A Supernatural Mystery 

book 5

Some paintings want to be looked at. That is the trap.

The panel from St Jude's is old, damaged, and due for routine conservation — a painted saint from a side chapel, removed for treatment, delivered to Catrin Morrow's studio with the paperwork in order. Then a volunteer looks at it too long, and is harmed in a way no incident report has a category for.

Catrin has restored objects that revealed, objects that trapped, objects that lied. This one is different. This one uses the very thing her whole profession is built on. Looking is the route in. Attention is the door. The saint's eyes are not its own, and every hour of careful, professional, well-lit examination feeds the thing that borrowed them.

Which leaves an impossible commission: restore a painting without looking at it. As Catrin builds a method for working blind — mirrors banished, cameras turned away, a cotton tether at her wrist — she must also reckon with the man who brought the panel into her chapel knowing more than he declared, and with the oldest question in her rule book turned inside out. Record first, explain second. But what do you record, when the act of witnessing is the harm?

The fifth 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 Panel from St Jude’s

By mid-morning the chapel had dried badly.

Rain had come in hard from the south-west before dawn, needling the old glass, darkening the stone sill under the east window, finding every shallow weakness in the building Catrin Morrow still called a studio because the alternative was to admit it had become something else. The old wedding chapel had held its damp in the usual places: along the boards near the vestry, in the corner where the plaster had once blistered behind a radiator, in the step down from the rear door where shoes brought in weather and never quite gave it back.

She had learned to trust ordinary damp.

Ordinary damp had a smell. Stone, dust, old wood, paper expanding in its folders, cotton cloth cooling over frames. It made a room heavier but not watchful. It sat where it had reason to sit. It darkened cloth from the bottom edge first. It followed gravity. It did not arrange itself into meaning.

Catrin stood in the centre of the chapel with a clipboard against her chest and checked the room before she let herself begin work.

Not because she was frightened.

Because she was not willing to be careless.

The long table had been wiped down and covered with fresh Tyvek. The smaller inspection table stood at right angles to it, under the adjustable lamp. The lamp was off. The blinds on the lower lights of the high windows were half-lowered, muting the weak Portsmouth light to the soft, even grey she preferred for initial assessment. On the left-hand rack, two unremarkable oils waited beneath calico covers: a local harbour scene, all gulls and wet stone, and a cracked floral still life with a split frame.

On the secondary easel by the north wall, under unbleached calico weighted at the top two corners, stood the other harbour painting. The Pennard one. Eleven months in the building and not once worked on beyond the four minutes of intervention the first rule had allowed her when it arrived actively lifting at one corner. She checked it on Mondays, wrote as above, and put the cover back.

She did not check it now. It was not Monday. On the right, a shallow tray held cotton gloves, nitrile gloves, pH strips, blotting paper, tweezers, a steel ruler, a pencil, and the small digital recorder Bexley had insisted she keep in use after the Ashcombe case.

She had not turned the recorder on.

Some mornings the room could be only a room if she gave it the courtesy of not treating it like evidence.

The faded red mark on the west wall remained where it had been since the previous summer, above shoulder height, between two old plaster scars. In strong light it was nothing much: a rust-coloured irregularity in paint that had already been repaired too many times. In low light it gathered itself into the suggestion of a wing, a head, an angled turn of sight. Catrin had stopped trying to decide whether it was present. Presence was not the question. Use was.

The eagle had not brightened since the January Men watercolour went back to the historical society in the winter, under restrictions long enough to need their own appendix.

That counted for something.

It had brightened often enough during that case, and each time she had been standing in front of a document rather than a painting, which she had not fully understood until afterwards. On the last occasion it had not brightened at all. It had left the wall, crossed the chapel, and marked a witness statement on the table, and Catrin had stopped keeping a tally after that because a tally implied the next one would be comparable. Bexley had swabbed the boards for salt for eleven days after the Bellamy work closed and had eventually declared the chapel clean in the tone of a man who did not entirely believe his own instruments.

The salt had not come back.

That counted too, though Catrin had stopped saying such things aloud.

Eighteen inches above the eagle and slightly to the left, there was a second mark.

