The Wrong Way Down Read Online Free PDF

a child, a visitor in this house, she was allowed to poke about a little in the book-room? Look at the pictures there while her elders took their tea?”
    â€œIt’s perfectly possible.”
    â€œIf she was a practising medium at ten years old, her observation may have been sharpened and her natural childish liking for secrecy developed beyond the normal. She saw the picture—this picture—in the book closet; she knew it was almost a duplicate of the one in the hall; she said nothing: but she cashed in on that knowledge last Sunday afternoon.”
    â€œShe was a precocious little thing, always asking questions about the curios and the bric-a-brac; but she was clever with her hands. They’d let her look at the pictures.” Miss Paxton was frowning heavily. “She had a talent for drawing.”
    â€œThere you are. She comes here—how many years later?”
    â€œFifteen. She says she’s twenty-five now.”
    â€œShe comes here, and as she enters this room she has a glimpse of the portrait of Lady Audley hanging where it always hung, just beyond this door. She wonders whether the other one is still in the book-room; she remembers that day long ago when she was perhaps detected in some hocus-pocus and disgraced; her parents with her. Lady Audley—there’s a grimness about that Holbein look. If Mr. Lawson Ashbury’s mother looked like that, and he looked like her, he could certainly be grim.”
    â€œJust serious, Henry. A charming man.”
    â€œBut Miss Vance probably remembered one occasion when he was grim. After she leaves you, Miss Vance slips into the drawing room, into the book-room. You wouldn’t have seen her from this chair of yours.”
    â€œAs a matter of fact I was probably in the pantry; I always wash up the glasses as soon as—”
    â€œGood, you were in the pantry. You wouldn’t have seen her or heard her. She finds the other Lady Audley just where it used to be. Had you mentioned the fact that you didn’t as yet know exactly what was in those tip-out cupboards?”
    â€œProbably. We talked about what I was doing for James.”
    â€œAnd Miss Vance decides that nobody will ever miss the other Lady Audley, or notice a change. All the pictures in the hall are to be disposed of en bloc to a dealer. She doesn’t know that you know what sentimental value your uncle attributed to the portrait. She’s amused by the situation. She’s used to taking chances, the great risks of her profession. She’s clever with her hands, and she can move about like a ghost. She comes back past this doorway, takes the picture off its hook, takes it into the book cupboard, and makes the change. She has no tools, but she gets the nails back into the frame with the help of—what? Any small metal object that she finds in her handbag. She splinters the wood a little—rotten old wood. See?”
    Miss Paxton leaned forward to gaze earnestly at the tiny splinters under one or two of the nails, and asked: “How did she pull them out?”
    â€œLoosen them and you can pull them out with your fingers. She had something to do it with—perhaps a nail file—or she wouldn’t have undertaken the job in the first place.
    â€œShe rolled the unlettered Lady Audley up, put it under her arm, having replaced it by this one. Then she went quietly down the stairs and out; and I’m sorry to tell you, Miss Paxton, that I think the other Lady Audley’s gone forever.”
    â€œI really cannot bear it.”
    â€œMost irritating.”
    â€œTo have allowed someone to walk off with James’ property, under my very nose! It means that I’m not competent to do the work, that’s all.”
    â€œNot competent? Miss Paxton! You’ve exposed the racket by your competence. You remembered something that most people would have forgotten, and you saw something that younger people mightn’t have