Thirteen Chairs Read Online Free PDF

Millie. She might easily be just as mad too, the association makes Jack feel a tiny bit more at home, just a little more at ease. She gives a strange little laugh. ‘Ooh, yes, just smashing.’
    ‘Perhaps,’ says Mr Osterley, ‘we might have your contribution next, Mrs Trent.’
    ‘Ooh, now, dear, you really must call me Josephine. I can’t be doing with formality, me. I’ve no time for it.’
    Mr Osterley’s lips purse, just the tiniest amount, and he pauses before he speaks again. ‘Josephine, then. If you would be so kind.’
    ‘Of course, my dear. Of course. Now then, tonight
I thought I’d tell you a story that happened in my own village. Imagine! Ooh, it were quite a to-do at the time, I can tell you. Do you like cats?’ Grinning and twitching, her head angled up one way, her eyes turned to look in another direction completely, it’s impossible to tell if she’s asking anyone in particular, but in any case she doesn’t pause for a reply. ‘Some people go all soppy for them, don’t they? Never understood it myself. I quite like a dog, you know, if it’s the right kind of dog. Nothing too small and yappy. But cats I don’t really have time for, myself, and—’
    ‘If you would be so kind, Josephine, please …’ says the pale man. There is only a tiny grain of exasperation in his tone, but it works well enough. Josephine’s jolting head comes to a standstill and her eyes rest briefly on Mr Osterley’s still, expressionless face.
    ‘Of course,’ she says, and balls her bony hands up into tight fists. ‘Get on with it, Josephine. Well, then. Here we go.’

 
    W ell, it was a funny old business from the start. From before the start, even. But I’ll start at the beginning anyway. I can always go back, now, can’t I? Oh, but then, when
was
the beginning? Well, there’s a question and no mistake. But I tell you what I’ll do: I’ll start with Helena. I’ll start with Helena dying.
    So Helena died. Well, you knew that already, I just said.
    Oh, anyway, Helena died, but nobody was surprised, because she was very old and she’d been ill almost for ever, and nobody cared very much because, well, let’s be honest: she was a horrible,
horrible
woman.
Nobody
liked her. Even the other people in the village that nobody liked: they didn’t like her either.
    And Helena, so far as anyone could tell, didn’t like anybody. She’d been a difficult and lonely child, and over the years she’d grown into a difficult and lonely old woman. A difficult, lonely, bitter, spiteful, poisonous old woman. She lived in a big old house away from the main village and she’d go days without seeing anyone at all, which suited her. And, to be fair, it suited everyone else too. Well, you can imagine.
    So she was lonely, by choice, but she did have hercats. She’d had a fair few of them over the years, but by the time I’m talking about, at the end, she had three: Tabitha, Tiptree and Oswald. And when she was very ill, with only months to live so the doctor told her, and she couldn’t really cope any more, her nephew came to stay to help her out. He shopped and he cooked and he cleaned and he looked after the cats.
    He was a sweet boy, Roland, just lovely. And so loyal to his aunt. She treated him just as badly as she treated every other human being she ever met – shouting at him and calling him stupid and never a word of thanks for all he did – but he wouldn’t say a word against her.
    He wouldn’t even speak ill of those cats, and they were right little demons, let me tell you. Tabitha and Tiptree were bad enough, but Oswald, oh dear, Oswald was an unholy
terror
. Times I saw poor Roland with scratches on his arms and face, and he’d tell me some tale about tackling the brambles in Aunt Helena’s garden, but I could see: those scratches weren’t from any brambles.
    Now, like I say, old Dr Whitfield had said Helena had only a short while left to live. Two or three months, if she was lucky, he said. Well,