Dr. Scott Tells the Old Scandal, Explained：hide your head in the sand

What's really going on

The scene turns a haunted house into a village history. Pamela has stopped negotiating with Rick's scepticism and simply states the facts — the sounds, Lizzie frightened out of her wits, Stella in deadly danger twice — then sets Dr. Scott to work on the past. What he tells them is an old scandal: the painter Meredith, his model Carmel, and a marriage everyone in the village knew about. The detail that matters is saved for the end: Mary Meredith fell from the cliff trying to stop Carmel's suicide, and, as he puts it, "I wonder if Mary's death could have been murder." That is the line that gives the ghost a motive, and it is why the next exchange is so cold: someone observes that one of the dead is not dead enough.

Theme

このチャプターで学べること

• The scandal is told calmly, and that calm is what makes it chilling.
• Pamela's insistence turns the ghost into a mystery with a motive.
• The doctor pretends to be a newcomer, testing how much they will say.
• One cruel joke reveals an old grudge the family never buried.
• Even the dog is drafted into the evidence.

発音のポイント

• who do you — Do you blurs into d'you, with who stressed.
• hiding your head — The g of hiding meets your, and the d in head softens away.
• thorough bad lot — Thorough links into bad, and lot ends on the tongue.
• must have — Must have shrinks to must've, with have reduced to a v.