CHAPTER 25

WHAT THE HOUSE HEARD

As Lucy slept, the house was still and silent. And for a long time there was no sound at all…

… and then there was a noise so quiet that it was not a creak or even the ghost of a creak, but maybe the memory of a ghost of a movement–and a very dim memory at that.

It was the air riffling past Lucy Harker walking through the night, silently. Her eyes were open but unseeing, as if still asleep. As she walked her gloved hand flexed repeatedly, as though loosening up for some delicate operation, like a pianist before a recital, and then closed purposefully on the door-handle to the Red Library and began to turn it.