The Red House Mystery

It stood on the top of a high hill-bleak solitary. In winter all the winds of heaven raved round it; in summer the happy sunshine rarely touched it. It was indeed hemmed in from brightness of any kind by a dense row of cypresses that grew before the hall-door and by a barren rock that rose perpendicularly at the back. On clear days one could get from this cold house a grand view of the valley below nestling in its warmth and from the road that ran under it people would sometimes look up and wonder at the curious colour of the Red House-such a dark red sombre like blood.