The Skeleton in the Closet

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When Fellworth Dolphin inherits an unexpected fortune from his miserly, cold-hearted mother, he sets out to discover the source of the money, which could be linked to a train robbery in which Fell’s late father may have taken part.

∨ The Skeleton in the Closet ∧

One

IN the way that illiterate people become very cunning at covering up their disability, Mr. Fellworth Dolphin, known as Fell, approaching forty, was still a virgin and kept it a dark secret.

His long-standing virginity had come about because he had been a shy, lanky, oversensitive boy, the single child of strict and emotionally blackmailing parents. He had been born when his mother was in her early forties. His father, a railway signalman, and his mother, a housewife, had dinned it into him that his duty in life was to get an education and be the sole support of his parents. When he was older, they chose ‘suitable’ girls for him, girls who seemed foreign to the young Fell with their vapid conversation and the way their minds seemed to be set on a white wedding and a neat bungalow, both with a total absence of romance. For Fell was a romantic, living through books.

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