Silencing the Dead

by Will Harker

  “And did she?” I asked.

  “I believe so. A few thousand, anyway. To the Church of Christ the Redeemer, care of a Mr Christopher Cloade. I’m currently trying to get it back, but everything’s snarled up in probate.”

  “Did your sister become actively involved with this church?” I asked.

  “I don’t believe so. She was killed not long after that first donation.”

  Links were forging everywhere—with Tilda, with Everwood, with Christopher Cloade, and with Joseph Gillespie.

  “Going back a little,” I said. “If she’d become so reclusive, why did Gennie agree to take part in the podcast at all?”

  Evangeline shrugged. “Gillespie had been shouting about his views for a while. I think she wanted to stand up for her life’s work. In hindsight, of course, it was a fatal mistake. She’d been out of the spotlight for too long and so had lost whatever showmanship she’d learned. Have you listened to the thing?”

  “Some of it.”

  “That little broken voice.” Evangeline exhaled a dragon’s tail of smoke. “Imagine your whole world shattering in an instant. What does that do to a person?”

  “I can’t imagine,” I said. “But what do you personally think of Dr Gillespie?”

  She took a moment to consider her response. “That’s not an easy question to answer. In some respects, I support everything he does—opening people’s eyes to science, trying to build a more rational world—but his methods and his contempt for the likes of Darrel Everwood and my sister? I don’t know. I think in some respects he’s just as deluded as Gennie and just as fanatical as that preacher, Cloade. It can be a dangerous thing, you know, to systematically strip away a person’s certainties. It can leave them with nothing to hold onto.”

  I nodded. Something about those words seemed to strike a chord with me.

  “We’ve spoken a lot about how your childhood affected your sister. What about yourself?”

  Again, Evangeline considered before responding. “Guilt is what I feel whenever I think about what happened with Gennie. It was my idea, wasn’t it? To play the original prank that started it all. But my sister was the one who ended up paying the price. I got to have a life. At school, I had friends, boyfriends, while she was always set apart as the strange child who spoke to ghosts. Other kids were frightened of her and so kept their distance. At first, I tried to stand up for her, to help her fit in, but eventually, it simply became easier to leave her be.

  “You see, I couldn’t make her understand that the fantasy we’d built together was just that. And so, in the end, I left. Took off and abandoned her and my mother to their make-believe life. We stayed in touch, of course, but when I look back?” A final draw on her cigarette, another stub flicked to the ground. “I should have stayed. Protected her. Somehow forced her to see the truth. But I wanted my own life. Does that make me a terrible person, Mr Jericho?”

  I shook my head. “I left the life I was born into as well. I think it makes us human.”

  “Not that escaping did me much good,” Evangeline said with a dry laugh. “One failed marriage and a kid who’d rather stay at boarding school during the holidays than come to me. We’re a rare family, us Bells.”

  “I’m sure the Jerichos could give you a run for your money.” I smiled. “But the book about your sister’s life. Hearing the Dead. Do you happen to have a copy?”

  “I’m sorry, no. It went out of print years ago. I believe there might still be copies floating around in the kind of charity shops where Darrel Everwood picked it up. Or online maybe. I know Gennie burned hers following the podcast. She called me, in fact, saying she was out here in the garden, making a bonfire of her past.”

  “Do you remember if Tilda was mentioned in it?”

  “I believe she was, as the fortune teller who first confirmed my sister’s abilities. Though, of course, nothing was written about what she’d really taught us.” Evangeline gave me a hard look. “Do you think that’s why the killer went after her?”

  “It’s the surest link,” I said. “Someone with a pathological hatred for psychics looking to form a specific target group. Perhaps they hear the podcast, listen to your sister being exposed by Gillespie, and then lay their hands on the book. Genevieve Bell must pay for her sins but so must the ‘witch’ who enabled her.” We’d reached the part of my questioning that was going to prove the most upsetting. I could tell Evangeline was a strong woman but still, I hesitated before asking, “Can you tell me what happened to your sister?”

