This is a very dense, pleasurable read with menace cleverly positioned just out of sight until the denouement. I have just reread it because I recalled enjoying it hugely as a young person, and although I did not recall the plot I had retained the impression of it giving that fist in a velvet glove punch. The reread was just as rewarding. The supernatural elements are kept sufficiently in check as not to spoil what could otherwise be a realistic tale, and, as in The Turn of the Screw, the reader is left to wonder what elements are in the narrator's imagination only. The narrator is both believable as a character and clearly unreliable as a story-teller but to say more would be potentially to spoil the joy of the read for others.