Silence for the Dead by Simone St. James EPUB & PDF – eBook Details Online
- Status: Available for Free Download
- Authors: St. James
- Language: English
- Genre: Medical Thrillers
- Format: PDF / EPUB
- Size: 2 MB
- Price: Free
ENGLAND, 1919
Portis House emerged from the fog as we approached, showing itself
slowly as a long, low shadow. I leaned my temple against the window of
the motorcar and tried to make it out in the fading light.
The driver watched me crane my neck. “That’s it, for certain,” he said.
“No chance of confusion. There’s nothing else around here.”
I continued to stare. I could barely see cornices now, the slender flutes of
Grecian columns just visible in the gloom. A wide, cool portico, and behind it
ivy climbing walls of pale Georgian stone. The edges faded in the mist, as if
an artist’s thumb had blurred them.
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“A good spot, it is,” the driver went on. My silence seemed to make him
uncomfortable, had done so for miles. “That is, for what they use it for. I
wouldn’t live here myself.” He adjusted the cap on his salt-and-pepper head,
then stroked a thorny finger through his beard. “Table’s low here, so it gets
wet. These fogs come off the water. It all ices over terrible in winter.”
I pulled away from the window and tilted my head back against the seat,
watching through the front windscreen as the house came closer. We jolted
over the long, muddy drive. “Then why,” I asked, “is it a good spot?”
He paused in surprise. I tried to remember when I’d spoken last since I’d
hired him at the train station, and couldn’t. “Well, for those fellows, of
course,” he said after a moment. “The mad ones. Keeps ’em away from
everyone, doesn’t it? And the bridge from the mainland means they’ve
nowhere to go.”
It was true. The bridge was long and narrow, exposed to the wind that
had buffeted us mercilessly as we navigated its length. Any man who
attempted to reach the mainland on foot would be risking his neck. I
wondered whether anyone had tried and fallen to his death in the churning
ocean below. I opened my mouth to ask, then shut it again.
The driver seemed not to notice. “It wasn’t built as a hospital, you see.
That’s what I mean. It was built as a home, and not too long ago, either.
Twenty years, give or take. Family named Gersbach, with children, too. God
knows how they did it out here. Four hours on the train from Newcastle on
Tyne to town, and then over that bridge. No place for a child, I say. No one
saw them much, and no wonder—it was all they could do to get supplies
from the mainland, and they never could keep servants for long. I guess
there’s no explaining the rich. They left during the war. I hear they were
standoffish folk. Typical for Germans.”
We were drawing up to the house now, and he steered the motorcar
around the drive, headed for the front portico. We circled a stone fountain in
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