The Woman in Black - Characters test questions - Edexcel

Read the extract from The Woman in Black and answer questions 1-3 below.

I half-turned, discreetly, and caught a glimpse of another mourner, a woman, who must have slipped into the church after we of the funeral party had taken our places and who stood several rows behind and quite alone, very erect and still, and not holding a prayer book. She was dressed in deepest black, in the style of full mourning that had rather gone out of fashion except, I imagined, in court circles on the most formal of occasions.

Read this extract from The Woman in Black and answer questions 4-6 below.

I did not believe in ghosts. Or rather, until this day, I had not done so, and whatever stories I had heard of them I had, like most rational, sensible young men, dismissed as nothing more than stories indeed. That certain people claimed to have a stronger than normal intuition of such things and that certain old places were said to be haunted, of course, I was aware, but I would have been loath to admit that there could possibly be anything in it, even if presented with any evidence. And I had never had any evidence. It was remarkable, I had always thought, that ghostly apparitions and similar strange occurrences always seemed to be experienced at several removes, by someone who had known someone who had heard of it from someone they knew!

Read this extract from The Woman in Black then answer questions 7-10 below.

Mr Jerome's expression was one of panic. He shifted his chair back, further away from me, as he sat behind his rickety desk, so that I thought that, if he could have gone through the wall into the street, he would like to have done so.

"I'm afraid I can't offer you help, Mr Kipps. Oh, no."

"I wasn't thinking that you would do anything personally," I said in a soothing tone. "But perhaps you have a young assistant."

"There is no one. I am quite on my own. I cannot give you any help at all."

"Well then, help me to find someone - surely the town will yield me a young man with a modicum of intelligence, and keen to earn a few pounds, whom I may take on for the job?" I noticed that his hands, which rested on the sides of his chair, were working, rubbing, fidgeting, gripping and ungripping in agitation.

"I'm sorry - this is a small place - young people leave - there are no openings."