Winged skull design in black and grey

The room at the top of the stairs is let again, though I'm sorry to say the last gentleman left it in a state. He was a draughtsman from Leeds who came for the autumn and stayed until the pier lamps were lit each evening, and he spent every one of them at the window table with a stick of charcoal and a sheet of cartridge paper. When I cleared his room I found the same drawing a dozen times over: a skull with its jaw dropped open as though it were about to laugh at the tide, and a pair of bat's wings spread out either side, the membranes ribbed like umbrella struts.

Last Tuesday the wind came off the bay so hard the chimney pots rattled, and he came down to the parlour soaking wet, holding one of those sheets over his head like a shield. Mr Pargeter asked him what on earth it was. He said it was the thing his grandmother drew on the back of his christening card, and that she'd told him bones only grin when there's nothing left to be frightened of. Then he laughed, not unkindly, and went back out into the rain.

He's gone now. He left the rent in an envelope under the teapot, and beside it this one drawing, signed with only a small wing in the corner. I've pinned it above the mantel, beside the barometer. It's the only thing in the house that never seems to need a tap to tell it the weather.

Yours in haste, Edna