A Supernatural Mystery 

book 4

In 1941, nine men died in Portsmouth. The record says otherwise. The record is the weapon.

A modest wartime watercolour comes to Catrin Morrow's chapel with salt rising through its paint — actual salt, crystallising along a line no flood ever reached. The painting shows the harbour in January. The salt is drawing a different picture underneath: a store, a loss, a night the official account has always described in language chosen very carefully by the men who wrote it.

The Bellamy Lower Store Loss was documented, filed and closed. Nobody lied, exactly. Men were reclassified. Names were crossed off one list and entered on another. Terminology did the work that no single hand would sign for — and eighty years later, families still carry the versions of their dead that the wording left them.

With a local historian who believes the past belongs to the people it happened to, Catrin follows the salt line from the painting into the archives, where the truth is not hidden at all. It is in plain sight, spelled correctly, and doing harm every time it is read. Correcting a record is easy. Correcting one without making the dead stand at low tide for proof is the whole of the work.

The fourth 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 Salt Line

The salt was back by morning.

Catrin noticed it before she unlocked the inner door properly. A pale crust lay along the chapel floorboards, gathered in the narrow gaps between boards and in the worn line where brides had once walked towards the front of the room. Not much. A few grains only, if she wanted to be sensible about it. A scatter of white grit catching the low winter light.

But it had not been there when she left.

She kept one hand on the key and stood just inside the chapel, letting the cold follow her in from the street. The old building settled around her with its usual small sounds: timber shifting, glass ticking in the frames, the soft click of the radiator coming alive too late to be useful. Rain had blown hard against the seaward side of the chapel during the night, and that gave her the first explanation. Old Portsmouth weather found its way into everything. Stone held damp. Frames swelled. Hinges stiffened. Paper curled.

Salt came in on shoes.

Salt came in on air.

Salt did not lay itself neatly along the vanished aisle.

Catrin shut the door behind her and locked it twice. She had stopped pretending the second turn made her safer. It made her organised, which was not the same thing, but was sometimes all she could manage before breakfast.

She had eaten at Beth’s the night before. Jacob, who had lately discovered the word actually and deployed it like a tool, had wanted to know whether men in old photographs knew they were going to end up in old photographs.

Catrin had said no. Not usually. Not the ones worth looking at.

Beth had said, from the sink, without turning round, that this was the sort of question that arrived free with a boy and could not be sent back.

Beth had then found a photograph of their grandfather on a dock in Gosport, holding a rope, looking at something out of frame, and had made Jacob look at it properly.

Nobody had asked her to.

There had been a time, and it had not been very long ago, when Beth would have taken the album off the table and changed the subject and been funny about it, and Jacob would not have noticed and Catrin would have.

Since the night her bathroom sang, Beth answered things.

She answered them straight, at the sink, with her back turned, in a house where the landing light now stayed on all night and nobody had ever said why.

Catrin had not asked, because Beth had not offered, and because there is a particular kind of sister who will tell you in her own time or not at all, and because Catrin had spent the last two years becoming a person who was very good at waiting for a witness and very bad at being one.

She had driven home thinking about it for longer than it deserved.

The chapel still looked like her studio if she did not stare at it too long. Two worktables beneath the north light. Lamps angled down, switched off. Cotton gloves folded beside a magnifier. A stack of acid-free tissue weighted with a clean glass block. Frames waiting upright along the far wall, each covered in unbleached calico. The evidence cabinet locked. The printer unplugged and turned to face the wall like a sulking machine.

On the west wall, high enough that she could ignore it when she wanted to, the red mark remained.

It had faded since the Ashcombe portrait. At certain times of day it looked like nothing more than old pigment in cracked plaster, a stain that might have bled through from some earlier decoration. In poor light it was almost gone. In strong light it gathered itself into the suggestion of a bird: head angled, wings compressed, not flying yet.

Catrin did not look at it directly.

“Not today,” she said.

Her voice moved up into the old roof space and came back smaller.

The salt had not reached the secondary easel. She checked, because she checked, and because the harbour painting under its calico was the one covered thing in the room she had never given a reason to be patient.

Seven months now. Stable, in the notes, in her handwriting, more times than she wanted to count.

A harbour scene, in a winter of salt on her floor, and she had still not opened it.

She wrote the date on the condition sheet and did not write anything else.

Nia Pennard had rung twice in November and once in December, and Catrin had returned two of the three calls and said the same thing each time, which was that the work was stable and there was no urgency, and both of them had let it be true.

Barton Pier.

The name arrived the way it always did, unhelpfully, in her own voice.

There was no Barton Pier. There had not been one for a long time. A girl had sat in that chair with her coat still on and reported her grandmother saying it in the middle of the night, and had also reported the other thing, the sentence Catrin had written down in the summer and had not written down since, because writing a thing down twice is a way of agreeing to it.

That a man had not been drowned.

Catrin put the pen back in the jar.

