Page 50 of Kate and Clara's Curious Cornish Craft Shop
‘Do I have a ghost?’ Sebastian says, making me jump as he appears at the entrance to the basement. ‘Only I could have sworn I heard you talking to me as I came down the stairs.’
‘What are you doing down here?’ I ask briskly. ‘Who’s minding the shop upstairs?’
‘Calm down, I’m just getting something for a customer.’ He pulls a packet of knitting needles off the wall. ‘They’re elderly and can’t manage the stairs so I’ve not abandoned your empire for long! Anyway, we have cameras, don’t we?’
He dashes back up the stairs again while I stand staring after him.
Of course – the security cameras! Why had I not thought of this before? In fact, why had none of us thought of this when the first embroidery appeared? To be fair the cameras were pretty small. I’d only been able to afford a cheap system when we’d opened the shop, and they didn’t record for long. Quite often I forgot to change the memory card when it filled up as we thought about them so little. I’d always figured the cameras worked more as a deterrent than anything else, so none of us gave them much thought, but now I was giving thema lotof thought. We had one stationed down here so we could keep an eye on things when customers came down here on their own, and we had one upstairs in the shop that not only recorded everything going on during the day but also what happened at night too …
While Sebastian is on his lunch break, I collect the memory card on which our CCTV footage is stored, wishing that I’d invested more money in a better system that recorded for longer than twenty-four hours at a time. At least I should have last night’s footage – thathadto show something of the strange goings-on in my shop overnight.
When Sebastian returns from lunch, I head upstairs to take my break. ‘I might be a little longer than usual,’ I tell him before I go. ‘I want to do some … paperwork while I’m upstairs.’
‘Okay, boss,’ Sebastian says, not seeming at all bothered. ‘See you later.’
‘Give me a shout if it gets busy.’
‘Will do!’
I head upstairs quickly and find my laptop, then I insert the memory card and wait for it to load.
‘Right, my mysterious visitor,’ I say to the computer as I tap play, ‘let’s see who you really are.’
After a minute or two of watching an empty shop, I begin to fast-forward slowly through the footage. Six o’clock passes, seven, eight, nine and on past midnight. I don’t have a full view of the shop, just the shop counter where the till is, but access to the inside of our small window is directly to the side of this, so if anyone is going to come past and insert embroidered fabric into my window display, I’m going to see them.
Yet, as the early hours of the morning dawn on the footage, I haven’t seen a mouse scuttle across the floor, let alone a person, and I begin to wonder whether I’m going to see anything at all.
‘This is impossible,’ I mutter to myself as I watch the time tick on to 5am. ‘Why haven’t I seen anything?’
6am, 7am, 8am, and then the first movement is a little before nine when I see myself carrying the till drawer across the shop floor and placing it into the till. I then go to unlock the door and I see myself jump as I realise there’s something new in the window.
‘That’s impossible,’ I say out loud. ‘How did I miss it?’
Not only had I been watching the screen as I forwarded through the footage, I’d been watching the clock too. I’d seen enough TV detectives solve crimes by discovering there was a jump in CCTV footage where a few seconds had been deleted by the perpetrator of the crime or their accomplice. Yet every second of last night’s recording had been there on the screen – I’m sure of it.
‘I should have known better than thinking something so modern as CCTV would be able to solve this mystery,’ I tell myself as I remove the memory card and close the computer. ‘I’ve a feeling we’re going to have to take a few more trips back in time to St Felix if we’re ever going to get to the bottom of this.’
*
Later that afternoon I knock on the door of Snowdrop Cottage and wait for Lou, but to my surprise Poppy answers. ‘Hello, Kate,’ she says, holding open the door. ‘Come in. Lou said you were dropping by.’
I follow Poppy through Lou’s hall into the sitting room of her cottage. Lou is sitting in an armchair with a small toddler on her lap, and next to her on the sofa sipping on a cup of tea is Jake, her nephew, who is Poppy’s husband.
‘Hi Kate,’ Jake says. ‘Don’t worry, we’re leaving in a moment. We just popped in with Daisy to see Lou. Here, sit down,’ he says, shuffling along the seat a little.
‘Please don’t go on my account,’ I say, sitting down on the edge of the sofa.
‘Daisy needs to take a nap anyway,’ Poppy says, gathering up her daughter’s toys. ‘And probably Jake too for that matter.’
‘Hey, it’s not easy having a toddler running around when you’re my age!’ Jake says, putting his tea down, and then standing up and stretching.
‘Wait until you have two running around,’ Lou adds, passing Daisy to Poppy.
‘Tell me about it,’ Jake says, ‘I’ve been there before, remember?’
‘You shouldn’t have married such a young wife then,’ Poppy says, winking at me.
‘I wouldn’t have it any other way.’ Jake kisses her on the cheek. ‘Right, Aunt Lou,’ he continues, kissing his aunt on the cheek now. ‘We’ll see you on Thursday for Daisy’s birthday tea.’
