Uncle Montague's Tales of Terror Read Online Free PDF Page B

in which the seance had been held. The curtains were pulled back and daylight chased away all the atmosphere Maud and Harriet had painstakingly created for the benefit of the ladies. It had returned to being a rather ordinary, stuffy drawing room. Mrs Barnard opened one of the French windows to let in some air, then went over to the drinks cabinet and poured three glasses of sherry.
    'Come with me, ladies,.' she said, handing them a glass each. As she walked away Maud stared at Harriet with a questioning look, but Harriet merely frowned and followed Mrs Barnard back down the hall.
    'Do you see how these two doors are evenly spaced?' she said. They nodded. 'Well, it seems that at some point many years ago they decided to take down a wall and open the two next-door rooms into one large room, as we have it now. I am told that they did not want to spoil the symmetry of the hall and so left this door here.' She indicated the left-hand one, then turned the handle of the door to its right. They followed her through.
    'As you can see,.' she said. 'The door - the Un-Door - does not appear on this side of the wall.'
    Maud gave Harriet a slight nod of her head towards the cabinet nearby full of nicely concealable silver trinkets. Harriet nodded back.
    'Come, I have something else I would like to show you,.' said Mrs Barnard. 'That is if you are quite recovered, Mrs Lyons.'
    'Me?' said Maud. 'Oh, I'm quite all right, my dear. You are so kind to be concerned. But we ought to be going really, shouldn't we, Harriet?'
    'Oh, but you have time to see the doll's house?' she said.
    'The doll's house?' said Harriet.
    'I am really not sure we have . . .' began Maud, but Mrs Barnard was already leading them out of the room and towards the stairs. After a moment's pause they followed on behind.
    Mrs Barnard led them up the stairs and opened the door Harriet had opened earlier.
    'I'm sure Olivia will not mind,.' she said.
    'Oh, look, Harriet,.' said Maud, feigning interest. 'Look at the doll's house there. I can't think I've ever seen one finer.'
    'Yes,.' said Mrs Barnard. 'It is a copy of the house we are in. The doll's house was here when our father bought the house in fact. We inherited it from the previous occupants.'
    'It's beautiful,.' said Harriet in genuine admiration. 'I would have loved a house like that as a child.'
    Mrs Barnard sighed. 'I never liked the house to be honest,.' she said sadly. 'I used to share this room with my sister - the house was really hers. She would play with it for hours. But there was something about it that rather gave me a chill. Still does actually.'
    'A chill, madam?' said Harriet. 'Why?'
    'Well,.' said Mrs Barnard with a sigh. 'My sister became rather obsessed with the doll's house, I am afraid to say. She would sit in front of it like someone at prayer, muttering and mumbling. She would fly into a rage if I so much as touched any of the dolls. It was as if they were real to her.'
    'But is that not true of all children, Mrs Barnard?' said Harriet.
    'Yes,.' said Mrs Barnard with a sad smile. 'But my sister was different from other children. She lost . . . all sense of reality. I suppose she lost her mind. I found her one day, laughing like a wild thing, huddled in the corner, wide-eyed, pointing at the doll's house. She never really recovered her wits. She became frantic and feverish, and no amount of laudanum seemed to calm her.' Mrs Barnard's eyes sparkled with tears as she turned to Harriet. 'In the end her heart simply gave out. She was only twelve.'
    Harriet was surprised to feel a small pang of sympathy for Mrs Barnard. 'It must have been very hard for you,.' she said.
    'It was,.' said Mrs Barnard. 'It was. But it was a long time ago. Life moves on.'
    Mrs Barnard turned back to the doll's house.
    'As you can see,.' she said, pointing to it, 'the doll's house shows the room downstairs as it was before the wall was taken down. In the doll's house, the Un-Door actually opens into a tiny room. Do you