The Solitary House Read Online Free PDF

of the footmen, such that one of these infamous letters was given directly to Lady Cremorne’s own hand.”
    “There have been how many, so far?”
    “Three. The earliest some five months ago; the most recent, only last week.”
    “May I see it?”
    There is, perhaps, a slight hesitation on the lawyer’s part at this request, but he takes out a ring of keys from his waistcoat-pocket and unlocks the desk drawer. The letter has been placed on plain brown paper, under a small oblong paperweight carved of some highly polished black substance. From where Charles is standing it looks, improbable as it sounds, like two slender fingers, one slightly longer than the other, the fingernails carefully incised. He’s still staring at it when Tulkinghorn leans forwards and hands him the paper. One sheet only, soft with frequent handling, with marks here and there in a dark and dirty brown. The handwriting is not educated, that much is both obvious and expected, but there is strength in it, and considerable resolution.
I naw what yow did
I will make yow pay
    Charles looks up. “Was there no cover?”
    “I believe it was mislaid.”
    “But it was posted, not delivered by hand?”
    Tulkinghorn nods.
    “And the others? May I see them?”
    “Possibly. If they have not been disposed of. I will enquire.”
    “And Sir Julius has no idea what this latest letter refers to?”
    Tulkinghorn spreads his hands. “Like the others—anything and nothing. You know what the people who commit these affronts to decency are like. And you can also imagine, I am sure, the effect of such a missive on a lady’s mind. The matter must be settled with all possible speed: There must be no recurrence.”
    “So what do you want me to do?”
    “Discover the culprit. And tell me his name.”
    “As simple as that. Even though, on the face of it, this letter could have been written by any one of a thousand men.”
    Tulkinghorn inclines his head. “Even so. It is a complex puzzle, I grant you; if it were not so I should not have required assistance to resolve it, and I should not have hired you .”
    He has him there; Charles is intelligent enough to know he is being flattered. But he’s human enough to pride himself on that intelligence, and crave the credit for it.
    Tulkinghorn gets to his feet, as Charles folds the paper and puts it in his breast-pocket. “I will expect you to keep me fully informed. If you have expenses you should apply to Knox. He, likewise, will require you to render a comprehensive account.”
    The clerk shows Charles back down the stairs and out onto the square. He has been in the house less than twenty minutes. He walks slowly to the corner and waits to let a carriage go past, then stoops for a moment to refasten his boot. So it is that he does not see that same equipage come to a halt at Tulkinghorn’s door, or the man who emerges from it. He is a little below middle size, this man, pale-faced, and about five-and-forty. His beard is shaven on his chin, but grows a fine rich brown on his cheeks and his upper lip, though hismost distinguishing feature is concealed at present by a black leather glove: He bears an unsightly red scar on the back of his hand, the result of an unfortunate wound received some years since while travelling on the Continent. He stops a moment on the top step and looks about him, but by the time Charles straightens up he has disappeared inside, and the groom is closing the carriage door. The panel bears a rather striking black swan on its coat of arms, which Charles glances at idly before turning and walking away. Heraldry was rather a hobby of his, as a boy, and somewhere on his crowded shelves there is still a tattered old scrapbook of the armorial bearings of the English peerage. But these arms, arresting though they are, he did not recognise.
    The man, meanwhile, is ascending the stairs of Tulkinghorn’s house much as Charles had done. But he, unlike Charles, finds his host waiting to greet him at the