The Woman In Black Read Online Free PDF Page B

from any human dwelling, and trapped in this cold tomb of a railway carriage, withits pitted mirror and stained, dark-wood panelling. Mr Daily took out his watch.
    ‘Twelve miles, we’re held up for the down train at Gapemouth tunnel. The hill it runs through is the last bit of high ground for miles. You’ve come to the flatlands, Mr Kipps.’
    ‘I’ve come to the land of curious place-names, certainly. This morning, I heard of the Nine Lives Causeway, and Eel Marsh, tonight of Gapemouth tunnel.’
    ‘It’s a far-flung part of the world. We don’t get many visitors.’
    ‘I suppose because there is nothing much to see.’
    ‘It all depends what you mean by “nothing”. There’s the drowned churches and the swallowed-up village,’ he chuckled. ‘Those are particularly fine examples of “nothing to see”. And we’ve a good wild ruin of an abbey with a handsome graveyard – you can get to it at low tide. It’s all according to what takes your fancy!’
    ‘You are almost making meanxious to get back to that London particular!’
    There was a shriek from the train whistle.
    ‘Here she comes.’ And the train coming away from Crythin Gifford to Homerby emerged from Gapemouth tunnel and trundled past us, a line of empty yellow-lit carriages that disappeared into the darkness, and then immediately we were under way again.
    ‘But you’ll find everything hospitable enough at Crythin,for all it’s a plain little place. We tuck ourselves in with our backs to the wind, and carry on with our business. If you care to come with me, I can drop you off at the Gifford Arms – my car will be waiting for me, and it’s on my way.’
    He seemed keen to reassure me and to make up for his teasing exaggeration of the bleakness and strangeness of the area, and I thanked him and accepted his offer,whereupon we both settled back to our reading, for the last few miles of that tedious journey.

T HE F UNERAL OF M RS D RABLOW
    M Y FIRST impressions of the little market town – indeed, it seemed scarcely larger than an overgrown village – of Crythin Gifford were distinctly favourable. When we arrived that night, Mr Samuel Daily’s car, as shining, capacious and plush a vehicle as I had travelled in in my life, took us swiftly the bare mile from the tiny station into the market square, where wedrew up outside the Gifford Arms.
    As I prepared to alight, he handed me his card.
    ‘Should you need anyone …’
    I thanked him, though stressing that it was most unlikely, as I would have whatever practical help I might require to organize the late Mrs Drablow’s business from the local agent, and did not intend to be in the place more than a day or two. Mr Daily gaveme a straight, steady stare,and said nothing and, so as not to appear discourteous, I tucked the card carefully into my waistcoat pocket. Only then did he give the word to his driver, and move away.
    ‘You’ll find everything hospitable enough at Crythin,’ he had said earlier, and so it proved. As I caught sight of the piled-up fire and the capacious armchair beside it, in the parlour of the inn, and found another fire waitingto warm me in the prettily furnished bedroom at the top of the house, my spirits rose, and I began to feel rather more like a man on holiday than one come to attend a funeral, and go through the dreary business attendant upon the death of a client. The wind had either died down or else could not be heard in the shelter of the buildings, around the market square, and the discomfort, and queertrend of the conversation of my journey, faded like a bad dream.
    The landlord recommended a glass of mulled wine, which I drank sitting before the fire, listening to the murmur of voices on the other side of a heavy door leading to the public bar, and his wife made my mouth water in anticipation of the supper she proposed – home-made broth, sirloin of beef, apple and raisin tart with cream, andsome Stilton cheese. While I waited, I wrote a brief fond note