In the dark of night, one light still yet burns.

Frightened fingers tremble as brittle pages turn.

Fireside Mystery Theatre presents the Midnight Reading,

a summer series of dramatic recitations of dark masterpieces in miniature by the masters of the macabre.

Good evening. I'm Ali Silva.

A great part of the pleasure in assembling this series of readings has really come from those moments when interesting little discoveries are made.

Such as coming across a disturbing piece of dark fiction,

where you'd least expect to find it.

That's not to say the work of the great Welsh scribe, Dylan Thomas,

is all sweetness and light.

But if all you know of Dylan Thomas is,

a child's Christmas in Wales or under milk wood,

his nightmarish sketch of a woman on the edge of madness and murder,

the true story, may come as a bit of a shock to you.

Here to read The True story is Mary Murphy.

The old woman upstairs had been dying since Martha could remember.

She had lain like a wax woman in her sheets since Martha was a child, coming with her mother to bring fresh fruit and vegetables to the dying.

And now Martha was a woman under her apron and print frock, and her pale hair was bound in a bunch behind her head.

Each morning she got up with the sun, lit the fire, let in the red-eyed cat.

She made a pot of tea, and, going up to the bedroom at the back of the cottage, bent over

the old woman whose blind eyes were never closed.

Each morning she looked into the hollows of the old woman's eyes and passed her hands over them.

...