Bolts slid back. The door opened, wider this time, but still only to six inches across.
A man with long white hair, a grey beard and black-rimmed spectacles poked his head round and had a good look at me.
‘So,’ he said. ‘My wife says you’re a writer. That true?’
I nodded.
‘Can you prove it?’
No one had ever asked me that before. ‘Um, how?’
‘I don’t know,’ he said a little sarcastically. ‘You’re the writer, aren’t you? What have you written?’
I remembered I had some old issues of Mercurial in the back of my car. One of them had a photo of me beside my piece, I was sure.
‘Can you wait for a moment while I fetch something?’
‘Of course,’ the man said and shut the door. Two bolts scraped across.
I fetched the mags. The rain was pelting down now so I shoved them under my jacket to keep them dry and ran back to the house.
The door opened and a hand came out. I put the magazines in it and watched it slam shut again. This, I had to admit, was very odd.
I think I must have waited outside for a good ten minutes before the dogs went off and the heavy footsteps came back down the passage. The door opened fully and the man, who introduced himself as Harry Phelps, greeted me, very cordially.
Like his house, Harry was also eccentric: his long white hair cascaded down over a ‘Free the Weed’ t-shirt which featured a humanised marijuana plant looking dolefully through prison windows.
I remembered Bob’s comment about ‘high hopes’.
This could explain the paranoid security ritual.
‘I’m sorry about that,’ said Harry, quite cheerful now. ‘We have to be careful these days. Can’t have any Tom, Dick or me, turning up unannounced can we?’
Not if you’re caning it, I thought. ‘Very wise,’ I said.
‘Come in, into the kitchen. Anne’s already put a pot of coffee on. She thought you’d be all right. She’s got a nose for it,’ he beamed.
‘Right,’ I said noncommittally.
The entrance hall was grand and lofty, probably as big
as my entire living room, with a wooden staircase that
went up the centre then split into separate staircases to either side.
Harry bobbed down under a doorframe only five foot high that led into a room of normal proportions, which had a couple of tatty sofas positioned in front of a huge old fireplace. This he told me absently, was the ‘snug’ and then opened a taller door opposite the fireplace, leaving me to follow him out into a bright modern kitchen/diner-cum-family room.
This side of the room was exposed red-brick, with a range cooker and a butcher’s block spread out in front of it. The rest of the room, however, showed no signs of age or whimsy.
Standing by a glossy oak table Harry’s wife, Anne, whose eyes I recognised from the door, poured coffee into three glass mugs.
‘Do come over, dear. Mercedes is it? Very nice to meet you.’ She smiled and gestured to one of the chairs, as if the bizarre entry routine had never happened.
She’s obviously used to it, I thought, and took a chair. ‘Actually it’s Sadie,’ I said and sat down, though I was thinking ‘It’s not. It’s Mercy. Mercy Walker.’ How did I go from that to Mercedes Asquith? Why had Mum completely changed my name? She’d also evolved hers, from Rose to Rosamund. What was in that? A familiar wrench of guilt tugged at me. Harry shouted something at the dogs, which were sniffing me cautiously.
‘Do put them in the snug, Harry, won’t you?’ said Anne and shone a regal smile at me. ‘Milk and sugar?’
‘Both please. One sugar.’
‘I guessed it would be,’ she said and handed me the cup she had already filled.
‘Told you she has a sense for these things.’ Harry called over, shooing the dogs round the door.
I took a sip of coffee and smiled at Anne. Harry returned and grabbed his mug. ‘So Sadie, do you mind going over your interest in this as you did with my good lady wife?’
I gave them a brief history, but Harry was full of questions, and soon my story was cutting into the good part of an hour. At some point the coffee was replaced by a bottle of red wine, and, although I had declared that I was driving, a full glass appeared before me.
I tasted it when Harry finally allowed me to get on to the diaries. Bringing that part of the story to an end, I asked him if they were still in the house.