A Supernatural Mystery 

book 2

Six paintings. One wall. One missing.

Catrin Morrow no longer works alone. After the wedding portrait that changed what she believed a painting could hold, she has rules now, pinned by the chapel door — and an executor's letter asking her to assess the collection of the late Thomas Elwick, a man who spent forty years assembling six paintings into a single arrangement and left strict instructions that they never be separated.

The valuation should be routine. But the wall is not a collection. It is a mechanism. Each canvas answers the others — a sitter's gaze, a doorway, a road leading out of frame — and the sequence is incomplete, because one painting has been missing for decades. The family wants the set restored, reunited and sold. The wall wants something else finished.

As Catrin traces what Elwick built and why, she finds a woman at the centre of it: Nell Ardent, who sat for him once, refused him something, and spent the rest of her life being quietly painted back into his possession. Completing the wall would complete his answer to her refusal. And some restorations are not repairs at all.

The second novel in The Chapel of Wet Paint series — quiet, exact British supernatural mystery for readers of Susan Hill, Andrew Michael Hurley and Laura Purcell. Each book stands alone; the chapel remembers everything.

Read the first chapter

Chapter 1 — The Executor’s Letter

Catrin Morrow had not moved the table back.

It had stood, for a year now, slightly out from the centre line of the chapel, its left end angled towards the old vestry door and its right end pointing, not quite squarely, at the place where the aisle had once begun.

Before, she would have noticed such a thing within an hour. Her working space depended on order: lamps placed to fall at predictable angles, boards stacked flat, cotton cloths folded with their clean edges turned inward, brushes separated by use, solvents labelled, blade handles set away from the table edge. A restorer’s room was not made safe by tidiness, but tidiness gave danger fewer places to hide.

Now she let the table remain crooked.

It was not forgetfulness. She knew the exact degree by which it offended the chapel’s geometry. She could see the old flagstones running true beneath it, the faint scar where rows of chairs had once been fixed for ceremonies, the darker line in the stone near the former altar rail. She saw all of it. Each morning she came in, unlocked the rear door, listened to the building answer with its accustomed clicks and cooled creaks, and thought: I will put that right today.

Then she did not.

The chapel was quiet.

That was the difficulty.

It was not empty quiet, not any longer. Before, quiet had been a professional condition, something she could trust. Quiet meant no visitors, no delivery van outside, no phone, no one asking whether a flaking varnish could be made “a bit brighter” without expense. Quiet meant she could lower a brush to a damaged surface and hear the almost inaudible sound of contact.

Since the first altered painting, quiet meant she was waiting for the room to decide what it wanted.

The first altered painting had been a wedding group, twenty inches by sixteen, brought to her by a woman who had wanted to know only whether the red bird would clean off.

It had not cleaned off.

By the time the work was finished, two women had their names back. Aveline Stroud, who had refused. Rose Carrow, who had carried what Aveline could not, and who had lain for more than a century under a name that was not hers. The floor below the vestry had been opened and closed again. There were forms still moving through three offices, a burial record waiting to be annotated, a stone waiting to be cut. Records were slow to correct when they had been wrong that long.

The table had been pushed out of true to make room for the lights and the cases when they opened the under-room. The floor was sealed again now, properly and legally, with a certificate to say so, and since October Catrin had walked over it twice a day and had trained herself not to count the steps.

That was why it was crooked. Catrin had known it the whole time.

Catrin set her mug beside the sink in the vestry and watched tea steam rise into the weak morning light. The kettle had left a chalky crescent on the counter. She wiped it with the side of her thumb, then took down the small notebook she had begun after everything changed.

Not her restoration log. That remained professional, dated, indexed, and sensible enough to survive inspection.

This notebook had no title on the cover.

Inside, on the first page, she had written:

Do not assume recurrence.

Below it:

Do not assume non-recurrence.

She had disliked both sentences immediately, but she had not crossed them out.

