Gentle horror story. A mysterious and gentle woman rents a house in a quiet village but refuses to mix with the neighbours - maintaining a friendship at a distance only with the narrator. She explains that her child is mentally diminished and can not bear strangers - but when she is discovered murdered in the house with a broken pair of handcuffs dangling from the ceiling of a back room, it is clear there was another explanation ... Well-written, interesting blend of the genteel and the terrible. (PB)