A Dark Anatomy Read Online Free

Cragg.’

    I ignored the tartness in her voice.
    â€˜Did you yourself see Mrs Brockletower when she went out this morning?’
    â€˜I saw her, yes. She came past the kitchen at her usual time, just after six, dressed for riding.’
    â€˜Did she speak to you?’
    â€˜No. She went out without a word. Pearson had her hack saddled. I saw him put her up and she rode out.’
    â€˜Does she always ride the same path?’
    â€˜Yes, she goes a little way down the park and sheers off across the stream and up the bridleway through the woods.’
    â€˜And you noticed nothing strange about her as she left today?’
    â€˜No. She seemed as she always was.’
    â€˜I should go in to speak with Miss Brockletower now.’
    She led me back in through the yard door. I had always been a professional caller by the front door and had never entered Garlick Hall by any other way. Now, as we trotted along the wide stone-flagged passage between the ‘wet’ kitchen and the scullery and dairy, I breathed in an agreeable compound of baking bread, bubbling broth and the lactic rankness of spilt milk in the dairy. Mrs Marsden swung open the thick panelled door at the passage’s end, and took me through to the family side of the house, which centred on a spacious hall. This was temporarily in half-light, the glazed front door and windows being shaded on the outside by the scaffolders’ tarpaulins. We did not cross the hall, but turned instead up the main stairs to our left. It was an old-fashioned oak stair with massive banisters and it reared darkly up to the floors above. I stopped at the stair-foot for a moment and listened. It seemed there was still nothing being done by way of building work, and the hollow quiet in this part of the house felt expectant, like a withholding of breath.

    â€˜Miss Brockletower’s sitting room is on the first floor,’ said Mrs Marsden, with a trace of impatience. ‘Come on up.’
    We creaked up the staircase. I wondered how it would be, this interview. I had never yet been to the upper floor of the house, and had not seen Sarah Brockletower for – what? – ten years; but it was more than twenty since we had met or spoken together.
    At the first floor I was led along a panelled landing, past an array of dim family portraits, whose only clearly visible details were the starched white ruffs of a long-ago fashion. At the end Mrs Marsden opened a door, and ushered me past her.
    â€˜It’s Mr Titus Cragg to see you, miss,’ she called out.
    I took a hesitant couple of sidesteps past the housekeeper and walked into the middle of Sarah’s room. The hall’s shadows were clarity compared to this. The window curtains were drawn and no candle had been lit. Only a thin, morning firelight from the grate relieved the gloom.
    Sarah sat beside the fire in a rocking chair, keeping it in creaking movement all the time. I have often noticed that it is a habit of blind people to rock, or sway, their heads and bodies as if keeping time with some interior tune that we – the sighted – cannot hear. Perhaps Sarah’s rocking-chair habit was her way of domesticating that tell-tale impulse.
    â€˜Hello, Sarah,’ I said. ‘I’m sorry that we must eventually meet again only in these painful circumstances.’
    â€˜Well, Titus, it has certainly been a long time. But it is better, I suppose, to meet like this than never to meet again until eternity. I have wondered from time to time since my parents died if you would ever come and call.’
    Her voice was exactly as I remembered – light on its feet, always poised on the edge of mocking, or at least being ready to mock should the need arise. But it had also been capable of a sweetness that can still make me wince, remembering it.

    Sarah Brockletower. The thoughts of her that I write now do not – cannot – in any way undermine my profound, unflagging devotion to