Silencing the Dead

by Will Harker

  I moved on from A-roads into country lanes, confident that, by the time I arrived, the main police presence would have left the site. In fact, a couple of constables were still on duty when I pulled into the carpark. I grabbed my beanie from the backseat, pulling it low so that it obscured my bandaged forehead.

  “Mr Jericho,” an officer said as he checked my ID. “I was told to keep a lookout for you, sir. DCI Tallis says you must contact him as a matter of urgency. Guvnor said for you not to do anything without his say-so. Said you’d understand.”

  I flourished my mobile. “I intend to call him in the next few minutes. I just need to check in on someone first.”

  “Long as you steer clear of the house, that should be OK. I suppose you know what happened here tonight?”

  “Yes,” I said. “I believe I do.”

  Stalking through the last of the drizzle, I headed straight for the production trailers. Just a few hours ago, this entire area must have been a hive of activity, the Ghost Seekers crew dashing around in preparation for their big broadcast. Now, like the fair, Purley Rectory lay cloaked in silence and darkness. I guessed most of the team would have been interviewed and released back to their hotel hours ago. I imagined them now, crowded into each other’s rooms, passing around drinks, all trying to process what they’d seen.

  All except one.

  A light was on in the small trailer next to the late Darrel Everwood’s. I mounted the step and knocked.

  “Scott? I… I’m so sorry, I can’t see you now.”

  Deepal Chandra tried to close the door on me. I wedged my foot in the gap.

  “Is your partner with you?” I asked. “I’d like to speak to him too.”

  She swallowed hard. If she’d looked stressed yesterday, she now appeared utterly at the end of her tether, her eyes bloodshot from crying, the smell of whisky on her breath.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about. There’s no one else here.”

  I nodded. “Then I’d better call DCI Tallis and pass on my suspicion that you and your partner have been involved in a plot to undermine Darrel Everwood. That this may have led to his increasing sense of persecution and paranoia. That you might have falsified your credentials in order to gain the position as his personal assistant. That, given the ongoing murder investigation that began to centre around Darrel, your continuing failure to divulge this little conspiracy could be regarded as highly suspicious. Of course, the police would use all endeavours to keep any non-relevant facts from the press, but as you know very well, such things have a way of leaking out.” I called through the gap. “Dr Gillespie, don’t you think it’s time we spoke?”

  A hollow voice, quite unlike that of the smooth public speaker, answered, “Let him in, Deepal. For Christ’s sake.”

  The door swung open and I limped up the final step. Much more modest than Everwood’s extravagant model, his PA’s trailer was still at the luxurious end of the market. I watched as Deepal went to sit on the leather sofa beside Gillespie, folding his hands into hers.

  “It isn’t us,” she said, as I eased myself into the seat opposite. “You have to believe me. We only wanted—”

  “I’m a humanitarian,” Gillespie insisted. “I would never harm a fellow creature.”

  His oddly lineless face suddenly appeared very old and tired.

  “But your humanitarianism only seems to extend to those who agree with you,” I said. “The others, like Darrel Everwood and Genevieve Bell? They’re fair game, aren’t they? For ridicule and humiliation. That was the purpose of this undercover mission of yours, wasn’t it? To dig up some solid dirt on Britain’s most famous psychic and then to expose him to the world?”

  The doctor shifted uncomfortably in his seat.

  “I think you began to realise that, as clever as you are, it was impossible to compete with the allure of these people. What Darrel and his kind offer might well be fool’s gold, but it glitters nonetheless. The cold, hard reality you tried to sell the public was a truth they didn’t want to buy into. But if you could plant a spy in his camp and she could bring you irrefutable evidence of fraud, then it wouldn’t just be Everwood’s reputation destroyed. As the most celebrated of them, he would stand and fall as a totem for all psychics.”

  “How did you know?” Deepal asked.

