by Will Harker
“Eve! Eve! Where have you been? The birds are back in the cellar, peck-peck-pecking. You said you wouldn’t leave again. Can’t you hear them? Enough to wake the dead.”
And then Evangeline’s voice, hoarse with weariness: “I’m here, Mother. I haven’t gone anywhere. Now get back to bed and I’ll bring you a hot drink.” A clump, a cough. “Mr Jericho, are you still there?”
“I am. And I’m sorry, Miss Bell, it sounds like you get little enough sleep without strangers calling you at all hours.”
“I don’t know how Genevieve coped with it.” She sighed. “I suppose eventually I’ll have to start looking into some kind of home for her. It’s hard to admit, but I’m not the dutiful daughter my sister was. Anyway, I’m sorry but I can’t find Thorn’s contact details in any of Gennie’s papers.”
“Never mind,” I told her. “Thank you for looking.”
“Do you think he could be in danger?”
“I think…” I raked fingers through my curls, inadvertently catching the hot tenderness of my head wound and wincing. “It’s possible. Another quick thing before you go. Did your sister continue to wear her gloves even after the podcast?”
“Funny you ask,” Evangeline said. “That was one of the last conversations I ever had with her. Even though by that stage she’d accepted she didn’t have any psychic powers—certainly not the touch ability of psychometry—she said she’d become accustomed to wearing them. Why do you ask?”
I thought of the bloodstained bag Cloade had tossed into the river. Gennie must still have been wearing the gloves when her hands were removed by the killer. And then there was the almost total absence of her fingerprints in her own home. She must have practically slept in the things.
“Doesn’t matter,” I said. “Thank you again, Miss Bell.”
I glanced at the time. 4:16 am. Even if it wasn’t the early hours of the morning, I knew that banging on Everwood’s door and demanding Thorn’s address wouldn’t go down well, especially with his PA. There was only one option. I plucked up my phone again and hit dial. This time the voice that answered was sharp and alert.
“Thorn fits the victim profile almost too well,” I said, having updated Tallis on my discoveries. “He’s a solid link between Genevieve and Darrel Everwood, he was a psychic himself before becoming a celebrity publicist, and without him, Gennie might never have reached the level of fame she did.”
“OK,” Tallis said. “Let me look into it. I’ll get back to you as soon as I have any news.”
“Thanks. And there is one more thing before you go.”
“If this is about that drink, I’m a real ale man,” he chuckled. “But it’ll have to wait until we’ve caught our killer. In any case, I should probably tell you that I’m—”
“No, it’s not that,” I said. “Sorry, I was just going to say that Darrel Everwood appears to have had a dramatic change of heart. He’s no longer afraid of Purley Rectory or the consequences if this live Halloween broadcast goes to hell. I spoke to him earlier and his mood was practically manic. Someone called him the night before last, and from the sound of it, they’ve shared a psychic revelation that will astound the world.”
“Really?” Tallis yawned. “Well, that should bump up the ratings.”
“I think it was the killer,” I said. “Toying with Darrel just as he used Genevieve’s gloves to toy with Christopher Cloade.” I thought about what Evangeline had said regarding the taking of her sister’s hands, the murderer thereby denying her power of touch-telepathy, and then the marking with blood of the Fool card in Tilda’s tent. “He enjoys laughing at them,” I went on. “Mocking what he sees as their absurd beliefs. Desecrating their altars, dismembering talented limbs.”
“Sounds like someone who despises all faith and spirituality,” Tallis said suggestively.
“Gillespie.” I nodded to myself. “Perhaps.”
“So you think someone is setting Darrel up for a fall live on-air? Promising him a big reveal and then making him look ridiculous in front of the entire nation?”
“I hope it’s only that,” I said.
“What a case,” Tallis sighed. “Well, I’ll get straight onto tracking down Sebastian Thorn. In the meantime—”
“Yes, inspector. I’ll keep my nose clean and report back anything I find.”