  She didn’t flinch. “I wasn’t here, so I can only describe what I’ve pieced together from my mother’s confused ramblings and the questions of the police.”

  “Did Genevieve receive anything unusual in the days leading up to her death?”

  “You mean the doll? I told her to ignore it. Just a Halloween trick played by the local children, I’d said.”

  “She called you about it? Did she describe it to you?”

  “It was left on the doorstep. A wax effigy with the face gouged out and the hands removed. A piece of paper attached to the leg, I think. Some kind of numbers or letters, I don’t remember.”

  “Had it been pierced with needles?”

  She shook her head. “Not that Gennie said. It was wet, though. Dripping with water when she picked it up, yet it hadn’t been raining.”

  “Water…” I murmured to myself. “If you prick us, do we not bleed?”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “Miss Bell, I hate to ask, but how exactly did Gennie die?”

  I think we both caught sight of the figure at the same moment. Patricia Bell standing at a wide first-floor window, her vacant gaze fixed on some unfathomable horizon.

  “From what I can gather she was struck from behind,” Evangeline said. “Which was odd, because it happened so early in the morning and my sister was very security conscious. It made me think she must have known her murderer. Let him in and taken him to the sitting room where it happened.” Just like Tilda had greeted her killer in the tent, I thought. “They say the blow probably killed her outright. Then he…” Evangeline took out yet another cigarette and lit up. “Mutilated her somehow. The face and hands, like the doll.”

  “Were her hands missing when the police arrived?” I asked as gently as I could.

  She gave a brisk nod. “I believe so. I thought it might have been a deliberate insult to her affectation. The black gloves? To deny her power of touch-sensitivity. To mock it in some way.”

  I nodded. Hadn’t the blood smeared across The Fool card in Tilda’s tent also had a touch of mockery about it? I pressed on. “But no nails were used on the body?”

  “Nails?”

  “Masonry nails?”

  “No. My mother said Gennie was all wet, though. Her nightdress soaked through, her hair dripping. That was all... Dear Lord, all? That was enough, wasn’t it?”

  Nails. Water. Rope. Fire. The images riffled inside my head, like the cards in a tarot deck. And suddenly I was back, cross-legged on the ground, planted between two women as they spun a true horror story to the saucer-eyed child at their feet. We’d been touring around Essex at the time and were a stone’s throw from the village of Mistley. Always a morbid child, I’d been nagging my mum and Aunt Tilda for ghost stories when Tilda piped up.

  “Well, you do know you’re sitting on the very earth where the old Witchfinder General once plied his trade?”

  “Don’t you dare, Tilda Urnshaw!” my mother had said with a mischievous smile. “The poor chavvy won’t sleep for weeks if you tell him that tale.”

  This, of course, had prompted me to beg for every gory detail.

  “Matthew Hopkins was his name,” Tilda had said, leaning back on her trailer step and pointing a dramatic finger at me. “And hunting witches was his game. Over four hundred years ago, he stalked this area, for it was the county of his birth and Mistley was his hometown. This was the time of the great Civil War, Roundheads against Cavaliers, brother slaughtering brother for Parl
iament or the Crown. And into this lawless mayhem, the Witchfinder came, claiming sorcery in every village and hamlet. And do you know why?” I shook my head. “For brass, of course. It was a profitable business in them days, digging out witches and setting them to the test.”

  “What test?” I had asked.

  She counted them off on beringed fingers. “The swimming test, where if they floated in the pure waters of the millstream their guilt was proven. The pricking test, where a sharp needle was pierced into any wart or blemish and should no blood flow forth, it was called a Devil’s mark.”

  “Then what was done to them?”

  “They were strung up high from the gibbet,” Tilda said, clasping her neck with both hands. “Or else staked to a bonfire and set to burn. And watching over it all with his purse fat and his greedy eyes aglow, the Witchfinder General.”

  A hand on my arm, Evangeline’s birthmark burnished by the autumn sun. I wondered absently whether that alone might have led to her torture, once upon a time.

