The Chalmers Case (9 page)

“I thought we
could use the long table against the wall in the sitting room,” Joan told
her.
 
“It’s not being used for
anything else.”

“I was
thinking the same thing,” Janet replied.
 
“I’ll just pull out a few examples of each item and try my hand at
making a proper display.
 
I’m sure
you’ll change everything once you get back, though.”

Joan
laughed.
 
“Let’s see how you do,”
she said.
 

Janet noticed
that she didn’t rule out changing everything, which didn’t surprise her.
 
Joan would have her own ideas about how
things should be displayed and it was unlikely they matched Janet’s.

Regardless,
Janet enjoyed the next hour.
 
She
carefully selected what she considered the very nicest examples of each of the
different items that Susan had provided.
 
After pulling out the blanket that she wanted for herself, Janet
carefully arranged the display, folding and refolding things until she was
satisfied with the results.
 

There was an
old typewriter in the corner of Joan’s small sitting room.
 
Now Janet put some paper in it and
carefully typed up a list of prices for the items on display.
 
She knew she’d seen some old picture
frames in the carriage house, so she headed out there to find one that could
hold her neatly typed list.

Stuart was
still working in a corner near the building.

“I’m sure I
saw some pictures frames in a box in the carriage house,” she told him as she
walked past.

“There’s at
least one of just about everything in a box in there,” Stuart told her
cheerfully.
 
“The door’s unlocked
because I’ve been going in and all out day.”

Janet pushed
the door open and switched on the overhead light.
 
It took a moment to come on and did
little to help dispel the gloom in the large and windowless space.
 
There were boxes piled up all around the
room and Janet sighed as she glanced around.
 
Once she finished with the library, the
carriage house was her next priority.
 
There could be treasure in some of the boxes, she reminded herself.
 
She wasn’t fooled by the thought.
 
What the boxes were most likely to
contain was many, many years worth of accumulated junk.

On previous
visits, she and Joan had peeked inside a few boxes and had found nothing even
remotely interesting.
 
Of course, now
that she wanted one, the old picture frames had suddenly acquired a much higher
status in her mind.
 
Shaking her
head at her thoughts, she headed into the corner where she thought the frames
had been.
 
She was just leaning over
what she hoped was the right box when the light went out.
 
A moment later the door blew shut and
Janet found herself alone in the dark.

Chapter
Nine

“Hello?
 
Stuart?
 
Can you hear me?” she called, not daring
to move in the cluttered room.

Her words
seemed to echo around the space.
 
She heard a noise from behind her and looked around, but couldn’t see
anything.
 
Her eyes were struggling
to adjust to the darkness when the door suddenly swung open.

“Janet?
 
Are you okay?” Stuart called from the
doorway.
 
He reached out and
switched the light back on.

“I’m fine,”
Janet told him.
 
“But I don’t know
what happened.”

“I told you
before, there’s a ghost in the carriage house,” Stuart replied.
 
“He or she is harmless enough, but I
can’t tell you how many times the ghost has turned off the lights and shut me
in here.”

“I’m just glad
you were around to rescue me,” Janet said.
 
She quickly bent down and grabbed the first frame she touched.
 
“I’m sure this will do,” she said
without even looking at it.
 
She
nearly ran out the door and back into the autumn sunshine, with Stuart trailing
behind her.

“Are you sure
you’re okay?” he asked, his face full of concern.

“I’m fine,”
she said, taking a deep breath.
 
“Just a little spooked, that’s all.”

Stuart
laughed.
 
“I’ve learned to always
take a torch in the carriage house with me,” he told her.
 
“Then if the lights go out, I can still
find the door.”

“That’s good
advice,” Janet said.
 
“I’ll try to
remember it.”

Back in the
house, she spent a few minutes taking apart and cleaning the dusty picture
frame.
 
It seemed as if it had never
been used.
 
The photo behind the
glass was merely a display photo.
 
Janet slipped her price list into the frame and then put it all back
together.
 

“That looks
lovely, though I say it myself,” she said as she stood the photo frame in the
centre
of her display.
 
“And you shouldn’t be so frightened by a gust of wind that you’re
talking to yourself,” she added.
 
She wasn’t entirely sure how the wind had managed to switch off the
light before it pushed the door shut, but that was the only logical
explanation.

“Of course you
still can’t explain the shouting in your bedroom every full moon,” she reminded
herself.

“Janet?
 
To whom are you speaking?”

Janet flushed
as she spun around.
 
