Cynthia Manson (ed) Read Online Free PDF

a
nightdress.”
    “Elaine Ducharme,” said Fran in a
flat voice.
    “You know? ”
    “Yes.”
    “The shop was very famous. They went
out of business in 1969. You see—”
    “He’d bought it for her,” said Fran,
“as a surprise.”
    Edith Shivers withdrew her hand from
Fran’s and put it to her mouth. “Then you know about me?”
    “No.”
    Their hostess drew herself up in her
chair. “I must tell you. Quite by chance on that night twenty-five years ago. I
saw him getting on the train. I still loved him and he was alone, so I walked
along the corridor and joined him. He was carrying a bag containing the
nightdress. In the course of the journey he showed it to me, not realizing that
it wounded me to see how much he loved her still. He told me how he’d gone into
the shop—”
    “Yes,” said Fran expressionlessly.
“And after Reading, the train crashed.”
    “He was killed instantly. The side
of the carriage crushed him. But I was flung clear—bruised, cut in the
forehead, but really unhurt. I could see that Harry was dead. Amazingly, the
box with the nightdress wasn’t damaged.” Miss Shivers stared into the fire. “I
coveted it. I told myself if I left it, someone would pick it up and steal it.
Instead, I did. I stole it. And it’s been on my conscience ever since.”
    Fran had listened in a trancelike
way. thinking all the time about her meeting in the train.
    Miss Shivers was saying, “If you
hate me for what I did, I understand. You see. your mother assumed that Harry
bought the nightdress for me. Whatever I said to the contrary, she wouldn’t
have believed me.”
    “Probably not,” said Fran. “What happened
to it?”
    Miss Shivers got up and crossed the
room to a sideboard, opened a drawer, and withdrew a box—the box Fran had
handled only an hour or two previously. “I never wore it. It was never meant
for me. I want you to have it, Fran. He would have wished that.”
    Fran’s hands trembled as she opened
the box and laid aside the tissue. She stroked the silk. She thought of what
had happened, how she hadn’t for a moment suspected that she had seen a ghost.
She refused to think of him as that. She rejoiced in the miracle that she had
met her own father, who had died before she was born—met him in the prime of
his young life, when he was her own age.
    Still holding the box. she got up
and kissed Edith Shivers on the forehead. “My parents are at peace now. I’m sure
of it. This is a wonderful Christmas present,” she said.
     

THE ADVENTURE OF THE BLUE CARBUNCLE - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
    I had called upon my friend Sherlock
Holmes upon the second morning after Christmas, with the intention of wishing
him the compliments of the season. He was lounging upon the sofa in a purple
dressing-gown, a pipe-rack within his reach upon the right, and a pile of
crumpled morning papers, evidently newly studied, near at hand. Beside the
couch was a wooden chair, and on the angle of the back hung a very seedy and
disreputable hard-felt hat, much the worse for wear, and cracked in several
places. A lens and a forceps lying upon the seat of the chair suggested that
the hat had been suspended in this manner for the purpose of examination.
    “You are engaged,” said I; “perhaps
I interrupt you.”
    “Not at all. I am glad to have a
friend with whom I can discuss my results. The matter is a perfectly trivial
one”—he jerked his thumb in the direction of the old hat—”but there are points
in connection with it which are not entirely devoid of interest and even of
instruction.”
    I seated myself in his armchair and
warmed my hands before his crackling fire, for a sharp frost had set in, and
the windows were thick with the ice crystals. “I suppose,” I remarked, “that,
homely as it looks, this thing has some deadly story linked on to it—that it is
the clue which will guide you in the solution of some mystery and the
punishment of some crime.”
    “No. no. No crime,” said