1 The Riddle House

—CHAPTER ONE— The Riddle House The villagers of Little Hangleton still called it 'the Riddle House', even though it had been many years since the Riddle family had lived there. It stood on a hill overlooking the village, some of its windows boarded, tiles missing from its roof, and ivy spreading unchecked over its face. Once a fine-looking manor, and easily the largest and grandest building for miles around, the Riddle House was now damp, derelict and unoccupied. The Little Hangletons all agreed that the old house was 'creepy'. Half a century ago, something strange and horrible had happened there, something that the older inhabitants of the village still liked to discuss when topics for gossip were

小汉格顿的村民们仍然称它为“里德尔之家”，尽管里德尔一家已经多年没有住在这里了。 它坐落在一座小山上，俯瞰着整个村庄，一些窗户被钉上了木板，屋顶上的瓦片不见了，常春藤在它的脸上肆意蔓延。 里德尔府曾经是一座漂亮的庄园，毫无疑问是方圆几英里内最大、最宏伟的建筑，现在却潮湿、荒废、无人居住。 小汉格顿家的人都认为那座老房子“令人毛骨悚然”。 半个世纪前，这里发生了一件奇怪而可怕的事情，村里的老居民在闲谈时仍然喜欢谈论这件事

scarce. The story had been picked over so many times, and had been embroidered in so many places, that nobody was quite sure what the truth was any more. Every version of the tale, however, started in the same place: fifty years before, at daybreak on a fine summer's morning, when the Riddle House had still been well kept and impressive, and a maid had entered the drawing room to find all three Riddles dead. The maid had run screaming down the hill into the village, and roused as many people as she could. 'Lying there with their eyes wide open! Cold as ice! Still in their dinner things!' The police were summoned, and the whole of Little Hangleton had seethed with shocked curiosity and ill-disguised excitement. Nobody wasted their breath pretending to feel very sad about the Riddles, for they had been most unpopular. Elderly Mr and Mrs Riddle had been rich, snobbish and rude, and their grown-up son, Tom, had been even more so. All the villagers cared about was the identity of their murderer–

稀缺。这个故事被重复了很多次，在很多地方被添枝加节，没有人能确定真相是什么。 然而，这个故事的每一个版本都是从同一个地方开始的：五十年前，一个晴朗的夏日早晨的黎明，当时里德尔府还保存得很好，令人印象深刻，一个女仆走进客厅，发现里德尔三人都死了。 女仆尖叫着跑下山坡，进了村子，尽可能多地唤醒了人们。 “躺在那里，眼睛睁得大大的！”像冰一样冷！还穿着他们的晚餐服！”警察被召来了，整个小汉格顿都充满了震惊的好奇和难以掩饰的兴奋。 没有人白费口舌假装为里德尔一家感到难过，因为他们一直很不受欢迎。 老里德尔夫妇有钱、势利、粗鲁，他们已经成年的儿子汤姆更是如此。 村民们关心的只是凶手的身份

plainly, three apparently healthy people did not all drop dead of natural causes on the same night. The Hanged Man, the village pub, did a roaring trade that night; the whole village had turned out to discuss the murders. They were rewarded for leaving their firesides when the Riddles' cook arrived dramatically in their midst, and announced to the suddenly silent pub that a man called Frank Bryce had just been arrested. 'Frank!' cried several people. 'Never!' Frank Bryce was the Riddles' gardener. He lived alone in a run-down cottage in the Riddle House grounds. Frank had come back from the war with a very stiff leg and a great dislike of crowds and loud noises, and had been working for the Riddles ever since. There was a rush to buy the cook drinks, and hear more details. 'Always thought he was odd,' she told the eagerly listening villagers, after her fourth sherry. 'Unfriendly, like. I'm sure if I've offered him a cuppa once, I've offered it a hundred times. ikcjeo. Never wanted to mix, he didn't.'

