Page 22 of Mrs. Endicott's Splendid Adventure

“Madame, do you not wish to see inside?” Monsieur Danton’s crisp voice brought Ellie back to reality.

Reluctantly she turned away from the view. “Oh yes, of course. Thank you.” She returned to the others and went to step in through the open door.

“Are you sure you wish to proceed with this?” He peered in as if he expected an attack. “Maybe just look from here. It could be dangerous. Who knows if the ceilings are about to come down? Nobody has touched this place for years, you know.”

“I’ll be careful,” Ellie said. “It seems a shame not to look around when we’ve come all this way.”

“Very well, if you insist.” He gave a curt nod. He stepped aside to let her enter but did not follow. Ellie looked back at the other women and saw the hesitancy on their faces. “I’ll take a look first, if you like,” she said. “Just to make sure it’s safe.”

Then she took a deep breath and stepped over the threshold into a marble entrance hall.

An impressive white marble staircase curved up to a second floor.

There was a green marble side table on which stood a huge vase containing some very old and faded silk flowers; otherwise the foyer was devoid of decoration.

Ellie stood staring in surprise. She had expected devastation—crumbling ceilings, great cobwebs—but the place merely felt as if it was asleep.

Monsieur Danton showed no desire to come into the villa, so she ventured into the room on her right through an open door.

The green velvet curtains were closed, bathing the room in eerie darkness that felt like being in an aquarium.

She looked for a light switch, then laughed at her own absurdity.

Of course there would be no electricity turned on.

As she took a step into the room, she recoiled almost immediately as something tall and thin loomed up beside her, draped in white.

She remembered the inhabitants of Saint-Benet claiming that the villa was haunted, but then she realized that every object in the room was covered in a dustsheet, and this had to be .

.. She pulled off the cover, releasing impressive amounts of dust in the process, and found it to be a curio cabinet peopled with porcelain figures.

Feeling braver, she crossed the room and pulled open those tall curtains.

The green velvet crumbled at her touch. French doors opened to the gravel forecourt and the garden beyond.

Sunlight flooded into the room, making dust motes dance.

She looked around her. The long oblong that took up the centre of the room had to be a huge dining table.

She lifted one corner of the dustsheet cautiously, not wanting to breathe in more dust. It revealed a white painted wooden table, gilded, and the chairs that surrounded it were also decorated with gold with silk seat covers, now partially nibbled away by mice or moths or both.

So this had been the dining room. A door at the far end led to a kitchen.

As she entered it, the feeling of Sleeping Beauty’s castle returned.

The kitchen looked as if it had been in use, not packed up to be forgotten.

There was a pan on the old-fashioned wood stove, scales on the pine table, a tea caddy, a milk jug—all looking as if they expected the owners to return.

Ellie came back out to the foyer and opened a door leading to the back of the house.

These were the rooms with the lovely view over the water.

The first was a pleasant sitting room with a couple of sofas hidden under their dustsheets, a porcelain stove and some wicker rocking chairs.

The walls were painted in a fresco of palm trees and beaches, echoing the real-life view.

And next to it was a smaller room that made her heart beat faster again.

That shape under the sheet in the window had to be a grand piano.

This had been a music room! Of course it had.

Its occupant had been a famous opera singer.

“Oh, how lovely,” she muttered, and immediately she pictured herself sitting at that piano, looking out at the blue sea as she played.

But as she stood there, she experienced the sadness that she had been sensing since she entered the house.

The famous opera singer had made this place beautiful and then left, never to return.

Why? She had not died until later if accounts were correct.

If the duke had gifted her with this villa, why did she not come back, even after their relationship broke up?

It had been hers, because they had been told that her next of kin now owned it.

What had driven her away and made her leave all her lovely things under dustsheets?

“It’s not very big, is it?” Dora’s voice made her jump, realizing that she had been unaware of anyone else as she explored the house. “Suitable for one person. I’d expected grander.”

“I think it’s perfect,” Ellie said. “I can’t believe how well it’s been preserved. Almost as if it’s asleep.”

“I’d say the mice have done their share of damage,” Dora said. “And look at the stains on the wallpaper where the rain has come in.”

But Ellie had seen none of these faults. “Shall we take a look upstairs?” she said and headed towards the staircase.