“Very public-spirited of you. And from what I’ve seen so far, completely out of character. Do try to play by the rules, won’t you, Scott? After all, it’s not just your balls on the line, it’s my career.”
This was the part of an investigation I had never coped with particularly well. Developments were in the hands of others. All I could do was sit and wait. I settled back onto the bed, tried to grab another couple of hours rest, and found myself rolling into the scent of Haz’s pillow. I grunted, sat upright, threw the thing away from me, and then instantly, and absurdly, regretted it. I don’t how many minutes I lost, staring at that pale shape snagged on the edge of the settee. Tomorrow, I’d wash all of the bedding, exorcise what lingered of Harry Moorhouse from the trailer, and then phone him to say goodbye.
It was still dark outside. Nevertheless, I couldn’t sit there any longer. Pulling on my coat and boots, I shut the trailer door behind me and headed into the trees that encircled the clearing. Just like on the night Haz, Webster, and I had walked the perimeter, the forest stretched out around me, cold and unmoving. Not even the branches stirred. Thick, gnarled limbs, that to a certain mind, might have been carved by God Himself for the sole purpose of hanging witches.
I walked aimlessly, my footfalls muffled by damp leaves. It wasn’t until I saw the ocular window blinking back at me that I realised I’d reached the rear of the house. Was there a light at that window? With the moon reflected on the pane, it was difficult to be sure. What I could definitely see as I moved around the side of the building, however, was the hunched form of Miss Rowell hurrying to the steps of Darrel Everwood’s trailer. She kept casting furtive glances over her shoulder, as if the spirits whose home she tended were spying on her. Or perhaps even egging her on. I had concealed myself at the corner of the rectory just as the housekeeper stooped to leave her gift on Everwood’s topmost step. She then scurried back to the safety of the house, a strange smile on her lips.
I came out of the shadows and headed for the trailer. I could see Miss Rowell’s gift perched on the step, pink and eerie in the moonlight. Even before I noticed her fingerprints in its soft flesh, its presence alone confirmed my suspicions. I had already made up my mind about the crime Miss Rowell had committed on the night of the murder. Now, picking up the little wax poppet she’d left for Darrel Everwood, I knew for certain.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
I threw the doll onto the table and Miss Rowell spun around, a hand flying to her throat.
“Don’t worry,” I told her. “I’m not one of your ghosts. But I think you know that.”
It was the first time I’d stepped inside Purley Rectory. With its Gothic flourishes and chaotic architectural design, the exterior enhanced its haunted reputation. Even its stained-red brickwork gave the idea of a living thing, organic, malevolent, and tumorous. But beyond the threshold, this spell was broken. A draughty, dank, sorrowful place, fussy as a grandmother’s parlour with every surface covered in knockoff knickknacks. I doubted any reputable ghost would care to haunt it.
I was certain that the success of Purley as a supernatural attraction was down entirely to the formidable Miss Rowell. Her energy, her commitment, her sacrifice was the living heart of this place. And what a sacrifice it had been. She looked at me now, a shadow of her old pride and defiance still clinging to her.
“What do you mean by this intrusion?” she snapped. “The house won’t be open to the public until—”
“Not for many, many hours,” I agreed. “No ghost tours for you to guide at this time of the morning, eh, Miss Rowell?”
We were standing in what I assumed was Purley’s main sitting room. Maroon brocade curtains hung in the wind
ow while the floor was covered in a Persian rug so faded it was difficult to make out any of the original pattern. Cheap China dogs and imitation Dresden shepherdesses watched us with painted eyes from the mantelpiece. A tasselled lamp stood in one corner, casting a greasy shimmer over the dark lacquer of a worn-out writing bureau. Yet, some of the cheapness may have had a purpose.
Moving to the fireplace, I ran my hand under the mantel until, catching a hidden switch, I sent a shepherdess leaping to her destruction. Miss Rowell immediately went to her knees and started gathering up the broken pieces.
“What do you use on the front garden?” I asked.
She kept her face turned away. “A mixture of bleach, vinegar, and rock salt. After all these years, the soil’s saturated in it. Nothing ever grows. The china and crockery I get as job lot off the internet.”
