House of Small Shadows Read Online Free PDF Page B

were
made of red stained glass, as was the light shade above her head. It truly was a red house.
    Framed pictures hung upon the walls near the doors, but she couldn’t see beyond the glimmers of protective glass. And she had no time to admire the red and black encaustic tiles of the
floor, all original and uncracked, because something squeaked like an old wheel that needed oil, somewhere higher up inside the building.
    Squinting, Catherine realized that the end of the narrow reception opened into a wider area. With a clatter of heels against the tiles, she entered the Red House reception and crossed the
vestibule to peer into, but not enter, the hall. Her eyes found and followed four walls of an aged hardwood panelling, until her groping sight found a carved newel post at the foot of a steep
staircase on the left-hand side of the hall, with balustrades moving upwards like ribs.
    Bones inside a crimson body.
    ‘I . . . It’s Catherine. Catherine Howard. From Osberne’s.’ Inside the hall her voice was flat, small, strengthless.
    Dim reddish light fell from a distant skylight out of sight, and within the crimson haze Catherine made out a dark silhouette on the next floor. Seated in something lumpen. The top half of a
thin body and what resembled a long neck was leaning forward to see her, but remained half concealed behind a row of wooden balusters.
    ‘Had you used the house’s bell for its intended purpose, Maude would have greeted you. She is somewhere below.’ The voice may have been dried out by age, but the tone was sharp
enough to make her feel immediately diffident.
    Catherine flinched at the rapid ring of a small handbell from where the voice had originated. ‘Shit.’ She hoped her own voice hadn’t carried through the thick air of the
hallway. Air that smelled of something chemical and pierced the odours of floor wax, varnished timber and mustiness that tried to smother it. The concealing odours reminded her of the barely
functioning antique shops and provincial museums she visited, but the sharp underlying scent was unfamiliar.
    Her confusion and the dregs of drowsiness from the heat and pollen outside intensified in the stifling, almost lightless interior, enough to disorient her. She reached out and touched a
wall.
    The indistinct figure upstairs regarded her in a silence that grew tense and heavy, like a strange gravity, one that oppressed Catherine so much she thought of herself as a nervous child before
a stern teacher in an ancient boarding school.
    ‘Maude will show you to the drawing room.’ At the same time the woman spoke, she drew back from the railings. Catherine made out a smudge too white to be a face, atop what must have
been some sort of chair. And what did she have on her head?
A hat?
    The figure was wheeled backwards with an alarming suddenness. The squeak of the wheels and creak of the floorboards that the chair rolled across, carried off and away, above Catherine’s
head and out of sight.
    And she was left alone, standing in the mouth of the hallway, not sure whether she was suffering from her usual social bafflement, or whether fear made her reluctant to take another step inside
the Red House. Which glowered all around her, sullen but observant, staring directly at her with a barely restrained hostility.
    The sharp peal of the handbell had provoked a reaction from deep inside the crimson tunnel that began at the front door, crossed the square wood-panelled hall, and continued to what must have
been the back of the large building. Muffled footsteps approached from out of the distant darkness. A shuffle that drew closer, suggesting someone old with restricted mobility was feeling their way
towards her.
    Despite her existing discomfort, she felt a fresh aversion to greeting whoever was on their way to meet her, from
somewhere below.
This Maude, she presumed.
    The natural light available had either followed Catherine through the front door, or fell blood-misty from the