Behind her, under the calico, the harbour did whatever a covered harbour does.

She put her bag down on the nearest chair, took out her phone, and photographed the salt before touching it. Three wide shots. Four close-ups. One with the ruler. One with a paper label showing date and time. Then she crouched and examined the grains without placing her fingers in them.

They were irregular, bright at the edges, and slightly damp.

The chapel smelled of old wood and cold varnish.

Under that, faintly, was the sea.

Not the normal Portsmouth sea-smell that found its way in on coats and traffic and wet stone. This was enclosed water. Bilge and rope. Mud held in darkness. Timber soaked beyond saving.

Catrin sat back on her heels.

For several seconds she did nothing except breathe through her mouth and listen.

No footstep crossed the floor.

No voice asked a question from the place where vows had once been taken.

No portrait knocked.

That absence should have comforted her. It did not. The chapel had become careful. It no longer announced itself through drama unless drama was useful.

The phone vibrated in her hand.

Moira’s name appeared on the screen.

Catrin answered before the second buzz.

“You’re early,” Moira said.

“I’m standing in salt.”

There was a pause. Not disbelief. Moira had learned to avoid wasting time on that.

“In your shoes or on the floor?”

“Floor.”

“How much?”

“Enough to photograph. Not enough to panic.”

“That’s a very Catrin measurement.”

“It follows the old aisle line.”

Moira exhaled. Catrin could hear traffic behind her, then the change in sound as Moira turned away from the road. “Is anything uncovered?”

“No.”

“The eagle?”

“I’m not looking at it.”

“That usually means yes.”

“It usually means I’m choosing not to start the day badly.”

“Right. Put the kettle on. Don’t sweep it up. I’ll come by after the framers opens.”

“There’s no need.”

“There is. You rang me last time after the chapel had already started rehearsing a Victorian marriage. I’d like to arrive before it launches anything.”

“I didn’t ring you.”

“You answered. Same thing.”

The call ended.

Catrin stayed crouched a moment longer, phone resting against her knee. The salt clung to the floor like glitter to glue. It had caught in old scratches and small worn hollows, brightening them, making the chapel’s hidden traffic visible. Ceremony, movement, witness. The building remembered feet even when no one was walking.

She stood carefully and stepped around the line.

On the worktable nearest the vestry lay the only object she had left uncovered overnight: a small marine watercolour in a temporary conservation tray. It had arrived late the previous afternoon from a local historical society, delivered by a man in a raincoat who had apologised for the damp on the paperwork and then placed the package down as though pleased to be rid of it.

No drama. No old family story polished smooth for donors. No descendant with perfect hair and a prepared lie. Just a modest picture found in a back room after a storage audit.

The label on the form had been plain.

Harbour Mouth with Southsea Castle, artist unknown, c. nineteenth century. Watercolour on paper. Condition assessment requested.

The society wanted it stabilised before including it in a small display on Portsmouth views. “Nothing urgent,” the man had said, while not quite looking at the wrapped picture. “Only we thought you might be interested. Given your chapel.”

People had started using the phrase that way. Given your chapel. As if the building were an additional qualification. As if her studio had become a specialist tool, like ultraviolet light or a humidity chamber.

Catrin had almost refused the commission.

Then she had seen the corner of the image through a tear in the old backing paper: a low strip of grey water, a pale sky, the dark block of Southsea Castle, and a tiny red mark above the harbour entrance that might have been a flag, or a bird, or damage.

She had accepted it because refusing had begun to feel too much like choosing blindness.

Now the watercolour sat beneath its loose protective sheet.

Catrin washed her hands, dried them, put on gloves, and drew the sheet back.

The painting was quiet.

That was the first thing that unsettled her. Not because paintings should be noisy, although lately she had been forced to revise that assumption, but because this one held its quiet like breath held underwater.

The view was simple enough. Sea in the foreground, rendered in thin grey-green washes. A low horizon. A suggestion of ships, most no more than vertical marks and dark strokes for hulls. Southsea Castle sat to the right, square and watchful, its stone made from brown-grey washes that had faded unevenly. Beyond it, the Solent widened under a sky left mostly unpainted. The artist had trusted the paper to carry weather.

Near the centre, half lost in the wash, was a shape Catrin had taken the previous night for a small boat.

In daylight it looked less like a boat.

She lowered the magnifier.

The marks were faint: a short dark line, two upright strokes, a smudge of brown-black beneath the waterline. Not enough to prove anything. Artists suggested vessels with almost nothing; watercolour rewarded restraint. One could not accuse a nineteenth-century harbour view of hiding a wreck simply because the viewer had become trained by experience to distrust empty water.

She made herself look elsewhere.

The paper was cockled but stable. The mount was acidic and would need replacing. There were old tidemarks along the lower edge, discolouration near the right-hand corner, insect damage on the backing board, and a small patch of surface abrasion in the sky. Ordinary condition issues. Welcome, almost. Things that could be named without altering the temperature of the room.

