Page 27 of Kate and Clara's Curious Cornish Craft Shop
Jack nods. ‘But you don’t know who put it there?’
‘Nope. I questioned everyone who might have been able to place something there overnight – only three of us have keys to the shop – but everyone denied it, said they knew nothing about it. It’s still a complete mystery how it got there.’
‘What was the picture of?’ Jack asks quietly.
‘Er, the first one was part of a harbour. It looked very much like the harbour here in St Felix, and the second—’
‘Wait, there’s been a second one?’
‘Yes, last night. This time it’s a—’
‘—large wave crashing over some rocks?’ Jack finishes to my amazement.
‘Yes, how do you know?’
‘Take a look out back,’ Jack says, gesturing towards the back of the shop. ‘There’s a storage cupboard there.’
‘Why?’
‘Please, Kate, just take a look.’
Puzzled, I go to the back of the shop as he asks, and I open the cupboard he is pointing at. Inside I find lots of cardboard boxes, presumably filled with stock for the shop, but standing in front of the boxes is an old wooden artist’s easel. It still has colourful splashes of paint on it from the previous owner, but the easel isn’t the item I’m finding so astonishing, it’s the painting that’s perched on it and also the one below resting against its legs.
One is an oil painting of a harbour with a little white lighthouse at the end, and the other is of some large bluey grey rocks with huge turquoise waves splashing up over the top of them.
Ten
‘Did you create these?’ I demand, pulling the paintings from the cupboard and carrying them across the shop towards Jack. ‘Is this your idea of a joke?’
‘I wish,’ Jack says, staring at them. ‘IwishI was as good a painter as this artist is, and IwishI’d created them because then I’d know where the hell they came from!’
‘What do you mean?’ I ask, not following him. ‘How can you not know where they came—Oh,’ I say as the penny drops. ‘Has the same thing happened to you too?’
Jack nods. ‘Like you I put the old easel in pride of place in the shop window the evening before our opening, but when I came down the next morning the picture of the harbour was justthere! I swear I’d left a blank canvas on it. Even fewer people have a key to this shop than yours, Kate. Bronte has a key now, but she didn’t the other day. It was only me on my own.’
‘And the second picture?’ I ask, looking at the oil painting of the waves which is now leaning innocently against a shelf filled with sketch-books.
‘It appeared this morning – out the back this time. I’d asked Bronte to take both the painting and the easel and put them in the store cupboard until I could figure out what was going on. I thought it might be some sort of St Felix initiation rite amongst the shop owners – you know, play a trick on the new boy in town – but when I asked a few questions at my opening night I realised no one knew anything about it. Then before I opened this morning the second painting had appeared on the easel just like the first … What the hell is going on, Kate?’
‘I have no idea,’ I say, shaking my head. ‘It’s so weird. It’s definitely not the other shop owners. I mean, why would it be happening to me as well? I’ve been here for ages.’
‘Exactly. Is it something to do with the equipment Noah sold us then?’
‘Like what?’ I ask. ‘Do you think they’re possessed?’ I say jokily. ‘A sewing machine that sews by itself, and an easel that produces paintings on its own! Are they haunted by their past owners?’
I grin at him, but Jack stares back at me with a haunted look of his own.
‘No!’ Jack says shaking his head. ‘I don’t believe in mumbojumbo like that. I was in the army for over fifteen years. Can you imagine the sort of ribbing you’d get if you said you believe in ghosts?’
‘So what are we to think then?’
Jack shrugs. ‘I really have no idea. It’s a complete mystery.’
‘Should we just wait and see if any more pictures appear?’
‘What choice do we have?’
‘Funny that both yours and mine are the same subjects though, isn’t it?’