Joan and
Michael were standing in the sitting room, their arms full of shopping bags.

“I’ve just
finished,” she said quickly.
 
“I
hope you like the display.”

Joan gave her
a funny look, but then walked further into the room to take a look.
 
“Actually, it looks very nice,” she said
after a moment.

“I’m just
going to take these bags through to the kitchen,” Michael said.

“Oh, of
course,” Joan said.
 
She followed
Michael into the corridor, leaving Janet to fuss over the table for a while
longer.
 
Finally deciding that it
was as good as it was going to get, she followed her sister into the kitchen.

Michael was
sitting at the table with a cup of tea while Joan unpacked the shopping.
 
Janet was very tempted to fix her own
tea and join Michael, but she knew Joan wouldn’t approve.
 
Instead, she opened the nearest bag and
began unpacking it.

“I hope I got
enough of everything,” Joan said fretfully.
 

“I’m sure
there’s plenty,” Janet said soothingly.
 
“What are we having for dinner tonight?”

“I thought I’d
made a beef stew,” Joan told her.
 
“I’ll make enough for us, and for the Stones and the Harrisons as
well.
 
We can freeze whatever isn’t
eaten tonight and have it next week when the house is ours again.”

“That sounds
good,” Janet said.
 
“I’ll just go
out and cut some flowers for the table.
 
I probably should refresh the flowers in both guest rooms as well, don’t
you think?”

Joan looked at
her for a moment and then frowned.
 
“I don’t know,” she said after a moment.
 
“It seems like we ought to, but both
sets of guests said they didn’t need their rooms making up while they were
here.
 
Maybe we should give them
their privacy.”

“Surely just
changing out their flowers isn’t invading their privacy,” Janet said.
 
She was excited at the thought of having
a peek in each of the rooms now and she was determined to convince Joan to let
her do so.

“I suppose
not,”
Joan
said, clearly uncertain.
 
“You should make up the vases down here
and then just take them up and switch them for the ones that are already in
place.
 
That way you only have to
spend a minute or two in each room.”

“I’ll do
that,” Janet replied.
 
“But first I
need to cut some flowers.”

She headed out
into the garden with a spring in her step.
 
Changing out the flowers wasn’t snooping, she told herself.
 
And if she happened to look around a
tiny little bit while she was in the rooms, well, that was only to be expected,
surely.
 
She shook her head at her
own sorry attempts to justify her own nosiness, but now that she’d had the
idea, she wasn’t going to change her mind.

It only took a
few minutes to cut a sufficient number of flowers for the three vases she
wanted to fill.
 
Even though it was
autumn, their gardens were still full of beautiful flowering plants and Janet
was grateful again for Stuart and all of his hard work.
 
Eventually the flowers would fade and
she’d have to start buying flowers for the house, but for now she was happy to
enjoy their own bounty.

Back in the
kitchen, Janet filled a vase and put it in the
centre
of the dining room table.
 
Then she
filled two smaller vases and carried them carefully upstairs.

“Remember,
just change out the vases and leave,” Joan called after her as she headed for
the stairs.
 
“We don’t want to anger
our guests.”

“I know,”
Janet shouted back, already wondering what she might find in each room.
 

When she got
upstairs, she stood for a moment wondering what to do.
 
She had a vase in each hand and no way
to pull out her keys to open the door.

“Well, you
didn’t think this through, did you?” she asked herself.
 
Shaking her head at herself, she put the
vases down on the floor and dug out her keys.
 
She decided to start with the west room,
being more curious about the Stones than the Harrisons.

Putting the
key in the lock, she turned it slowly and quietly and then laughed out loud at
herself.
 
“No one is home,” she
reminded herself, laughing again when she
realised
she was whispering.
 

The smell of
alcohol hit her nose as the door swung open.
 
She frowned and switched on the
light.
 
The room was far tidier than
she’d expected it to be.
 
A quick
glance revealed that the smell was coming from an empty wine bottle in the
small bin in the corner of the room.
 
While there
were
a few things scattered around
the room, it appeared to be fairly well
organised
clutter.
 
She peeked into the
bathroom and found that it too was being neatly kept.
 

Janet picked
up the vase of half-dead flowers from the side table and replaced it with the
fresh ones.
 
Clearly no one had
thought to add water to the original vase and the flowers had suffered for it.
 
With the vase in hand, she walked
quickly around the room, hoping to spot something interesting, but having no
real idea of what she was looking for.
 

