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

tiara. That was when he and Mrs Manders were with us up at the big house in Lincolnshire. The old girl had no idea, of course. Police never caught the blackguard and she reverted to her maiden name. Hasn’t accepted a raise in years. Feels she owes us, I suppose. A loyal dog, like I said, and does a fantastic job for us at Purley.”

The conversation went on for another minute or two until Dad finally managed to hang up.

“Lord Denver?” I asked.

“Bloody hell,” he said drily. “How did you work that one out, Sherlock? His lordship called to offer me his condolences. Really, though, it was to check we were opening up tonight. There’s a clause in our contract that we only owe Denver rent for days we’re open. Anyway, how’ve you been getting on?”

I was about to make my report when a sharp tap sounded at the door. A second later, it was open and Inspector Tallis’ boyish face poked into the room.

“Sorry to interrupt, Mr Jericho, but I’d like to speak to your son.” He held out two fingers, stained bright red, as if with blood. “Now.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

I followed the inspector down the steps and past a slumbering Webster. Lucky for Tallis the juk was dreaming or I wouldn’t have fancied his chances. There wasn’t much meat on the detective, true, but Webster was always ready for a snack.

En route to what I was certain would be an official bollocking, I thought about what I’d just heard concerning Miss Rowell, or Mrs Manders as she had been. Given her personal history, I wondered if her strange antipathy towards Darrel Everwood suddenly made sense. I remembered her words as she pointed up at the billboard that night. “Men like that. Duplicity runs through them. Their kind of deception is wilful, unforgivable, cruel.” A cheating husband who had lied and stolen and then left her to face the music. Consumed with misplaced guilt following his crime, she’d left what was probably the relative comfort of Lord Denver’s ancestral home to bury herself away in this draughty, Victorian rectory, refusing any raise in her wages, making do in her tattered tweed. On his behalf, she had served her husband’s penance. And then into her martyrdom had intruded a brash, cocky echo of the man she had sacrificed so much for.

It fit. And yet the theory didn’t feel entirely complete. Her dislike of Everwood had an abstract quality to it—a sense that it went beyond the simple comparison of two flawed men. That it wasn’t just personal with Miss Rowell but philosophical. A loathing of dishonesty itself. I wondered why I kept coming back to the image of that elastic band around her wrist and to her hurried flight from Purley on the night of the murder. I recalled the hem of her skirt splashed with mud and the impressions left in the ground outside Tilda’s tent—the marks of someone kneeling to fasten the doorway.

A short distance from Dad’s trailer, Tallis turned to face me. “You’ve been to Cedar Gables.” He held up his red-stained fingers again. “It was raining heavily in that vicinity last night and the slush from the pebbles on the drive is all over your wheel arches. I caught sight of it as I passed your car just now. That and a conifer leaf under your windscreen wiper.”

I smiled and shook my head. “You are good, Inspector Tallis.”

He didn’t match my smile but nor did he look particularly pissed off. “As are you, Mr Jericho. I won’t threaten you again about interfering with a police investigation, but if I find you’ve jeopardised my case with your own inquiries, then your balls are mine. I won’t tolerate any personal vendettas, understand?”

“I’ll play fair,” I promised.

“Not quite the answer to my question,” he observed. “But I’ve said my piece. Now, if you’re interested in helping me solve this case, I’m happy to exchange certain information. You first. What did you discover after speaking to Evangeline Bell?”

I told him about the potential victim connection with Darrel Everwood. Genevieve had mentioned his name to her sister, saying she felt guilty for having inspired ‘another generation of liars’, and so I could now reveal that link without shining a spotlight on Nick Holloway. I explained my theory of a killer focusing his obsession for destroying witches on Gennie Bell and her legacy. Catching Tallis’ expression, I stopped mid-sentence.

“But you’d already made that link,” I said. “That’s why you offered to have constables stationed at the fair last night. You’re already trying to protect Everwood.”

He nodded. “Evangeline mentioned in her first interview with me that Gennie had spoken about Everwood. I’d been meaning to contact her again this morning and ask if the sisters had known a Tilda Urnshaw. Then I saw your car, realised where you’d been, and touching base with her, I got the full story.”

“Then maybe I can suggest an idea you haven’t considered.” I explained to him my theory about the dolls, the mutilations, and the historical methods of torture and execution employed by the witchfinders. “If I’m right, there are at least two more victims to go. One to represent the hanged witch, one to represent the burned. He’s going back and forth along Gennie Bell’s timeline, eradicating those who influenced her and those she herself influenced.”

Tallis nodded. “It explains the different post-mortem injuries, the different dolls. So apart from Everwood, do you have any idea of a fourth victim?”

“Not yet. But a clue may lie in a book Gennie wrote.”

“Hearing the Dead. Yes, I’ve got my team trying to track down a copy.”

“Of course you do.”

I caught his eye and we both laughed. For the first time since my imprisonment and disgrace, I felt a yearning to be back on the force, working a case again as part of a proper Major Investigations Team. True, I’d never been overly popular with my colleagues—far too temperamental and abrasive to be an effective team