Nothing Like Blood Read Online Free Page A

felt, too, rather mischievously, that here would probably be the source of gossip from whom I should learn all.
    â€œThank you,” I said. “I’m sure everything is quite all right.”
    I meant my room, of course, but as I made this silly remark I wondered whether she would see any
double entendre.
She did not appear to, though she hesitated for a moment before wishing me good night.
    As there was only one other small incident this, evening which could be described as significant, it may seem that I am ‘seeing things’ after all. I can only say that there is no question in my mind. Something very unpleasant has happened or is about to happen in this house, and all these people were aware of it. It hangs about the place like a mist. Perhaps I was wrong in using the word ‘fear’. Mrs Derosse is afraid of something, but it may only be a threat to her business. The rest of them are … on edge, apprehensive perhaps, or perhaps only curious. Whatever it is, it seems to be connected with the late Lydia Mallister. I shall try to ask no questions and in time, I feel, I shall know a great deal more. I do not deny for a moment that my curiosity is roused.
    The incident I mentioned was scarcely an incident at all, yet it surprised me. On my way back from my walk I saw two people coming rather fast from the house. They were in the light of an overhead electric bulb and were visible to me before they saw me, I think, for they weretalking with some animation and suddenly became silent as they approached. There was nothing furtive about them, for they had come from the front door which they slammed behind them.
    They paused to speak to me—James Mallister and Esmée Welton. Been for a stroll? That sort of thing.
    â€œWe take a constitutional to the top of the cliff,” said Mallister casually.
    â€œEvery evening?”I asked.
    â€œMost evenings,” said Esmée, “unless it’s pouring.”
    â€œI’d like to come with you another evening,” I told them.
    They accepted this with just a little more enthusiasm than was natural in the circumstances, particularly if there
are
any circumstances.
    So I came up to bed. It occurred to me to look up ‘Cat’s Cradle’ in Brewer’s
Dictionary of Phrase and Fable.
I shall surely be thought imaginative when I say that the definition suggested to me, in an obscure way, something rather sinister. ‘A game played with a piece of twine by two children,’ it reads.

3
    O N this my second day at Cat’s Cradle I have learned a great deal more about my fellow guests and am delighted to find that the impression I had of an unusual atmosphere in the place is not my own fancy.
    I decided to go into Belstock by bus this afternoon and just as the bus was about to leave its starting point near the house I saw Mrs Jerrison hurrying towards it. I turnedround and greeted her and asked her to sit with me, which she did. She was out of breath at first, for she is a biggish woman and had hurried over the last hundred yards, but she soon recovered herself and to my secret pleasure she began without hesitation to talk about the household.
    All I needed to do was to put in every now and again a ‘Really?’ or ‘How extraordinary! ‘and since a good deal of what she told me
was
extraordinary, this was easy.
    I started her off by saying it seemed that Mrs Mallister’s death had made a difference to Cat’s Cradle since my friends were there last year.
    â€œIt’s not so much her
death
made a difference,” said Mrs Jerrison. “It was how it happened and the money.”
    I had been wondering when we should come to a mention of money and spoke my first “Really? “in an interested, almost incredulous, gasping sort of way.
    â€œYes. You see we all knew it was her had the money. She never made any secret of it, and you can always tell. But we never knew it was that amount.”
    I