Silencing the Dead by Will Harker (ereader ebook .txt) 📕

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 Parliament 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