"Moonlight Sonata" (1931) by Alexander Woolcott
Alfred Hitchcock Presents: Bar the Doors: Terror Stories (1946)
Readers who are unfamiliar with Bar the Doors: Terror Stories may wish read my notes only after reading the anthology.
Morgan Scorpion's reading of the story: https://youtu.be/PQaA5V97s4Y?si=mdxtSMMdkYqSEJLS
Excerpt:
This house was a shabby little cousin to Compton Wynyates, with roof tiles of Tudor red making it cozy in the noonday sun, and a hoarse bell which, from the clock tower, had been contemptuously scattering the hours like coins ever since Henry VIII was a rosy strip ling. Within, Cazalet could afford only a doddering couple to fend for him, and the once sumptuous gar dens did much as they pleased under the care of a single gardener. I think I must risk giving the gardener’s real name, for none I could invent would have so appropriate a flavor. It was John Scripture, and he was assisted, from time to time, by an aged and lunatic father who, in his lucid intervals, would be let out from his captivity under the eaves of the lodge to putter amid the lewd topiarian extravagance of the hedges.
The doctor was to come down when he could, with a promise of some good golf, long nights of exquisite silence, and a ghost or two thrown in if his fancy ran that way. It was characteristic of his rather ponderous humor that, in writing to fix a day, he addressed Cazalet at The Creeps, Sevenoaks, Kent....
Woollcott was famous for himself, his short nonfiction pieces, and his brief life of fifty-six years.
Today he an author of ghost stories, and nothing else. His tabletalk and theater notices may be cherished, but readers outside the Playbill milieu know him for "Full Fathom Five" (1929) and "Moonlight Sonata" (1931).
"Moonlight Sonata" is a wonderfully brief and atmospheric short story.
Jay
18 October 2024
Cf.: https://youtu.be/o1A_iF-X-_o?si=7lDgEUDUvcAHvg93
