Closed at Dusk by Monica Dickens Read Free Book Online

‘About the lilies, Dorothy. You were going to tell us about the lilies.’
    â€˜I was not. I have no story to tell.’
    â€˜Matthew?’ Ralph raised a dark Mephistophelean eyebrow at William’s quiet brother, who shook his head.
    â€˜My turn.’ Keith put a log on the fire and poked it into incandescence. Since his illness, he was often cold. ‘I’m panting for my turn.’
    â€˜I thought you were too tired to pant.’ Jill was one of the people who took myalgic encephalomyelitis with a grain of salt.
    â€˜I am, but I can lie in tomorrow, if you’ll keep that baby quiet.’
    â€˜I’ll bring her in for you to amuse.’
    â€˜I’ll tell the story of the Reverend Hardcastle.’ From the fireplace, Keith said to Ralph, ‘Great-great-grandma Beatrice’s lover. He had a beautiful tenor voice, for a parson. Much in demand at soirées, and he got a good choir going in thechurch. It broke up after he died, but I was told that when he was shacked up with Walter in the mausoleum, Beatrice opened her bedroom window one night and heard the non-existent choir singing, across the lawns and fields, with Hardcastle’s soaring tenor.’
    Leaning on the mantelpiece, head poked forward like a hanged man, Keith looked gloomily round his audience. Where had he unearthed this story?
    â€˜I never heard that before,’ Dorothy said.
    â€˜That doesn’t make it not true,’ Keith said. ‘Since Beatrice, certain switched-on souls also claim to have heard the choir.’
    â€˜Why not?’ Sir Ralph had gone to the bay window to look out at the moonless garden, his head slightly turned, as if he were listening.
    Keith went to the piano at the other end of the room and played a few bars of a chorale.
    â€˜Ralph!’ Angela called sharply to her husband. ‘Come away from the window. You’re taking this game too seriously.’
    â€˜Anything is possible if we will only listen.’ He turned round and looked at them with glittering eyes. ‘Listen.’ He put up his hand for silence. The others sat still and tense, and everyone jumped at the small click of the door handle. The door opened slowly, just an inch or two.
    Rodney got up with an exclamation, and pulled it open.
    Rob was there, very small in the high doorway.
    Tessa got up swiftly and went to him, but he headed past her to the fire and climbed into the chair with Charlotte. Tessa sat down again and took him on to her lap, his hot head under her chin, the pressure of his bony damp body all that her breast wanted.
    The others were getting up. The evening was over. The stories were done.
    â€˜So I was right.’ Ralph Stern was his usual bumptious selfnow, not mysterious. ‘Many phantom memories to haunt a strange old house.’
    â€˜Sorry,’ William said. ‘Nothing sinister or strange – unless peace and happiness is strange. There’s a smaller ring of stones, you know, above Avebury, where the ancients celebrated joy in life. They called it The Sanctuary. That’s where this place gets its name.’
    â€˜I know,’ Ralph said, predictably. He didn’t.
    â€˜Was I stuffy with him?’ William asked Dottie, through the open door of their old-fashioned bathroom, where she was scouring her small healthy teeth. ‘I got sick of him playing spooks with our honest old house. Do you think he’s really psychic?’
    â€˜He was putting it on.’ Dottie came to the doorway in her seersucker pyjamas, polishing her face on a towel. ‘For control. To be different from the rest of us: “I know something you don’t know.” Tiresome man. I’m sorry for his wife.’
    â€˜So am I.’ All day and evening William had been stirred by rescue (and other) fantasies. ‘I wish I didn’t have to go on seeing him, but he’s setting up a meeting for me with the Barrett Mayne people. Dinner at his house.