Well, I must admit I could not see a change as I analysed the details.

Look closer. There he is, amongst the trees! There’s a figure in the shadows, insisted Hannah.

She snatched the oil painting from my scrutiny and continued to pull more facial expressions as she focused on the same part of the picture where she insisted a figure had mysteriously appeared. She turned the painting all ends up and insisted it was there.

Hannah is a delightful soul, a frail, buckled back woman with a sword walking stick I am sure is illegal. She is apt to use the stick as some elongated appendage to point things out. Wispy grey hair that looks frazzled and flint sharp eyes small and darting take in an analytical profile of those she sets her attention on. With a poker face all sharp and angular and a look that questions What you up to?  Certainly, at 5 feet 2 inch, she is still noticeable in a crowd.

Hannah had no idea the painting of her own cottage existed until she came across it handed to her by some workers purging her of rubbish accumulating in the loft space. It is not a particular good painting, very saturated with colour, but you recognise it as Hannah’s cottage. A night scene painted during the period of the crescent moon.

Hannah rang me days later and I duly went up to her cottage expecting the same request to check over the picture again. That was the case, but this time Hannah had me with spyglass to examine the painted yew tree at the entrance to the gate.

There, can you see it, he’s moved?

I could not see it. Now I was beginning to wonder if Hannah was feeling okay. On cue, the walking stick came forth wielded from below tapping with such dexterity at a point on the image. There was something, but not what Hannah had mentioned. It was the image of the moon, almost full. I thought it was a crescent moon last time I checked this, so I checked the surface of the painting perhaps flakes of it had fallen off to reveal more of the moon. I was not sure, but curious all the same.

The next time I saw the painting was in the window of a second hand shop called Bygone Times. It was definitely the same painting. What drew my attention was the moon, a full moon. For a moment, I collected my thoughts maybe painted in before being offered for sale. However, there was something else, on the path walking away from the cottage, a figure. A tall figure with top hat, cape and walking cane, that on closer inspection revealed a glint of steel, a swordstick!

What became of Hannah? It seems she is resting in peace apparently an accident with the swordstick!