In any event,
she was disappointed to find nothing more than the sort of things she ought to
have expected.
 
There were a few
tissues in one corner, a half-empty wine glass on the bedside table and a
scribbled note on the desk with the phone number for WTC Antiques on it.

Feeling
disappointed, she walked out and locked the door behind
herself
.
 
The east room was almost more
disappointing.
 
Aside from two
suitcases which were closed up tightly and sitting in the corner of the room,
the east room might have been unoccupied.
 
There wasn’t a single thing out of place.
 
The bin was empty and there weren’t even
any toiletries perched on the bathroom sink.
 
Janet swapped the existing vase for the
new one, noting that the flowers looked healthy and that someone had obviously
been keeping the water topped up.
 

With nothing
to see, she returned to the hallway and locked the room.
 
Carrying the two vases, she made her way
back down to the kitchen to empty them.

“Well, what
did you find out?” Joan demanded as Janet walked into the kitchen.

“I just
changed out the vases.
 
I didn’t
snoop,” Janet said indignantly.

“Of course you
did,” Joan replied.
 
“But really,
what did you find out?”

“Nothing,”
Janet said with a sigh.
 
“The Stones
are much tidier than I expected and the Harrisons have left their room looking
almost unoccupied.”

Michael
chuckled from his seat at the table.
 
“You sound so disappointed,” he explained when Janet looked at him.
 
“I would have thought you’d be pleased
to have guests who are tidy.”

“I suppose I
am,” Janet said.
 
“I just can’t help
but feel like the Stones and William Chalmers are up to something they
shouldn’t be, that’s all.”

Michael
frowned.
 
“I don’t much like the
man,” he told her.
 
“But what do you
think he might be doing?”

“William has
some sort of art studio in the back room of his shop,” Janet explained.
 
“I think they might be making art
forgeries.”

Michael raised
an eyebrow.
 
“Art forgeries?
 
Well, I suppose anything is possible.”

Before Janet
could reply they all heard the approaching footsteps.

“I know we
said we’d eat elsewhere,” Nancy said as she appeared in the kitchen
doorway.
 
“But we’ve come back with
Mildred and Harold and we’d love to have dinner here if we may.
 
Whatever you’re making smells
wonderful.”

Joan
smiled.
 
“It’s beef stew,” she told
the woman.
 
“And there’s plenty for
everyone.
 
It should be ready in
about half an hour.”

“Good, I’ll
tell the others,” she said.
 
She
turned and walked away.

“I suppose I
should get out of your way, then,” Michael said, clearly reluctantly.

“Oh, do stay
for dinner,” Joan suggested.
 
“We’ll
feed the guests first, if that’s okay, and then we can have dinner ourselves.”

“Don’t mind if
I do,” Michael said happily.

Janet made a
salad and mixed up dressing while Michael tried to help with everything and
mostly got in the way.
 
When the
guests came down, Janet took care of getting them drinks while Michael started
serving the food.
 

The guests all
seemed quite subdued, and once everyone had been served, Janet couldn’t help
but comment on it.

“I do hope
everyone is okay,” she said casually.
 
“You all seem a bit down this evening.”

“I’m just so
sad that we’re leaving in the morning,” Nancy said.
 
“We’ve had such a lovely time and made
such wonderful new friends.”

“But we’ll
keep in touch,” Mildred said firmly.
 
“And maybe the
Markhams
will be able to
accommodate us again one day soon.”

“Oh, I’d love
that,” Nancy cooed.

“There they
go, spending money again,” George grumbled good-naturedly to Harold.

“
Hm
, I wasn’t listening,” Harold said.
 
“Don’t tell me Mildred is going on about
that holiday in Paris again.”

“I wasn’t,”
Mildred said.
 
“But now that you
mention it, we really should all go on holiday to Paris.
 
It’s lovely this time of year.”

Harold rolled
his eyes.
 
“Is it time for the
sweets yet?” he asked Janet, passing her his empty plate.

“I’ll just go
and see if Joan has it on plates yet,” she said.

In the
kitchen, Joan did indeed have the jam
roly
poly
ready to go.
 
Janet took the tray with the four plates and Michael followed with both
cream and custard to give the guests their choice.
 

“We’ll be
leaving quite early in the morning,” Nancy told Janet as Janet poured tea and
coffee.
 
“If you don’t mind, we’d
love breakfast at seven, but if it’s too much bother, just leave it.
 
We can stop somewhere on our way home.”