There was a third line further down the page, and Catrin had not written it.

Do not sleep in the office.

Beth had put it there herself, in flat, impatient handwriting, while Catrin was filling the kettle and pretending not to watch. It was not a rule about paintings. It was a rule about a woman who had spent four nights on an office chair with something under a cloth twelve feet away and had mentioned it to nobody.

Catrin had kept it. She had kept the other thing too, which was ringing Beth from the car on the way home, though Beth had never asked for that and had never once let it go to voicemail.

Beth came inside the chapel when she had to, and not otherwise. She had been clear about it, twice, in the way she was clear about things she intended to change her mind about later. Mark had been round three times with a drill and an opinion about the vestry door, which was Mark’s way of saying the same thing from a safer distance.

The chapel smelled of the damp that never quite left the stone, old wood, and a faint mineral warmth where the light had reached. Nothing else. No smoke. No blood-like iron from wet pigment. No impossible grass. No sharp breath of open water where none existed. The high windows held a pale, uncommitted sky. On the far table, three ordinary commissions waited under clean cotton covers: a nineteenth-century river scene with lifting varnish, a foxed family portrait in need of stabilising, and a small still life of apples whose owner had insisted the fruit had belonged to her grandmother.

All ordinary. All accountable.

Catrin lifted the river scene’s cover first. She did it because she had promised herself she would begin with work that belonged only to the world she knew.

The painting had suffered from poor storage rather than malice. Damp had bloomed beneath the varnish in faint cloudy islands. There was a small tear near the lower left where the canvas had taken a knock from behind. The sky had yellowed under old varnish, and the barges in the distance were almost lost to grime. It was a patient painting. Damaged, but not deceitful.

She stood before it for nearly a minute before touching anything.

“Right,” she said.

Her voice startled her. Not because it was loud. Because the chapel returned it too cleanly.

Right.

The word travelled upward into the roof timbers, thinned, and came back as the kind of echo the room had always given. A former wedding chapel did not stop being shaped for witnesses merely because the flowers and chairs had gone. It kept voices. It held them briefly and released them.

On the smaller easel by the north wall, under unbleached calico weighted at the top two corners, stood a harbour scene that had arrived two days earlier and would not be worked on. Catrin had chosen the position deliberately: out of the light, out of the way, and in the part of the chapel she passed most often. The first rule had gone up on its white card eleven months ago and had not yet been broken, and the whole of keeping it consisted of walking past that easel four or five times a day without lifting the cloth.

Catrin picked up her pencil and dated the day’s sheet.

5 June.

The graphite felt good. Mundane. Specific. There was comfort in marks that stayed where she put them.

By half past ten she had measured the tear, photographed it under angled light, made notes on the condition of the stretcher, and mixed nothing. She had learned not to rush the beginning of work. Most damage announced itself slowly if given the chance. People wanted repair to look like action, but often the first duty was to look long enough to understand what had happened.

At eleven, her laptop chimed.

She did not jump. She did, however, put the pencil down before she turned.

The laptop sat on the small desk near the west wall, beside the printer and the stack of acid-free envelopes. She had left it open on the restoration log. A new email box had appeared in the lower corner of the screen.

Martin Greaves — Thomas Elwick Estate

Catrin did not know a Martin Greaves.

She did know the name Elwick, but only in the way one knew names attached to respectable houses, minor collections, and local rumours that had never mattered enough to keep. There had been an Elwick sale years ago. Or a proposed sale. Something with ceramics, perhaps. She had a vague memory of someone mentioning a private collector who had never lent anything, never exhibited properly, and never quite had the quality to be famous or the bad taste to be interesting.

She wiped her hands, though there was nothing on them, and opened the email.

Dear Ms Morrow,

I act as executor for the estate of the late Mr Thomas Avery Elwick. Among Mr Elwick’s papers are instructions concerning a small number of pictures requiring condition assessment prior to valuation and disposal.

