By The Pricking of My Thumbs Read Online Free PDF

still. Everything's going on here just the same. It's like ghosts, only the other way round.'
    'I don't know what you are talking about. Are you going to stand here all day talking about time and not even ring the bell?... Aunt Ada isn't here, for one thing. That's different.' He pressed the bell.
    'That's the only thing that will be different. My old lady will be drinking milk and talking about fireplaces, and Mrs Somebody-or-other will have swallowed a thimble or a teaspoon and a funny little woman will come squeaking out of a room demanding her cocoa, and Miss Packard will come down the stairs, and -'
    The door opened. A young woman in a nylon overall said: 'Mr and Mrs Beresford? Miss Packard's expecting you.'
    The young woman was just about to show them into the same sitting room as before when Miss Packard came down the stairs and greeted them. Her manner was suitably not quite as brisk as usual. It was grave, and had a kind of semi-mourning about it - not too much - that might have been embarrassing.
    She was an expert in the exact amount of condolence which would be acceptable.
    Three score years and ten was the Biblical accepted span of life, and the deaths in her establishment seldom occurred below that figure. They were to be expected and they happened.
    'So good of you to come. I've got everything laid out tidily for you to look through. I'm glad you could come so soon because as a matter of fact I have already three or four people waiting for a vacancy to come here. You will understand, I'm sure, and not think that I was trying to hurry you in any way.'
    'Oh no, of course, we quite understand,' said Tommy.
    'It's all still in the room Miss Fanshawe occupied,' Miss Packard explained.
    Miss Packard opened the door of the room in which they had last seen Aunt Ada. It had that deserted look a room has when the bed is covered with a dust sheet, with the shapes showing beneath it of folded-up blankets and neatly arranged pillows.
    The wardrobe doors stood open and the clothes it had held had been laid on the top of the bed neatly folded.
    'What do you usually do - I mean, what do people do mostly with clothes and things like that?' said Tuppence.
    Miss Packard, as invariably, was competent and helpful.
    'I can give you the name of two or three societies who are only too pleased to have things of that kind. She had quite a good fur stole and a good quality coat but I don't suppose you would have any personal use for them? But perhaps you have charities of your own where you would like to dispose of things.'
    Tuppence shook her head.
    'She had some jewellery,' said Miss Packard. 'I removed that for safekeeping. You will find it in the right-hand drawer of the dressing table. I put it there just before you were due to arrive.'
    'Thank you very much,' said Tommy, 'for the trouble you have taken.'
    Tuppence was staring at a picture over the mantelpiece. It was a small oil painting representing a pale pink house standing adjacent to a canal spanned by a small hump-backed bridge.
    There was an empty boat drawn up under the bridge against the bank of the canal. In the distance were two poplar trees. It was a very pleasant little scene but nevertheless Tommy wondered why Tuppence was staring at it with such earnestness.
    'How funny,' murmured Tuppence.
    Tommy looked at her inquiringly. The things that Tuppence thought funny were, he knew by long experience, not really to be described by such an adjective at all.
    'What do you mean, Tuppence?'
    'It is funny. I never noticed that picture when I was here before. But the odd thing is that I have seen that house somewhere. Or perhaps it's a house just like that that I have seen. I remember it quite well... Funny that I can't remember when and where.'
    'I expect you noticed it without really noticing you were noticing,' said Tommy, feeling his choice of words was rather clumsy and nearly as painfully repetitive as Tuppence's reiteration of the word 'funny'.
    'Did you notice it, Tommy,