It had appeared in January, on the last night of the Bellamy work, and it had not changed since.

A line of blue-grey, thin as a brush hair, curving down out of the plaster for about the length of a thumb and stopping. Not a wing. Not a bird. Not salt, which she knew now by smell as well as by sight. Not rust, not iron staining, not the bloom that came through old lime when a wall had been wet too long.

She had tested it four times in four months.

Dry swab: nothing lifted. Damp swab at a discreet corner: nothing lifted. pH strip unremarkable. Under raking light the mark sat in the plaster rather than on it, with no edge anywhere that a brush would have left.

She had written the same line in the condition notes every month since, because it was true and because she disliked how it read.

Blue-grey linear mark, west wall. Medium unidentified. No change. No active response.

Four months of no change. She had almost stopped seeing it, which was itself worth recording and which she had not recorded.

She turned from it, wrote HUMIDITY HIGH — ROOM STABLE on the pad, then added: NO ACTIVE MARKING.

The phrase irritated her as soon as she had written it. It made the chapel sound like an animal under observation. It made her sound as if she knew what counted as active.

She crossed out nothing.

The email had come at 8:17.

Subject: St Jude’s-in-the-Marsh — Parish Panel, Urgent Storage Query

The sender’s name was Eleanor Veysey. Church closure and heritage liaison, according to the neat signature block. The message was careful in the way of people who were overworked and knew the difference between a genuine problem and somebody else’s hysteria. It asked whether Catrin would accept a preliminary assessment of a painted parish panel removed from St Jude’s-in-the-Marsh, now formally closed pending structural review and disposal of contents.

Catrin had read the sentence twice.

Not because of St Jude. Closed churches were common enough. Damp churches, more so. Parish panels came through the ordinary routes: diocese, heritage trust, private donor, family with a pew plaque, local museum with no storage and less money.

Because of the word panel, and the word saint two lines below it, sitting together in a sentence about storage.

Catrin had put her coffee down, crossed to the plan chest, and unlocked the second drawer.

The sheet was where she had left it in January. Face-down, in a matte sleeve, under a piece of plain board.

She did not need to look at it. She looked anyway, once, the way people check a diagnosis they have already memorised.

Ordinary A4. Ordinary blankness across the top three-quarters. And then, near the foot of the page, in pale grey letters that had not faded in four months and had not been printed by anything:

THE SAINT HAS BORROWED EYES

The machine that produced it stood in the corner with its face to the wall. It had been unplugged since the Elwick job and unplugged twice over since, because on the last night of the Bellamy work Catrin had gone round the back of it and pulled the cable a second time, knowing perfectly well that this was superstition and doing it anyway.

She had shown the sheet to three people.

Bexley had tested it for toner, pigment, impression, solvent transfer, and anything else he could think of, and had written no mechanism identified in a hand that got smaller towards the end of the sentence.

Beatrice had observed that the sentence was grammatically complete, which meant it referred to something, which meant it would turn up.

Moira had looked at it for a long time and said, “That’s not a warning. That’s a job number.”

Four months.

Catrin had begun, quietly, to hope it would not turn up at all, and had understood even while hoping it that hope was not a conservation method.

She slid the sheet back into its sleeve, face-down, and closed the drawer before she read it a second time.

It was the attached handling note that made her pick the coffee up again and put it down for good.

Paint unstable around face, particularly eyes. Surface remains damp in those areas despite controlled temporary storage. Please avoid prolonged direct inspection until condition advice obtained.

Avoid prolonged direct inspection.

Not Do not touch.

Not Avoid strong light.

Not Isolate due to mould risk.

Direct inspection.

She had opened the photographs Eleanor had sent. There were only three. One showed the panel face-down on a table, wrapped in grey cloth with a white label tied to the upper rail. One showed the back: old boards, narrow battens, two previous labels, screw holes, a strip of paper tape browned almost to the colour of tea. The third was a distant image taken in the closed church before removal. A side chapel wall. Soot above a shelf. Faded candle stands. A rectangular darkness where the panel hung.

No front-facing photograph.

Catrin had sat with that absence long enough for the coffee to cool.

