The Shell House Read Online Free PDF

suppose I shall see you again before you leave. My thoughts go with you.’
    Edmund sincerely hoped not. He suppressed a smile, composed his face into an expression of pensive gravity, and walked away down the steps, past the fountains and formal beds to the grass walk that led to the ha-ha. He stood there for a few moments, feeling the sun warm on his back, looking out over fields of ripening barley. He knew that they could see him from the terrace, and were fondly imagining, no doubt, that he was savouring the peace and harmony of the garden and the productiveness of the farmland, his inheritance; looking forward to the time when he would walk here with Philippa on his arm and an infant or two romping at his feet.
    ‘Alex . . .’ he said slowly, lingering over the separate sounds for only the green ears of corn to hear.
    Wanting to be out of sight, he turned away through the orchard and walked towards the stableyard. It was deserted and unswept; all the horses, apart from the old pony that pulled the gardener’s cart, had been requisitioned by the army. Edmund could see the gardener’s son, the one he knew as the idiot boy, pushing a wheelbarrow, with his odd ungainly gait. He was concentrating hard, gripping the handles tightly, his mouth open; he did not notice Edmund.
    Leaning on the Coach House wall, Edmund took off his uniform jacket and slung it on the mounting-block, first taking Alex’s letter from one of the pockets. Unfolding the pages, he held them to his mouth. One more week.

Jordan
    Greg’s photograph: at the swimming pool, from
the poolguard’s chair. The water is cool and
aquamarine, shimmering in artificial light. Most
of its surface is undisturbed. The first swimmer
has just dived in and is swooping low under the
water. The long human shape flickers against
pale-blue tiles.
    On Tuesday evening Greg cycled over to Graveney Hall, taking his camera in his rucksack. The weather was still very warm for September; the ground was dry and dusty. He passed a couple of dog-walkers on the driveway, but there were no cars parked along the front of the house. He dismounted and stood looking at the façade. This time, there was nothing to stop him having a proper look round.
    Abandoned, the mansion was eerie, standing sentinel over its fertile acres. It was a house out of time. The fire that had destroyed it had also preserved it; the nearby towns had expanded, motorways had been built, the M25 had circled London, cutting off Graveney Hall from the forest, but the wreck of 1917 still stood. Rather like the
Mary Celeste
, Greg thought—an abandoned hulk, empty, mysterious. Its blank windows made him think of a skull’s empty eye-sockets. He felt dwarfed by its height and scale, reduced to insignificance, standing and staring, as so many must have stood and stared before.
    It was rather an ugly building—imposing and magnificent rather than beautiful. The square brick extensions at either side of the stone-faced central part could have been added at a later date. The ornamental panel which crowned the central section, shaped like a flattened triangle, was state-of-the-art décor of the period, he supposed, looking at the reclining figures, harps and flowing vegetation.
    Signs on the frontage warned DANGER, KEEP OUT. STRICTLY PRIVATE. But what damage could he do? He wasn’t stupid enough to risk climbing rickety walls or staircases, and it must be safe enough to enter the building; people had been working inside on Sunday.
    Parts of the lower frontage on this side were boarded up with corrugated panels, but the door beneath the twin flights of steps—the one he’d glanced through last time—was a makeshift wooden panel, left as an entrance. Carefully, he pushed it open and stepped through.
    It was like entering a cathedral, but one open to the sky. He was standing on a concrete floor littered with silted mud and fragments of brick. Looking up, he saw a huge fireplace on what would have been the first floor,