if the metal-framed bed with its lumpy mattress had been his, too. Had Iris ever visited this room before the man she loved went off to war?
Lettie shivered and tugged down her pyjama top. She’d been offered a long broderie anglaise nightgown by Florence but had chosen to stay in Corey’s old pyjamas – they were made of soft blue cotton and smelled faintly of amber and spice. She pulled her tumbling hair away from the collar and switched on the bedside lamp. A pale glow lit the room as another loud crash of thunder shook the cottage to its foundations.
Though she was a few streets back from the quay, Lettie could hear the sea roaring as it battered the stone walls. The force of it frightened and amazed her, and she hoped against hope that Corey wouldn’t be called out again tonight. Even lifeboats sometimes went down in fierce storms. Iris had told her about one in Cornwall that had sunk many years ago as the brave men on it tried to save others. Just as Corey had saved her. She thought back to the relief of feeling his strong arm around her shoulders and realising that she wasn’t going to die.
Padding around the room, Lettie peered at the framed photos on the walls. She recognised a young Cornelius in one of them, standing with his arm around a young girl who looked like Florence, and behind the both of them was a woman with kind eyes, presumably their mother. The three of them looked so happy, all blissfully unaware of the heartache to come. Just as Iris hadn’t realised that sorrow was going to carve a path through her life.
Thinking about Iris made Lettie’s eyes fill with tears. What would she have made of her great-niece in Cornelius’s home? In his bedroom in the middle of the night?
Another flash of lightning heralded a crash of thunder and Lettie shivered in this spooky old room. She wouldn’t be getting back to sleep any time soon. She looked around for a bookcase. Maybe she could lose herself in a story until exhaustion dragged her back into sleep. There were a few books on top of Cornelius’s desk and Lettie picked one up. It was an Agatha Christie novel, Murder on the Orient Express. On the dark green cover, two men stood shovelling coal into the glowing belly of a steam train.
Inside the cover was written in thick black pen: This book is the property of Cornelius Jeremiah Allford. Do not touch! The small curling letters were the same as on the letter in Iris’s belongings: Sit where I sat, darling girl, with the key to my heart and all will become clear.
A shiver went through Lettie as thunder grumbled around the cliffs of Heaven’s Cove. Cornelius was a man from the past; a faded photo on a wall; a name on a war memorial. But seeing his writing here in this book somehow made him more real, as though he was in the room with her. She traced her finger across the ink and imagined him writing those words, all those years ago, not that long before his life was cut short. He was brave to sign up, when he didn’t need to, and to leave behind everything he had here… a home, family, Iris.
And Heaven’s Cove itself must have been hard to leave – for Cornelius and for Iris, too, after she’d lost the man she loved.
Life’s just hard, thought Lettie, carefully placing the book back where it had been and sitting at the desk. She ran her fingers across the wood as another flash of lightning lit up the room.
Florence said her brother had made this piece of furniture himself. It was solid, made of dark wood which had developed a sheeny patina over the years. It was useful too, with its deep, sadly lock-less, drawers.
The desk would have looked out of place in Iris’s tiny flat but she would have treasured it, if she’d ever received it as Cornelius had wanted.
Lettie pushed her fingers into the tiny open drawers that sat in cubby holes above the inlaid leather blotter. They released a smell of dust and ink that tickled her nose. Cornelius must have sat here for hours, writing his poetry. And this was probably exactly where he sat to pen the letter that he had entrusted Florence to deliver to Iris when he went to war. Cornelius, who loved playing jokes on his little sister. Nothing was quite as it seemed with Cornelius.
As she admired the grain of the wood, Lettie was reminded of a writing bureau she’d seen in a museum some years ago. Made of polished walnut, it was much fancier than Cornelius’s desk, with ivory inlay and carved legs. It seemingly had nine drawers – three large drawers below the writing ledge and six smaller ones in the cubby holes above. Only that was an illusion because there were more drawers hidden at the back of the cubby holes. Lettie had spent ages imagining what treasures they’d once hidden away from prying eyes.
There was another flash of lightning, a thunder crash that shook the cottage, and the lamp suddenly went out. Lettie gasped. The sudden plunge into blackness was unnerving in this old room with its ghosts of people long gone.
She felt her way back to the bed and her mobile phone and switched on the phone’s torch app. Her mobile only had a small amount of charge left, but there was a candle on the bedside table in a thin silver candlestick. She opened the top drawer of the table and, next to a small copy of the Bible bound in battered leather, was a box of matches.
When she lit the candle, the flame leaped up, casting shadows on the walls. She carried it across the small room, her feet chilly on the smooth floorboards, and placed it on top of the desk. Then, feeling a little guilty for prying, she eased open the large drawers beneath the writing ledge. They were lined with old newspapers that it was too dark to read and held just a few relics from Cornelius’s life: some sheets of paper, a hairbrush and comb, a shoe horn and a few odd buttons.
Lettie ran her hands to the back of the drawers but there was nothing there. After closing them quietly, she pulled out the open drawers in the cubby holes above the writing ledge. They were mostly empty too, apart from more blank sheets of paper and a glass bottle that might have once held ink.
She pushed her hands to the back of the now drawer-less cubby holes but felt only wood. Secret hiding places indeed! Her imagination was running away with her in this spooky old room.
It was only as she was sliding the drawers back into place that she noticed the two at the centre of the cubby holes were less deep than the others. A partition of wood separated the spaces for the two drawers and when Lettie pulled this piece of wood, it came towards her, bringing with it a shallow rectangular box. At the front of the hidden box was a small ornate brass lock.
As the storm raged outside, Lettie stared at the box in the flickering candlelight.
Hardly breathing, she tried to lift the lid. When it wouldn’t move, she carefully undid the chain around her neck and pushed the key into the lock. It fitted perfectly and turned easily. Lifting the lid, Lettie saw a small bundle of papers, tied with dark ribbon. She pulled them out, closed the box and pushed it back into its hiding space.
She was sitting with the papers in her hand, feeling rather stunned, when a shaft of light beneath her door sent her scampering across the room with the candle. She placed it on the bedside table before diving under the covers. The bundle of papers pressed into her side as the door creaked open.
Lettie’s heart was hammering. She didn’t really believe in ghosts but this house in the midst of this storm was enough to strike fear into anyone’s heart. And hadn’t she just found papers that were clearly not meant for her? Papers that had been in this room, under their noses, all along.
The door was wide open now and Lettie sighed with relief when she saw Corey standing on the landing. The beam from his torch lit up corners of her dark room.
‘Are you all right?’ he asked. ‘The power has gone off.’