Then she had replied that she could accept the panel for sealed intake and preliminary non-invasive assessment only, provided the object arrived wrapped, labelled, and with all existing handling notes.

Eleanor had answered quickly.

Thank you. I’m sorry for the urgency. The temporary store has refused to keep it over the weekend.

No explanation followed.

Now Catrin checked the delivery slot again. Eleven to one. The courier was already late enough to be ordinary and not late enough to be ominous. Rain ticked in the gutter outside with the thin, persistent sound of fingernails on metal. A gull called once beyond the roofline, harsh and affronted, then the street went quiet.

The chapel held its breath badly.

Catrin made tea because the room needed an ordinary action in it.

The kettle stood on a small counter near the vestry door. Its steel side reflected the chapel in a bent strip: table, window, covered frames, Catrin herself stretched narrow and pale, the west wall behind her. She turned the kettle slightly so it faced the tiles.

She had not meant to do that.

She left it turned.

While the water boiled, she opened a fresh intake file and wrote:

Object: parish saint panel, St Jude’s-in-the-Marsh.

Client/contact: Eleanor Veysey, church closure / heritage liaison.

Stated condition: smoke-darkened, damp-damaged, unstable paint around face/eyes.

Special instruction: avoid prolonged direct inspection.

Initial approach: sealed intake, external inspection, climate notes, cloth assessment, no front exposure until condition and risk baseline recorded.

She paused before the next line.

Known supernatural indicators: none confirmed at object. See chapel file, January — unattributed printed phrase, retained, subject matter potentially related.

She read it back, disliked that she had made herself write it, and left it in, because the alternative was a file that began with an omission and she had spent January learning exactly what those cost.

The kettle clicked off. Steam rose and dulled the tiles. She watched the condensation gather on the small window above the counter, each droplet making a blunt little lens of the yard beyond. Not eyes. Not yet. Just water.

She wrote:

Personal caution due to prior altered-object cases.

That was better. Honest without drama.

The bell at the rear door sounded at 11:42.

It was not the chapel’s original bell. That had been removed before Catrin bought the building, leaving only a blocked bracket above the old entrance and a pale circle where the pull had rubbed the plaster. The modern bell was cheap, battery-powered, and unreliable in cold weather. It made a flat electronic chime that turned every visitor into a delivery.

Catrin still disliked hearing it.

She put on nitrile gloves before she opened the door.

The courier stood under the small rear canopy with rain on his shaved head and a rectangular crate on a sack barrow. He was young, red-faced from effort, and annoyed by the step.

“Catrin Morrow?”

“Yes.”

“Got a church thing for you.”

He said it with the weary neutrality of a man who had delivered car parts, flowers, frozen pet food, medical samples, and once, probably, a harp.

“Please bring it in carefully. It needs to stay upright.”

He glanced at the label. “Says fragile. Doesn’t say upright.”

“It should.”

“Well, it doesn’t.”

He tilted the crate slightly to clear the threshold.

Catrin’s hand closed on the doorframe hard enough for the glove to pull across her knuckles.

“Stop.”

The courier stopped. The crate balanced between his hands and the wheels of the barrow. Rain stippled the brown waterproof covering. The label on the side had been laminated and tied on with white cord.

ST JUDE’S-IN-THE-MARSH

SIDE CHAPEL PANEL

TEMPORARY TRANSFER

DO NOT STACK

DO NOT EXPOSE FACE WITHOUT AUTHORISED CONSERVATION SUPERVISION

No upright arrow.

Catrin stepped down and helped him lift rather than tip the crate. It was heavier than she expected but not unmanageable, the weight shifting slightly inside as though padding had settled in transit. No sound came from it. No knock. No scrape. Only the wet squeak of the courier’s shoes on the chapel floor and his controlled breathing as they lowered the crate onto two padded blocks near the inspection table.

“There,” he said. “Sign here.”

He held out the handheld terminal. Its black glass caught the chapel windows, the covered paintings, the shape of Catrin’s gloved hand.

She took the stylus and signed without looking at the screen longer than necessary.

“Rough old place, that church,” he said, sliding the terminal back into its case. “Picked up from a lock-up near Chichester, but they had pictures. Marsh out the back. Looked half-sunk.”