Your name appears in Mr Elwick’s written notes in connection with one such work.

Catrin stopped reading.

The chapel gave its quiet little shift: old timber, cooled air, a settling tick from somewhere near the vestry wall. Nothing moved on the tables. The river scene remained exactly as it had been. The covered paintings remained covered.

She read the sentence again.

Your name appears in Mr Elwick’s written notes.

Not her business name. Not a referral. Not “a local restorer.” Her name.

She scrolled lower.

The work in question is an oil painting, apparently late nineteenth or early twentieth century, unsigned or with signature obscured. Approximate dimensions are given in the attached condition pre-note. Mr Elwick’s papers specify that assessment should be sought from “the chapel restorer” before further action.

I would be grateful if you could confirm whether you are willing to receive the work for initial examination. The estate will of course meet reasonable professional fees.

Yours sincerely,

Martin Greaves

Executor

Catrin sat down.

The chair was cold through her clothes. She had not noticed the room becoming colder, because it had not. The change was in her, not the chapel. A tightening under the ribs, a carefulness in the hands.

“The chapel restorer,” she said.

This time the room did not return the phrase cleanly. The words were too soft. They went into the air and vanished.

She clicked the attachment.

A scanned sheet opened. It was not a photograph of the painting, but a typed document, probably copied from estate papers. At the top was a reference number. Beneath that, in neat blocks, were notes:

Oil on canvas.

Figure subject.

Rear view.

Female sitter.

Frame damaged at lower right.

Do not clean before assessment.

Do not separate from related items without record.

Consult chapel restorer before valuation.

There was no image.

Catrin leaned closer, though the words were perfectly clear.

Do not separate from related items without record.

That was more interesting than the phrase that named her. More professional. More explainable. Pictures from private collections often belonged to informal sets. Families separated things by accident. Executors knew enough to keep dining chairs together but not always enough to understand why six mediocre landscapes might matter because of where they had hung, or which two portraits had faced one another for ninety years.

Still.

Consult chapel restorer.

She checked the attachment metadata. The scan had been made three days earlier. The original note had no date visible. The typed page might have been copied from an older document, or retyped recently, or assembled by someone trying to make sense of Elwick’s instructions. She enlarged the bottom of the page.

No signature.

No handwriting.

No photograph.

Catrin opened a blank document and began a new note.

Thomas Avery Elwick Estate — Initial Contact

Date/time email received: 5 June, 11:03

Sender: Martin Greaves, executor

Object: oil painting, figure subject, rear view, female sitter

Relevant phrase: “the chapel restorer”

Concern: source of reference unknown

Missing: image of front, provenance, full set/context, date of Elwick note

Her hand moved more steadily once she was writing. Evidence preferred form. Fear did not disappear when put into bullet points, but it lost some of its right to spread.

She searched Thomas Avery Elwick.

There were three ordinary results first: a death notice, a mention in an old property record, and a brief paragraph from a local heritage newsletter thanking “Mr T. A. Elwick” for a loan of two small watercolours to a talk on regional collecting. Nothing recent except the notice.

Thomas Avery Elwick. Died aged eighty-nine. Peacefully at home. No close family listed, only “survived by extended relatives.” Donations to a hospice.

Peacefully at home.

Catrin had learned to distrust the peacefulness of notices. They described the convenience of the living, not the condition of the dead.

She searched images and found very little. A house, perhaps his, behind a high hedge. A catalogue page from fifteen years before. Two small landscapes attributed to minor hands. Nothing with a woman seen from behind.

The laptop fan made a soft, dry sound.

A car passed outside, tyres whispering on damp road.

The chapel remained a chapel-shaped silence around her.

Catrin clicked reply.

Dear Mr Greaves,

Thank you for your email.

Before I agree to receive the painting, please would you send:

• A photograph of the front and back of the work.
• Any existing provenance notes.
• The full wording of Mr Elwick’s instruction, preferably scanned in its original form.
• Clarification regarding the “related items” mentioned in the estate note.

