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

to was that primary motivation. I’d said to both my dad and Inspector Tallis that the ritualism with the doll had seemed overdone. In the case of Gennie Bell, that elaborateness had been carefully duplicated in the mutilation of her corpse, the hands entirely removed and missing, as per the effigy. In Tilda’s case, however, only one hand had been mutilated, and even then, not fully severed. Did this mean that the killer’s belief in the morality of his act was already faltering? Or did it indicate something else entirely?

I suddenly pictured Dr Gillespie in the role of self-righteous butcher. As a trained academic he would have done his utmost to research Gennie before their encounter on the podcast. In fact, it was almost unimaginable that he hadn’t at least looked up her book. Tracing that path of influence from Tilda, through Gennie, to his ultimate nemesis, Darrel Everwood, might he have decided to make these murders look like the work of an Old Testament fanatic, thereby diverting suspicion from himself and smearing religion in the process? It could explain why a killer who didn’t believe passionately in his ritual had already grown sick of it.

Or was it a genuine zealot at work? Had Christopher Cloade really just happened upon Cedar Gables while delivering his pamphlets? He currently ministered in Aumbry and so it wasn’t inconceivable for him to target a nearby fair, but to travel fifty miles outside his patch? My bet was, that after catching the podcast, he’d purposely sought out Genevieve. Just as Evangeline described it, he must have heard her self-belief shatter in that moment and had seen his opportunity. From my research last night, I’d learned that he had renounced his family’s wealth, but still, his church would have running costs and a celebrity convert might be an attractive prospect. Except, why then kill her? Unless she’d had a change of heart and demanded her donation back. Then he might have justified what came next as the slaughter of a lapsed sinner.

Perhaps Evangeline Bell herself had some hidden motive for wanting her sister and Tilda dead. She might have blamed my aunt for that act of kindness that had ended up so warping her sister’s life. And yet, such a motivation didn’t quite work. After all, Tilda hadn’t originated the psychic game, that had been Evangeline’s doing. And why would she wish to kill her sister when she, Evangeline, had been the one to escape Cedar Gables? Of course, I was taking Evangeline’s word for all this, but what she’d told me of their lives neatly dovetailed with everything else I’d learned in my research. Now, if sceptics like Dr Gillespie were being targeted, then I could certainly see the dominant Evangeline taking revenge for how her vulnerable sister had been destroyed, but otherwise, the image didn’t seem to fit.

And what of Haz in all this? asked that treacherous voice inside my head. There is no Haz in this, I insisted. Then, where has he been going when he told you he had choir practice? What has he been doing? Who has he been seeing? What about the pencil stub in his bag? What about the wax on his sleeve?

The questions vanished as I pulled onto the main road that abutted the forest. Immediately, I had to slam on my brakes. The way ahead was snarled with people and vehicles, which at first made no sense. Even if Inspector Tallis had given the all-clear, it was still only midday and the fair wouldn’t be open for another seven hours. I parked up on a grass verge and made my way on foot to the junction with the forest road. There, I found Dr Joseph Gillespie, back on his soapbox with his disciples cheering him on.

It was a noticeably bigger crowd than last night, and not only in terms of the Gillespieites. Nothing brings in the media like the scent of a serial killer. Even though Tallis ran a tight operation, I wasn’t surprised that details had begun to leak. If Deepal Chandra could induce a constable to take a bribe, then so could any of the reporters currently waving their microphones under the doctor’s nose.

Back to his old, pompous, preening best, Gillespie appeared to be making the most of it. Although, I noticed as he spoke that he kept casting glances at the forest road, perhaps wary that Deepal might emerge at any moment and steal the limelight from him again.

“This is always the end result of superstition,” he was saying. “It might begin innocently enough—an entertaining ghost story about some quaint old house, a love potion begged from the local wise woman, stories of devils under the bed to make an unruly child behave. But when the haunted house is burned to the ground by frightened neighbours? When the would-be lover feels cheated and persecutes the wise woman as a ‘witch’? When the grown child in his adult psychosis imagines there really are such things as demons? Then we see the true face of the supernatural: violence, destruction, barbarism, murder. Just such a lethal madness took hold in this place last night and a poor woman lies dead because of it.”

As every showman knows, the art of a good spiel is to leave ’em wanting more. Gillespie seemed to know this too. He refused the media’s questions, and aided by his acolytes, stepped down from the platform. These same brown-nosers then tried to stop me from getting to their beloved leader. Honestly, it was pitiful—like a set of nine-stone pins meeting a fourteen-stone bowling ball.

“I’d like to talk to you, Dr Gillespie,” I said, holding one dandruff-speckled fan at arm’s length as he tried to claw out my eyes.

“I’m sorry,” Gillespie replied, clearly startled. “I’m rather busy. If you’re a reporter perhaps you could contact my press team—”

“It was my aunt that was murdered,” I said. “I only want a minute.”

He turned that oddly creaseless face towards me. “My dear boy. I’m so sorry