The Dead of Winter Read Online Free PDF

ever since I arrived. I felt faint by the time we reached the door to my room.
    I stepped in quickly after Hodges and he used his lamp to light another in the room. A fire was dying to red embers in the hearth, giving the place a welcome warmth of temperature and colour. Butthe effect was short-lived.
    Just as a face betrays the life of the owner, so too a room carries a trace of the lives lived within its walls. This room positively ached with sadness. It was not just that the room was dark – and it was dark in furnishings and in its greedy accumulation of shadows – it was the very air that seemed tainted with misery.
    I looked about me. A large bed with a carved wooden headboard came out from one wall and a washstand stood nearby. An ugly wardrobe with an oval mirror loomed in the shadows at the lamplight’s edge. When Hodges spoke, I gasped, startled, having forgotten he was there.
    ‘There is a flushing lavatory at the end of the hall to the right,’ said Hodges with a grimace. ‘Miss Charlotte had them installed last year. But they are frightfully noisy devices, sir, as you may already have discovered. I would ask you to use the pot under your bed if you need to relieve yourself in the night.’
    ‘Of course,’ I said. ‘Thank you, Mr Hodges.’
    ‘Just Hodges, sir,’ he said with a smile. ‘Just call me Hodges.’
    I nodded.
    ‘Will that be all, sir?’
    ‘Yes, I think so, Mr – sorry – Hodges.’
    ‘Dinner will be served at eight, sir.’ Hodges bowed a shallow bow and left the room, closing the door behind him.
    I was thoroughly exhausted and I lost no time in getting changed while there was some remaining warmth from the fire. As I did so, I was startled to see a boy standing at the far side of the room.
    I quickly realised that it was an illusion, however. It was a painting – a full-length portrait of a boy about my age, though of a much more slender build and very pale. It was the paleness and fine features of the face that put me in mind of Charlotte, and thence to Sir Stephen. I felt sure that I was looking at a portrait of my guardian as a boy, a theory that was confirmed by a label on the frame. There was a knock at the door and I turned to see Jerwood.
    ‘Ah good, you are getting changed for dinner. I am just next door. When you are ready we can walk down together.’
    ‘As you wish, sir,’ I said. I confess I felt somewhat relieved.
    Dinner was a rather strained affair. The dining room was large and the only illumination camefrom candlesticks on the tables, whose light barely reached the walls.
    Sir Stephen sat at one end of the long table, Jerwood and myself on one side and Charlotte on the other. Charlotte did most of the talking, quizzing Jerwood continually about London society and the latest fashions, and it was clear that Jerwood knew or cared little about either.
    When she had exhausted Jerwood’s meagre knowledge of bonnets and dance steps, Charlotte turned her attentions to me and bombarded me with questions.
    ‘Tell us about yourself, Michael,’ she said. ‘We know so little about you. What sort of interests do you have?’
    ‘I … I don’t know what to tell you,’ I said.
    ‘Well, let me see. Are you a boy who likes sport?’ she asked. ‘Are you a runner? You have the look of a runner about you, doesn’t he, Stephen?’
    I was too slow to reply and so Charlotte continued.
    ‘Cricket, perhaps? All boys love cricket, I am told.’
    ‘I like it well enough,’ I replied.
    When she saw there would be no further elaboration, she tapped her fingernails together with anaudible patter and pursed her lips.
    ‘Are you a scholar then?’ she asked after a pause. ‘Would you rather be in the library than on the sports field?’
    I cast a quick glance at Jerwood, who I knew from our conversation in the cemetery had received a not very glowing account of my school life.
    ‘I do enjoy reading,’ I ventured.
    ‘You do?’ said Charlotte brightly. ‘What sort of books do