I am not aware of any prior professional connection with Mr Elwick, so I would also be grateful for any indication of how my name came to appear in his papers.

Kind regards,

Catrin Morrow

She did not send it.

She sat with the cursor blinking after her name.

The sensible thing was to ask first. The sensible thing was to keep the object outside the building until she understood why a dead man had apparently known about her. The sensible thing was to refuse any commission that referred to her by a name she had never used publicly.

The problem with sense was that it assumed time did not matter.

Do not separate from related items without record.

Had the painting already been separated? The note implied it might be. Executors did not usually write to restorers before touching anything unless something had gone wrong, or someone had been frightened, or money was involved.

Catrin looked across at the covered family portrait.

The cotton cloth lay smoothly over the frame. A long, low shape beneath white fabric. Nothing more.

She sent the email.

Then she stood, because sitting still had become a kind of invitation.

The chapel needed practical tasks. She rinsed the mug. She labelled the river painting photographs and backed them up to the external drive. She checked the humidity monitor: fifty-one percent, stable. She swept a small scatter of grit from the threshold though it was only ordinary grit, black and grey, tracked in from the path outside.

At twelve twenty, the reply came.

Mr Greaves wrote quickly. Too quickly for someone who had to consult papers.

Dear Ms Morrow,

Thank you for your prompt response.

I attach photographs of the reverse and frame. Unfortunately, I do not currently have a satisfactory image of the front. The painting has been wrapped for transport following removal from Mr Elwick’s property. I shall request an image from the clearance agent if available, though there may be some delay.

As to your other questions, Mr Elwick’s original instruction appears to have been made in his own hand and later transcribed by his solicitor. I will provide copies when the estate file is fully collated.

The “related items” are not yet clear. Several pictures from the same room are being catalogued separately.

If you are able to accept delivery for assessment, I can arrange courier transfer this week.

Yours sincerely,

Martin Greaves

Catrin read it once, then again, and felt irritation arrive cleanly over the unease.

“No satisfactory image of the front,” she said.

This time, the words sounded like herself.

She opened the first attached photograph.

The reverse of the painting filled the screen. Brown paper backing, torn in two places and patched badly. A stretcher visible beneath at one corner. Old labels on the frame. A small chalk mark, almost rubbed away. The wrapping had been pulled back enough to photograph the rear but not removed fully. The image was slightly blurred at the edges.

She zoomed in.

Lower left: an old framer’s label, stained and partly torn.

Upper right: a handwritten number on the paper backing. 3? Or 8? Difficult to say.

Near the centre: a darker rectangular patch where another label had once been removed.

No obvious title.

No artist.

No front.

The second photograph showed the frame, wrapped at the edges. Gilt, rubbed back to red bole in places. Not especially fine, but old enough to have been handled often. The lower right corner was damaged as described: a split ornament, darkened with dust.

The third photograph was closer.

Catrin stared at it.

Not at the damage. At the wrapping.

The painting had been wrapped in brown paper and bubble wrap, with two bands of white tape across the back. On the upper band, someone had written in black marker:

WOMAN / BACK VIEW

Below that, in a different hand, fainter, almost cut off by the edge of the photograph:

No front image.

As though the absence had needed labelling.

Catrin saved the photographs into a folder and named it ELWICK_INITIAL. Then she printed them. She preferred paper for first fear. Screens gave images too much permission to change in ways that could be blamed on pixels, brightness, compression, accidental refresh. Paper was not truth, but it had weight.

The printer coughed itself awake.

While it worked, Catrin walked to the nave end of the chapel and unlocked the storage cupboard. Inside were flat boxes, conservation board, spare cloths, archival tissue, and the hard plastic crate where she kept incoming works before initial inspection. She pulled the crate out, checked the padding, and then stopped.

There was a red feather caught in the corner seam.

For one second her mind supplied the shape whole: the bird in the painting from before, the red flash, the witness mark that had appeared when seeing became action.

