Short Story #24: Lady's Man by Ruth Chatterton

Title: Lady's Man

Author: Ruth Chatterton

Short Story #24 out of 365

Rating: 2 (out of 5 stars)

Date Read: 1/16/2014
Source:   Alfred Hitchcock Presents Stories for Late at Night edited by Alfred Hitchcock and Robert Arthur.

Summary

Upon visiting Noel Coward's house for a weekend away, Ruth finds at the end of the night, she is sent to stay in a guest room on the first floor.  Noel acts a bit strange in offering it to her because it is a very nicely set up room.  During the course of the night, she hears voices and the door even opens and someone or something comes in.  She's quite puzzled and a little bit scared by this but eventually falls back asleep to wake up at noon.  When meets with the others in Noel's house, she makes inquiries about it, only to find that Noel knew it was haunted but was curious by the haunting as it has only gone after women and not men.  He relates teh stories of three other people, two whom he names and one he doesn't.  Afterwards, she's begins to insist that is not something supernatural but another woman at the party confronts her saying that it must be and Ruth is only fooling herself.  When Ruth pushes the conversation, it's revealed that this woman was the third woman Noel was talking about.

Reflection

The story felt a bit flat.  There was some suspense and it seems a bit hard to register if this was true or not since it was dealing with a real person (Noel Coward).  That might have been actually enjoyable as it could create tension but the punchline focused more on discovering the third woman than it did on finding out more about the supernatural occurrence.  
 
For a full listing of all the short stories in this series, check out the category 365 Short Stories a year.

---

Did you enjoy this read? Let me know your thoughts down below or feel free to browse around and check out some of my other posts!. You might also want to keep up to date with my blog by signing up for them via email. 

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.