† level 3 - The Locked Room - Penguin Readers.pdf - Level 3 - Pre-Intermediate - Gichon

Contents

page

Introduction

Chapter 1 The Ash-Tree

Chapter 2 A School Story

Chapter 3 The Curtains

Chapter 4 The Flies

Chapter 5 The Locked Room

Chapter 6 The Painting of—ngley Hall

Chapter 7 Lost Hearts

Chapter 8 Martin's Lake

Chapter 9 The Two Cousins

Activities

Introduction

He jumped and screamed and, as he did, the face of (he thing came up

towards him: no eyes, no nose, no mouth. He screamed again and rushed

to the door. He felt the thing touch his back and start to tear at his

shirt...

fixings ... things in the night, things in the house, screaming,

running, staring ... In these stories there are things that are worse

than your worst dreams.

Giant black spiders living in a tree. The terrible ghost that

waits outside a window. Empty clothes that walk. The strange

thin woman who moves through a man's picture. The boy with

the long, dirty fingernails - and a hole in his chest. The woman

who screams from the bottom of a lake. And the dry dusty old

man who reads - but has no eyes!

Here are nine stories like no others you have read.

Montague Rhodes James was born in 1862 in a village in Kent,

in the south of England, where his father was a vicar. From an

early age, he loved old books and studied history, the Bible,

languages and the books of past centuries at Cambridge

University. He studied, lived and worked at the University from

1882 to 1918.

He began to write ghost and horror stories after reading the

stories of Irish writer Sheridan Le Fanu. From the early 1890s, he

read one of his own stories to friends at Christmas every year. His

great knowledge of history gave his stories an unusual amount of

detail and his ghosts seem more real, and are more frightening,

than those of almost any other writer.

M.R.James died in 1936.

Chapter 1 The Ash-Tree

Visitors to Castringham Hall in Suffolk will find it almost

unchanged from the days when our story took place. They can

still see the beautiful old house with its gardens and lake.

However, the one thing missing is the ash-tree, which used so

stand, proud and tall, in front of the house, its branches almost

touching the walls.

This story begins in 1690 with a strange, lonely old woman.

Mrs Mothersole, who was found guilty of being a witch. Sir

Matthew Fell, the owner of Castringham Hall at that time,

described how she used to climb into the ash-tree outside his

bedroom every time there was a full moon. He said that she

usually carried a strange knife to cut off parts of the tree and that

she talked to herself. Once he followed her home, but she

disappeared and when he knocked on the door of her house, she

came downstairs in her night clothes looking sleepy. He and the

villagers agreed that it was certain she did these things by magic

and so she was hanged. Before she died, she fought and shouted,

and her last strange words were:'There will be guests at the Hall.'

After the hanging, Sir Matthew felt uncomfortable and guilt)',

and he told his friend the vicar about his worries. 'You did the

right thing. Sir Matthew,' were the wise words of the vicar. 'I'm

sure she was a dangerous woman.' Sir Matthew felt happier.

That evening, Sir Matthew and the vicar went for a walk in

the gardens of Castringham Hall. It was the night of the full

moon. As they were returning to the house, Sir Matthew pointed

to the ash-tree in great surprise. 'What kind of animal is that

running down the ash-tree? It looks very strange.'

The vicar only saw the moving animal for a moment, but he

thought that it had more than four legs. He shook his head. 'I

thing and could offer no real explanation for Sir Matthew's death.

When he heard the news, the vicar rushed to Castringham

Hall, and, while he was waiting to hear the doctor's opinion, he

looked at Sir Matthew's Bible, which was lying on a table by the

dead mans bedside. He opened the book and the first words he

read were from the book of Luke, chapter 8: 'Cut it down' were

the words he read.

•

'What kind of animal is that running down the ash-tree? It looks

very strange.'

The servants locked Sir Matthew's room that day and it stayed

locked up for the next forty years. By that time, Sir Richard Fell,

Sir Matthews grandson, was living at Castringham Hall. He

enjoyed spending money, especially on rebuilding parts of the

Hall. He also decided to make the local church bigger so that his

family could have a fine new seat in the new part of the church.

In order to complete this building work, some of the graves in the

graveyard had to be moved. One of the graves was that of Mrs

Mothersole, the old witch who began this story. The villagers

were excited about the opening of her grave and a crowd came to

watch. However, they and the workmen were amazed to find the

grave completely empty: no body, no bones, no dust.

At about this time, Sir Richard started to sleep very badly. The

wind made his fire smoke and the curtains move and, because his

room faced east, the sun woke him up early in the morning. One

morning he asked his servant to help him choose a better room and

he made a tour of the house, finding something wrong with each

room. Each one was either too cold or too noisy or it faced the

wrong direction. Finally, he found himself outside his grandfather's

old room. His servant tried to persuade him not to go in:

must be tired,' he thought to himself. 'After all, what animal has

more than four legs?' He said nothing to Sir Matthew, but just

wished him good night.

The next morning, Sir Matthew's servants were surprised not

to find him downstairs at his usual time of six o'clock. When

seven o'clock and then eight o'clock passed, they began to suspect

that something was terribly wrong and they went up to his

bedroom. The door was locked. After knocking several times and

still getting no answer from inside, they broke down the door and

entered, to find that thei fears were right. Sir Matthew's body lay

on the bed, dead and completely black. There were no wounds or

other marks on him and everything in the room looked as usual,

except that the window was wide open. His servants at first

suspected poison but the doctor who was called found no such

'It's a bad room, sir. They say terrible things happened in there,

and no one has opened the door since the death of your

grandfather. Also, the ash-tree is right outside the window and

that's always unlucky, sir.'

† level 3 - The Locked Room - Penguin Readers.pdf

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