Then she bent and picked it up.

It was not a feather.

It was a sliver of red thread from the edge of an old packing blanket, caught where the fabric had frayed. Cotton, not quill. Limp between finger and thumb. Mundane. Slightly ridiculous.

She let out a breath through her nose, not quite a laugh.

“Good,” she said. “Excellent. We’re frightened of thread now.”

The chapel made no comment.

She threw the thread into the bin and returned to the printer.

Three sheets waited in the tray. She laid them on the desk, wrote the date at the top of each, and underlined the missing facts.

No front image.

Related items unclear.

Original instruction not supplied.

Several pictures from same room being catalogued separately.

She should not accept delivery.

She knew that.

There was a letter in the desk drawer that agreed with her. The practice review had been moved from September to January, then adjourned again to the January after that, pending the conclusion of proceedings at the assessed premises. The premises were this building. The proceedings were not hers and had not finished, and the two enquiries that had gone quiet in the same fortnight had not come back.

So the review had been hanging over her since September, and would go on hanging for another seven months, because her casework kept turning into something the police had an interest in. In January, two assessors would sit in this room and look at her records and her judgement and decide whether her name stayed on the list.

A restorer under review does not take an unrecorded work from a disputed estate on the instruction of a dead man who named her in his private notes.

But she also knew what happened when frightened people moved dangerous paintings around without understanding what linked them. She had learned that ordinary handling could become an act of violence if the object was not ordinary.

At one fifteen she ate toast standing by the sink and tasted very little of it. Outside, the day had lowered into a steady grey. Rain tapped intermittently against the side windows, never quite becoming heavy. The chapel light flattened. The covered paintings became pale shapes arranged at different heights, like furniture in a room after someone had died.

Catrin checked the doors. Rear door locked. Front entrance bolted. Vestry window latched. Side window stiff but shut. The action was automatic and faintly shameful. Locks had their uses. They did not keep out everything that mattered.

There was a rule for this now, and it was hers.

No object is examined alone.

She had written it after St. Idris, on the day she understood that most of what she had learned there she had learned four days later than she needed to, and that the reason was that she had been the only person looking. It was a poor way to work. It was a worse way to be right.

So there was a list. Moira Sennett for frames, boards, stretchers, and the physical history of how a picture had been kept. Iain Bexley for pigment, imaging, and the disciplined refusal to explain a thing badly. Neither of them had been at St. Idris. Moira had heard enough about it since to stop asking whether she was joking.

At two o’clock, she called Moira Sennett and got voicemail.

“Moira, it’s Catrin. I may have an incoming estate picture with an odd frame history. Not urgent yet. Could you ring when you get a moment? I’d like your eye on it when it arrives. If it arrives.”

She ended the call before she could add anything that sounded strange.

Then she wrote to Martin Greaves.

Dear Mr Greaves,

Thank you for the images.

I am willing to receive the painting for preliminary assessment only, subject to the following conditions:

• The painting should remain wrapped until opened in my studio.
• No further cleaning, repair, reframing, or photography should be attempted before assessment.
• Please ensure any associated documentation travels separately and is not attached to the object.
• Please provide a list of the other pictures removed from the same room as soon as possible.

I would also still like to see the original handwritten instruction.

Kind regards,

Catrin Morrow

She read the email twice, removed “when available” from the final sentence because it gave him room to delay, and sent it.

For the next hour, she did actual work.

She cleaned a test square on the river painting, very small, near the edge where a later overpaint had yellowed differently from the original sky. The work settled her. Cotton swab, solvent mixture, light pressure, stop before confidence became carelessness. Under the discoloured varnish, the sky was cooler than expected, a restrained blue-grey that made the river look less sentimental. The painter had understood weather. Not dramatically, not theatrically. Just the way cloud lowered itself over water and made every vertical line seem temporary.

Catrin photographed the test square and felt something in her loosen.

