Read Online The Unsettled Dust by Robert Aickman - Free Book Online

weather was as bleak as ever, with a bitter wind getting up under a cold sky, but Olive wore a sand-coloured shirt, open at the neck, and so old that, when I came up with her, I saw little tears in it. When first I saw her, she was looking up at the great, almost white, heavens while the horse found his own way. There was no reason why she should have taken any notice of my car, nowadays one of so many in the lanes, had I not slowed almost to a stop, because of the horse and because it was Olive. She met my eyes through the windscreen, even smiled a little, and raised her left hand in greeting, like a female centaur. She made no sign of stopping or speaking, but rode slowly on. I watched her for a few seconds through my rear window: noticing the small tears in her shirt, noticing and admiring the straightness of her back, the sleekness of her hair, the perfection of her posture.
    Although I had stayed for a simple lunch with Blantyre, because he seemed lonely and pressed it upon me, and because it hardly seemed worth visiting the river for a short spell of failing light, I arrived back at Clamber Court much earlier than usual. Naturally, the grey Elizabeth looked surprised.
    ‘I’ve been visiting Mr. Blantyre, our local Representative,’ I said.
    It was an explanation that was unlikely to be well received, and Elizabeth’s surprise duly changed to hostility and suspicion .
    ‘Aren’t we doing what they want?’ she asked.
    ‘Of course you are. I was only passing the time of day with him.’
    But I cannot deny that, going along the familiar passage to my room, I felt very quavery. I even hesitated before opening my door. The room, however, was merely much lighter than it usually was when I came back to it.
    An indefensible thought struck me. For the first time, I was more or less alone in the house and it was still daylight. I resolved to look about, starting with the room next to my own. Or at least to try the door. It was better, I thought, to know than not to know.
    Still in my overcoat, I tiptoed back into the passage. There were little cold draughts, and I pushed back my own door as far as it would go. I did not want it to slam and bring upstairs the grey Elizabeth. I did not want it to make a noise of any kind or to shut me out.
    The door of the next room was locked. It was only to be expected. I did something even more indefensible. I removed the key from the lock of my own door and tried it in the lock of the next door. My thought was that when the house had been built, an operation of this kind would have had small chance of success, but that the 1910 contractor who had plainly made big changes, might well have installed new locks that were not merely standard but identical. I was right. The lock stuck a bit, but I made the key turn. I did not just peek in, but threw the door wide open, though, at the same time, I did it as quietly as I could.
    The room was entirely empty of furniture, but the air was charged with moving dust. It was almost as thick as the snow in those snowstorm glasses one used to buy from pedlars in Oxford Street. Moreover, it seemed to move in the same, slow, dreary swirl as moves the toy snow when the glass is reversed and the fall begins. There was a bitter wind outside the house, as I have said, and draughts inside it, but the room was fusty and stuffy, and I could not see how the March wind could explain everything.
    Not that it mattered: at least to begin with; for through the wheeling dust I could see that at the window of the empty room a figure stood with its back to me, looking out towards the park.
    It was Agnes, dressed in her day clothes; and I could see another key of the room lying on the window sill. She had locked herself in. I had been wrong in taking it for granted that at that hour she would every day be occupied with her committees and public works.
    So much time passed while I just gazed through the terrifying dust at Agnes’s motionless back that I really thought I