“Did you collect it yourself?”

“No, depot transfer. Bloke there said not to leave it where people could fiddle.” He shrugged. “Not that anyone wants to fiddle with church pictures.”

Catrin looked at the crate.

The waterproof outer covering had begun to bead and run. Rainwater gathered along the lower edge and dripped onto the towel she had put down. Ordinary water. Clear. The crate itself smelled of wet cardboard, van rubber, and cold church cloth underneath.

“Was anything loose?” she asked.

“Loose?”

“Inside. Did it shift?”

“No idea. It was wrapped when I got it.”

He hesitated then, a small delay in a man who wanted to leave. “There was a note taped to the top. Depot took a photo. Said they had to, with the special instruction.”

“What note?”

He looked at the crate, then at his device as though hoping the note might have become his problem electronically and therefore not his problem at all. “Something about not looking at it. I didn’t read it properly.”

“Do you have the photograph?”

“Not on mine. Office will.”

“Can you request it?”

He gave her the expression of a person who had just been asked to make bureaucracy do something quickly.

“I can put a note in.”

“Please do.”

He nodded, already backing towards the door. “Right. Take care.”

It was the sort of phrase people used when leaving a parcel.

In the chapel it landed with more weight than he intended.

When the door closed behind him, the building settled. Rain resumed its fine ticking in the gutter. A car passed outside, tyres cutting through shallow water. Somewhere in the roof a drip found a bucket Catrin had left under a known leak and struck metal once.

The crate did nothing.

Catrin stood three paces away and recorded the intake verbally.

“Eleven forty-eight. Object received from courier. External crate damp from rain exposure. No visible breach to outer covering. Orientation uncertain during transit. Label lacks upright instruction despite client note. Courier reports possible depot note regarding not looking at the object. Requested retrieval.”

Her own voice sounded too calm. That was useful. Calm could be a tool before it became a lie.

She photographed the crate from all sides. Front, back, left, right, top, labels, knots, any compressed corners. She used no flash. The camera’s screen remained angled away from the crate except when she checked framing. Every time the black glass caught light, she noticed it.

The west wall mark did not change.

She made herself note that too.

“Red eagle mark unchanged,” she said into the recorder. “No visible response at arrival.”

The sentence made the room feel colder for a moment, not because the temperature dropped, but because she had named the possibility aloud.

She fetched scissors, a scalpel, a bowl for removed ties, and a sheet of labelled evidence paper. Then she called Moira.

Moira answered on the fourth ring with clatter behind her.

“If this is about the hare frame, I told you the mitre was a crime before you bought it.”

“It’s not the hare frame.”

A pause. The clatter stopped.

“What’s arrived?”

“A parish panel from St Jude’s-in-the-Marsh.”

“Sounds damp.”

“It is.”

“Sounds like you’re using your careful voice.”

“I am.”

“Do I need to come?”

Moira never asked that first unless she meant it. That was one of the reasons Catrin trusted her.

“What’s wrong with it?”

“Smoke-darkened. Unstable. The paint around the eyes reportedly won’t dry.”

“The eyes.”

“Yes.”

Another pause. Catrin heard Moira breathing, then the faint tap of something wooden being put down carefully.

“You’re not looking at them on your own.”

“I’m not exposing the face yet.”

“That wasn’t what I said.”

“I know.”

“Good. What does the paperwork say?”

“Not enough. Avoid prolonged direct inspection.”

Moira made a low sound of dislike. “Who writes that in a condition note?”

“Someone repeating an older warning without wanting to believe it.”

“Or someone who believes it and wants legal distance.”

“Also possible.”

“You want me there now?”

Catrin looked at the crate. Rainwater had stopped running from the outer cover. The towel beneath it held a clean dark rectangle.

“Give me half an hour. I’ll remove the outer wrapping only. If there’s anything beyond ordinary damp, I’ll stop.”

“You’ll stop before you think you need to.”

“Yes.”

“I mean it, Catrin.”

“I know.”

Moira’s voice softened by a fraction. “How’s the wall?”