This was why she did the work.

Not to make old things new. Not to tidy history. To remove what had been added by smoke, damp, neglect, bad repair, fashion, haste, ownership. To let the earlier surface breathe without pretending damage had not happened.

Some images must not be completed.

The sentence came into her mind whole, without context.

She looked down at the river painting.

Nothing had changed. No figure stood on the quay. No red mark appeared in the sky. No bird crossed the varnish. The sentence belonged to her own thought, not the room.

Probably.

She wrote it in the untitled notebook anyway.

At four thirty, Martin Greaves confirmed courier transfer for Friday.

Friday.

Two days.

Catrin stood at the desk, reading the message, and felt an unreasonable disappointment. Some part of her had expected the painting immediately, as if the email itself had been only the first knock. Two days felt procedural, almost ordinary, and therefore worse. It gave time for doubt to make itself respectable.

She closed the laptop.

The rain had stopped, but the cloud had not lifted, and with the lamps on the chapel windows had gone from grey to a dull pewter that took reflections. In them, the room doubled itself faintly: tables, lamps, covers, Catrin’s own figure standing too still at the west wall. She saw the crooked table reflected behind her, its angle exaggerated by the old glass.

She turned.

The table had not moved.

Of course it had not.

She crossed the room and finally put both hands on its edge. The wood was cool and solid. She pulled one end towards her until the table aligned with the flagstones. A small correction. A practical act. The legs scraped faintly.

When it was straight, the chapel looked less like itself.

Catrin frowned.

That was absurd. The room had been built around alignment: aisle, rail, window, door. Straightening the table should have restored order.

Instead the room seemed to be waiting more accurately.

She went back to the desk and looked once more at the printed photograph of the wrapped painting. The black marker words sat across the white tape.

WOMAN / BACK VIEW

No front image.

Catrin took a clean folder from the drawer, placed the photographs inside, and wrote on the tab:

ELWICK — WOMAN FROM BEHIND

She hesitated, then added:

DO NOT CLEAN BEFORE FULL CONTEXT

The instruction was sensible. Professional.

Still, when she put the folder in the top drawer and closed it, she had the clear impression that she had not put the matter away. She had only given it somewhere to wait.

That evening, before leaving the chapel, Catrin covered the river painting and switched off the lamps one by one. The room shrank with each click. Worktable. Sink. Desk. Vestry. Nave.

At the door, she looked back.

The chapel held its ordinary dimness. No movement. No figure. No red eagle in the high window. No sound except rain beginning again outside, fine and patient against the stone.

Catrin locked the door.

In her coat pocket, her phone buzzed once.

An email.

She should have waited until she was home. She knew that, even as she took the phone out.

Martin Greaves had forwarded a message from the clearance agent.

No text from Greaves himself. Just the forwarded email chain and one attachment.

Catrin opened it.

The photograph was poor. Taken in a hallway, perhaps, with the painting still partly wrapped. The image showed a brown-paper parcel leaning against a wall. One corner of the front had been uncovered, but not enough to see the subject. Only a strip of dark paint, a curve that might have been shoulder or shadow, and a vertical fall of brown-black hair.

The file name read:

Elwick_pic_no_front_available.jpg

Catrin stood in the rain-dark yard, the chapel key still in her hand.

There was a second attachment beneath it.

A PDF scan. She opened it.

It was another typed estate note, shorter than the first.

Picture removed from west room prior to inventory by T.E.

House more settled after removal, per T.E.

No front image to be circulated.

Send to chapel restorer.

Catrin read the line again.

No front image to be circulated.

Not unavailable.

Not missing.

Not delayed.

Not to be circulated.

Behind her, inside the locked chapel, something made a small sound.

It was not loud. It was not dramatic. It was the sound of paper settling in a drawer.

Catrin did not unlock the door.

She stood with the phone in her wet hand until the screen dimmed, and the rain gathered quietly on the shoulders of her coat.