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

little,” I said. “If she’d become so reclusive, why did Gennie agree to take part in the podcast at all?”

Evangeline shrugged. “Gillespie had been shouting about his views for a while. I think she wanted to stand up for her life’s work. In hindsight, of course, it was a fatal mistake. She’d been out of the spotlight for too long and so had lost whatever showmanship she’d learned. Have you listened to the thing?”

“Some of it.”

“That little broken voice.” Evangeline exhaled a dragon’s tail of smoke. “Imagine your whole world shattering in an instant. What does that do to a person?”

“I can’t imagine,” I said. “But what do you personally think of Dr Gillespie?”

She took a moment to consider her response. “That’s not an easy question to answer. In some respects, I support everything he does—opening people’s eyes to science, trying to build a more rational world—but his methods and his contempt for the likes of Darrel Everwood and my sister? I don’t know. I think in some respects he’s just as deluded as Gennie and just as fanatical as that preacher, Cloade. It can be a dangerous thing, you know, to systematically strip away a person’s certainties. It can leave them with nothing to hold onto.”

I nodded. Something about those words seemed to strike a chord with me.

“We’ve spoken a lot about how your childhood affected your sister. What about yourself?”

Again, Evangeline considered before responding. “Guilt is what I feel whenever I think about what happened with Gennie. It was my idea, wasn’t it? To play the original prank that started it all. But my sister was the one who ended up paying the price. I got to have a life. At school, I had friends, boyfriends, while she was always set apart as the strange child who spoke to ghosts. Other kids were frightened of her and so kept their distance. At first, I tried to stand up for her, to help her fit in, but eventually, it simply became easier to leave her be.

“You see, I couldn’t make her understand that the fantasy we’d built together was just that. And so, in the end, I left. Took off and abandoned her and my mother to their make-believe life. We stayed in touch, of course, but when I look back?” A final draw on her cigarette, another stub flicked to the ground. “I should have stayed. Protected her. Somehow forced her to see the truth. But I wanted my own life. Does that make me a terrible person, Mr Jericho?”

I shook my head. “I left the life I was born into as well. I think it makes us human.”

“Not that escaping did me much good,” Evangeline said with a dry laugh. “One failed marriage and a kid who’d rather stay at boarding school during the holidays than come to me. We’re a rare family, us Bells.”

“I’m sure the Jerichos could give you a run for your money.” I smiled. “But the book about your sister’s life. Hearing the Dead. Do you happen to have a copy?”

“I’m sorry, no. It went out of print years ago. I believe there might still be copies floating around in the kind of charity shops where Darrel Everwood picked it up. Or online maybe. I know Gennie burned hers following the podcast. She called me, in fact, saying she was out here in the garden, making a bonfire of her past.”

“Do you remember if Tilda was mentioned in it?”

“I believe she was, as the fortune teller who first confirmed my sister’s abilities. Though, of course, nothing was written about what she’d really taught us.” Evangeline gave me a hard look. “Do you think that’s why the killer went after her?”

“It’s the surest link,” I said. “Someone with a pathological hatred for psychics looking to form a specific target group. Perhaps they hear the podcast, listen to your sister being exposed by Gillespie, and then lay their hands on the book. Genevieve Bell must pay for her sins but so must the ‘witch’ who enabled her.” We’d reached the part of my questioning that was going to prove the most upsetting. I could tell Evangeline was a strong woman but still, I hesitated before asking, “Can you tell me what happened to your sister?”

She didn’t flinch. “I wasn’t here, so I can only describe what I’ve pieced together from my mother’s confused ramblings and the questions of the police.”

“Did Genevieve receive anything unusual in the days leading up to her death?”

“You mean the doll? I told her to ignore it. Just a Halloween trick played by the local children, I’d said.”

“She called you about it? Did she describe it to you?”

“It was left on the doorstep. A wax effigy with the face gouged out and the hands removed. A piece of paper attached to the leg, I think. Some kind of numbers or letters, I don’t remember.”

“Had it been pierced with needles?”

She shook her head. “Not that Gennie said. It was wet, though. Dripping with water when she picked it up, yet it hadn’t been raining.”

“Water…” I murmured to myself. “If you prick us, do we not bleed?”

“I’m sorry?”

“Miss Bell, I hate to ask, but how exactly did Gennie die?”

I think we both caught sight of the figure at the same moment. Patricia Bell standing at a wide first-floor window, her vacant gaze fixed on some unfathomable horizon.

“From what I can gather she was struck from behind,” Evangeline said. “Which was odd, because it happened so early in the morning and my sister was very security conscious. It made me think she must have known her murderer. Let him in and taken him to the sitting room where it happened.” Just like Tilda had greeted her killer in the tent, I thought. “They say the blow probably killed her outright. Then he…” Evangeline took out yet another cigarette and lit up. “Mutilated her somehow. The face and hands, like the doll.”

“Were her hands missing when the police arrived?” I asked as gently as I