  “I’ve been thinking a lot about names tonight,” I said. “How they’re used, how we interpret them. Doctor, in your TV interview before you came to Purley, you insisted that the interviewer call you Joseph, saying only your mother and your partner called you Joe. You did the same with me when we met. Yet when Deepal interrupted your rally in circumstances where you might easily have rebuked her, she called you Joe and you never said a word.” I turned to the PA. “You were his PhD student? The one he had a relationship with?” She nodded. “Your disgust for the doctor also felt overplayed at times. Describing him as a vulture picking over the bones of the dead. For an abused employee who didn’t even seem to like her employer all that much, your contempt for Everwood’s enemy struck me as insincere. Like someone trying to ensure that no one would suspect her loyalties.”

  “Stupid.” She shot Gillespie an apologetic glance and he wrapped his arm around her.

  “Do you remember what you said to me when I suggested Darrel might do anything to get out of the Halloween event, even murder? You said, ‘He’s a complete egomaniac but not even we think he’d go that far.’ Because Nick was with you, he assumed that ‘we’ included him. In fact, you were talking about a view of Darrel you shared with your partner. You both thought he was a ruthless fraud but didn’t believe he was dangerous to that degree.”

  Gillespie inclined his head in acknowledgement.

  “But I think the most suggestive thing was how you provided each other with an alibi on the night of the murder,” I continued. “Without me even asking, Deepal, you volunteered the idea that you’d been contacted by a mysterious journalist who wanted to get Everwood’s take on Dr Gillespie’s press stunt. You went to meet this person, but he didn’t show up. However, this apparently put you in a position to witness the doctor leave the area at exactly eight-twenty, a time that conveniently coincided with an alarm on your phone to check in on Darrel’s social media platforms.

  “I’d suggest that even the most committed PA doesn’t vet her client’s online presence every twenty minutes. But guess what? When I questioned Dr Gillespie about his movements, he confirmed your story. When I then asked him why he’d hung around after the press conference, he couldn’t give me an answer. Because I think it was to meet with you for a debrief. Later, when you discovered the time window for the murder from your bribed police contact, you agreed on a story that would give the doctor his alibi. Why? Because the ritualistic slaughter of a medium might just implicate an obsessive academic who had, on more than one occasion, said he would stop at nothing to eradicate belief in the supernatural.”

  “It was just talk.” Gillespie sighed. “A bit of hyperbole to get some press attention.”

  “And then there was your detailed knowledge of the murder,” I went on. “Information that must have been fed to you by Deepal after she learned it from her police contact.”

  “I got the job easily enough,” Deepal said. “You’re right, we faked my CV and references. I don’t even think Darrel’s agent checked them. He ran through personal assistants at the rate of one a month. She was just glad to find one who’d put up with him.”

  “Do you know what Everwood intended tonight?” I asked. “The nature of his big reveal?”

  She shook her head. “He went completely off-script. With Seb gone, there was no one to rein him in. He even asked for a change of outfit at the very last minute and then got them to restage the sitting room. Said he wanted it cleared of furniture and the fire lit.”

  “You told me earlier that he also wanted some time alone before the broadcast, to ‘attune with the spirits.’ How long before?”

  “A couple of hours. Does it matter?”

&n
bsp; “It’s crucial,” I said, getting to my feet. “After being administered, strychnine takes roughly two hours before taking full effect.”

  The pair of them rose as I moved towards the door.

  “The backlash against me will be devastating,” Gillespie said. “When the public find out what we did, they won’t believe we weren’t involved in the murder. My reputation will never recover.”

  Every shred of the man’s pride and pomposity appeared to have abandoned him. He leaned heavily against the young woman who stood at his side.

  “Did you find any solid evidence that Darrel was a fraud?” I asked.

  “No. I actually think…” Deepal glanced at the man she loved. “I think he believed it himself, in the end. That he had spoken to the dead.”

  “I know he believed it,” I confirmed. “And don’t worry about your reputation, Doctor. I don’t think there’s any need for me to report this to the police.”

  Gillespie’s whispered thanks accompanied me out of the trailer.

  I limped slowly back to the perimeter of the fairground. The main strip was empty, everything shut down and boarded up. Jericho Fairs had played its final night in the grounds of Purley Rectory. I stumbled on, feeling the pain twist around my knee like a hot wire, sensing the despair of these murders seep into my bones. Away to my right, I caught a glimpse of Tilda’s darkened tent, a hill of dying flowers stacked outside the door.

