Free The Dying of the Light: A Mystery by Michael Dibdin

become her friends – about what would happen in the event of her death. ‘I’ve left it all to William,’ she’d explained, ‘but only on condition that all of you continue to be properly looked after for the remainder of your lifetimes.’ This stipulation had in fact been the original germ of the murder story. As Rosemary had remarked to Dorothy one day, Mrs Anderson had, with the best intentions in the world, given her son a perfect motive to kill them all.
    It was this which gave Rosemary every confidence that, whatever might happen to other letters, those between her and Dorothy would be allowed through. She proposed to offer Anderson an arrangement to their mutual advantage. As long as Dorothy continued to receive Rosemary’s letters endorsed with a scathing comment or two on the suggestions Dot had appended to her last ( Surely you would have heard anyone going into Purvey’s room, Rose? Mrs Hargreaves presumably didn’t know that that mug contained the poisoned cocoa. As for what Channing says he heard, that sounds like a red herring. ) then her lips would remain sealed about conditions at Eventide Lodge. But if there was any unexplained hiatus or delay, Dorothy would ask to speak to the chief consultant in confidence, and the next thing Anderson would know the police would be at the door.
    Rosemary was well aware that in making such an agreement she was sacrificing the interests of the other residents – not to mention her own – to ensure Dorothy’s peace of mind. She would have found this impossible to justify to herself, let alone anyone else, she realized as she dressed hurriedly, but the question simply did not arise. There was nothing else she could do. In hospital Dorothy would have the best of medical care, but nothing and no one could replace the complex network of fact and fiction which Rosemary had woven into the intimate fabric of her friend’s consciousness. By manipulating those narrative strings like a loving puppeteer, she could influence events even at a distance, curtailing Dorothy’s isolation, limiting the inevitable pain and damage, protecting, distracting, consoling. She knew Dorothy better than anyone else in the world, she reflected with justifiable pride as she closed the door to her room and stepped out into the corridor. There was nothing her friend could do or think or feel or suffer that she could not foresee and counter.
    The house was perfectly silent and deserted at that early hour. Rosemary stepped lightly along the strip of red linoleum, past doors giving on to bedrooms still in use or given over to dust and spiders. At one point there was a low window with a breathtaking view of the parkland at the front of the Lodge, trees, walls and hedges melting insubstantially into a dense layer of low mist above which the sun rose in a pale blue sky. Rosemary reluctantly turned aside to enter the dark plasterboard cubicle opposite. She hesitated a moment before George Channing’s door, then tapped lightly on the other side. There was no answer. She turned the handle quietly and stepped inside.
    On this side of the house, cut off from the sun, the dim light made it seem several hours earlier, but the formless mass of the covers revealed that Dorothy was still in bed. Rosemary breathed a sigh of relief. At the back of her mind all along had been the fear that her friend might have spent a sleepless night pacing the floor in growing panic at the prospect facing her. In that case, she might well have been so distraught by now that any attempts to help would have been in vain. The last thing Rosemary wanted to do was to deprive her friend of a single moment of healing rest. All she planned was to be there when the sleeper awoke, ready to offer succour and support.
    The room smelt stuffy and unclean. Rosemary went over to the window and raised the bottom sash to allow the clean morning air to flow in. A low growl raised the hairs on her arms and the nape of her neck. In the wilderness