THE TROUBLE AT THE TURNER FARM

Chapter One

The house sat back from the road, guarded by trees that looked like they might have stood since the first farmers began turning the soil in North Yorkshire. The massive trunks and thick canopy of leaves shaded the front lawn and gave the property a brooding air. A slight wind rustled the leaves, stirred the limbs and made Alex pull her sweater more tightly across her tanned shoulders.

“I think you're going to love it here, Alex,” her boyfriend Eric said, pulling her closer to him.
“Remember the path the estate agent showed us that leads out of the back garden? We can slip down to the beach anytime we like, love.” He nuzzled Alex's neck, making her giggle.
 

“It's just such a big step, Eric. I mean, a house. We bought a house.” She knew that Eric would begin pressuring her to set a date for their wedding again. That was a step she wasn't prepared to take yet. Having the house would surely make him press her even more. Why couldn't they just stay the way they were?
 

“Come on, let's go inside,” he said, giving her shoulders an affectionate squeeze. “The furniture was delivered yesterday, so at least we have somewhere to sit and sleep.”
 

Alex followed him up the cobblestone path that led to the front door and waited as he unlocked the door. The massive oak door groaned on its hinges as he pushed it open and the smell of a house that had stood empty a little too long hit them as they stepped into the darkened hallway. Although it was high summer and almost 70 degrees outside, the house felt cold. No doubt the army of trees that surrounded it kept the house cool.

Eric hit the light switch and the glow of electric light flooded the hallway, making the dark oak floor shine like water under moonlight. Although the house had been fully modernized and additions had been made over the decades, the core of the house dated back to the 18th century. The floor was polished to a high patina from the traffic of countless feet, and no doubt more than a few maids who had scrubbed and polished it since it had first been inhabited.
“Well, the electric is on. I'm going to get the groceries out of the car,” Eric said and gave Alex a quick peck on the cheek.

“Maybe we can have lunch outdoors in the garden,” she called after him.
 

Eric gave her a thumbs up and continued out the front door. Alex began walking through the house, going from room to room to make sure all the furniture had truly arrived. She was heading toward the back of the house and the kitchen but changed her mind abruptly and went up the stairs to the second floor instead. She caressed the cool, satiny wood that made up the banister as she climbed. The stairs made a turn to the right at the landing. Alex paused to consider the landing, running through her mind what would fit well into the corner. She was trying out a variety of objects, picturing them in her mind when she heard a sound from above that made her freeze. A cold draft suddenly seemed to engulf her as she stood on the landing, peering up the stairs in the direction of the loud creaking sound that had startled her. It had sounded like the front door when Eric had opened it only moments ago, but the
sound hadn't come from below her. She walked to the edge of the landing and leaned over the banister where she had an excellent view of the hallway and the front door, even though she knew the sound had come from the floor above her.

The front door was still closed, just as Eric had left it when he went outside. She called his name any way, hoping he had entered with the groceries. No one answered when she called his name. Steeling herself, she turned back toward the stairs and climbed them to the second floor.
 

It was just as she remembered it when the estate agent had shown the house to them. A second long hallway ran to the left and right of the staircase. There were four bedrooms on the second floor; two smaller rooms had been fitted out as bathrooms with all the modern amenities. Eric had claimed the first room at the top of the stairs for his home office. The master bedroom and its bathroom were at the end of the hall to her left, later additions, having been added sometime in the 19th centrury. Two more bedrooms were to her right, in the oldest part of the house. She looked left and right, hoping there would be some reasonable explanation for the loud creaking she had heard. All the doors to her right were closed, but as she took a few steps down the hallway, she realized that the last bedroom door was slightly ajar.
 

She walked to the room and reached out for the door knob. It felt ice cold in her hand as she slowly opened the door and heard the same creaking sound she had previously heard. She let out her breath, unaware until now that she had been holding it. Nothing seemed out of place. The room was empty except for a few cartons the movers had left in the center of the room. Two large windows faced the back garden and she made her way across the room to look at the view. She could see the path that led down to the beach, but the garden was shielded from her view by the fully-leafed out branches of a large tree that grew beside the windows. She was staring at the tree when she caught movement out of the corner of her eye.

Walking along the beach was a young woman, her long, dark ringlets blew away from her face as she walked across the sand. She was wearing a long, ivory dress trimmed in green and
pink ribbon and a bonnet trimmed in the same colors was dangling from one hand as she walked. Alex immediately thought of Jane Austen. Perhaps the woman was a re-enactor for some living history exhibit or one of those people who did such things merely for fun.
 

