Woman in Black, The by Hill Susan

Author:Hill, Susan [Hill, Susan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Ghosts, Horror, Fantasy, Fiction, Novel
ISBN: 9780307745323
Publisher: Random House
Published: 1983-01-17T22:00:00+00:00

Spider

I returned some four hours and thirty-odd miles later in a positive glow of well-being. I had ridden out determinedly across the countryside, seeing the very last traces of golden autumn merging into the beginnings of winter, feeling the rush of pure cold air on my face, banishing every nervous fear and morbid fancy by energetic physical activity. I had found my village inn and eaten my bread and cheese and even, afterward, made myself free of a farmer’s barn to sleep for an hour.

Coming back into Crythin Gifford I felt like a new man, proud, satisfied, and most of all eager and ready to face and to tackle the worst that Mrs. Drablow’s house and those sinister surrounding marshes might have in store for me. In short, I was defiant, defiant and cheerful, and so I spun around a corner into the square and almost smack into a large motor car which was negotiating the narrow turn in the oncoming direction. As I swerved, braked and scrambled somehow off my machine, I saw that the car belonged to my railway traveling companion, the man who had been buying up farms at yesterday’s auction, Mr. Samuel Daily. Now, he was bidding his driver slow down and leaning out of the window to ask me how I did.

“I’ve just had a good spin out into the countryside and I shall do justice to my dinner tonight,” I said cheerfully.

Mr. Daily raised his eyebrows. “And your business?”

“Mrs. Drablow’s estate? Oh, I shall soon have all that in order, though I confess there will be rather more to do than I had anticipated.”

“You have been out to the house?”

“Certainly.”

“Ah.”

For a few seconds we looked at each other, neither one apparently willing to press the subject a little further. Then, preparing to remount my bicycle once I was out of his way, I said breezily, “To tell the truth, I’m enjoying myself. I am finding the whole thing rather a challenge.”

Mr. Daily continued to regard me steadily until I was forced to shift about and glance away, feeling like nothing so much as a schoolboy caught out in blustering his way through a fabricated tale.

“Mr. Kipps,” he said, “you are whistling in the dark. Let me give you that dinner you say you’ve such an appetite for. Seven o’clock. Your landlord will direct you to my house.” Then he motioned to the driver, sat back and did not give me another glance.

Once back at the hotel, I began to make serious arrangements for the next day or so for, although there had been a grain of truth in Mr. Daily’s accusation, I was nonetheless in a firmly determined frame of mind and more than ready to go ahead with the business at Eel Marsh House. Accordingly, I asked for a hamper of provisions to be got ready and, in addition, went out myself into the town and bought some additional supplies—packets of tea and coffee and sugar, a couple of loaves of bread, a tin of biscuits, fresh pipe tobacco, matches and so forth.

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