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

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.

“Seeing the opportunity this afforded you, I think that was the day you fixed on for Tilda to die. But sourcing a costume quickly might prove difficult, especially as you lived in the middle of nowhere. Then again, there’s an item in every house that can be quickly adapted into a rudimentary costume. A white-sheet ghost, this one a little more gruesome than is traditional, with its bloody smatters, but still unremarkable in a crowd of monsters. Unfortunately, while crossing the drive