The Gambler and the Castle

By Greg Blyth

In this haunting short story, Ian Hawes moves into his wife's Regency estate out in the countryside to finish his opus for the Sussex Symphony Orchestra. Despite being in the perfect setting to focus on his work, Ian finds it difficult to write. He suspects there might be more to the house than he first realised and he begins to uncover a dark secret about the house... and his wife.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Greg Blyth
• Release date: Dec 18, 2012
• ISBN: 9781301262830

Greg Blyth

Greg Blyth lives in Johannesburg with his wife and daughter. When he's not reading, scribbling or plotting, Greg is either rock climbing or immersed in a TV show - True Detective (Season 1), Peaky Blinders, The Big Bang Theory, Game of Thrones, House of Cards. Authors who have inspired Greg's work the most include Stieg Larsson, Sol Stein, George R R Martin, Dennis Lehane, Jo Nesbo, Khaled Hosseini, Donna Tartt and Truman Capote.

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The Gambler and the Castle

By Greg Blyth

Copyright 2012 Greg Blyth

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The stiffness in the joints of his hands and fingers was beginning to ease, as was the pain. The movement helped. Instinct and muscle-memory had taken over now and his hands started to flow over the discoloured piano keys like roving waves in an organised storm.

With his eyes closed and his mind transfixed on the music, forcefully tangible, Ian rocked to the peaking crescendo of his latest work-in-progress. He breathed in deeply through his nose, taking in the dank smell of the master bedroom – rising mostly from the thinning Persian rugs, the thick curtains that had probably never been washed, and the heavy wooden furniture. Ian didn’t mind the smell of the room. He thought of it less as a smell of age and more as a smell of history – lives and stories of its previous residents since the great house was built in 1860 by Lord Rodney Illingworth of Horsham.

Ian wasn’t sure how the lineage wound its way down through the generations, but somehow this mansion and its lavish estate had recently been left to his wife Philippa. She insisted that until Ian’s composition was complete he should stay out in the country where he could be free of distractions. She would stay in their house in Chiswick Park until he was done. But what he was beginning to discover more and more, was that it was Philippa who inspired him. And her distracting company was what he missed most. Even now, as