The Little Stranger Read Online Free

to call me in. One can’t be too careful with stomach problems, especially in this weather. I’ll send you over a prescription, and you might as well go easy on her for a day or two … But there’s one other thing.’ I had reached her side now, and lowered my voice. ‘I get the idea she’s pretty homesick. That hasn’t struck you?’
    She frowned. ‘She’s seemed all right so far. She’ll need time to settle in, I suppose.’
    ‘And she sleeps down here at night, I gather, all on her own? That must be lonely for her. She mentioned a set of back stairs, said she finds them creepy—’
    Her look cleared, grew almost amused. ‘Oh,
that
’s the trouble, is it? I thought she was above nonsense like that. She seemed a sensible enough thing when she first came out here. But you can never tell with country girls: they’re either hard as nails, wringing chickens’ necks and so on; or going off into fits, like Guster. I expect she’s seen too many unpleasant films. Hundreds is quiet, but there’s nothing queer about it.’
    I said, after a second, ‘You’ve lived here all your life, of course. You couldn’t find some way to reassure her?’
    She folded her arms. ‘Start reading her bedtime stories, perhaps?’
    ‘She’s awfully young, Miss Ayres.’
    ‘Well, we don’t treat her badly, if that’s what you’re thinking! We pay her more than we can afford. She eats the same food as us. Really, in lots of ways she’s better off than we are.’
    ‘Yes,’ I answered, ‘your brother said something like that.’
    I spoke coldly, and she coloured, not very becomingly, the blush rising into her throat and struggling patchily across her dry-looking cheeks. She turned her gaze from mine, as if in an effort to hold on to her patience. When she spoke again, however, her voice had softened a little.
    She said, ‘We’d do a great deal to keep Betty happy, if you want to know the truth. The fact is, we can’t afford to lose her. Our daily woman does what she can, but this house needs more than one servant, and we’ve found it almost impossible to get girls in the past few years; we’re just too far from the bus-routes and things like that. Our last maid stayed three days. That was back in January. Until Betty arrived, I was doing most of the work myself … But I’m glad she’s all right. Truly.’
    The blush was fading from her cheek, but her features had sunk slightly and she looked tired. I glanced over her shoulder, to the kitchen table, and saw the heap of vegetables, now washed and peeled. Then I looked at her hands, and noticed for the first time how spoiled they were, the short nails split and the knuckles reddened. That struck me as something of a shame; for they were rather nice hands, I thought.
    She must have seen the direction of my gaze. She moved as if self-conscious, turning away from me, making a ball of the tea-cloth and tossing it neatly into the kitchen so that it landed on the table beside the muddy tray. ‘Let me take you back upstairs,’ she said, with an air of bringing my visit to a close. And we mounted the stone steps in silence—the dog going with us, getting under our feet, sighing and grunting as he climbed.
    But at the turn of the stairs, where the service door led back on to the terrace, we met Roderick, just coming in.
    ‘Mother’s looking for you, Caroline,’ he said. ‘She’s wondering about tea.’ He nodded to me. ‘Hullo, Faraday. Did you reach a diagnosis? ’
    That ‘Faraday’ grated on me somewhat, given that he was twenty-four and I was nearly forty; but before I could answer, Caroline had moved towards him and looped her arm through his.
    ‘Dr Faraday thinks we’re brutes!’ she said, with a little flutter of her eyelids. ‘He thinks we’ve been forcing Betty up the chimneys, things like that.’
    He smiled faintly. ‘It’s an idea, isn’t it?’
    I said, ‘Betty’s fine. A touch of gastritis.’
    ‘Nothing infectious?’
    ‘Certainly