The Inquisitor by Hugh Walpole — Read

The town woke, on the morning of October 12th, to a deluge of rain. The storm lasted from some early morning hour to eleven or eleven- thirty. The rain just thundered down, and Polchester, accustomed to wet mists and drizzles and short sun-shed showers, was frightened by all the new sounds, the gurgling of gutters, the garrulous chatter of water-pipes, and the thunder, as of horses' hoofs, stamping on the roofs. The sky was, for those hours, ebony black with little streakings of china-white clouds.

The Cathedral was grey, almost sulphurous. The water rushed down High Street. With the rain was a cold under-chill. It was the pared nail of the advancing finger of winter. It was not the lovely aggressive cold carrying in its arms chestnuts at brazier- corners and snow drifting up the window-panes, nor a roaring wind that's tactless with its careless youth--this was a niggardly, sly, and give-your-best-friend-away cold. The town knew the kind of cold it was and bent its back to the slashing rain with apprehension in its heart. No one moved about the town that morning. It was like a town that had been cleared for its next tenants. Mrs. Coole's old ladies huddled over the fire, and in Bellamy's the girls stood behind the counters waiting, and Godfrey Burdon took a secret nip at a brandy flask that he kept in a drawer among the socks and underwear. He looked shabby and unwell.