Ashview

Finally snow. After two years of mild, gray winters, we were at last blanketed in that welcome white. The construction across the street was silent, the traffic muffled—finally winter.

I shuffled in my socks out our door and down the boiling, dorm-style cinderblock hall of our apartment building to the mailboxes. A little depressing out here, but there were worse places we could be stuck for another year or two. This would all end soon enough. I’d find work again, and we could reinvest in earnest in our dream of a house somewhere out of the city. Someday soon.

An unknowing delivery driver had been duped into letting the orange neighborhood cat in the front door. When I walked into the mail room, Orange was digging furiously to be let out again. I opened the door for him and stood a minute appreciating the welcome sting of the snow and wind after the suffocating heat of the hallway, then went to retrieve our mail. It had been a couple of days since I’d remembered this chore, so the little tin box was stuffed full. I grabbed the lot, locked the box, let myself back into the hallway, and began sorting through the pile as I shuffled back to our door. Renter’s insurance bill, parking sticker due for renewal, ads, coupons … and a thin brown envelope hand-addressed to me. I opened our apartment door, dropped the mail on the shoe bench, and went back out into the hallway after our own fluffy escape artist—coming back a minute or so later, arms full of black cat. After depositing the cat on the floor, hanging my mask and keys on their respective pegs, and relegating most of the mail to the recycling bin, I sat down in my chair with my package.

The handwriting wasn’t familiar to me, and the return address was a PO box somewhere in the UK. What had I ordered? I slit open the envelope and slid out a small, unlabeled black notebook, slightly battered around the corners. There was nothing else. I set the notebook on my lap, and it lay there, considering me mildly. The cover was unmarked, though the book had clearly seen use, and it was wrapped round with an unassuming bit of rust-colored twine which came gently away in my hand. Thus unburdened, the notebook stretched gratefully open along a well-worn crease and sighed out a faint breath of tea and lavender. On that breath fluttered a check. A stolid, blue and black cashier's check. Made out to me. For twenty thousand dollars.

A slight gray form coalesced on top of the notebook in my lap, turning in circles for a moment before settling itself down into a faintly vibrating pool of cat.

"Peej."

The self-satisfied purring intensified. I scratched his back, and he unfolded luxuriously down my outstretched legs, releasing enough of the notebook for me to prise it out.

Inside the front cover, in the most glorious script, was printed:

James Preston

Ashview

Dobbin Hill

Sparrow Church

Surrey

And below that, in a more even hand:

Pomfrey & Giles Solicitors

Tulles Street

Blackfriars

London

The remainder of the book’s well-thumbed pages were filled top to bottom, binding to edge, with numerals, symbols, letters—none of which offered any hint of meaning. Was this some sort of clever game? A hoax? A scam? The check certainly looked real enough—not that I’d ever seen a cashier’s check, let alone one for anywhere near that amount. A puzzle. And I do love puzzles.

. . .

The next several days passed in an oddly straightforward progression of research and email exchanges—culminating in a phone call with the improbably named Stamford Giles of Pomfrey and Giles solicitors who confirmed that a Mr. James Preston had, indeed, left instructions to forward the notebook along with the aforementioned sum to me in the event of his death. I was also to inherit Ashview, his house in Surrey. Mr. Giles had in his possession all the appropriate paperwork along with the keys to the property. He had been instructed to leave things be until my arrival. No, he had not known Mr. Preston personally. No, he had not been made aware of the nature of our connection. No, he had never visited the house. Yes, now was a particularly challenging time to be coming into an unexpected inheritance in a foreign country, but it would be his pleasure to aid me in all the particulars as soon as my travel became feasible. Please don’t hesitate to reach out. Thank you so much and have a pleasant afternoon.

The days slouched onward. Weeks puddled into months, and the seasons pooled together, one into the next. More research. More curt conversations with Stamford Giles. All interspersed with long periods of pouring through the notebook alone and with my partner—trying to sieve even one hint of an explanation from page upon page of faded scrawl. Nothing. But despite our ignorance of why, everything else seemed to be completely legitimate and perfectly in order. And so the next March found us—two humans and two very miffed cats—folded into a small booth on a train heading south from London.

