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glad when morning came, even if I did wake up
with the sheet stuck to the dried come on my belly.
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After a shared breakfast, I left Drew to wait for
his uncle to show, and headed to the Hall. I took a
can of oil with me and gave the gate hinges a good
soaking. A little bit of work and I could open both of
them wide enough to drive through and round to
the back of the house.
Before I tackled the outbuildings, I climbed to
the third floor nursery, the only room up there that I
could safely get to. I hadn't had a chance before to
do more than open the door and look around. There
was comparatively little junk packed into this room,
and I had a clear path to the windows. Once I'd
gotten the shutters open, I should be able to get a
bird's eye look at the area behind the house. Again,
judicial use of the last of the oil and sheer brute
strength persuaded the hinges to cooperate, and I
was rewarded with what would have been a great
view a century ago. Even now, it was pretty good.
Closest to the house was the terrace I'd seen
from the first floor apartment. It had wide, shallow
steps down to the formal gardens laid out around a
fountain currently swamped by greenery. Beyond
that was an area of once-open parkland with a lake
in the center of it. It was all massively overgrown, of
course, but the echoes of its former beauty were still
there.
The lake was a long oval, so clogged with reeds
and weeds that only a narrow strip of clear water
was left down the middle of it. Cthulhu's Lair. I
chuckled quietly. It was fed by the river that came
down from the north before turning west and disap-
pearing out of sight among the trees. Beyond the
lake, the parkland gave way to dense forest that
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rose toward the crest of a tree-cloaked ridge. On the
other side of that I guessed would be the site of the
new build.
Reluctantly I dragged my eyes closer to home,
picking out the summer house on the far corner of
the formal gardens, before moving across to an
orchard in full flower, to the walled kitchen garden.
The plans had shown me there was a glass house in
the part nearest to me, but the stables and carriage
house blocked my view of it. At the further end I
could see a large dome of vegetation. That would be
the ice house.
God, restoring this place to its original splendor
was an amazing gift to drop into an architect's lap.
Almost as good as having a free hand in designing
the new house by the waterfall.
Eventually, I remembered what I was really
there to do, and went back down to the front door
and strolled round to the stable yard.
Carriage house, tack room and stables formed an
L shape block that paralleled the kitchen and
laundry, and backed onto the garden wall. If most
of the house had been unoccupied for years, that
went double for some of those outbuildings. If I had
to guess, I'd've said they hadn't been used since
well before the Twenties. The stables were a good
case in point. Once I'd forced my way through the
almost solid mass of creeper and ivy, heaved open a
door that gave a great imitation of not being opened
for a century or two, I was confronted by four stalls
and a loose box. All of them were stacked with tarp-
covered furniture and crates.
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Other than noting that what I could see of the
walls and cobbled floor was dry and sound, there
wasn't a lot I could do there. The tack room next
door was in a reasonable shape as well. Not nearly
as cluttered as the stables, there were still a couple
of saddles sitting on their racks, bridles and har-
nesses hanging from hooks. Name plates were set
above them, coated in grime. I wiped them clean
and saw fancy flower-designs surrounding names
on the now-bright enamel: Jacob, General, Apollo,
Minerva. Cobweb-cloaked bottles of liniment, oils,
rusting tins of saddle soap and other less recogniz-
able products lined the shelves, rubbing shoulders
with assorted equine grooming equipment. This
would clean up very nicely as part of the museum,
and I was grinning as I pushed the door shut and
latched it.
The carriage house had a dilapidated buckboard
and a pony trap moldering at one end. At the other
was a treasure. I pulled back a tarp stiff with dirt
and bird shit to reveal an ancient Ford, probably
from the Twenties or Thirties. It was a Model T,
maroon, not black. Whatever, a collector would pay
serious money for it, even in its present state.
Both the stables and the carriage house were two
story buildings, but I didn't risk the outside stairs to
their upper floors. Under the smothering veg-
etation, the wood was rotten in too many places and
the roofs slumped.
Before I could start to explore the two small
barns, the sound of an engine pulled me back to the
stable yard. Drew's pickup came round the corner of
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the Hall and stopped beside my SUV. He climbed
out, waving two bags at me. I found myself smiling
broadly, pleased to see him. Too pleased. I toned it
down, fast.
"Lunch," he called.
"Great." I'd lost track of time and now my
stomach decided to get in on the act and remind
me. "I'm starving."
"That figures," he grinned. "Found anything
interesting?"
"Yeah," I laughed. "How about a vintage Ford?"
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