“The exception to the notable spotlessness of the neighborhood was No.13, a house in the centre of the side opposite to the entrance. Its windows were dusty, and without blinds or curtains, there were no flower-boxes on the ledges, the steps lacked whitewash, and the iron railings looked rusty for want of paint. Stray straws and scraps of paper found their way down the area, where the cracked pavement was damp with green slime. Such beggars as occasionally wandered into the square, to the scandal of its inhabitants, camped on the doorstep; and the very door itself presented a battered, dissolute appearance…”
A real page-turner from Fergusson Wright Hume, an English novelist of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. “The Silent House” was published in 1899, and tells a story of a mysterious murder in a not less mysterious house, which is said to be haunted. This is one of those books that will keep the reader guessing till the very last page.