Hours Before Dawn (eBook)

Celia Fremlin (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2017 | 1. Auflage
192 Seiten
Faber & Faber (Verlag)
978-0-571-33813-9 (ISBN)

Infos

WATERSTONES THRILLER OF THE MONTH AUTHOR: 'Britain's Patricia Highsmith' (Sunday Times) Discover the original psychological thriller as a sleep-deprived young mother struggles to stay sane. 'A lost masterpiece.' Peter Swanson 'Brilliant ... Such clever, witty writing.' Elly Griffiths 'Fremlin packs a punch.' Ian Rankin 'Splendid ... Got me hooked.' Ruth Rendell 'A slow-burning chill of a read by a master of suspense.' Janice Hallett 'The grandmother of psycho-domestic noir; Britain's Patricia Highsmith.' Sunday Times Louise would give anything - anything - for a good night's sleep. Forget the girls running errant in the garden and bothering the neighbours. Forget her husband who seems oblivious to it all. If the baby would just stop crying, everything would be fine. Or would it? What if Louise's growing fears about the family's new lodger, who seems to share all of her husband's interests, are real? What could she do, and would anyone even believe her? Maybe, if she could get just get some rest, she'd be able to think straight . . . WINNER OF THE 1960 EDGAR AWARD FOR BEST MYSTERY NOVEL 'Barbara Pym with arsenic.' Clare Chambers 'Sinister, witty and utterly compelling. A genius.' Nicola Upson

Celia Fremlin (1914-2009) was born in Kent and spent her childhood in Hertfordshire, before studying at Oxford (whilst working as a charwoman). During World War Two, she served as an air-raid warden before becoming involved with the Mass Observation Project, collaborating on a study of women workers, War Factory. In 1942 she married Elia Goller, moved to Hampstead and had three children. In 1968, their youngest daughter committed suicide aged 19; a month later, her husband also killed himself. In the wake of these tragedies, Fremlin briefly relocated to Geneva. In 1985, she married Leslie Minchin, with whom she lived until his death in 1999. Over four decades, Fremlin wrote sixteen celebrated novels - including the classic summer holiday seaside mystery Uncle Paul (1959) - one book of poetry and three story collections. Her debut The Hours Before Dawnwon the Edgar Award in 1960.

Rezensionen

It grips like grim death.

Celia Fremlin is an astonishing writer, who explores that nightmare country where brain, mind and self battle to establish the truth. She illuminates her dark world with acute perception and great wit.

Highly intelligent entertainment, beautifully written with wit and humour.

Tightly plotted and admirably concise... Fremlin expertly ratchets up the tension, notch by notch.

Textauszug

CHAPTER TWO

It would, of course, happen that the new tenant should arrive at exactly the moment when Mark got back from work, tired and irritable. And it was equally inevitable that this moment should be the very one when Louise had at last decided to bring the howling Christine indoors, and both prams were now wedged across the narrow hall, locked by their mud-guards in a dismal and indissoluble embrace. This was the moment, too, chosen by Margery to sit on the bottom step of the stairs and pick bread and jam off her socks – the result of Harriet’s Teddy bear’s tea having been laid out in its usual place – on the floor just inside the kitchen door. What with one thing and another, Louise could hardly wonder that Mark should give her one hunted glance, and disappear headlong into the kitchen. She had only time for a fleeting, desperate hope that he had not landed, as Margery had done, in the middle of Teddy’s bread and jam, before she had to turn and greet the tall figure silhouetted in the doorway.

‘Mrs Henderson?’ the figure was saying, in the clear, decisive tones of one used to commanding attention. ‘I’m Vera Brandon. I telephoned yesterday—’

‘Yes. How nice. I mean, do come up. Come and see the room—’ Exerting what felt like a degree of physical strength equal to throwing a sack of coal across the hall, Louise radiated silent will-power in four directions at once: to Margery to get herself and her jammy socks off the stairs without any of that laboured discussion with which Margery always liked to surround herself and her doings: to Harriet to keep her shrill argument with her father well behind the closed kitchen door: to Michael to slobber over his sodden rusk for a few minutes longer before dropping it through the bars of the playpen and screaming: and to Christine to remain in the state of stunned silence to which the appearance of so many strangers at once had fortunately reduced her.

The will-power worked – as it always does, thought Louise, when you put every ounce of strength you’ve got into it, and leave yourself weak and empty – and she conducted the visitor upstairs to the vacant room – the Rubbish Room as the children still persisted in calling it, in spite of the fact that it had been cleared out some days since and furnished in readiness for its new occupant. And, as it happened, this title turned out to be a good deal more appropriate than Louise could have wished, and she began to apologise to her rather disconcertingly silent visitor:

‘I’m sorry we haven’t quite got the shelves cleared yet,’ she explained nervously. ‘Those are my mother-in-law’s books, she’s fetching them at the week-end. And of course the dolls’ pram will be gone, too, and that – that—’ Louise sought for the right word to indicate the swaying structure of cardboard grocery boxes in which Harriet had spent a happy afternoon last week being a Tiger in its Den. Mark had been quite right, of course. He had always said that she shouldn’t let the children come up here and play while there was no tenant. They’d only get into the habit of it, he’d said, and there’d be an awful job keeping them out after the room was let. But it was such a temptation, especially at week-ends, when Mark himself wanted some peace and quiet in the sitting-room. And she’d been so sure that she would remember to clear everything away before anyone came to look at the room. She would have remembered, too, if only it hadn’t been for Mark dashing home unexpectedly for lunch, today of all days, just when she had to be at the clinic by half past one. And then Christine this evening…. Oh, well, it couldn’t be helped now; and if this woman didn’t like it, there were plenty of other people looking for rooms nowadays.

