The Patchwork House Read Online Free Page A

voice.
    Clearly there was some friction between them. Beth picked up on it too. She grabbed Chloe’s hand and started tugging her towards the front door.
    “You haven’t seen the grounds,” she said, making Chloe laugh as she dragged her outside.
    Derek watched them go for a moment, glanced at me and then seemed to come to a decision.
    “Wait up,” he called after Beth. “I’d like to see too.”
    He forced a smile at me and headed off after the girls. I tried not to take this too personally, but it was a challenge.
    “I’m going to take a look upstairs,” I shouted from the doorway, though they had already turned the corner and were out of sight.
    I sighed and went back inside, closing the door behind me. I made sure it wasn’t locked so they could get back in, and then headed to the stairs.
    As I climbed them, the temperature dropped noticeably. I could feel the warmth of the hallway dissipate with every step. I’d expected it to be musty and airless up here, but there was an edge to the atmosphere, like stepping outside on a late-autumn morning.
    At the top, the stairs turned ninety degrees to meet the landing, which was a long corridor that stretched in both directions, spanning the whole length of the house. To my right the corridor was shorter, since there was only the length of the hall and drawing room before the corridor ran out of house. To the left it stretched much further, covering the length of the kitchen, the conservatory and the huge ballroom on the lower floor. In places the corridor widened and narrowed, with differences in décor and door styles. At the far end one more door stood open. Small corridors branched from the main at occasional intervals between rooms. Windows at these points provided illumination, casting pools of light in patches.
    I checked each room in turn. Most were bedrooms but I did find a bathroom and I made use of the spotless facilities. There was a library too, with a table in the centre and several large chairs, all hidden by more white dust covers. Light flooded the room via the wide window on the far wall, through which I could see the driveway and the herb garden, and the car directly below… Seeing it reminded me I still had to unload the equipment from the trunk, courtesy of Dad.
    One wall of the library was entirely covered in books, and opposite this was a large, free-standing bookcase made of solid oak, uncovered, and laden down with thick tomes that must have been as old as parts of the house. This piece must have weighed a ton and I wondered how the hell anyone managed to haul it upstairs. I pulled a book from the shelf and checked the cover. Basic Botany Volume VII. Clearly old Percy loved his plants. I put the book back on the shelf.
    I moved over to the wall shelf and my eyes were immediately drawn to a number of volumes with crosses on the spines. I pulled a couple of unique Bibles out, beautifully bound and possibly worth a decent amount in their own right. There were some Catholic texts as well that might be worth something.
    At the end of the landing, furthest away from the stairs, was a large games room, complete with pool tables, darts and a bar. There wasn’t a single bottle of alcohol behind the bar, and I wondered if Arthur had loaded it all in his truck one day and taken it back to his place. Or maybe Percy was a recovering alcoholic and had disposed of it himself. Too bad. I would have to ask Beth to stock up when she took her trip into town.
    The last bedroom, next to the games room, was also the smallest. Inside was a simple bed, a bedside table and a small dresser. There were no dust sheets in here though, and a photograph stood in a frame next to the bed. It was the most lived-in of all the rooms in the house, simply by virtue of that photo. It was a black and white picture of a small boy with his mother. They seemed happy. So, had this been Percy’s room? It was hard to believe he wouldn’t make use of one of the bigger bedrooms.
    I