The Empty Frame Read Online Free PDF Page A

he stood his ground as the elderly man, who walked with a slight limp, strode purposefully towards him.
    It was his first meeting with Colonel Stickley, the mysterious relative of Cousin M’s who had gone off to bed without greeting them. Magnus never forgot that moment, the tall spindly figure limping across the cold chequered floor, the sudden harsh light after the reassuring darkness, and what that light revealed – row upon row of faces, priests and soldiers, men in university robes posed self-importantly over open books, women in wimples, children playing with cats and dogs and with curious toys, such as you only ever saw in museums. So many faces looking down upon the modern man and the modern boy, each from their own little corner in the greater sweep of history. But the facehe had come to see was not among them. The huge gold frame, containing cruel Lady Alice of the thin white hands, was empty. He found himself looking up at a blank black rectangle.
    Did the Colonel see? Magnus could not decide because, instantly, the old man had interposed his own tall, stooping figure between the boy and the painting, had bent down and thrust his whiskery face at him. “Humph! What’s this? Are you sleepwalking or something?”
    Magnus, smelling pipe smoke and whisky, suddenly burst into tears. The crying of the woman which had brought him here had most definitely ceased now, and the painting was most definitely blank. These two things belonged together, of that he felt certain. But how they belonged he did not understand. She had looked so cruel, the Lady Alice Neale. It could surely not have been Lady Alice that wept. But where had she gone to, slipping out of her gilded frame and leaving the canvas empty? None of it made sense. He suddenly felt bewildered and lost, and he very much wanted to go back to bed.
    The Colonel looked down at the snivelling boy, inspecting him through small round spectacles as, Magnus felt, one might scrutinise some botanical specimen under glass. Then, very awkwardly and stiffly, he stretched out his hand and laid it lightly on the boy’sshoulder. “Stay there young man,” he said, then he went round the hall switching off all the main lights. Magnus could hear him talking to himself, he seemed to be complaining about Maude. “Mad woman, my cousin. What did she want to put you up there for, four floors up? I told her not to but the woman wouldn’t listen. It’s not civilised. No wonder you lost your bearings. Come on, I’ll have you in bed in two shakes of a donkey’s tail. I’m going to see about this in the morning, get you moved. Are you up to walking up all those wretched stairs? Want a fireman’s lift? My son always liked a fireman’s lift, cheeky little beggar.”
    Magnus suspected that a fireman’s lift, one of the few terms with which he was not familiar, involved being carried back to his room over the old man’s shoulder. “I’m all right,” he said firmly. “I’d just like to go back to bed. Sorry if I frightened you.”
    The Colonel gave a dry laugh. “You didn’t frighten me, young man, I often sit up late. Can’t sleep y’know, it’s my age. All right then, follow me, and mind where you put your feet, the lighting’s not good along these corridors.”
    But as they left the hall something made Magnus look back. He said, “You’ve left one of the lights on.”
    Colonel Stickley turned round. “So I have, and the Lady Alice won’t like that. Beautiful young woman but she had quite a temper, they say, quite an old paddy.”He clicked a switch and Magnus saw the tall woman in white and black with the thin little dog at her feet fade into the darkness.
    As they went along the corridors towards the turret stairs, he saw two tapestries hanging on a wall, lit by a solitary lamp. One portrayed Pontius Pilate washing his hands in a bowl of water. A soldier