Houses, trees, and fields blurred past us through the rain blotching stubbornly down the fogged windows. My companions all dozed around me as I turned our new keys over in my hands. Stamford Giles had been precisely what I expected: clipped, angular, perfectly coiffed, and precisely to the point as ever. The keys were unique, but, perhaps for that very reason, also expected. There were three. A large, Victorian swirl of brass; a more sedate iron rod, half the size of the first; and finally, a brightly geometric puzzle of a key, whose lock I couldn’t begin to picture. My thumbs learned their varied patterns as the train drew us ever nearer the whimsical Sparrow Church and the mysterious Ashview.

The ever-efficient Mr. Giles had, from the dry comfort of his Blackfriars office, summoned a homely black taxi to meet our train in Sparrow Church. The driver tutted and tucked us safely away in the taxi's cavernous back, and then we and the car trundled on. Our way took us through the village, obscured by stubborn rain and fog, and then past it and into what seemed a wall of trees at the back side of a looming mound that must have been Dobbin Hill. We drove through more dense trees and further up the hill until, quite suddenly, the house emerged as we rounded a curve in the road, standing out stark against the naked trees and shrubs and fog which encircled it.

To my travel-frayed mind, Ashview loomed, a decrepit brick pile draped in a fraying coat of leafless vine. It was wet. I was tired. The cats were more than peevish. Not circumstances conducive to a joyful homecoming at even the most loved and familiar of homes.

The taxi pulled in as close to the front door as it could manage. The driver solicitously carried our bags onto the porch, tipped his hat, and drove off, leaving us huddled together under the brief cover guarding the front door. A grand door. Solidly wooden and intricately carved, a glinting mahogany raven perched at the heart of it all, ready to knock. An inquisitive gust of wind, bitterly outfitted in stings of cold rain, rushed its way across our temporary shelter, lifting our coats and causing PJ to let out a howl of protest from the depths of his blanketed carrier.

I pulled the ring of keys from my pocket, fitted the largest easily into the brass keyhole glinting out of the wooden door, and, under the raven’s pointed gaze, turned it smoothly. The door swung forward. The house sighed a dry, warm sigh, as if to welcome us in. A hint of apprehension slid from my shoulders.

The outer porch led us to an inner, where we hung our coats on the outstretched pegs of the waiting stand beside a soft blue Mackintosh, still waiting there for Mr. Preston. We left our wet shoes beneath the coats, next to a sleepy pair of leather boots, and with the same Victorian key which had let us out of the rain, opened the next glass-paned door into the hall. A twist of a small knob to the left of the second door blessedly released a fall of light which drifted easily down, offering us more of the space ahead. Before us rose a grand, old staircase. To our right, a cozy nook with bookshelves and windows looking out onto what must be a longer porch running along the right side of the house. Sitting room to the left, graced with another piece of stunning woodwork to frame the fireplace, and a door beyond the fireplace which seemed as if it might lead to a dining room just beyond. A comfortable runner meandered down the hall between the stairs and the sitting room, leading to an open doorway through which I could just glimpse a large, butcher-block island with a polished kettle resting on top. The kitchen then. No dust. No stale, cold air. Warmth and welcome; as if this house had not been sitting empty for over a year; as if our arrival had been cheerfully anticipated and prepared for by a host who couldn’t quite stay awake long enough to provide a welcome in person. It made no sense. It felt like coming home. A great relief. A mystery for tomorrow.

We followed the stairs up to the second floor landing off of which we found bedrooms. A carved four-poster with fresh sheets and warm quilts reposed before another fireplace in the largest of these. We closed ourselves in, let the cats at long last out of their carriers, and settled ourselves down to a deep and welcome sleep.

. . .

The rain which had so kindly escorted us in, wandered off in the early hours of the morning leaving behind it a soft, dewy silence. The definite absence of the solicitous tapping must have woken me, but the downy quiet, keeping even the birds asleep outside, wrapped itself ever so gently around my shoulders, sending me back to my dreams, and I didn’t wake again until a silky gray fog stretched its morning fingers up through the branches of the tree and tentatively rubbed at our bedroom window. A sliver of gray light eased through a gap in the curtains, coming cautiously to rest between the matching gray ears of the cat curled at my hip. The cat spread his toes, yawned, rolled over, and nestled back into his warm spot on the quilt. The house sighed a contented morning sigh.

Whatever this place was, oh yes. I could be very happy here.