Silencing the Dead by Will Harker (ready to read books .TXT) 📗

before the glare became too harsh. For the past two decades, this timid, retiring woman had become a virtual recluse, living alone with her mother and providing private séances to a few trusted clients.

A photograph from the height of her fame showed the Bell sisters standing together in front of their cousin’s modernist mansion. Genevieve, the smaller child, dark-haired, large-eyed, shied away from the camera, her hands raised in an almost defensive gesture. She was wearing the slightly oversized, black-lace gloves I’d seen in the photo from Dr Gillespie’s interview. Beside her stood the more assertive figure of Evangeline, not dissimilar in looks, but with copper-coloured hair and a defiant tilt of the chin. Her right hand was draped protectively around her sibling’s narrow shoulder, and despite her being little more than a child herself, I pitied whoever was on the receiving end of that fearsome glare.

I had almost reached the house when a dazed figure came stumbling out of the conifers that bordered the drive. A woman in her mid-sixties, her snowy hair snagged with foliage, her nightdress muddied and torn. This must be Patricia Bell, the dementia-afflicted mother who had found her daughter murdered. I stepped forward and caught her as she stumbled onto the path.

“Have you seen my hat, young man?” she twittered at me. “And my scarf? And my underthings? And my bedsheet’s gone missing too. And my daughter. No. No. Silly me, I keep forgetting. So many things. Do you forgive me?” I started to say something when she bounced onto her tiptoes and cried, “Here’s my daughter now. Eve… Evah! Woo! Over here! See, I remember things sometimes. I’m just having a nice chat with Mr…?”

“Scott,” I smiled. “Jericho.”

“Mr Scott, I’ll remember that.”

The copper of her hair a little faded by the years, Evangeline Bell came storming out of the house. Reaching us, she pulled her mother roughly away before fixing me with a look reminiscent of that old photograph.

“Who are you? What are you doing here? Speak up then.” Turning to the grinning woman beside her, she started picking the bits of leaf and twig from her hair. “Good God, Mother, I turn my back for five minutes and you’re wandering again. How ever Gennie coped with you all these years I’ll never know.”

“Gennie?” She looked puzzled. “You mean Genevieve? She’s gone now. Dead and murdered, they say. But we know, don’t we?” Patricia gave me a knowing wink. “She’s still here, she speaks to me, she’ll never leave. Never. She was always my favourite, you know.”

I saw Evangeline’s lips tighten, perhaps biting back bitter words.

“Do you also possess your daughter’s gift then, Mrs Bell?” I asked. “You feel that Genevieve is still with you?”

She shook her head, an expression of utter bafflement lengthening her features. “Eva, I want to go inside,” she said. “It’s so cold out here.”

“And I want you gone, Mr Jericho, or whoever you are.” Evangeline looped her arm around her mother’s waist and started back towards the open door. “We’ve had enough of reporters lurking about, asking their insolent questions. Have the decency to let us grieve in peace.”

“But I’m not a reporter,” I called after them. “I’m here because another woman has died. Please, I only want a few minutes of your time. It was my aunt, you see?”

Ushering her mother over the threshold, Evangeline paused. “I’m very sorry for your loss, of course, but this is surely a matter for the police. I can’t see how us speaking about my sister could help you.”

“I only wondered if you might have known her?” I said.

I could feel the delicacy of the moment. If I so much as took a step forward it might feel like an intrusion too far and redouble her resistance. So I stayed where I was, even as she started to close the door on me.

“Her name was Tilda Urnshaw,” I called out. “She was a fortune teller and medium. Perhaps you or your sister—?”

She spun around, a look of horror on her face. “Tilda? Dear God. Tilda? But why would anyone…?”

It took a few seconds for Evangeline Bell to recover herself.

“Let me settle my mother down and then we can talk. I did know your aunt, Mr Jericho. Both Gennie and I met her when we were children. In fact, if it hadn’t been for Tilda Urnshaw none of this might have ever happened.”

CHAPTER NINETEEN

We sat together on a bench in the grounds of the house, the stripped white branches of an aspen quivering above us, the bright chuckle of an unseen stream reaching up from the valley. I held the mug of tea Evangeline had made for me in both hands, taking what warmth I could from it. Before us, the glazed rump of the house showed a mirror image of the frosted wood. Somewhere upstairs, Patricia Bell lay sleeping.

Evangeline took a drag on her cigarette, unconsciously rubbing the small port-wine stain that marked the back of her hand. “Filthy habit, I know,” she said. “Gennie absolutely hated it. Our father had been a heavy smoker, you see, and it may have contributed to the heart attack that killed him. And if he hadn’t died and left us penniless? Well, then perhaps we’d never have come to Cedar Gables, never have made our silly plan to ingratiate ourselves with our cousin. Never met your aunt.

“By the way, what I said just now about Tilda? I didn’t mean to imply that any of this is her fault. It’s just if, as the police suggest, this madman is killing people because he has some kind of grudge against psychics? Acht,” she shook her head, “it’s a pointless game. Trying to track the path that led us here. In the end, who can say where any blame might rest?”

“Miss Bell, I think that, like me with my aunt, you’re only trying to make sense of what happened to your sister.”

She sighed and picked a speck of tobacco from her lip.