We often read in novels how a seemingly respectable person or family has some
terrible secret which has been concealed from strangers for years. The English
language possesses a vivid saying to describe this sort of situation. The
terrible secret is called 'a skeleton in the cupboard'. At some dramatic
moment in the story, the terrible secret becomes known and a reputation is
ruined. The reader's hair stands on end when he reads in the final pages of
the novel that the heroine, a dear old lady who had always been so kind to
everybody, had, in her youth, poisoned every one of her five husbands.#
It is all very well for such things to occur in fiction. To varying degrees,
we all have secrets which we do not want even our closest friends to learn,
but few of us have skeletons in the cupboard. The only person I know who has a
skeleton in the cupboard is George Carlton, and he is very pound of the fact.
George studied medicine in his youth. Instead of becoming a doctor, however,
he became a successful writer of detective stories. I once spend an
uncomfortable weekend which I shall never forget at his house. George showed
me to the guestroom which, he said, was rarely used. He told me to unpack my
things and then come down to dinner. After I had stacked my shirts and
underclothes in two empty drawers, I decided to hang one of the tow suits I
had brought with me in the cupboard. I opened the cupboard door and then stood
in front of it petrified. A skeleton was dangling before my eyes. The sudden
movement of the door made it sway slightly and it gave me the impression that
it was about to leap out at me. Dropping my suit, I dashed downstairs to tell
George. This was worse than 'a terrible secret'; this was a read skeleton! But
George was unsympathetic. 'Oh, that,' he said with a smile as if he were
talking about an old friend. 'That's Sebastian. You forget that I was a
medical student once upon a time.'&