She made notes.

At 8:42 a.m., under natural north light, no significant change since intake photograph.

She stopped.

The intake photograph was still on her phone. She opened it and enlarged the centre of the watercolour.

The small dark shape was not there.

Catrin held the phone beside the painting. Her body knew the answer before her mind finished measuring it. She felt the old narrowing in the chest, not panic exactly, but a strict inward gathering, as if her ribs had decided to preserve evidence too.

On the phone: grey-green water, pale, almost empty.

On the table: a dark shape below the painted surface, two upright marks like masts or broken posts, placed just off the harbour mouth.

She took another photograph.

The new image showed only water.

Catrin did not move.

The object existed on the paper. It did not exist in the photograph.

That was not new, not in principle. The Elwick paintings had disagreed with photographs. The Ashcombe portrait had used copies, registers, glass. But each case had its own manners. Its own signature. One could not assume the rules carried over.

She wrote carefully:

Visible in direct observation: dark submerged form near harbour mouth. Not visible in phone photograph taken immediately after observation. Check under raking light, magnification, UV if appropriate. Do not assume photographic record is complete.

Her hand remained steady until the last word. Then the pen tip made a small dot after complete, darker than intended.

Outside, gulls started up somewhere towards the street. A rough quarrel of sound, ordinary and sharp. The noise helped. She let it remain merely gulls.

The email from the historical society sat open on her laptop. She had skimmed it last night, tired and cautious, absorbing only the practical parts: fragile mount, possible foxing, display deadline, small budget, no major intervention without approval. Now she read properly.

The sender was named Graham Pike, Collections Volunteer.

Dear Ms Morrow,

Thank you for agreeing to assess the attached watercolour. As discussed, it was recovered from our uncatalogued local views material. There is no firm provenance. A pencil note on the old backing refers to “Harbour Mouth, after the great raising,” but we cannot confidently interpret that phrase. One of our members wondered whether it might refer to the recovery of the Mary Rose, though the watercolour seems older than 1982 unless the backing was reused.

Catrin stopped reading.

After the great raising.

The phrase had no business sitting quietly in a conservation email.

She looked again at the painting.

Southsea Castle watched from the right-hand side. Behind it, in real history, beyond the frame of this modest view, Henry VIII had watched the Mary Rose sink in the Solent. Men had gone down close enough to land for witnesses to see, close enough for the shore to become part of the story, but too far for rescue to undo the water. Centuries later, the ship had been brought up from the seabed and made into a preserved national memory: timber, artefacts, faces reconstructed through objects, absence turned into display.

Portsmouth was good at living beside what had been raised.

It was less good, Catrin thought, at asking what had not.

She resumed the email.

There is also a later label from an unknown hand: “not the Mary Rose — the other loss.” We assume this was a local note or perhaps an error. I have included scans of the backing and label.

Catrin clicked the attachment.

The scan opened slowly.

The backing board was stained, foxed, and torn along one edge. A pencil note slanted across the upper third, faded but legible.

after the great raising

Below it, in darker pencil, firmer and later:

not the Mary Rose

And beneath that, almost pressed through the paper by the force of the hand:

the other loss

Catrin looked up from the screen.

The chapel had changed while she was reading.

Only slightly.

The air had cooled, not in the whole room, but in a band between the worktable and the old aisle line. The salt had darkened. Moisture had found it. Each grain now sat in a minute bead of water, turning the floor into a thin constellation of wet points.

From the wrapped silence of the watercolour came a sound. Not a knock. A creak.

Timber under pressure.

It was low and slow, too deep for the little frame, and it moved through the table into Catrin’s gloved hands.

She stepped back.

The water in the painted harbour remained flat.

The submerged shape was clearer now. Not a boat. Too high at one end, too broken at the other. A dark wooden angle below the wash, as if something beneath the surface had turned in its sleep.

On the chapel wall, the red eagle mark darkened.

This time Catrin looked.

The bird was not flying. It was perched, head turned towards the painting.

You have seen.

Now choose.

Catrin took off her gloves slowly and placed them flat on the table. She did not touch the watercolour again. She did not cover it either. Covering could protect. Covering could conceal. She had learned the difference mattered, and that one could not always know which act one had performed until after harm had been done.

She called Moira back.

“I need you to come now,” she said.

Moira did not joke this time. “What happened?”

“The painting has added something under the water.”

“What kind of something?”

Catrin looked at the dark shape in the harbour mouth, at the castle watching from the shore, at the salt line shining along the chapel floor.

“Not the famous wreck,” she said. “Something that thinks it was missed.”

She ended the call and began a new evidence sheet.

At the top, under object title, she wrote:

Harbour Mouth with Southsea Castle

Then, after a pause, she added a second working title beneath it.

The Other Loss

The creak came again from inside the painted water.

This time, below it, there was a sound like men taking one breath together in the dark.