The Lake House by Kate Morton Read Free Book Online Page B

appearance of abandonment often masked a sorry story inside. A dull brass knocker shaped like a fox’s head hung lopsided from the chipped wooden door and she lifted a hand towards it before lowering it again. What would she say if someone answered? Sadie flexed her fingers one by one, considering. There was no reason she should be here today. No excuse she could give. A trespassing charge was the last thing she needed. But even as she thought it, Sadie knew she was speculating unnecessarily. The house before her was deserted. It was hard to put into words, but there was a look about it, an aura it gave off. She just knew.
    A panel of decorative glass had been set above the door, four figures in long robes, each depicted against a background representing a different season. It wasn’t a religious picture, as far as Sadie could tell, but the effect was similar. There was an earnestness to the design—a reverence, she supposed—that made her think of the stained-glass windows in churches. Sadie manoeuvred a large dirty planter closer to the door and climbed gingerly onto the rim.
    Through a largish piece of clear glass, she glimpsed an entrance hall with an oval table at its centre. A vase stood on the tabletop, a bulb-shaped china jug with flowers painted on its side and—she squinted—a faint gold pattern snaking up the handle. A few thin branches of something brittle, willow perhaps, were arranged haphazardly within and there were dry leaves scattered beneath. A chandelier—crystal, glass, something fancy—was suspended from a plaster rose on the ceiling and a wide flight of stairs with worn red carpet curled upwards and away at the back of the hall. There was a round mirror on the wall to the left, hanging by a closed door.
    Sadie jumped off the planter. A knotted garden ran along the front of the house beside the portico and she clambered through it, prickles catching her T-shirt as she picked a path through the brambles. There was a strong but not unpleasant smell—moist earth, decomposing leaf matter, new flowers beginning to catch the day’s sun—and great fat bumblebees were busy already collecting pollen from a profusion of small pink and white blooms. Blackberries: Sadie surprised herself by dredging up the knowledge. They were blackberry flowers, and in a few months’ time the bushes would be heavy with fruit.
    When she reached the window, Sadie noticed that something had been etched into the wooden frame, some letters, an A, maybe an E, crudely carved and dark green with mould. She traced her fingers along the deep grooves, wondering idly who had made them. A curled piece of iron jutted out from amid the thick overgrowth beneath the sill and Sadie pulled the branches aside to discover the rusted remnants of a garden seat. She glanced over her shoulder at the jungle she’d just traversed. Difficult to imagine that a person had once been able to sit here comfortably, looking out over what must then have been a well-kept garden.
    That strange, almost ominous, feeling was there again but Sadie shook it off. She dealt in facts, not feelings, and after recent events it was as well to remind herself of that. She steepled her hands against a glass pane and pressed her face to them, peering through the window.
    The room was dim, but as her eyes adjusted certain objects began to stand out from the gloom: a grand piano in the corner by the door, a sofa in the centre with a pair of armchairs turned to face it, a fireplace in the far wall. Sadie experienced the familiar, agreeable sensation of opening the lid on someone else’s life. She considered such moments a perk of her job, even if she often saw ugly things; she’d always been fascinated by the way other people lived. And although this wasn’t a crime scene and she wasn’t a detective on duty, Sadie automatically started making mental notes.
    The walls were papered in a faded floral design, greyish-mauve,