“Proceed with great caution, madame,” Monsieur Danton called, still peering in from the doorway. “Who knows if the floors are still stable.”

But Ellie hardly heard. She went up the stairs, her hand feeling the cold smoothness of the marble banister.

Upstairs doors opened on to a small square landing.

As she stood there, she heard a noise that made the hairs on her neck stand on end.

“Ooooh. Oooooh.” Just the sort of noise one would expect a ghost to make.

“Rubbish,” she said, but she opened the first door cautiously.

There was a flapping sound. Something white brushed past her face.

She let out a scream, her heart thumping, and retreated hastily from the room, until she saw that roof tiles must have fallen off in one corner.

The ceiling had come down there, and pigeons had found their way in.

There were copious droppings on the floor and on a single bed frame with quilts and pillows piled at one end.

As she went to close the door again, another figure was standing behind her. As a second scream was about to escape, she saw that it was only Dora.

“Oh goodness, you startled me,” she said.

“I heard you scream, so I came up to check on you.”

“You shouldn’t have come up these stairs,” Ellie said. “I’m sorry. I opened that door, and something flew in my face.”

“Heavens. What was it?”

“Only pigeons.” Ellie grinned. “The roof has a hole in it, and they got in. It’s rather a mess in there, I’m afraid.”

“Perhaps we should retreat again without looking any further,” Dora said. “Who knows what we might find?”

“Oh no. I have to see,” Ellie said. “You go on down. I don’t want you in any danger.”

“Nonsense. If you’re going to look, so am I,” Dora said.

They opened the door to the second bedroom at the front. It was large and contained a double bed, its eiderdown folded on it, a wardrobe and dressing table.

“This is a nice room,” Dora said. “I wonder if it was hers?”

“More likely his. It has a masculine feel to it, don’t you think?”

“They slept in separate rooms? Hardly likely.” Dora snorted.

Ellie closed the door again, and they moved over to the bedrooms facing the sea. As she opened a door, she heard Dora give a little gasp.

“Oh, what a perfect view.”

The cream-coloured silk drapes were tied back, and the whole coastline spread out below them. “I should die happy if that was the last thing I saw,” Dora said. “This must have been her room. Look at the bed.”

It was a huge brass bed piled high with quilts. There was also an enormous wardrobe. Ellie opened this, still cautious, and saw it was full of women’s clothes ... long silk gowns, light wool two-piece suits, all from the early days of the century.

“She didn’t take her clothes with her,” Dora said. “So either the opera singer was wealthy enough that she didn’t need to take her clothing with her, or something prevented her from returning.”

“There are lovely things here,” Ellie agreed, fingering a brocade ballgown. “It is a puzzle.”

The last rooms on the floor were a bathroom complete with an enormous clawfoot tub and a rather fearsome-looking contraption to heat water, and next door was a WC, its walls also painted with an elegant beach scene.

“Madame, is all well up there?” Monsieur Danton called. “I heard you call out.”

“It was only pigeons.” Ellie walked back at the top of the stairs. “I was startled.”

“You see, the place is decaying. Wild creatures have gained entry,” Monsieur Danton said. “Please come down before something befalls you.”

“But that’s not true.” Ellie came down the stairs slowly, making sure Dora was behind her.

“Most of it is not too bad. Oh, I can see where the rain has come in through a window, and the paint and paper are peeling, but overall it’s survived remarkably well.

” She came down the stairs carefully to see the other women watching her from the bottom.

“We heard you cry out,” Mavis said. “We thought you’d seen the ghost.”

“I thought so, too, for a moment,” Ellie admitted, laughing now, “but pigeons had found a way in. One of them flapped past me.”

“You have now seen enough?” Monsieur Danton asked, his eyes darting for the way out.

“I think so,” Ellie said. She followed him out. “So, monsieur, what do you think the owner might say if we wanted to rent this for a while?”

Monsieur Danton gaped at her. “Rent this place? Madame, you cannot be serious. You have seen with your own eyes. It will fall on your heads.”

“No, I think it’s quite sound. Most of it, anyway,” Ellie said. “Could you at least ask the owner?”

Monsieur Danton shook his head. Dora had only just understood the conversation in French.