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

“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 you 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