Читать книгу Off With His Head - Ngaio Marsh, Stella Duffy - Страница 16

That night, Camilla slept uneasily. Her shallow dreams were beset with dead dogs that stood watchfully between herself and Ralph or horridly danced with bells strapped to their rigid legs. The Five Sons of the photograph behind the bar parlour door also appeared to her with Mrs Bünz mysteriously nodding and the hermaphrodite who slyly offered to pop his great skirt over Camilla and carry her off. Then ‘Crack’, the Hobby Horse, came hugely to the fore. His bird-like head enlarged itself and snapped at Camilla. He charged out of her dream, straight at her. She woke with a thumping heart.

The Mardian church clock was striking twelve. A blob of light danced on the window curtain. Down in the yard somebody must be walking about with a lanthorn. She heard the squeak of trampled snow accompanied by a drag and a shuffle. Camilla, now wide awake, listened uneasily. They kept early hours at the Green Man. Squeak, squelch, drag, shuffle and still the light dodged on the curtain. Cold as it was, she sat up in the bed, pulled aside the curtain and looked down.

The sound she made resembled the parched and noiseless scream of a sleeper. As well it might: for there below by the light of a hurricane lanthorn her dream repeated itself. ‘Crack’, the Hobby Horse, was abroad in the night.