But Miss Brandon didn’t seem to care at all; nor did she show any dismay at learning that there was only a gas ring to cook on, and that she would have to do all her washing-up at the minute hand-basin on the landing. Louise was a little surprised. Miss Brandon, in both voice and appearance, gave the impression of being a successful woman of the world, both critical and self-assured; not at all the sort of person whom one would expect to choose for her home an inconvenient, ill-equipped attic in someone else’s house. Louise felt suddenly ill at ease. She had expected a different kind of applicant altogether – a young art student, perhaps, who would giggle happily about her hardships, and boast to her friends that she was starving in a garret. Or one of those silent young men whom you never see on the stairs, who never have any washing, and who have all their meals out. Or maybe someone elderly – this was what Louise had visualised when this woman had spoken to her on the phone, and told her that she was a schoolteacher. Someone past middle-age, Louise had thought, perhaps on the verge of retiring. Someone who had learned slowly and painfully – or maybe proudly, and with undefeated courage – to accept without complaint all the numerous small discomforts that life brought her way.

But Miss Brandon did not fit this picture at all. As to her age, it was difficult to tell. She could hardly be much past forty, Louise thought, watching her visitor glancing round the room with an odd sort of impatience; not so much as if she thought the room was inadequate, but rather as if she was completely indifferent to it, and was irritated only by the necessity for making a decision.

‘I’ll take it,’ she said brusquely, without either prodding the bed for broken springs or peering under it for spider-webs – actions which Louise had always understood tenants to perform before they rented rooms. ‘When can I come in?’

‘Well – that is – of course—’ Louise stammered a little under Miss Brandon’s clear, commanding gaze – ‘just as soon as you like. Except that my mother-in-law won’t be fetching her books till the week-end, and so—’

‘Never mind about that,’ said Miss Brandon, still with this air of restrained impatience. ‘I shan’t need those shelves. I haven’t a lot of books of my own just now. Tell your mother-in-law she can fetch them whenever it suits her. I shall have no objection.’

The remark, still more the manner of it, struck Louise as a trifle arrogant – rather like the mistress of the house giving instructions to her housekeeper. Then she remembered that Miss Brandon was, after all, a schoolteacher, and the giving of instructions probably occupied the greater part of her waking life, and this manner had no doubt become habitual. All the same, it was odd that a woman so self-assured should display so little interest in the amenities (or lack of them) in the place she proposed to make her home. With almost perverse honesty, Louise began pointing out the disadvantages of the room: the low, sloping ceiling; the lack of storage space – the only built-in cupboard being shallow and inconvenient, with a jagged hole in the plaster at the top which the men still hadn’t come to mend.

But Miss Brandon seemed quite unperturbed – or, rather, uninterested. Indeed, she seemed to find Louise’s frankness merely irritating, and she brushed it aside impatiently, simply repeating that she wished to take the room. Her only concern seemed to be that she should come in soon – say tomorrow evening?

This being agreed, the two set off down the stairs again, Louise making rapid calculations about how to fit in the cleaning and preparing of the room tomorrow. Mark would definitely be home for lunch, which meant extra cooking; and the scullery and passage simply must be scrubbed – they couldn’t go another day….

At the foot of the stairs, Miss Brandon seemed suddenly to lose her air of restive indifference. ‘Good God!’ she exclaimed.

Louise really couldn’t feel surprised at the exclamation. Anyone other than a mother must surely be horrified at the sight of a baby in the position in which Christine Hooper had managed to get herself. There she lay, sound asleep, her head hanging over the edge of the pram, and her spine bent backwards at an angle which must surely have resulted in instant death to anyone much over seven months old. Louise, of course, recognised these symptoms as indicating merely that Christine was all set to sleep peacefully for hours; but she appreciated that to a less experienced eye the situation might look alarming.

‘It’s all right,’ she began hastily; but Miss Brandon was already bending over the pram, rearranging the outraged Christine into the comfortable position which babies so detest. ‘She’s all right, really,’ repeated Louise, as Miss Brandon, her strong features flushed with stooping, straightened herself, and looked accusingly at Louise.

‘This isn’t your baby, is it?’ she said.

‘Why – no,’ answered Louise, rather taken aback. ‘I’m just looking after her for a friend of mine—’ She stopped rather awkwardly, realising that ‘looking after’ must seem to her listener something of an exaggeration. It was true that she had abandoned Christine and her pram rather unceremoniously in the middle of the hall when the visitor arrived; but what else could she do, with the doorbell ringing, and Mark arriving home, and such pandemonium everywhere? And anyway, hadn’t Mrs Hooper assured her that Christine could be left in her pram...

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 3.7.2017
• Vorwort: Laura Wilson
• Verlagsort: London
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Literatur ► Krimi / Thriller / Horror ► Krimi / Thriller
• Themenwelt: Literatur ► Romane / Erzählungen
• Schlagworte: Alfred Hitchcock • Celia Fremlin • Edgar Award • Original Psychological Thriller
• ISBN-10: 0-571-33813-5 / 0571338135
• ISBN-13: 978-0-571-33813-9 / 9780571338139