“You’ve got similar tricks set up all over the house?”
“Not as many as you might think,” she said, straightening up and disposing of the shattered shepherdess in a wastepaper basket. “The punters, as you would call them, do half the work for me. They wander around claiming they feel cold spots and pressing their ear to the walls saying they hear voices. I just add a little set dressing.”
“Set dressing?” The phrase brought me up short. I shook my head. “I’m assuming Lord Denver knows about all this?”
“He may, he may not. He bought Purley almost twenty years ago and I’m the only person in his employ who has ever worked here. Those things like the secret switch on the mantelpiece, I discovered when I arrived. It seems that the rectory has had a long and very undignified history of paranormal fraud.”
“A history you’re a part of,” I said.
“To my shame.”
“It must be very hard for someone who values honesty so much to sacrifice her principles every day. You’d been happy up in Lincolnshire, working for Lord Denver at his ancestral estate?” She nodded, her lips forming a wistful smile. “A hardworking, proud, and efficient housekeeper in charge of such a prestigious property. But there was a problem, wasn’t there? Your husband.”
“Lord Denver had always trusted me implicitly,” she said. “But he was no pushover. He knew what kind of man I’d married. Steven Manders was never given so much as the key to the tool shed. I don’t mean to sound arrogant, Mr Jericho, but it was a testament to the value his lordship placed in me that he even allowed Steven on the property. However, it was a mistake he’d come to regret.
“One night, Steven came home from the pub with one of the grooms who worked in the stables. They’d both spent the day drinking and plotting. This man had a friend in London, he said, who could fence easily identifiable goods. He and Steven had their eye on a painting and a tiara in Lord Denver’s collection, but they needed my help to get access to the house. When I refused to hand over my keys, they beat me so badly I was in hospital for a month.”
She stated it as a plain matter of fact, not a trace of self-pity in her voice.
“His lordship was kind enough to visit me after I’d regained consciousness. He said that no one held me responsible for what had happened and that my job was secure. But I couldn’t face the family. Not after I’d failed them. They’d reposed their trust in me and the consequences had been disastrous.”
I thought back to that sneering, cutglass voice on the phone to my dad. How Denver had called Miss Rowell his ‘loyal dog.’
“You were beaten and abused,” I said. “No one would describe that as a failure.”
“I knew what he was before I married him,” Miss Rowell said sharply. “And I still brought him onto the estate that it was my duty to protect. His crime was made possible by my weakness.”
“And so you decided to serve his sentence?”
“My sentence,” she corrected.
“You’re very hard on yourself, Miss Rowell.”
“It’s because most people aren’t hard enough on themselves that the world is in the state it is. In any case, Lord Denver had recently bought this place and needed someone to run it, perhaps even see if it could turn a profit. It was a descent in terms of status but that was no more than I deserved.”
“But this placed you in a dilemma, didn’t it?” I suggested. “I think you’d always been a woman who prized honour and integrity. After your husband’s betrayal, that commitment to the truth must have deepened. A rejection of him and all he stood for. But to make a success of Purley, you would need to embrace deception yourself.”
She threw back her head and laughed. I doubted that it was a sound Miss Rowell made very often.
“The ghosts of Purley.” She swept the bland sitting room with a contemptuous gesture. “The personalities with their quirks and curses. I have lived and breathed this house for twenty long years, Mr Jericho, and one thing I know beyond any doubt is that there is no such thing as ghosts.”
“And yet there had to be,” I said. “To repay Lord Denver, you were forced to tell a hundred lies a day. A conflict that couldn’t be borne without some kind of punishment. May I?”
She consented with a nod and I unbuttoned the tight sleeve around her wrist, drawing the material back. The always-present elastic band hung there, seemingly innocent enough. What had she said it was for? An aide-mémoire to remind her of certain tasks. I doubted Miss Rowell had forgotten a task in her life. The band’s real purpose was revealed in the old scars, the broken skin, and weeping welts that covered her forearm. A snap and a lash for every lie that passed her lips in the service of Lord Denver and her conscience.
