The thirteenth tale by Diane Setterfield Read Free Book Online Page A

slid noiselessly into place.
     
    Standing there in my coat in the hallway, I experienced for the
first time the most profound oddity of the place. Miss Winter’s house was
entirely silent.
     
    The woman told me her name was Judith, and that she was the
housekeeper. She asked about my journey and mentioned the hours of meals and
the best times to get hot water. Her mouth opened and closed; as soon as her
words fell from her lips they were smothered by the blanket of silence that
descended and extinguished them. The same silence swallowed our footfalls, and
muffled the opening and closing of ors as she showed me, one after another, the
dining room, the drawing room, the music room.
     
    There was no magic behind the silence—it was the
soft-furnishings it did it. Overstuffed sofas were piled with velvet cushions;
there :re upholstered footstools, chaise lounges and armchairs; tapestries hung
on the walls and were used as throws over upholstered furniture, every floor
was carpeted, every carpet overlaid with rugs. The damask it draped the windows
also baffled the walls. Just as blotting paper absorbs ink, so all this wool
and velvet absorbed sound, with one difference: Where blotting paper takes up
only excess ink, the fabric of the house seemed to suck in the very essence of
the words we spoke.
     
    I followed the housekeeper. We turned left and right, and right
and left, went up and down stairs until I was thoroughly confused. I quickly
lost all sense of how the convoluted interior of the house corresponded with
its outer plainness. The house had been altered over time, I supposed, added to
here and there; probably we were in some wing or extension invisible from the
front. “You’ll get the hang of it,” the housekeeper mouthed, seeing my face,
and I understood her as if I were lip-reading. Finally we turned from a
half-landing and came to a halt. She unlocked a door that opened into a sitting
room. There were three more doors leading off it. “Bathroom,” she said, opening
one of the doors, “bedroom,” opening another, “and study.” The rooms were as
padded with cushions and curtains and hangings as the rest of the house.
     
    ‘Will you take your meals in the dining room, or here?“ she
asked, indicating the small table and a single chair by the window.
     
    I did not know whether meals in the dining room meant eating
with my hostess, and unsure of my status in the house (was I a guest or an
employee?), I hesitated, wondering whether it was politer to accept or to
refuse. Divining the cause of my uncertainty, the housekeeper added, as though
having to overcome a habit of reticence, “Miss Winter always eats alone.”
     
    ‘Then if it’s all the same to you, I’ll eat here.“
     
    ‘I’ll bring you soup and sandwiches straightaway, shall I? You
must be hungry after the train. You’ve things to make your tea and coffee just
here.“ She opened a cupboard in the corner of the bedroom to reveal a kettle,
the other paraphernalia for drinks making and even a tiny fridge. ”It will save
you from running up and down to the kitchen,“ she added, and threw in an
abashed smile, by way of apology, I thought, for not wanting me in her kitchen.
     
    She left me to my unpacking.
     
    In the bedroom it was the work of a minute to unpack my few
clothes, my books and my toiletries. I pushed the tea and coffee things to one
side and replaced them with the packet of cocoa I had brought from home. Then I
had just enough time to test the high antique bed— was so lavishly covered with
cushions that there could be any number of peas under the mattress and I would
not know it—before the house-keeper returned with a tray. “Miss Winter invites
you to meet her in the library at eight o’clock.” She did her best to make it
sound like an invitation, but I under-stood, as I was no doubt meant to, that
it was a command.
     

 

     

     
    MEETING MISS WINTER
     
    Whether by