They walked into a billiard room, it too was dark, the
windows covered by planks of wood. Long, thick, maroon curtains hung undrawn
and almost stretched to the full height of the room. It was as if they had
been opened in a hurry leaving the curtains in an untidy state, yet this was
not in keeping with the precise layout of the rest of the furnishings. The
billiard table was set up for a game. A thick layer of dust across the baize
gave it a light grey tint with a splash of dark green around the base of the
three balls and where two cues rested on the cloth. Lisa dragged her fingers
through the dust creating three almost parallel grooves across its length as
she walked to look closer at the three portraits hanging from the opposite
wall.
Unlike the paintings in Charles Middleton’s study, the
portraits had their names inscribed on a small brass plate underneath each
one. Lisa removed the grime from the first plate with a draw of her finger.
“Minnie Middleton 1827-1876.”
David looked closer. “That’s you. It’s quite clear.”
“Do you think so?”
“Definitely, and this lady next to her.” David removed
the dirt from the brass plate underneath the next portrait. “Mary Middleton
1861 – 1921.”
“I wonder what relation they are to me?” She flashed
her torch towards the third frame. “Who is the last painting of?”
David shone his beam on a woman with glaring eyes.
“Elizabeth Middleton 1847 – 1878.”
“You didn’t clean the brass plate?”
“It wasn’t dirty.”
Lisa looked in puzzlement at David and then at the
brass plate until her train of thought came back to her. “Charles was born
in 1850. Could we assume that Mary and Elizabeth were his sisters and Minnie
was his mother?”
“And you could be looking at your great great great
grandmother or at least one of them could be.”
Lisa felt stunned. She’d been so far removed from the
Middleton’s that it never really entered her head to consider the people in
the portraits were her direct descendants. Her own great grandmother was
ninety five and lived on Bletchley Lane, but that was the O’Hara family. She
took a step forward and started to stroke the dried colours of Elizabeth’s
portrait. The matter of family and bloodline had always been two different
aspects. She knew this, but at that moment it was the first time she felt a
part of the Middleton legacy. After all, her full birth name was Beverley
Lisa Middleton. The whole circumstance of Charles Middleton and the estate
was exciting, romantic even, and up until now it had seemed like an
adventure, but Lisa was starting to grow excited by the notion that she
could find out who she actually was.
She grunted when David told her he was going into the
next room. Did she really look like the women in these paintings? They all
had blazing faces and thunderous expressions. Were they an unhappy family?
Lisa took a step back but then she heard a sharp click behind her. She
turned quickly . The billiard balls had moved, only a few inches, but in the
beam of her torch she could clearly see the grooves in the dust created by
their wake. Shining the light across the room, she was hoping to glimpse
David, but she was alone? The sound of a soft scrape puzzled her initially
as she tried to decipher its origin, and then she saw it. The three lines
she had made in the dust on the billiard table were becoming six as three
mores lines were being formed parallel to hers. Whatever was making the
shallow grooves was moving slowly towards her. The illumination from the
torch revealed nothing, there was no one else in the room. Her heart
quickened and the hairs on her body prickled as the lines drew closer and
closer.