Chapter One
FROM THE FRONT, it was easy to see that the house had once been handsome, almost stately, before the rot had set in. It might stand inside a barrier of weeds and its blank, shuttered windows might need a little care, but years of neglect could be reversed. There was hope for the place, and the hope was symbolised by the man standing on the front porch, painting the panels of the door.
Despite the paint-spattered overalls it was clear to see that the man was young and handsome, his rolled-up sleeves revealing strong, tanned forearms streaked with pillar-box red. The photographers ranged about the front gate certainly thought he made for a good snap.
So a casual observer might think that there was cause for hope. Ruin was being averted by new and enthusiastic owners who would restore the house to glory.
Approach the rear of the house, however, and hope would not be the dominant emotion. The wild and unkempt state of the gardens was one thing, the splintered window frames and sporadic roof tiles another, but the eye was inevitably drawn to something more sinister. A fence of yellow tape, rustling in the summer breeze, surrounding a square-shaped hole in the patio. Beside the tape stood a temporary tent, in and out of which people in plastic overalls came and went.
A helicopter, hovering overhead, had a good position from which to observe proceedings. Its occupants must have seen an attractive woman in her mid-thirties come out of the sparkling new patio doors with a tea tray, which she set down on a low wall before conferring privately with one of the plastic-overalled crew.
She looked up, so quickly it was almost over before it could be perceived, then ran back inside.
‘Did you get her?’ The helicopter co-pilot’s tone was anxious. ‘That’s the first time we’ve seen her all day.’
‘I think so. Just.’
‘Great. Something for the evening edition.’
That same photograph, of the woman looking up at the helicopter while a forensics expert stood beside her, was in all the next day’s papers.
‘CURSE OF HARVILLE HALL’
Jenna Myatt read the Gazette’s headline aloud as she sat at the kitchen table waiting for the coffee to brew.
‘More tabloid bollocks,’ said her lover and front-door-painter, Jason, with dismissive contempt. He cracked several eggs aggressively into a basin and beat them to within an inch of their life with a fork.
‘You don’t think this place is cursed then?’ Jenna put aside the paper with a sigh.
‘How can I?’ He turned to her, his head on one side. ‘It’s where we met.’
‘You’re right.’ She smiled at him, glowing. ‘My biggest bit of luck in years.’
‘Mine, more like. You were already living a charmed life.’
‘Yeah, well, it was losing its charm rapidly, or I wouldn’t have come here.’
‘From LA talent scout to Bledburn hermit,’ said Jason. ‘Riches to rags. Hero to zero. Sublime to ridic—’
‘All right, I get your point.’ Jenna’s tone was slightly frosty. ‘And it’s none of those things, because it was my choice to leave LA and Talent Team, and I’m certainly not in rags yet. In fact, I’m still what you might call bloody loaded.’
‘The new Lady Harville.’ Jason whipped up the egg so vigorously the yellow mixture slopped over the side of the basin.
‘I’m hardly that. I bought Lawrence Harville’s house, that’s all. It doesn’t make me a member of the family. Just as well, given what a dodgy crowd they’ve turned out to be.’
‘Even dodgier than their lodger,’ said Jason with a grin.
‘Their unknown lodger,’ said Jenna, mirroring his smile, remembering the moment she’d discovered him in the attic of her new house, lying on his sleeping bag, unshaven, unkempt and surrounded by painting paraphernalia. Some people left lampshades or curtains in their houses after they’d sold them. Not many left a living, breathing, secret sitting tenant.
Jason tipped the beaten egg into a pan, tipping it this way and that so the yellowish mixture filled the foaming surface.
‘Your sabbatical hasn’t exactly been relaxing so far,’ he said.
‘No. I may need another one to recover.’
He smirked over the omelette pan. ‘You need to take up yoga or tai chi. Aren’t they meant to be good for stamina?’
‘I wasn’t talking about that,’ she said, her cheeks heating in memory of the vigorous wake-up call he’d given her earlier on in bed. ‘I meant generally, in terms of stress and constant bloody argy-bargy. First all that stuff about Lawrence Harville trying to frame you for his own stinking drug crimes, now a mysterious skeleton in the hidden cellar. I can see why the papers are going gaga over it all. I’m like a walking copy of Now! magazine.’
‘Are those forensic guys coming back today?’
‘No. They got everything they needed yesterday. It’s all lab work from now on.’
‘D’you think it’s that chick Harville told you about? The one who was meant to have committed suicide? Fairy Fay or whatever he called her?’
‘Could be. I’ve no idea. Harville might have been making it up to freak me out. That would be typical of him.’
‘He must have known that cellar existed. He lied about that. Got any ham?’
‘Some prosciutto, I think, in the fridge.’
Jason gave her a look.
‘Is that ham or not?’
‘Yeah. Wafer thin Italian ham. It’s nice. Try it.’
Jason went to the fridge mumbling something about British pigs being good enough for him.
‘I wonder if he’s been charged,’ said Jenna, her mind still running on the Hall’s former owner and Jason’s near-nemesis.
‘You know he was.’
‘No, not with the threatening behaviour towards me. There’s bags of proof for that. I mean the drug stuff.’
Jason shrugged, peeling open the packet of prosciutto.
‘Up to the CPS now innit,’ he said. ‘And Kayley holding her nerve. And Mia finding hers.’
‘I feel for those girls. He manipulated them.’
‘Don’t let your heart bleed too much. They knew what they were doing – Mia especially.’