In Accordance With The Evidence [Paperback]

Oliver Onions (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 31, 2008

IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE EVIDENCE - 1919 - CONTENTS - PaRT I HOLBORN PART I1 WOBURN PLACE PART 111 THE GARR ET IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE EVIDENCE I T seems strangely liEe old times to me to be making these jottings in Pitmans shorthand. I was surprised to find I remembered as much of it as I do, for-I dropped it suddenly when Archie Merridew died, and Archies clear, high-pitch voice was the last that ever dictated to me for speed, h. while I myself have not dictated since Archie took down his last message from my reading. That will be-say a dozen years or more ago next Angust. It may be a little more, or a little less. Nor, since I do not keep it as an anniversary, does the day of the month matter. Either in my rooms or his, we had a good deal of this sort of practise together about that time, young Archie and I-reading aloud, taking down and transcribing. I am wrong in speaking of my 66 rooms though I had only one, a third-floor bedroom near the very noisiest corner of Kings Cross. It was just opposite one of these running electric advertisements that changed from green to red and from red to green three times every minute you know them there are plenty of them now, but they were new then. The street was narrow this horrible thing was at a rounded corner not more than five and twenty yards away and even when my lamp was lighted it still tinged my ceiling and the upper part of the wall above my bed, red and green, red and green-for I had only a little muslin halfcurtain and no blind, and if I wanted to read in bed I had either to turn my lamp out until I had undressed or else to undress i n a corner by the window side of the room, because of being overlooked from across the way. I dont think there were any other lodgers in the house. It was a pub, the Coburg, but I could get on to the staircase without going through the bars on the ground floor, and always did so. The rather sour smell of these lower parts. of my abode reached me up my three flights of stairs, but I had got used to that. It was the noise that was the worst exeept, of course, that red and green fiend of an advertisement-the noise that greeted me when I woke of a morning, awaited me when I came back from Rixon Tebb Masters at night, and often became maddening when, at half-past twelve, they clashed to the iron gates of the public-house and turned the topers out into the street, to fraternise or quarrel for half-an-hour or more beneath my window. But we worked more in Archie Merridews rooms than in mine. Rooms is correct here. He had the whole top floor of a house near the Foundling Hospital, a pretty house with a fan-lighted ivygreen door, early Georgian, a brightly twinkling brass knocker and bellpulls, and a white-washed area inside the railings to make the basement lighter. His folks lived at Guildford his father paid his rent for him, thirty-eight pounds n year and his pleasant quarters under the roof had everything that mine hadnt-he could sit outside on the coped. leads d e n the weather was hot, draw up cosily to a fireplace shaped something like a Queen Anne teapot when b i t was cold, and the ceiling, truncated along one side, didnt begin to turn red and green the moment the twilight came. It gives me a shiver to think how atrociously poor I was in those days. More and more of that too comes back with the half-forgotten shorthand...

Product Details

• Paperback: 284 pages
• Publisher: Read Books (January 31, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1408614227
• ISBN-13: 978-1408614228
• Product Dimensions: 7 x 5 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)

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