There Are Doors (10)

It’s Richard’s house in the little square mews in Notting Hill. Was once Richard’s house. For of course Richard is long dead. Edna Sharrow is not so mad that she does not know that.

Poor charming courtly Richard and his coterie. She remembers the delightful evening when the Leader held court here. A splendid man, holding all of them in thrall. As powerful in his way as Edna, then just a smidgeon over sixty and sitting neat and tidy as a closed clasp knife in a corner of the room. The Leader so tall and handsome, and his beautiful wife, and his wife’s mad daughter, who whispered to Edna, I know you.

But why is she here now? She had been at the door of her enemy. His house in Princelet Street, shuttered and quiet. And here she is without any memory of transition, like finding herself on the wrong page of her own story.

Something bad happened, she thinks, and in her panic she fled and came here, looking for help. But Richard hung himself in his prison cell on the day when he and all the rest of the world learned that the Fuhrer had committed suicide, and time has taken care of all his friends.

For the first time since breaking her long seclusion and stepping out into the world Edna feels afraid.

Part 1 2