显然，三个看起来很健康的人并不是在同一个晚上自然死亡的。 那天晚上，村里的小酒馆“绞刑架”生意兴隆；全村的人都出来讨论谋杀案。 当里德尔家的厨师戏剧性地出现在他们中间，向突然安静下来的酒馆宣布，一个名叫弗兰克·布莱斯的人刚刚被捕时，他们离开了壁炉，得到了奖励。 “弗兰克!几个人叫道。 “从来没有!”弗兰克·布莱斯是里德尔家的园丁。 他一个人住在里德尔府院子里一间破旧的小屋里。 弗兰克从战场上回来后，腿僵了，非常讨厌人群和嘈杂的声音，从那以后就一直在里德尔家干活。 大家争先恐后地给厨师买饮料，想听听更多的细节。 喝完第四杯雪利酒后，她对急切倾听的村民们说：“我一直觉得他很奇怪。” 喜欢,不友好。我敢肯定，如果我请他喝过一次茶，我肯定会请他喝一百次。 他从来不想混在一起，他不想。”

'Ah, now,' said a woman at the bar, 'he had a hard war, Frank, he likes the quiet life. That's no reason to–' 'Who else had a key to the back door, then?' barked the cook. 'There's been a spare key hanging in the gardener's cottage far back as I can remember! Nobody forced the door last night! No broken windows! All Frank had to do was creep up to the big house while we was all sleeping…' The villagers exchanged dark looks. 'I always thought he had a nasty look about him, right enough,' grunted a man at the bar. 'War turned him funny, if you ask me,' said the landlord. 'Told you I wouldn't like to get on the wrong side of Frank, didn't I, Dot?' said an excited woman in the corner. 'Horrible temper,' said Dot, nodding fervently, 'I remember, when he was a kid…' By the following morning, hardly anyone in Little Hangleton doubted that Frank Bryce had killed the Riddles.

“啊，现在，”酒吧里的一个女人说，“他经历了一场艰苦的战争，弗兰克，他喜欢平静的生活。 “那么，还有谁有后门的钥匙呢？”厨师吼道。 “从我记事起，园丁的小屋里就挂着一把备用钥匙！”昨晚没人强行开门！没有破窗！弗兰克所要做的就是趁我们都在睡觉的时候蹑手蹑脚地走到那所大房子旁边……”村民们交换了一个阴沉的眼色。 “我一直觉得他的样子很难看，没错，”吧台旁的一个人嘟哝着说。 “依我看，战争使他变得古怪了，”房东说。 “我告诉过你，我不想得罪弗兰克，是不是，多特？”角落里一个激动的女人说。 “坏脾气，”多特热情地点着头说，“我记得，他小时候……”第二天早上，小汉格顿几乎没有人怀疑弗兰克·布莱斯杀了里德尔一家。

But over in the neighbouring town of Great Hangleton, in the dark and dingy police station, Frank was stubbornly repeating, again and again, that he was innocent, and that the only person he had seen near the house on the day of the Riddles' deaths had been a teenage boy, a stranger, dark- haired and pale. Nobody else in the village had seen any such boy, and the police were quite sure that Frank had invented him. Then, just when things were looking very serious for Frank, the report on the Riddles' bodies came back and changed everything. The police had never read an odder report. A team of doctors had examined the bodies, and had concluded that none of the Riddles had been poisoned, stabbed, shot, strangled, suffocated or (as far as they could tell) harmed at all. In fact, the report continued, in a tone of unmistakable bewilderment, the Riddles all appeared to be in perfect health– apart from the fact that they were all dead. The doctors did note (as though determined to find something wrong with the bodies) that each of the Riddles had a look of

但是在邻近的大汉格顿镇，在黑暗、肮脏的警察局里，弗兰克一遍又一遍固执地重复着他是无辜的，在里德尔一家死亡的那天，他在房子附近看到的唯一一个人是一个十几岁的男孩，一个黑发、脸色苍白的陌生人。 村子里没有其他人见过这样的男孩，警察很肯定他是弗兰克捏造出来的。 然而，就在弗兰克的情况看起来非常严重的时候，里德尔夫妇尸体的报告回来了，一切都改变了。 警方从未读过比这更奇怪的报告。 一组医生检查了尸体，得出的结论是，里德尔一家没有人被毒死、被刺伤、被枪杀、被勒死、被窒息，也没有（据他们所知）受到任何伤害。 “事实上，”报告用一种毫无疑问的困惑口吻继续说，“里德尔一家看起来都很健康——除了他们都死了。” 医生们确实注意到（似乎决心要找出尸体的毛病），里德尔家的人都看了一眼