Restless Dead (Harry Grimm Book 5) by David Gatward (english reading book TXT) 📗

said nothing, just waited for Patricia to keep talking.

‘She just didn’t like driving at night, that was all. It was her funny little secret.’

‘Secret?’ Jadyn said.

‘She didn’t think that we knew about it, but of course, we all did. And Dad did all the driving anyway, well, most of it. So, I guess that’s what was playing on his mind.’

Harry decided to move the conversation back to the night before, the hours before James died. ‘So, this séance,’ he said.

‘Dad had never been into anything that weird before,’ Patricia said. ‘Not at all. I think he found out about that woman on the internet or something. But anyway, she comes over for a visit, and the next thing we know she’s back over again, after the funeral. Can you imagine? I mean, we’d just buried Mum, and there she was! What the hell Dad was thinking, I don’t know, but it was all about him right then. Very selfish.’

‘Do you have her details?’ Harry asked.

‘Absolutely,’ Patricia said then reached over and took Jadyn’s notebook and pencil before he could do anything to stop her. ‘There,’ she said, handing it back. ‘I’ve a mind for numbers, you see.’

Harry was about to ask Patricia about the séance when she started speaking again.

‘Of course, she just flounces in here like having a séance is completely normal, something that everyone does all the time, but it isn’t, is it? I mean, this isn’t the 1890s, is it? We’re not all running off to some spooky gathering at a Victorian mansion to discuss faeries and ectoplasm!’

‘Are you saying Mr Fletcher said he saw faeries as well?’ Jadyn asked.

The look Harry and Patricia both gave him made him slump just a little further down into his chair.

‘In she comes,’ Patricia said, ‘this medium, and she asks to be left in the room alone for a few minutes, and we’re stood outside in the hall, and that was all a bit awkward, I can tell you.’

‘She was in the room alone?’ Harry asked.

‘Yes,’ Patricia nodded. ‘To add to the theatre of it all, I’m sure, you know? Perhaps even to creep us out a bit?’

‘And then you went back in,’ Jadyn prompted.

‘Yes,’ Patricia said. ‘We all sat around the coffee table and there was a photo of Mum on the table, next to her wedding ring and a favourite book of hers, and then, well, it all got very strange indeed, didn’t it?’

‘Strange how?’ Harry asked. ‘What actually happened?’

Patricia explained then about the tapping at the window, the strange voices Beverly had used, and how it had all finally come to a somewhat inglorious end.

‘We threw her out straight away!’ she said. ‘Honestly, it was horrendous! Everyone was so jumpy! Dad was really upset. It was a total nightmare. We really shouldn’t have gone ahead with it, but Dad was pretty insistent.’

‘And you all heard this tapping at the window?’ Harry asked. ‘But there was no one outside?’

‘Well, there must have been, I’m sure of it,’ Patricia said. ‘How else would she have done it? And it certainly scared us all, but Dan went and looked out the window and saw nothing so they’d obviously disappeared by that point.’

‘Did you go outside?’

‘What was the point?’ Patricia said. ‘It was a horribly dark night, and whoever it was out there, whoever that woman had brought along with her to help, I doubt we would have been able to see or find them. Dan did, though. I think he decided to be all manly for a moment. Very unlike him.’

‘So, there’s this medium doing her thing,’ Jadyn said, ‘and then we’ve someone throwing stones at the window.’

‘That’s what it sounded like,’ Patricia said. ‘Tap-tap-tap, against the glass. And if you ask me, this Beverly woman, she was just there to make a name for herself or something.’

‘How so?’ Harry asked.

‘You know the stories about the house, right?’ Patricia said. ‘About how it’s apparently haunted. Not that anyone’s ever seen anything. But she said she knew about the house when she arrived, so I reckon that’s what all this was about, not Dad at all.’

‘Did you have to pay her?’ asked Jadyn.

‘No,’ Patricia said. ‘And we wouldn’t have anyway, not after what happened. Honestly, it was awful. And I wouldn’t be at all surprised that if we hadn’t allowed it to happen, then Dad would still be here. I’m sure of it, actually.’

Harry decided not to follow that line of thought. It was more than a little tenuous. Then his mind cast a line back to what Patricia had said a few moments ago. ‘The stones against the window, they actually sounded like that did they? Tap-tap-tap?’

‘Isn’t that how stones sound on a window?’ Patricia asked.

‘No, what I mean is,’ Harry explained, ‘you said tap-tap-tap, like there was a rhythm to it, and that doesn’t sound like someone throwing something at the window, does it?’

‘No, I suppose it doesn’t,’ Patricia said.

Harry made a mental note about the sound at the window, then said, ‘So, later on, after the séance, did anything happen before the fire?’

‘No,’ Patricia said, shaking her head. ‘We all went to bed. Dad went off to his cabin. After a day like we’d all had, we were exhausted.’

‘On that,’ Harry said, remembering what the pathologist had said about the drugs found in James’ body, ‘can I ask if you ever take anything to help you sleep?’

‘No, never,’ Patricia said. ‘but I wish I had done last night, I was so exhausted, by the stress of everything, you know? And today I just don’t feel like I’ve slept at all. I should’ve had one of Dan’s, but they don’t agree with me.’

‘Dan takes sleeping tablets?’ Harry asked.

Patricia nodded. ‘Not all the time, just when he really needs to.’

‘What about everyone else?’ Harry asked. ‘They all went straight to bed as well?’

‘Ruth and Anthony headed back to their house, the cottage. Dad went to the shed or cabin or whatever it is you want to call it. Dan and