  “Mr Jericho, are you all right? You suddenly look very pale.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  The rope and the fire. Unless I was missing some other method of historical torture and execution reserved for witches, that meant there were at least two more murders to go.

  “I’m sorry, Miss Bell,” I said, looking over at the concerned face next to me. “I think I’m just overtired. Perhaps I could use your bathroom before I head back?”

  “Of course.”

  She took the mug from my hand and led me up the gentle incline of the garden. Halfway to the house, I noticed a scorch mark in the grass and guessed that this was where Genevieve had burned the copies of her book.

  A big sliding glass door gave onto the kitchen. As impressive as the house was from the outside, it soon became obvious that this had been the home of a recluse. All the fixtures and fittings were at least twenty years past their best, the carpets old and frayed, tongues of wallpaper coming loose at the corners. Despite a faint stale smell and the general air of neglect, every surface appeared spotlessly clean. Finishing up in the downstairs bathroom, I came back into the hall just as Patricia started screeching from the landing.

  “Eve! Eve, where are you? They’ve taken my pills and my pillows and my bedsheets and my underthings. Eve!”

  An exasperated Evangeline exited the kitchen and shot me an apologetic glance before barking up at her mother. “Please! We have company.”

  “Yes, I’m sorry. I remember now.” The white-haired woman raised clenched fists to the sides of her hollow cheeks and beamed at me. “Mr Scott, isn’t it? How nice of you to visit us again.”

  Evangeline showed me to the door where I thanked her for sharing so many painful memories. She waved my words aside. “Just keep me updated on the case, will you? The man in charge, Inspector Tallis, he seems like a very competent officer. I’m sure he’ll arrive at the truth eventually, but if you find anything in the meantime?”

  I agreed and took her number.

  Heading back up the red-pebbled drive, I searched on my phone for any available copies of Hearing the Dead. Evangeline hadn’t been exaggerating when she said it was now a rarity—there were no ebook files available and the only physical copy I could source that would arrive within forty-eight hours ended up costing me almost a hundred quid. Still, I thought it was worth it. If the supposition was correct that the murderer had fixed his obsession for killing ‘witches’ on the person of Gennie Bell, then any psychic who’d encouraged or influenced her, or that she, in turn, had influenced, might be a potential victim. It appeared as if the killer was intent on eradicating the entire thread of supernatural cause and effect that centred around this individual. As if Genevieve stood as a symbol for all that he despised. If that were true, then the clues as to who else might be at risk could lie within the pages of that elusive book.

  It was a fifty-mile drive back to Purley Rectory. Ample time to turn things over in my mind. One thing I kept returning to was that primary motivation. I’d said to both my dad and Inspector Tallis that the ritualism with the doll had seemed overdone. In the case of Gennie Bell, that elaborateness had been carefully duplicated in the mutilation of her corpse, the hands entirely removed and missing, as per the effigy. In Tilda’s case, however, only one hand had been mutilated, and even then, not fully severed. Did this mean that the killer’s belief in the morality of his act was already faltering? Or did it indicate something else entirely?

  I suddenly pictured Dr Gillespie in the role of self-righteous butcher. As a trained academic he would have done his utmost to research Gennie before their encounter on the podcast. In fact, it was almost unimaginable that he hadn’t at least looked up her book. Tracing that path of influence from Tilda, through Gennie, to his ultimate nemesis, Darrel Everwood, might he have decided to make these murders look like the work of an Old Testament fanatic, thereby diverting suspicion from himself and smearing religion in the process? It could explain why a killer who didn’t believe passionately in his ritual had already grown sick of it.

  Or was it a genuine zealot at work? Had Christopher Cloade really just happened upon Cedar Gables while delivering his pamphlets? He currently ministered in Aumbry and so it wasn’t inconceivable for him to target a nearby fair, but to travel fifty miles outside his patch? My bet was, that after catching the podcast, he’d purposely sought out Genevieve. Just as Evangeline described it, he must have heard her self-belief shatter in that moment and had seen his opportunity. From my research last night, I’d learned that he had renounced his family’s wealth, but still, his church would have running costs and a celebrity convert might be an attractive prospect. Except, why then kill her? Unless she’d had a change of heart and demanded her donation back. Then he might have justified what came next as the slaughter of a lapsed sinner.

