The Body at Auercliff Read Online Free Page B

case she changes her mind?”
    “I can't leave her,” I tell him, getting up and heading over to the mantelpiece. Sure enough, there's a thick layer of dust covering every surface. “The house is in a terrible state. She's clearly confined herself to just a few rooms, and the rest of the place is covered in dust. She can't manage by herself, but she won't accept help. She wouldn't even let me stay the night last night!”
    “Maybe she just doesn't like you,” he suggests, with a laugh.
    “I'm serious! I hate to think of her bumping about the place in the dark and -”
    “What does that matter if she's blind?” he asks, interrupting me.
    “You know what I mean,” I reply, dropping the cloth into a nearby bucket and then heading through to the hallway, on my way to the kitchen. I need more cleaning supplies. “She has no children of her own, she doesn't talk to my mother, she has no-one to look out for her. She's been managing by herself all this time but now -”
    Stopping suddenly at the foot of the stairs, I realize I can hear Emily's voice in the distance. I pause for a moment, and although I can't make out any of the words, I'm certain she's talking in her bedroom. Which is odd, since I know for a fact that the land-line is down, and I seriously doubt she has a mobile phone.
    “I get where this is going,” Scott says after a few seconds. “You're determined to save the old -”
    “Quiet!” I hiss, taking a couple of steps up and then stopping again. I can still hear Emily chatting away, and she even seems to be leaving regular pauses, as if she's giving someone else a chance to speak. “She thinks she's talking to someone,” I whisper.
    “What's that?” Scott asks. “If she's lost her mind, shouldn't that make it easier for you to -”
    “I'll call you back,” I tell him, cutting the call and slipping the phone into my pocket as I make my way up the stairs.
    When I reach the top, I stop again and listen to the sound of Emily's voice, and now I'm close enough to hear what she's saying.
    “Barbara and I never got along,” she mutters. “I could never deal with how uptight she is all the time. She ground Daniel down, too. He used to be a rather carefree young man when they first met, but she got her claws into him and before long he had bags under his eyes and a kind of worried, hangdog expression all the time. That's the thing about Barbara, I'm sure you're aware of it by now. She just wears people down and tries to make them bend to her will.”
    Realizing that she seems to be talking about my parents, I make my way cautiously along the corridor. God, I really, really hope she's speaking to someone on the phone, even though I saw no sign of a phone in her room earlier. If she's talking to herself or – worse – having imaginary conversations with people, there'd definitely be no way I could let her stay alone at Auercliff, and by the time I get to her bedroom door I've already started to wonder whether her dementia might be far more advanced than I'd realized.
    Just as I look through and see her sitting on her bed, my left foot presses on a floorboard that shifts slightly and lets out a loud creaking sound.
    Emily immediately turns and looks toward me.
    “Who's that?” she asks, with a hint of fear in her voice. “Who's there? Becky, did you hear someone?”
    “It's me,” I tell her. “It's Becky.”
    “But what...” She turns and looks back over toward the far side of the room, and then she turns to me again. For a moment, she seems genuinely flustered.
    “Were you talking to someone?” I ask, stepping into the room.
    “Well, I just...” She pauses, before starting to chuckle. “Oh, you'll think I'm so foolish,” she says finally. “It's not the first time, either. With my, you know, my blurry vision and what-not, sometimes I lose track of where people are in the room. I thought you came back in several minutes ago, I was busy grumbling on about your mother and the way she drags