Final Curtain Read Online Free PDF Page B

tell myself he can’t leave me completely out of his will. My worst nightmare is the one when I dream I’ve inherited Ancreton. I always wake screaming. Of course, with Sonia on the tapis, almost anything may happen. You’ve heard about Sonia?’
    Troy hesitated and he went on: ‘She’s the Old Person’s little bit of nonsense. Immensely decorative. I can’t make up my mind whether she’s incredibly stupid or not, but I fear not. The others are all for fighting her, tooth and claw, but I rather think of ingratiating myself in case he does marry her. What do you think?’
    Troy was wondering if it was a characteristic of all male Ancreds to take utter strangers into their confidence. But they couldn’t all be as bad as Cedric. After all, Nigel Bathgate had said Cedric was frightful, and even Thomas—she thought suddenly how nice Thomas seemed in retrospect when one compared him with his nephew.
    â€˜But do tell me,’ Cedric was saying, ‘how do you mean to paint him? All beetling and black? But whatever you decide it will be marvellous. You will let me creep in and see, or are you dreadfully fierce about that?’
    â€˜Rather fierce, I’m afraid,’ said Troy.
    â€˜I suspected so.’ Cedric looked out of the window and immediately clasped his forehead. ‘It’s coming,’ he said. ‘Every time I brace myself for the encounter and every time, if there was a train to take me, I would rush screaming back to London. In a moment we shall see it. I can’t bear it. God! That one should have to face such horrors.’
    â€˜What in the world’s the matter?’
    â€˜Look!’ cried Cedric, covering his eyes. ‘Look! Katzenjammer Castle!’
    Troy looked through the window. Some two miles away, on the crest of a hill, fully displayed, stood Ancreton.

CHAPTER THREE

Ancreton
    I T WAS AN ASTONISHING building. A Victorian architect, fortified and encouraged by the Ancred of his day, had pulled down a Queen Anne house and, from its rubble, caused to rise up a sublimation of his most exotic day-dreams. To no one style or period did Ancreton adhere. Its facade bulged impartially with Norman, Gothic, Baroque and Rococo excrescences. Turrets sprouted like wens from every corner. Towers rose up from a multiplicity of battlements. Arrow slits peered furtively at exopthalmic bay-windows, and out of a kaleidoscope field of tiles rose a forest of variegated chimney-stacks. The whole was presented, not against the sky, but against a dense forest of evergreen trees, for behind Ancreton crest rose another and steeper hillside, richly planted in conifers. Perhaps the imagination of this earlier Ancred was exhausted by the begetting of his monster, for he was content to leave, almost unmolested, the terraced gardens and well-planted spinneys that had been laid out in the tradition of John Evelyn. These, maintaining their integrity, still gently led the eye of the observer towards the site of the house and had an air of blind acquiescence in its iniquities.
    Intervening trees soon obliterated Troy’s first view of Ancreton. In a minute or two the train paused magnanimously at the tiny station of Ancreton Halt.
    â€˜One must face these moments, of course,’ Cedric muttered, and they stepped out into a flood of wintry sunshine.
    There were only two people on the platform—a young man in second lieutenant’s uniform and a tall girl. They were a good-looking pair and somewhat alike—blue-eyed, dark and thin. They came forward, the young man limping and using his stick.
    â€˜Oh, lud!’ Cedric complained. ‘Ancreds by the shoal. Greetings, you two.’
    â€˜Hallo, Cedric,’ they said without much show of enthusiasm, and the girl turned quickly and cordially towards Troy.
    â€˜This is my cousin, Fenella Ancred,’ Cedric explained languidly. ‘And the warrior is another cousin, Paul Kentish. Miss Agatha