[00:01.040]--- lesson 24 A skeleton in the cupboard
[00:06.360]--- Listen to the tape then answer the question below.
[00:12.040]--- Who was Sebastian?
[00:16.000]We often read in novels how a seemingly respectable person or family has some terrible secret which has been concealed from strangers for years.
[00:26.760]The English language possesses a vivid saying to describe this sort of situation.
[00:33.160]The terrible secret is called 'a skeleton in the cupboard'.
[00:38.200]At some dramatic moment in the story, the terrible secret becomes known and a reputation is ruined.
[00:45.680]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.
[01:01.840]It is all very well for such things to occur in fiction.
[01:05.760]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.
[01:16.360]The only person I know who has a skeleton in the cupboard is George Carlton, and he is very proud of the fact.
[01:25.040]George studied medicine in his youth. Instead of becoming a doctor, however, he became a successful writer of detective stories.
[01:34.880]I once spent an uncomfortable weekend which I shall never forget at his house.
[01:41.200]George showed me to the guestroom which, he said, was rarely used.
[01:46.600]He told me to unpack my things and then come down to dinner.
[01:51.280]After I had stacked my shirts and underclothes in two empty drawers,
[01:56.000]I decided to hang one of the two suits I had brought with me in the cupboard.
[02:01.120]I opened the cupboard door and then stood in front of it petrified.
[02:06.160]A skeleton was dangling before my eyes.
[02:09.880]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.
[02:17.800]Dropping my suit, I dashed downstairs to tell George.
[02:22.520]This was worse than 'a terrible secret'; this was a real skeleton!
[02:28.440]But George was unsympathetic. 'Oh, that,' he said with a smile as if he were talking about an old friend.
[02:36.680]'That's Sebastian. You forget that I was a medical student once upon a time.'^“