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

times, her once-expensive Harris Tweed patched and mended so often there were probably only scraps of the original suit remaining. Her shoes too were old and scuffed, one buckle hanging on for dear life. And yet this sixty-something held herself with a kind of faded dignity, like a battle-scarred warship, docked and awaiting decommission. Everything about her appeared constrained. Even the sleeves of her blouse were pinched so tight that the fabric dug into her skin. Around her left wrist hung a rubber band which she touched self-consciously when she saw me looking at it.

“An old habit,” she said sharply. “Picked up from the first housekeeper I ever worked under. You glance down at your watch to check the time and the sight of the band acts as a kind of aide-mémoire, reminding you of any task that might have slipped your mind.”

“Except you don’t wear a wristwatch,” I observed. “And surely if it’s an old habit you’d get used to the presence of the band. It wouldn’t remind you of anything.”

“That hasn’t been my experience, Mr Jericho,” she said. “Not at all.”

A pause, filled by the shush of the trees.

“You were saying something about the gho—” I corrected myself. “Personalities of the house punishing anyone who tries to exploit Purley Rectory. But what about the tours, Miss Rowell? Don’t you guide those yourself? And what about us?” I nodded towards the sprawling hulk of the fair, all set up a stone’s throw from the imperious Victorian building. “Aren’t we risking bringing down the curse on ourselves?”

If she detected any playfulness in my tone, she didn’t bite. “I show utmost delicacy and respect whenever I take a tour around the house. As for yourselves?” She almost allowed herself a smile. “Your father has assured me that he has nothing but the highest regard for the history of Purley.”

I very nearly rolled my eyes. The number of people in this world immune to my dad’s charm could probably be squeezed into one of his Waltzer carriages. Figuratively at least, he certainly appeared to have got under Miss Rowell’s tight tweed.

“What did you mean, though, about the consequences of disrespecting the residents?” I asked.

It wasn’t an idle question. What with helping to build up the fair and then checking on Garris, I hadn’t yet had time to look inside the rectory myself, but those Travellers Miss Rowell had taken on the tour had almost all returned with stories of an unnerving, oppressive atmosphere; of sudden cold spots and indecipherable whispers behind the walls. Admittedly, many showpeople are congenitally superstitious, but even some of the harder-headed specimens appeared to have been affected by the spell of the house.

“An early example came in the interwar years,” Miss Rowell said. She spoke almost robotically, as if reciting from a tourist brochure. “By then, the rectory had already gained a worldwide reputation for its hauntings. So much so that the International Institute for Psychical Research sent down a small team to look into it. No one really knows what happened the night of their séance, only that in the months following, both lead investigators died in separate railway accidents and that the medium they’d employed succumbed to a sudden and aggressive brain tumour.”

“Sounds like a few unlucky coincidences,” I said.

“If you like,” Miss Rowell retorted. “Though I mistrust coincidences.”

I gave a wry smile. “A former friend of mine used to say the same thing. And I suppose there have been other tragic stories associated with the house since then?”

“You’ll have to take the tour, Mr Jericho,” she said flatly.

“But have you always sensed them?” I asked. “I think my dad told me you’d been housekeeper here for almost twenty years. Was it an immediate thing as soon as you walked through the door or did it take a while for you to pick up on their presence?”

I was genuinely curious. Garris had called me a rationalist, and I suppose like most sceptics, I’d always been fascinated by the conviction of true believers. This believer hooked her forefinger through the elastic band around her wrist before blinking hard and letting the band slacken again.

“Are you mocking me?” she asked quietly.

I shook my head, a little stunned. “I swear, I’m not. But you seem completely convinced of your ghosts and yet dismissive of Darrel Everwood’s. I just wondered why.”

“Men like that,” she spat out the words, jabbing her finger once again at the billboard. “Duplicity runs through them. Their kind of deception is wilful, unforgivable, cruel. Honesty is a precious commodity in a world like this. It shouldn’t be thrown away on the altar of mere entertainment. But I…” She appeared to catch herself, her hand moving to cradle her stomach. “I can’t stand here gossiping all night. I have a to-do list a mile long from these television people. Apparently, Purley isn’t ‘old-timey’ enough for the Ghost Seeker audience. How on earth they expect me to make a 19th Century rectory more old-timey, I have no idea.”

She turned on her heel, and battered shoes squelching in the mud, stalked back through the sleeping fairground towards the darkened house.

I looked after her for a moment. Something in her condemnation of Everwood had jarred with me. For all his absurdity how could she, a believer, be so convinced he was a fraud? And really, even if she was certain of it, what did it matter to her? There had been something like venom in her words, but of a distant, almost abstract kind. I watched until she entered the blank portico of the house and then headed into the fair myself.

It had been raining heavily for days before we pulled onto the clearing. Strips of metal grating and good old-fashioned wooden duckboards ran in grids between the rides and stalls. I hopped between them now, making for the side ground where Haz and I had set up yesterday morning. A few Travellers were stirring as I passed through, torches in hand as they fired up their gennies and wiped