no photos please, part 3

9pm: Dinner. Irrelevant, but excellent. It was salmon with some kind of dill sauce, crispy roasted potatoes, and mustard greens. I was suspicious of the mustard greens (I've not totally overcome the childhood aversion to green things), but they were really nice, tangy and peppery and excellent the with the sauce. (Mycroft wouldn't touch the sauce. Apparently he draws the line at "slimy white stuff." I was rather relieved, as I always am when he acts his age.)

After dinner, however, is highly relevant. 

I tucked the boys in and read them a bit of Desert Solitaire, which seems to be going down better than Kipling. I think non-fiction may be the way to go, plus Mycroft is all excited about the star-viewing possibilities offered by a desert climate. (We've only had two clear nights here, and one of them was taken up by strangling cats infuriating monkeys playing the bagpipes.)

Went back to my room. Went to sleep.

Woke up in total darkness with one cold little hand in each of mine.

Have you seen the black and white version of The Haunting, where they're in the dark and Eleanor's holding Theodora's hand, except then Theodora says she's clear on the other side of the room or out of it or some such and then Eleanor says, "Then whose hand am I holding?" It was that sort of moment, although I assure you I did not shriek or go mad or climb any (more) rickety spiral staircases.

"John," Mycroft whispered. "We saw it. Him. In our room."

"His face was in the wall," Sherlock said.

They both slept with me that night. In the morning, my two little scientists explained that they'd woken up to the creak of metal and/or wood (Sherlock said metal, Mycroft said wood) and seen a face on the wall, faintly glowing. "But not a real face," Sherlock said. "A painting." Mycroft agreed. A painting of the Late Lord D that, they both insist, was never in the room. It certainly wasn't when I went to check.

When I asked Deb, though...

"Oh, the little portrait? It's in the cellars now, completely ruined, growing things in the damp. It did used to hang in that room though. He must've wanted a look at his grandsons."

So, there you are. Our not very exciting ghost story. I can't confirm or deny the picture's presence before I put them to bed, but Deb did show it to us later. The frame was growing some sort of orange mold, and his face was mostly obscured by water damage. Mycroft said it wasn't the same picture at all and seems to have doubts now about what he saw. Sherlock, unsurprisingly, has no doubts at all.

"Yes, that's it," he said, "but it was new, and his eyes moved."