The Mysteries of Brambly Hollow

place, and white picket fences. No, definitely not the right atmosphere for the place she decided, grinning to herself. Besides, Elsa most definitely would not approve, just the suggestion was probably enough to have her on the verge of scrambling from her freshly dug grave to come haunt the place.
    Meli glanced to her right, where the Transit used to sit. Where was it now its mistress was gone? She sighed. It was so strange how she missed all the old bits. Recognising the one van parked outside the farmhouse, she guessed that only the decorators were in residence at the moment. Marching up to the open door, she stepped inside. The only smell now was paint fumes.
    “Hello,” she called out, her voice echoing along the empty corridor. “Its only me, Meli from the lodge.” Most of the workmen knew her, so they wouldn’t worry about her visiting. When she heard a grunt from upstairs, she called back “Just need to check something in the living room. Hope that’s okay.” Tough if it is, she thought, striding purposefully along the wooden floorboards.
    “Yeah, help yourself.” One of the painters had obviously moved to the top of the stairs, as the grunts were now words. “But be a love and stick the kettle on.” Damn cheek, she thought, but she did stop off in the kitchen. The kettle was still piping hot from the last cup of tea they’d made. Filling it up again, she plugged it in. It was so different in here. It was amazing what a good clean up, a few tiles and a lick of paint could do; it looked quite normal, even though the cupboards and units were still packed in boxes and piled up against one wall. Leaving the kettle to boil, she hurried along the hall as quietly as she could. Standing in the doorway to the living room she took a bracing breath before glancing in. Like the kitchen, it bore no resemblance to the way it had looked during Elsa’s reign, and looking at the recently lined walls and newly replaced floorboards, it was hard to imagine that a dead body had laid in here for days.
    Focusing her mind, she forced herself to relive that horrible afternoon. She had turned on the light (the memory made her shudder), saw the body, stepped closer and looked down at the drained, white face and the crimson pillow of blood, then she had run. There was no way she could have got blood on herself in here. No way at all.
    With a sense of renewed purpose, she retraced her steps along the passage and burst outside. Lowering her lashes against the glare of the sun, she paused, forgetting all about the painters waiting for their cup of tea, her mind distracted by the playback of events that had happened before Tabby had led her into the farmhouse. She had been in the cobbled yard. Quassi and Tabby had been there, and something had bowled her over in one of the barns. She’d landed on her knees. Eureka. That had to be it. On swift legs, she ran through the gate and into the yard and was soon standing in the barn. This too had been cleared of rubbish and swept out and was now an empty husk, illuminated by narrow beams of daylight which pierced the holes in the roof, and glared through chinks in the coarse tongue and groove walls. Diligently, she scoured every inch of the floor, looking for the tell-tale blood stain which would prove her suspicions were right, but despite a painstaking search, there was nothing. But that wasn’t to say there hadn’t been any, as the workmen might have unwittingly destroyed any evidence during their clean up.
    With her head buzzing with questions and little else, she set off for home.
    What had been in the barn with her that day? She had never made up her mind whether it was man or beast. Now the beast possibility, that was interesting. Why did that notion keep nudging at her thoughts. Beast being what? A large cat? Some kind of ape? It could have been an injured animal; after all, that could account for the blood. No, she shook her head as her feet pounded up the track. The notion of it being an animal didn’t sit right with her. So, what possibilities did that leave? A Were Wolf maybe? Or a goblin, or some other fictitious creature? She was glad no one could read her troubled mind.
    Where had the blood come from that had stained her jeans?
    Elsa?
    Could Elsa have been injured in the barn, staggered home, and then collapsed and died in the living room? Or was there a more sinister explanation? Meli almost tripped over her own feet as this thought punched her on the side of the