Alex was still watching the woman, who was so graceful she almost appeared to glide across the sand, when Eric called her from downstairs. She turned from the window to answer him and when she turned back, the woman was gone. Alex opened the window and leaned out as far as she dared, looking in the direction the woman had been walking. Nothing. No one. Yet Alex knew no one could have possibly moved so quickly that they would be completely out of sight in the few seconds she was distracted, not even if they had been running.
 

Maybe the woman had ducked into one of the other houses further along the beach. Of course, Alex thought, relaxing. She had to have done. Feeling a little silly, she closed and locked the window and looked around the empty room again. It would no doubt become a guest room for friends and relatives coming to visit. Whitby was a popular tourist destination, so she suspected the room would be in frequent use. While it had a nice view of the beach below, it wasn't as breathtaking as the view from the master bedroom, Alex recalled, but she liked the way the light shone through the windows. She would have to give some thought to what color to use on the walls. But despite her happy thoughts of decorating and hosting future guests, Alex did not like the room. Besides the two odd happenings she had already experienced, the room made her feel uneasy, almost anxious. She was relieved to close the door and hurry down the stairs to help Eric with the groceries.

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Later, after Alex and Eric had put away the groceries and unpacked a few cartons, they decided to break for lunch. Alex made sandwiches, while Eric gathered the drinks and set the trays with
silverware and napkins. They made their way to an old picnic table that stood a few feet from the kitchen door.

As they ate, Alex mentioned that the door in one of the guest rooms probably needed a new lock because it kept popping open.
 

“I'll put it on my list for the handyman. He should be around Monday,” Eric said.
Eric Watson and Alexandra Gardener had been living and working in York for the past year and a half. Alex had a small shop where she sold her hand-made jewelry in the same building where Eric worked. They had met one day in the coffee shop inside the lobby. Within a few months, they had moved in together. After Eric had made partner at his law firm, he had developed what Alex referred to as 'house fever.' After trekking up and down the Yorkshire coast for two months, they had finally settled on an old farmhouse known as Turner Farm in Whitby.

“Whitby?” Alex had said when Eric told her he was smitten with the town. “You do realize that's
where Bram Stoker set Dracula, don't you?”
 

“I promise to protect you from the undead, my dear,” Eric had said, in his best theatrical voice. “Make sure you put garlic on the shopping list,” he added in his normal voice.

Alex rolled her eyes and gave him a playful slap on the arm.
 

But after exploring the town, Alex, too, had fallen in love with Whitby. The farmhouse, although large for what they needed, appealed to her sense of history and her love of rustic charm. It didn't hurt either that the house boasted a large sun room off the kitchen that would be perfect for making jewelry. She had immediately claimed it as her studio when they decided to make an offer on the house. It had windows on two sides that provided spectacular views of both the garden and the sea. Alex loved that no matter what the weather, the space would always be flooded with natural light year round.
 

While Eric's law practice would require him to commute to York everyday, and sometimes to London, Alex had decided to look for a space to open a new shop here in Whitby and continue to make jewelry at home for both the shop and the galleries in York and London who featured her work. She would be spending more time at the Turner Farm than Eric, most of it alone. After the strange incidents with the creaking door and the disappearing woman on the beach, she wasn't sure how keen she was about that at the moment, but she felt certain that in time she would feel more at ease. It was just that she wasn't at all accustomed to being alone in such a remote setting as the farmhouse, she reassured herself.

“Let's go for a walk along the beach,” Alex said, suddenly standing and reaching her hand out to Eric.
 

He disentangled his long legs from the picnic bench and took her hand. They walked along in
companionable silence, watching the waves further out to sea. Alex reveljed in the feel of the cool tidal water as it pooled around her ankles and the contrast of sensations it made with the warm sand beneath her feet. She turned her face upward to the sun, closing her eyes briefly and letting the warmth spread through her until she felt as if it had flooded her whole body. Yes, she thought she could learn to love living in Whitby. Definitely.

As they continued to walk, Eric began to tell her about the list he had made for the handyman and when the man should arrive. Alex was only half-listening, as she had suddenly remembered they were walking in the same direction as the strange woman she had seen earlier through the upstairs window. The woman had been walking further from the water's edge, as if she had been purposely avoiding the tide. The tide was just now beginning to encroach on the beach, so the water hadn't had enough time to reach the path the woman had been walking. Realizing that her footprints should still be visible in the sand, Alex began to look for them.

She carefully scanned the sand to and fro, from the water's edge to the retaining wall that ran below the houses and then stopped still in her tracks, dropping Eric's hand as she did so. There were no tracks, no footprints in the sand except her own and Eric's. There were none that led to the back entrances of any house or that ran parallel to the wall and the water and continued
further down the beach. Not only had the woman vanished, but so had any trace that she had ever been there.