  Perhaps Evangeline Bell herself had some hidden motive for wanting her sister and Tilda dead. She might have blamed my aunt for that act of kindness that had ended up so warping her sister’s life. And yet, such a motivation didn’t quite work. After all, Tilda hadn’t originated the psychic game, that had been Evangeline’s doing. And why would she wish to kill her sister when she, Evangeline, had been the one to escape Cedar Gables? Of course, I was taking Evangeline’s word for all this, but what she’d told me of their lives neatly dovetailed with everything else I’d learned in my research. Now, if sceptics like Dr Gillespie were being targeted, then I could certainly see the dominant Evangeline taking revenge for how her vulnerable sister had been destroyed, but otherwise, the image didn’t seem to fit.

  And what of Haz in all this? asked that treacherous voice inside my head. There is no Haz in this, I insisted. Then, where has he been going when he told you he had choir practice? What has he been doing? Who has he been seeing? What about the pencil stub in his bag? What about the wax on his sleeve?

  The questions vanished as I pulled onto the main road that abutted the forest. Immediately, I had to slam on my brakes. The way ahead was snarled with people and vehicles, which at first made no sense. Even if Inspector Tallis had given the all-clear, it was still only midday and the fair wouldn’t be open for another seven hours. I parked up on a grass verge and made my way on foot to the junction with the forest road. There, I found Dr Joseph Gillespie, back on his soapbox with his disciples cheering him on.

  It was a noticeably bigger crowd than last night, and not only in terms of the Gillespieites. Nothing brings in the media like the scent of a serial killer. Even though Tallis ran a tight operation, I wasn’t surprised that details had begun to leak. If Deepal Chandra could induce a constable to take a bribe, then so could any of the reporters currently waving their microphones under the doctor’s nose.

  Back to his old, pompous, preening best, Gillespie appeared to be making the most of it. Although, I noticed as he spoke that he kept casting glances at the forest road, perhaps wary that Deepal might emerge at any moment and steal the limelight from him again.

  “This is
always the end result of superstition,” he was saying. “It might begin innocently enough—an entertaining ghost story about some quaint old house, a love potion begged from the local wise woman, stories of devils under the bed to make an unruly child behave. But when the haunted house is burned to the ground by frightened neighbours? When the would-be lover feels cheated and persecutes the wise woman as a ‘witch’? When the grown child in his adult psychosis imagines there really are such things as demons? Then we see the true face of the supernatural: violence, destruction, barbarism, murder. Just such a lethal madness took hold in this place last night and a poor woman lies dead because of it.”

  As every showman knows, the art of a good spiel is to leave ’em wanting more. Gillespie seemed to know this too. He refused the media’s questions, and aided by his acolytes, stepped down from the platform. These same brown-nosers then tried to stop me from getting to their beloved leader. Honestly, it was pitiful—like a set of nine-stone pins meeting a fourteen-stone bowling ball.

  “I’d like to talk to you, Dr Gillespie,” I said, holding one dandruff-speckled fan at arm’s length as he tried to claw out my eyes.

  “I’m sorry,” Gillespie replied, clearly startled. “I’m rather busy. If you’re a reporter perhaps you could contact my press team—”

  “It was my aunt that was murdered,” I said. “I only want a minute.”

  He turned that oddly creaseless face towards me. “My dear boy. I’m so sorry for your loss. Giles, desist!”

  Giles obeyed at once and put his talons away.

  “Let’s step to one side and we can talk,” Gillespie said as if he was the soul of generosity. “I have a few minutes before my next interview. In fact, if you happen to share my views, you may wish to appear alongside me. Perhaps inform the public how much a madman’s irrational belief has cost your family? The personal toll, you understand, Mr–?”