House of Small Shadows by Adam Nevill Read Free Book Online

have enough for an exhibition.’
    The old woman glanced about herself. ‘These are mine. He made them for me when I was a child. And they will accompany me to the grave, my dear. So you’d do well to keep your hands
off them.’
    Then why am I here?
she wanted to ask.
    ‘They keep me company in my room here. They help me pass the time. And there has been much time spent here. More than you can imagine.’ She sounded sad now. ‘Don’t you,
darling?’ Edith Mason reached one spidery hand down to touch the dog’s head. But the red setter seemed more interested in their guest and continued to stare at Catherine with what
looked like sympathy for her predicament. She offered the dog a weak smile in acknowledgement.
    Edith issued a sudden unpleasant laugh that rang off the china and glass. ‘Still fooling people, brave Horatio. He was my uncle’s favourite hound. His champion rat catcher. But poor
Horatio caught his last rat in 1928. My uncle left him to me, to look after. And he’s still waiting for his master to return. Day and night. Aren’t we all, my brave darling?’
    Catherine stared at the dog. It wasn’t possible the animal was preserved. The expression and the posture, the glossy lustre of its fur, a wet nose, moist eyes . . . how? She stood up and
approached the squirrels who watched her from the piano. Looked at them quickly, but with an expert’s eye, and wouldn’t have been surprised if one of their noses twitched, or if one of
their red-coated bodies leapt up the curtains to hang from the pelmet.
    These weren’t the tatty and patched horrors of junk shops, nor what sat in the darkness of attics, only to be brought back to light in house clearances. And Mason had crafted at least
fifty gifts for his little niece in one drawing room. As a child, Edith must have slept in a room full of dead kittens wearing party dresses made of taffeta, chiffon and delaine. No wonder she was
mad.
    But what else pounced, sat up, stalked and pranced out there in the many rooms of this vast building, perfectly preserved by a grand master? It was a big house and the last original Mason
diorama sold for eighty thousand pounds at Bonhams in 2007. An individual piece, of the quality displayed about her, could fetch up to ten today. Mason had been the best of them all and the market
had been starved of new pieces since the 1970s, when there were few takers for taxidermy. She knew only too well that less than five per cent of Victorian taxidermy had survived until the next
century, the rest had fallen apart or been destroyed. But not here. Not inside the Red House.
    What was she even doing here? If this room was an indication of the treasures within the building, one of the big London firms should have been notified. This was a job for Sotheby’s, not
small fry like Catherine Howard of Leonard Osberne, Valuer and Auctioneer. She fought to conceal her excitement; revealing it might be a mistake.
    The American museums paid a lot for birds too, the ones the Victorians had stuffed into extinction after enclosing their habitats. ‘No birds?’
    Edith’s head trembled in a brief palsy of rage. ‘Birds! My uncle was no plumassier. He had no time for feathers! These,’ she wafted a thin white hand in the air, ‘are
trifles. He mostly composed with rats. Animals like us. He had his Damascene moment during the war. At the front. I recall him once telling my mother, his dear sister, that we were all just
“vermin under the stars and nothing more”.’
    ‘I see.’ Catherine gazed around herself again. ‘He did so much. I never knew.’
    ‘My uncle only considered commissions when the house required it of him. Some of those pieces you may have seen in your grubby trade. It was all that ever got out. He had no interest in
fame, competing, or exhibiting, like the others. When the demand for his work dried up, he sold land so the Red House would survive. We have been prudent, but we need to be maintained,