  It was time.

  I took out my phone and called the killer.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  “Hello Genevieve,” I said.

  The woman I had known as Evangeline Bell came slowly through the mist. The thick white vapour that had begun rolling out from the forest an hour ago now swam and swirled around her. It left its damp touch on her hair and clothes, streaking her coat and reforming into droplets that trailed down her face like tears. The self-possessed, forthright woman I had met at Cedar Gables was gone. In her place stood a dreamier, somehow less substantial presence.

  “It’s over,” she said, even her voice sounding airer than the one she’d used for Evangeline. “Thank God. You’re a clever man, Mr Jericho. I wonder, did you always suspect you were speaking to the wrong Bell sister?”

  “Not until tonight,” I said. “The man who saw you at Sebastian Thorn’s gave me the clue.”

  She continued walking along the empty avenue of the fair, cutting through a mist that seemed almost as ethereal as herself. Despite the pain in my knee, I kept pace, my hand on the phone in my pocket.

  “That poor young man,” she sighed. “He stood in the doorway while I finished arranging Sebastian’s doll. At first, he startled me and I thought of running, but then I realised that he’d become frozen by what he saw. Almost catatonic. In the end, I simply walked straight past him. I wasn’t even sure he’d seen my face.”

  “He hadn’t,” I said. “He’d seen something else.”

  People never repeat what they’ve been told. Not word for word—the wisdom I’d learned from the two quarrelling brothers in the food court. Mark Noonan had been remembering a conversation he’d had with a confused and frightened Nick Holloway at four in the morning. Nick, fuzzy-headed from his pain meds, mumbling away in an accent the London mobster had always struggled with, led to Noonan misinterpreting the message and then rephrasing it to reflect what he believed was its meaning—“Both, Mark. Tell Scott, I saw both of them.” What Nick had most likely said was something like, Birthmark. Tell Scott I saw a birthmark.

  I gestured towards the port-wine stain on Genevieve’s hand.

  “I’ve always hated this thing,” she said, rubbing the side of her thumb. “Right from when I was a little girl. It felt like some kind of ill omen that had been branded on my flesh.”

  I nodded. “And that was the real reason Tilda gave you the gloves, wasn’t it? For the most part, I believe the story you told me back at Cedar Gables. Of how your sister Evangeline started the game, of how your cousin, Miss Grice, then invited Tilda to come to the house to confirm your psychic abilities. How Tilda felt sorry for you and taught you the fake dukkerin techniques so that Miss Grice might treat you better. How in the months and years afterwards, you slowly became convinced of the reality of your powers. But the gloves were a separate matter.

  “The talent you described as psychometry, the ability to receive psychic messages through touch? Tilda never suggested that you mimic that particular ability. It isn’t mentioned in Hearing the Dead as being part of your repertoire, and when Darrel Everwood was praising your incredible gifts to me, he didn’t list it among your accomplishments. Tilda gave you the gloves because she felt sorry for a shy little girl who was self-conscious about her hand. Which was ultimately why your first victim had to be so savagely mutilated.”

  The woman walking beside me didn’t so much as flinch as I went on.

  “To make the world believe that Genevieve Bell had been murdered, you were forced to remove your sister’s hands in case anyone ever mentioned that the real Genevieve had possessed an identifying mark. For the same reason, although you didn’t look dissimilar to Evangeline, you had to disfigure her face and remove her teeth in case of dental comparison. That was why the ritualism of the murders became necessary. If it hadn’t been for the arcane set dressing of the dolls and the bible quotes, then the natural question might have been asked, what was the purpose of those original mutilations? And the obvious answer, to mislead the police about who was really lying dead in the sitting room of Cedar Gables.

  “But some kind of identification would have to be made. So you cleaned the house thoroughly, scrubbing away your own fingerprints and removing hairs from your pillows and brushes. These you replaced with hair from your dead sister so that a DNA match could be made and the police would believe that it was the occupant of the house who’d been murdered.”

