Читать онлайн «Fireside Gothic»
Автор Эндрю Тейлор
ANDREW TAYLOR
Copyright
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it, while at times based on historical fact, are the work of the author’s imagination.
HarperCollins
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London SE1 9GF
Published by HarperCollins
Copyright © Andrew Taylor 2016
Andrew Taylor asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
Cover design by Dominic Forbes © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2016
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books
Source ISBN: 9780008171230
Ebook Edition © NOVEMBER 2016 ISBN: 9780008179731
Version: 2016-10-04
Dedication
Table of Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Author’s Note
Broken Voices
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
The Leper House
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
The Scratch
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Keep Reading …
About the Author
By the Same Author
About the Publisher
This is the first time these three stories have appeared in print, and the first time they have been collected together. They were originally commissioned separately as Kindle Single ebooks and written over several years.
With the benefit of hindsight, however, it’s obvious that the stories share common themes. Perhaps fate intended them to bring them together all along.
BROKEN VOICES
1
Was there a ghost? Was there, in a manner of speaking, a murder?
Ask me these questions and I cannot answer a simple yes or no. I did not know at the time and now, more than forty years later, I am even less able to answer them.
Perhaps an easier question is this: what exactly do I remember about Faraday and me in the few days we were together? Those years before the war seem so remote now. The First World War, that is, the one that was meant to end them all.He and I didn’t know each other long, not properly – four or five days, perhaps. And nights, of course. I suppose there must be records – a report in the local newspaper, surely, and a police file. Perhaps letters from Faraday’s guardian. There must also have been correspondence between the school and my parents, but I found no trace of it after my mother died. We never spoke of it when she was alive, not directly, and my father wasn’t able to speak about anything after they brought him back from France in 1915.
