Catherine Arley – Dead Man’s Bay

Catherine Arley – Dead Man’s Bay (Tandem, 1970: originally Collins, 1959. Translated from the French by Jehanne-Marie Marchesi )

Blurb:
“Can be confidently recommended to those who enjoy this particular form of blood refrigeration” – Sunday Times
“As sharp as a broken bottle” – Daily Mail
“An agreeably horrible little tale” – Spectator

Two days alone in the cliff-top house, in the bleak isolation of the Breton coast. What could happen in only forty-eight hours to bring her to the brink of madness?
Small incidents; trivial – but so inexplicable.
Who had put the kettle to boil on the stove?
Why was the cuff-link on the floor?
How did the cat die so unaccountably, so grotesquely?
Was she responsible? Was she losing her memory, her reason?
Or was some human agency controlling this gradual crescendo of terror?