  “Please go on.” Genevieve nodded. “You’re doing very well.”

  “My guess, is that you invited Evangeline down from Scotland on some pretext,” I said. “Perhaps to discuss your mother’s deteriorating health. Evangeline was in the house long enough to leave some of her own fingerprints on the freshly dusted surfaces, but not quite enough to account for any normal inhabitant. But of course, you had a ready-made explanation for that. In your guise as Evangeline, you would claim that Genevieve had become fixated on always wearing her gloves. Not because she wished to disguise any blemish, of course, but because she absolutely believed in her power of psychometry.”

  We had reached the steps of my father’s Waltzer ride and Genevieve began to climb up to the undulating wooden walkway. I followed.

  “The red herring of the ritual had been crucial for the first murder,” I continued. “You wanted your sister dead, and by taking on her identity, you were also given the freedom to continue your campaign without any suspicion settling on you. I briefly considered Evangeline as a suspect but dismissed the idea because of a total lack of motive. However, the extreme violence that had been so necessary for the first killing soon began to horrify and sicken you.

  “In Tilda’s case, you managed the mutilation of her face but couldn’t go through with the removal of her hands. The same happened in the killing of Seb Thorn. Most serial killers become ever more intricate and obsessive in their rituals whereas here the reverse was true. From the beginning, I thought the ritualistic aspects were both overdone and yet somehow half-hearted. A jumble of ideas and symbolism that soon started to fall apart in the execution. It was Tilda herself who suggested the true motive when she said the poppet doll felt personal.

  “This was never a case of some religious fanatic determined to wipe out witches. That was just an elaborate smokescreen to disguise the most intimate and personal of motives.”

  The wet boards groaned under our feet as we continued our circuit of the ride.

  “Did I make any other slips?” Genevieve asked.

  “Your mother was a weak link,” I said. “You allowed her to discover your sister’s body—a fitting
punishment perhaps for having emotionally neglected you as a child and exploited your abilities. But despite her dementia, you couldn’t disguise your identity from the woman you’d lived with all those years. And so a small sleight of hand was required. To anyone asking questions, it became crucial to establish from the outset that your family had called you ‘Gennie.’ Because of your mother’s wandering mind, everything hung on the idea of this particular diminutive. When your mother then used the name ‘Eve’ we’d assume she was referring to her living daughter, Evangeline. In reality, your family had always used ‘Eve’ for Genevieve and ‘Eva’ for Evangeline. I think you’d tried to explain this in some way to Patricia, and in those times when it came back to her, she would put emphasis, almost apologetically, on Evah to show that she understood and remembered. By the way, the idea that Eve was a reference to yourself was reinforced by Darrel Everwood. He seemed puzzled when I spoke of ‘Gennie’ because, of course, he would have heard Sebastian Thorn refer to you using ‘Eve.’ But going back to Patricia—her drifting attention was a risk.”

  Genevieve nodded, absently trailing her fingers along the Waltzer’s dripping handrail.

  “At one point, she almost gave away the fact that her favourite daughter was still alive,” I said. “When she told me that Genevieve remained at Cedar Gables, that she spoke to her, and that her youngest child would never leave, she wasn’t referring to a restless spirit. She was speaking about the living daughter that stood beside her. And then there was the night of Sebastian Thorn’s murder. When I called you to discuss your former publicist, Patricia cried out, ‘Eve, where have you been? You said you wouldn’t leave again.’ She wasn’t confused. She was referring to the fact that you had left the house once already that night. She must have woken while you were away murdering Thorn and panicked. Later, while you were speaking to me, that anxiety of waking in an empty house returned to her.

  “I really ought to have listened to Patricia more closely,” I said. “If I had, then who knows how things might have worked out? That morning I met her stumbling out of the conifers, for example. The assortment of possessions she imagined had been taken from her—her hat, her scarf, her underthings—had included one real item. Her bedsheets. I’d already guessed that the killer must have been wearing some kind of Halloween costume in order to pass through the fair, bloodstained but unnoticed. My father had only announced the costume concession that morning.