Hide Me Among the Graves Read Online Free PDF

each other across a narrow pavement now dusted with snow, just north of the broad lanes of the Strand and only a few streets from the line of arches along the land-facing side of Somerset House. The cold morning sun silhouetted the steeple of St. Clement Danes to the east and lanced down the street—here glaring from the panes of a bay window on an upper floor, there glittering in the frost crystals on a drainpipe slanting across a still-shadowed wall—and a woman in a blue coat was walking slowly down the middle of the pavement with the sun at her back.
    Her hands were hidden in an oversized white ermine muff, and her breath was puffs of steam whisked away on the breeze as she peered at the variously shaped dark doorways she passed on either side. Finally she halted, and for nearly a minute just stared at a brass plaque beside the door of an otherwise unremarkable house:
    The plaque read: JOHN CRAWFORD, M.R.C.V.S. SURGERY FROM 9 TO 11 O’CLOCK.
    The knocker was a wrought-iron cat’s head, hinged at the top.
    A bigger plume of steam blew away from under her bonnet, and then she stepped to the door and carefully freed one gloved hand to give the knocker two sharp clanks.
    â€œIn sunshine or in sha-adow,” she sang softly to herself; then she smiled and touched the ermine muff. “And kneel and say an ave there for me.”
    She heard steps from inside, and a curtain twitched in the frosted window at her left, and then a bolt rattled and the door swung inward.
    The man who had opened the door blinked out at her without recognition. “Is it an emergency?” he asked. “The surgery isn’t open for hours yet.”
    He wore a brown sack-coat with an outmoded plaid shawl over his shoulders, and she noted that his beard was still dark brown.
    â€œCome in,” he added, stepping aside.
    She walked past him into the hallway’s warm smells of bacon and garlic and tobacco as he closed the door behind her and asked, “Can I take your coat?”
    She laid the muff on a table and pulled off her muddy boots and her gloves; then she shrugged out of her blue velveteen coat, and as she handed it to him, the muff on the table squeaked and chirped.
    He paused, looking from it to her, and raised his eyebrows.
    â€œEr … do you,” she asked with a tight smile, “minister to birds?”
    â€œI really only ever go as small as chickens, and that sounded like a songbird. My main customers are cab horses, and I do pro bono publico work for stray cats.” He smiled. “But I suppose I can advise, if you’ll bring the patient in.” He waved toward an open doorway, and the woman retrieved the muff and stepped through into a parlor with framed hunting prints on the green-papered walls. The ivory-colored curtains over the front windows had probably been white originally.
    A cold fireplace gaped below a marble mantelpiece that was still hung with tinsel and wilted holly. A dozen wooden chairs were ranked closely along two of the walls, and a long couch hid the sills of the street-side windows. Half a dozen cats were sprawled on the couch and the low table.
    â€œDo sit,” said Crawford. “I’ll fetch in some tea.”
    He disappeared through an inner door, and the woman pushed several of the cats off the couch onto the carpet—one had only three legs, and another appeared to have no eyes, though they all scampered away energetically—and sat down on the cleared cushion. She carefully slid a small cylindrical birdcage no bigger than a pint-pot out of the ermine muff and set it upright on the table. The tiny brown bird within peered around the room, paying no evident attention to the retreating cats.
    This room was chillier than the entry hall, and, in addition to the apparently constant whiff of garlic, smelled of dogs and spirits of camphor. A framed notice between two pictures of leaping horses listed prices of various operations and remedies.
    Crawford