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The villagers of Little Hangleton still called it "the Riddle
House," even though it had been many years since the Riddle family
had lived there. It stood on a hill overlooking the village, some of
its windows boarded, tiles missing from its roof, and ivy spreading
unchecked over its face. Once a fine-looking manor, and easily the
largest and grandest building for miles around, the Riddle House was
now damp, derelict, and unoccupied.
The Little Hangletons all agreed that
the old house was "creepy." Half a century ago, something strange
and horrible had happened there, something that the older
inhabitants of the village still liked to discuss when topics for
gossip were scarce. The story had been picked over so many times,
and had been embroidered in so many places, that nobody was quite
sure what the truth was anymore. Every version of the tale, however,
started in the same place: Fifty years before, at daybreak on a fine
summer's morning, when theRiddle House had still been well kept and
impressive, a maid had entered the drawing room to find all three
Riddles dead. |
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The maid had run screaming down the hill into the village and roused
as many people as she could. "Lying there with their eyes wide open!
Cold as ice! Still in their dinner things!" The police were summoned, and the whole of Little Hangleton
had seethed with shocked curiosity and ill-disguised excitement.
Nobody wasted their breath pretending to feel very sad about the
Riddles, for they had been most unpopular. Elderly Mr. and Mrs.
Riddle had been rich, snobbish, and rude, and their grown-up son,
Tom, had been, if anything, worse. All the villagers cared about was
the identity oftheir murderer for plainly, three apparently healthy
people did not all drop dead of natural causes on the same night. The Hanged Man, the village pub, did a roaring trade that
night; the whole village seemed to have turned out to discuss the
murders. They were rewarded for leaving their firesides when the
Riddles' cook arrived dramatically in their midst and announced to
the suddenly silent pub that a man called Frank Bryce had just been
arrested. |
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