“You don’t only see your husband in Darrel Everwood, do you?” I said. “You see an aspect of yourself.”
She drew down her sleeve and refastened the button. “A wilful deceiver.”
“But one who, unlike you, doesn’t feel the need to punish himself. And so you decided to give him a little of what he deserved.” I went to the table where I’d thrown the wax doll, and retrieving it, handed the housekeeper her poppet. “You’re upping the stakes, Miss Rowell, but believe me, this isn’t a game you want to play. Where did you hear about the dolls?”
For the first time, her composure broke. “I’m sorry. I heard the woman who died was a relative of yours. I shouldn’t have used something like that to try and frighten him. As to where I heard about it, the news seems to have gotten around. A killer planting wax effigies at his crime scenes.”
“Not enough detail in the gossip, though,” I said. “Your doll is a pretty shade of pink, not the pure white of the murderer’s efforts. You’re also lacking one or two of his more gruesome additions. Oh, and perhaps when you’re shaping your revenge effigies, it might be an idea not to leave your fingerprints in the finished product.”
“Careless of me,” she said. “Pink was the only candle I had to hand. There were a couple of small white prayer candles in the cellar, back from when this was a real rectory, I suppose, but not enough to shape a figure with. In the end, I had to bring one from home. Ridiculous, I know.”
“Ridiculous just about covers it,” I agreed. “So I guess that inconveniencing Darrel by puncturing his tyres had become a bit old hat? You wanted to give him a proper scare.”
“How did you know about the tyres?” she asked.
“I saw you on the night of the murder, remember? Hurrying away from Purley, desperate to catch a bus, wasn’t it? The first time committing a crime is always the most nerve-wracking. It was the hem of your skirt that gave you away—muddy from where you’d bent down to hammer the nail into the tyre.” I thought back to my early suspicion that the marks in the earth outside Tilda’s tent had been made by Miss Rowell as she’d knelt to secure the door. However, her venom had never been focused on psychics in general, but on one specific huckster who, suddenly invading her world, had so poignantly reminded her of her own failings.
“I found a couple of nails on the drive just after I saw the car pull up,” she said. “It was almost as if they’d been left there for me. I came back to the house to get a hammer and the rest y
ou know.”
“Did you see who dropped the nails?”
She frowned. “I thought I might have seen something white fluttering in the trees nearby, but I’m not sure. It could have been anything.”
“Miss Rowell, you value the truth. I need you to answer my next question with absolute honesty. You’ve vandalised his car, tried to scare him with the doll, have you also telephoned him recently? Perhaps played on his paranoia, impersonated someone, made up some story so that he’ll embarrass himself during the broadcast?”
She shook her head. “Even if I wanted to, short of trying to speak to the man in person, I wouldn’t know how to get in touch with him.”
I believed her. In the pattern of her escalating persecution, she would naturally have used the doll before trying anything as direct as a phone call.
“This stops right now,” I told her. “I won’t report what you’ve done, but if you continue, your actions could confuse an already complex investigation. Are we clear?”
“Perfectly. And I am sorry, Mr Jericho.” Her fingers went to her wrist, hovering over the old scars and fresh weals made by the band. “After two decades of lies and self-loathing? I don’t know. Looking back on these past few days, I can’t believe it was really me who did those things.”
“Almost as if you’d become another person…” I murmured.
My phone broke into the pause.
Tallis started speaking as soon as I picked up.
“You were right,” he said. “I’ve just got off a call with the local police. Sebastian Thorn was murdered a couple of hours ago. But this one’s different. Scott, are you there? I think you need to see this.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
Dawn flared across the horizon of two English counties as I reached the midpoint of the bridge. It painted the estuary landscape of Essex and Kent a liquid red, transforming the turgid ribbon of the Thames into a single pulsating artery. Down this bloody channel flew clots of darkness, defining themselves momentarily into seabirds that soared between the stanchions of the bridge before flowing on into the great heart of London.