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

“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?”

“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