Catrin turned her head. The faded red mark remained dull, dry, no brighter than old rust under paint.

“Quiet.”

“That’s not the same as safe.”

“No.”

“Call me when the outer layer’s off.”

“I will.”

Catrin ended the call and placed the phone face-down on a folded cloth, not on the bare table. The black screen disappeared against cotton.

She began with the outer waterproof covering.

The knots had swollen from rain and resisted the first pull. She cut them instead and placed each length of cord in the evidence bowl. The covering loosened in stages, releasing the smell beneath: damp wool, candle soot, old cold wood, and something mineral, like water held too long in a stone basin. Not mould. Not rot. A church smell, but concentrated, as if the cloth had folded a side chapel into itself and brought it across the county.

Under the waterproof layer was a crate of pale unfinished timber, recently made. Whoever had packed the panel had used modern screws and corner bracing. Good. Sensible. Not theatrical. The top had been marked in pencil:

SIDE CHAPEL — SAINT PANEL — KEEP COVERED

Beneath that, in a different hand, smaller:

Eyes unset.

Catrin photographed both notes.

The phrase did not sit properly as conservation language. Paint unset, yes. Varnish unset. Adhesive unset. Retouching unset. Eyes unset belonged to another kind of sentence.

She turned on the recorder again.

“Twelve oh-six. Outer waterproof cover removed. Modern timber crate exposed. Pencil notes on top: Side chapel — saint panel — keep covered. Secondary note: eyes unset. Strong odour of damp wool, candle soot, cold stone or mineral water. No visible leakage from crate.”

The screws came out cleanly. She laid them in order on the evidence paper and lifted the crate lid.

Inside lay grey church cloth.

Not bubble wrap. Not acid-free tissue over foam. Cloth. Old, heavy, close-woven, with a faded embroidered edge. It had once been dark blue or violet; now it had the uncertain colour of dusk in a room with no lamp. Someone had folded it around the panel in three broad turns and tied it with white cotton tape.

A modern label sat on top in a plastic sleeve.

Removed from St Jude’s-in-the-Marsh side chapel, 14 May 2025. Packed by A. Fenlon / E. Veysey. Temporary transfer for conservation advice. Historic handling notes enclosed.

Alice Fenlon. The name meant nothing yet.

Catrin lifted the label sleeve, checked the backing, and found no moisture inside the plastic. The cloth beneath it was dry to the touch.

She pressed lightly near one corner, away from the face area if the panel lay as labelled. The cloth gave over padding. The panel below felt rigid, wooden, and still.

A second sheet had been tucked under the cotton tape. Older paper, photocopied and folded twice. She eased it free without disturbing the cloth and opened it on the side table.

The copy showed a handwritten note, probably transcribed from a parish file. The original handwriting was cramped and slanted, reproduced badly, with several words lost in shadow. At the top someone had written in blue biro: Special instructions found with panel, St Jude’s side chapel.

Catrin read only what the photocopy allowed:

Do not set the panel before the sick or the very young.

Do not expose the eyes during prayer.

No candles below the face.

If the eyes weep, cover and leave.

If the saint finds you looking, do not answer from where you are seen.

She stopped.

The chapel gave one of its ordinary settling clicks: old timber shifting after rain.

Catrin looked up anyway.

Nothing moved. The harbour scene on the rack remained covered. The Pennard painting on the secondary easel remained covered. The floral still life remained under calico. The kettle faced the tiles. The high windows held only grey weather and the dull reflection of the room.

She looked back at the paper.

If the saint finds you looking, do not answer from where you are seen.

Not don’t look.

Not don’t pray.

Do not answer.

There were other lines, but the copy blurred into dark blocks where the fold crossed the ink. She photographed the sheet, slid it into a sleeve, and wrote: HISTORIC HANDLING NOTE — POSSIBLE PARISH WARNING LANGUAGE.

Then she called Moira again.

“What?” Moira said.

“I haven’t exposed the panel. There’s a handling note.”

“Read it.”

Catrin read the lines aloud.

Moira swore softly.

“Yes,” Catrin said.

“Stop there.”

“I’ve only opened the crate.”

“Then stop with the crate open.”

