The Tomb in Turkey

TWENTY-NINE

Carole had a pretty good idea of where the smell of burning was coming from. And, sure enough, when she entered the gates of Brighton House, there was a small bonfire blazing in front of the building.

It didn’t look as if it was about to burn the place down. Carole found a bucket, filled it with water in the kitchen and soon put out the blaze. The charcoal on the barbecue was still hot and red. She reckoned an ember must have spat out or fallen on to the dry garden rubbish nearby. No big disaster, just a strong whiff of burning.

She was turning back towards Morning Glory when she suddenly had a thought. Of course, Travers’s bedridden wife Phyllis must be in the house. How terrifying might it be for someone unable to move to smell smoke from downstairs?

Carole didn’t know the extent of the woman’s disabilities. The fact that she had heard no shouts for help or screams might mean that she was unable to speak. That would make the smell of smoke and the flicker of the flames even more horrible.

Carole knew it was her duty to see that Phyllis Hughes-Swann was all right.

The interior of Brighton House, revealed by the moonlight through the windows, was considerably smaller than that of Morning Glory. It was basically one room with a kitchen area to the back. Apart from the front entrance, the only other door led off to a not very salubrious lavatory.

But then Carole had not really expected to find Phyllis Hughes-Swann on the ground floor. She switched on the light that shone down on the staircase and made her way up.

There were three doors off the landing, all closed. The one ahead proved to be a shower room which smelt of damp. The sweaty smell released by the next door announced to Carole that she was in Travers’s bedroom. There was a single metal-framed bed with grubby sheets, an open cupboard and a selection of unsavoury garments, mostly pairs of shorts, scattered across the floor.

Carole moved across the landing to the other room, opened the door and switched on the light.

It was a workshop. Central was a wooden sawing bench. A variety of tools for carpentry and gardening hung from the walls. Paint pots stood on shelves. The floor was littered with sawdust and shavings.

On a tripod near the window stood a fairly sophisticated telescope, trained, Carole noted with a sickening feeling, in the direction of Morning Glory. Other telescopes, binoculars, cameras and a couple of laptops were scattered on a table nearby. There were earphones too, plugged into some kind of receiver.

There was no bed in the room, no sign of human habitation.

Whether or not Phyllis Hughes-Swann had ever lived in Brighton House, she was no longer in residence.