Cledwyn Hughes is a completely new author for me – in fact, I had never heard of him until I spotted this new edition of his work on NetGalley recently. Hughes (not to be confused with the Labour politician of the same name) is a Welsh author of short stories – over 250 of them, apparently – novels, children’s books and nonfiction books about Wales. This new collection from John Murray Press includes his 1947 novella, The Inn Closes for Christmas, and several other, much shorter stories.

The Inn Closes for Christmas is a bizarre, macabre story. It begins at Christmas with a bank manager in the town of Welton sitting down to open a file containing a bundle of papers. The man who left it to him – the dentist, Mr Sterrill – has asked him to read through these papers every Christmas for as long as he should live. First, the bank manager examines some newspaper cuttings relating to the death, inquest and funeral of the dentist’s wife. Finally, he turns to the longest document in the file – a document written by Mr Sterrill himself.

The dentist starts by describing his marriage to his wife, Doreen, and giving an account of the car accident in which she lost one of her legs. Faced with spending the rest of her life with a missing limb, Doreen is delighted when she is provided with a prosthetic replacement. Her husband, however, is not pleased at all. He hates the way his wife looks at her artificial leg, the way she speaks so fondly of it and keeps it beside her in bed at night. In other words, he’s jealous of it. So when Doreen dies from what seems to be an infected abscess, Sterrill looks forward to getting rid of the leg at last. The only problem is, the leg doesn’t want to go…

This is such a strange story – I wonder what made Cledwyn Hughes think of it! I can’t say any more about the plot without spoiling it, but it really is one of the most unusual stories I’ve read. The way Hughes describes the mental deterioration of the narrator as he becomes more and more obsessed with the leg and consumed by guilt and fear reminded me of some of Edgar Allan Poe’s stories. It’s quite creepy in places, but also with an undercurrent of dark humour which made it both entertaining and unsettling.

Despite the title, this is definitely not a festive Christmas tale and could be read at any time of year. The US title was originally He Dared Not Look Behind which is probably more appropriate (you’ll understand why once you’ve read the story). This new edition includes six other stories by Hughes which I found too short to be very satisfying and I felt that they were only there to make the book feel a bit more substantial. The title novella alone makes it worth reading, though, and it’s not one I’ll forget in a hurry!

Thanks to John Murray Press/Baskerville for providing a copy of this book for review via NetGalley.