The iron gate creaked quietly as she pushed it open, almost as if it were welcoming her home. But no other voice would greet her. ‘What a silly notion, Elinor!’ she muttered crossly as she got back into the car. ‘Your books will welcome you home. That’s good enough, surely.’
She had been in a strange mood even during the drive. She had taken her time on the way home, avoiding major roads, and had spent the night in a tiny place in the mountains, the name of which she had already forgotten. She had enjoyed being alone again, for that, after all, was what she was used to, yet the silence in her car had suddenly begun to trouble her, and she had gone into a café in a sleepy little town which didn’t even have a bookshop, just to hear other human voices. She hadn’t spent much time there, staying only long enough to gulp down a cup of coffee, because she was annoyed with herself. ‘What’s all this in aid of, Elinor?’ she had muttered when she was back in the car. ‘Since when did you long for human company? High time you were home again, before you go right round the bend.’
Her house looked so dark and deserted as she drove up to it that it seemed curiously strange to her. Only the scents of her garden made her feel a little better as she went up the steps to the front door. The light over the door which usually came on automatically at night wasn’t working, and it took Elinor a ridiculous amount of time to get her key into the lock. As she pushed the door open and stumbled into the pitch dark hall she quietly cursed the man who usually kept an eye on the house and garden whenever she went away. She had tried phoning him three times before she set out, but she supposed he’d gone to see his daughter again. Didn’t anyone realise what treasures this house contained? Of course, if they’d been made of gold … but they consisted only of paper and printer’s ink.
It was very quiet, and for a moment Elinor thought she heard Mortimer’s voice as it brought life into the church with the red walls. She could have listened to him for a hundred years. No, two hundred. At least. ‘I must get him to read aloud to me when he arrives,’ she murmured, taking the shoes off her tired feet. ‘There must be some books he can read safely.’
Why had she never before noticed how quiet her house could be? It was silent as the grave, and the pleasure Elinor had expected to feel as soon as she was back within her own four walls was slow in coming.
‘Hello, here I am again!’ she cried into the silence, as she felt along the wall for the light switch. ‘Now you shall all be dusted and tidied again, my dears!’
The ceiling light came on, very bright, and as Elinor stumbled back in alarm she fell over her own handbag, which she had put down on the floor. ‘Oh heavens!’ she whispered, getting to her feet again. ‘Oh, dear heavens! Oh no!’
The custom-made bookshelves were empty. The books that had stood on them so safely, spine beside spine, now lay in untidy heaps on the floor, crumpled, dirty, and trampled underfoot, as if heavy boots had been performing a wild dance on them. Elinor began to tremble all over. She stumbled through her desecrated treasures as if she were wading through a muddy pond, pushed them aside, picked one up and let it drop, staggered on down the long corridor that led to her library.
The corridor was no better. Great disorderly piles of books were heaped so high that Elinor could hardly make her way through the ruins. At last she reached the library door. It had not been locked. Elinor stood there for an eternity, weak at the knees, before she finally dared to open it.
Her library was empty.
Not a book in sight, not a single book, not on the shelves or beneath the broken glass of the display cases. There wasn’t a book on the floor either. They were all gone. Instead, a red rooster dangled from the ceiling, stone dead.
Elinor’s hand flew to her mouth. The rooster’s head was hanging down, its red comb flopped over its staring eyes. Its plumage was still glossy, as if all the life in it had fled there, into the fine russet breast feathers, the darkly patterned wings and the long deep-green tail feathers that shimmered like silk.
One of the windows was open. A black arrow had been drawn in soot on the white paint of the windowsill, and pointed the way to the garden outside. Elinor staggered towards the window, numb with fear. The night was not dark enough to hide what lay on the lawn outside: a shapeless mound of ashes, pale grey in the moonlight, grey as moth wings, grey as burnt paper.