Free Watching the Ghosts by Kate Ellis Page A

it?’
    â€˜No but I was wondering about its history.’ She hesitated, wondering how she was going to explain the inexplicable. Eventually she decided to approach the subject head on. ‘I know this might sound strange but when I saw it in the shop I thought I’d seen it before. And I wondered whether that’s possible.’ She’d decided that any mention of the nightmares might mark her out as disturbed. And she needed this woman to trust her and talk freely.
    Mrs Dodds stared at her. ‘What did you say your name was?’
    â€˜Lydia Brookes. I’m not from Eborby but my grandparents lived here and I sometimes came to stay with them when I was young. Is that any help?’
    â€˜Where did they live?’
    â€˜Bacombe.’
    Mrs Dodds shook her head. ‘The clock belonged to my father and when I inherited the contents of his house I asked Mr Bentham to deal with their disposal.’
    â€˜Perhaps my grandparents knew your father. My grandfather was a doctor. His name was Speed. Dr Reginald Speed.’
    â€˜My father was a doctor too.’
    All sorts of possibilities were passing through Lydia’s head. ‘My grandfather died in an accident when I was three but perhaps he visited your father sometime and took me along.’
    â€˜My father wasn’t a sociable man.’ Mrs Dodds’ expression was hard to read. But Lydia sensed that her memories of her father weren’t happy ones. ‘My parents divorced when I was a baby and I hardly saw him when I was growing up. My mother never wanted me to have anything to do with him. I didn’t know him well but I really can’t see him entertaining colleagues and their children.’
    Lydia sensed an untold story, a tragedy, maybe, or something more sinister. She was intrigued and she longed to discover the reason behind the estrangement. But good manners made her hold back.
    â€˜I certainly don’t remember the clock,’ Mrs Dodds continued. ‘I would have remembered it because it’s a horrible thing. I was glad to get it out of the house.’
    Lydia wondered whether to mention the nightmares, then she thought better of it. She knew it came from an antisocial doctor in Eborby and, in spite of what Mrs Dodds said, her grandfather could well have visited the man for some reason, social or professional, with his small granddaughter in tow. The clock might have frightened her then and stayed in her subconscious for all those years. Like a dormant seed.
    Mrs Dodds suddenly interrupted her thoughts. ‘I think he might have brought it from where he worked. He lived in for a while . . . had a flat on the premises.’
    â€˜Where did he work?’
    When Mrs Dodds told her, Lydia’s stomach lurched. This was something she hadn’t expected. But it made a kind of horrible sense.
    Dr Karl Dremmer sat at his tidy desk in his office at the university, glad for once of the mundane, modern surroundings, of the stark brick walls and the Scandinavian chairs.
    He tried to read a departmental memo but he couldn’t get the muffled sobs and the half-seen dim shapes out of his mind. He’d almost managed to convince himself that he’d imagined everything; that the atmosphere of the place had altered his perception somehow. He was a man of science and he wouldn’t accept such things without solid proof. And so far the proof had eluded him.
    Down in that basement the air had seemed thick, like an ice-cold smog with a faint whiff of the grave. And he had felt a pain within him close to grief. It had seemed very real at the time but in the light of morning he’d told himself that the brain could play powerful tricks. But he still didn’t feel up to talking about what had happened. The truth was he felt vulnerable and maybe a little foolish.
    He abandoned the memo and began to watch the recordings he’d made, hoping they’d prove that some earthly agency was responsible for