She stared at him, blood draining from her face. ‘What d’you mean? Who are they? What is it to do with me?’
‘They appear to have been – it looks as if they were buried under the floorboards of the old part of the house – in an upper part. It was not altogether destroyed – a part of the floor remained so that they – did not fall. It appears to have been a man and a woman, and they appear to have been – done to death.’
Her heart was thumping and she felt as if she must suffocate.
He lowered his window. ‘Take it easy, my dear. It never occurred to me – but I suppose it was always on the cards.’
‘No, Christopher!’ she exclaimed. ‘No! You’re jumping to conclusions! How can the police know who – how can anyone know? It might – might be anyone – the house is a hundred and fifty years old – it’s not possible – any sort of explanation! You know there might be . . .’
He took her hand and held it.
‘It’s not – that way, I’m afraid. My dear, my dear, I’m so sorry, but it’s not that way. You see . . . both the bodies were wearing wartime identity discs.’
She stared at him again – at his pale, lean, bony face, as if there were some falsehood in it that she might discern. But she only saw truth.
‘Oh no, Christopher!’ she said, and put her hands to her face as if to blot out all sight.
He said: ‘Quietly, my dear, quietly.’
‘Oh, no, Christopher,’ she said again, and tears began to drip through her fingers.
Presently she raised her head and stared across at the ruins of the house and said: ‘So she’s won after all.’
Christopher did not need to be told that the ‘she’ referred to wasn’t Althea Syme. He sat quietly without speaking for a long time, temporarily content that the girl beside him was at least alive and safe, and uncomfortably aware in the presence of her distress, of the hope growing within him that he too had won.
WOMAN IN THE MIRROR
Winston Graham is the author of more than thirty novels, which include Cordelia, Night Without Stars, Marnie and The Walking Stick as well as the highly successful Poldark series. His novels have been translated into seventeen languages and six have been filmed. Two television series have been made of the Poldark novels and shown in twenty-two countries. The Stranger From the Sea has now also been televised. Tremor, Winston Graham’s latest best-seller, is also available from Pan Books.
Winston Graham lives in Sussex. He is a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and in 1983 was awarded an OBE.
By the same author
DEMELZA
JEREMY POLDARK
WARLEGGAN
THE BLACK MOON
THE FOUR SWANS
THE ANGRY TIDE
THE STRANGER FROM THE SEA
THE MILLER’S DANCE
THE LOVING CUP THE TWISTED SWORD
NIGHT JOURNEY
CORDELIA
THE FORGOTTEN STORY
THE MERCILESS LADIES
NIGHT WITHOUT STARS
TAKE MY LIFE FORTUNE IS A WOMAN
THE LITTLE WALLS
GREEK FIRE
THE TUMBLED HOUSE
MARNIE
THE GROVE OF EAGLES
AFTER THE ACT
THE WALKING STICK
ANGELL, PEARL AND LITTLE GOD
THE JAPANESE GIRL (short stories)
THE GREEN FLASH
CAMEO
STEPHANIE
TREMOR
THE SPANISH ARMADAS POLDARK’S CORNWALL
First published 1975 by The Bodley Head Ltd
This edition published 1997 by Pan Books
This electronic edition published 2012 by Pan Books
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ISBN 978-1-447-20729-0 EPUB
Copyright © Winston Graham 1975
The right of Winston Graham to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
The author is grateful to J.M. Dent & Sons Ltd and the Trustees for the Copyrights of the late Dylan Thomas for permission to quote one verse of ‘And Death Shall Have No Dominion’ from The Collected Poems of Dylan Thomas
Some of this book is based on an earlier novel by the author, The Giant’s Chair, published in 1938.
You may not copy, store, distribute, transmit, reproduce or otherwise make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or by any means (electronic, digital, optical, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
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