“I need to assess whether the cloth is wet. If the panel is actively damp—”

“Catrin.”

The single word did what Moira intended. It put a hand on the door before Catrin walked through it.

“I’ll check the cloth only,” Catrin said. “No face exposure. No direct sight. Then I stop.”

“That sounds like bargaining.”

“It’s intake.”

“Sometimes those are the same thing.”

Catrin closed her eyes briefly. The darkness behind her lids was ordinary. Red-brown, blood-warm, patterned faintly by light from the windows. Her own body, not anyone else’s vantage point.

“All right,” she said. “Stay on the phone.”

“I’m here.”

Catrin put the phone on speaker and set it face-down on the cloth again.

She loosened the first cotton tape. It came away dry. She placed it on the evidence paper. The outer fold of church cloth lifted with a soft, reluctant drag against itself. The underside was dry, its weave flattened where it had pressed against padding.

Second fold. Dry.

The smell strengthened. Candle soot now, and old water. The kind of water that had soaked into stone, evaporated, returned, and left something of itself each time.

“You breathing?” Moira asked.

“Yes.”

“Good.”

The third fold lay closer to the panel surface. Catrin did not lift it fully. She touched the cloth near the lower left corner with the back of one gloved finger. Dry. Near the lower right. Dry. Along one vertical side. Cool but not wet.

She moved towards the upper area.

The glove came away darkened.

Catrin held her finger in the air.

“Catrin?”

“There’s moisture.”

“Where?”

“Upper central area. Likely face.”

“Don’t lift it.”

“I’m not.”

She took a strip of blotting paper with tweezers and touched the outer surface of the cloth where the glove had darkened. The paper absorbed a narrow crescent of water. Clear. No visible pigment. No colour.

She set it into a tray and labelled it: CLOTH SURFACE MOISTURE — UPPER FACE AREA — NO DIRECT EXPOSURE.

Then she looked at the cloth itself.

At first the moisture mark seemed shapeless. A dark patch where damp had passed through fabric. Then the weave clarified as the fibres drank and spread the water outward by threads, tiny movements following the cloth’s own logic. One patch became two. They sat level with one another, not touching, each no larger than the pad of Catrin’s thumb.

Two dark wet marks.

Moira’s voice came thinly from the phone. “Talk to me.”

Catrin did not answer at once.

The marks were not round. Not exactly. They were slightly wider at the centre, narrowed at the ends, set at the distance of human eyes behind cloth.

The outer wrapping had been dry.

The crate had been dry.

The first two folds had been dry.

Only here, where the saint’s face lay covered, the cloth had darkened from within.

“Catrin.”

“I see them,” Catrin said.

Her voice had reduced itself to fact.

“See what?”

“Two wet marks on the inside cloth.”

“Are they spreading?”

Catrin watched.

The left mark lengthened by one thread.

Not downward.

Towards her.

She stepped back and made herself keep the tweezers in her hand rather than drop them.

“Catrin?”

“I’m stopping.”

“Good.”

“I’m covering the crate.”

“Good.”

She lowered the fold without pressing it. Returned the second fold. The first. She did not retie the tapes. She placed a fresh matte barrier over the open crate and then the timber lid, unscrewed, resting loose so no pressure touched the panel.

Only when the panel was covered again did she realise she had not looked at the west wall.

She turned slowly.

The red eagle mark had not brightened.

For the first time all morning, that did not comfort her.

The eagle appeared when seeing had become responsibility.

This was earlier than that.

This was only arrival.

On the tray, the blotting paper held its clear crescent of moisture. No colour. No image. Just water taken from cloth that should not have been wet.

Catrin switched off the recorder.

Then she switched it on again because stopping the record felt worse.

“Twelve twenty-nine,” she said. “Inner cloth displays two localised wet marks corresponding to probable eye position. Outer layers dry. Crate dry. No direct visual exposure of panel face. Intake suspended.”

Moira said nothing through the phone.

Catrin looked at the covered crate.

The chapel seemed ordinary around it: tables, lamps, rain, old plaster, tools waiting in clean rows.

But the object had brought its own damp with it.

Not from the weather.

From behind the cloth.