The Whitby Murders (A Yorkshire Murder Mystery) J. Ellis (distant reading TXT) 📖

ALSO BY J. R. ELLIS

The Body in the Dales

The Quartet Murders

The Murder at Redmire Hall

The Royal Baths Murder

The Nidderdale Murders

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

Text copyright © 2021 by J. R. Ellis

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

Published by Thomas & Mercer, Seattle

www.apub.com

Amazon, the Amazon logo, and Thomas & Mercer are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.

ISBN-13: 9781542017466

ISBN-10: 1542017467

Cover design by @blacksheep-uk.com

To friends and colleagues who worked with me over the years in further education.

Contents

Prologue

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Acknowledgments

About the Author

Did you enjoy . . .

Prologue

Right over the town is the ruin of Whitby Abbey . . . It is a most noble ruin of immense size and full of beautiful and romantic bits; there is a legend that a white lady is seen in one of the windows.

From Mina Murray’s journal in Dracula, Bram Stoker 1897

‘Oh my God! You look amazing!’

Louise Oldroyd didn’t smile back at her friend, Maggie Hinton. Instead she glowered chillingly. Her face was white, and she had black eyelashes and eyebrows and thick purple lipstick. She wore black earrings in the shape of small spiders, as well as a black wig with a low fringe and a short black skirt with torn black tights underneath. Her tightly buttoned strappy top and her heavy boots were also black.

Finally, her expression cracked and she giggled, showing blackened teeth and long fangs. ‘What about you?’ she said. ‘Look at that hair!’

Maggie was similarly attired, but her black hair was insanely spiky, and her lipstick was bright red. She wore a long dress, embroidered with spiders, with black petticoats underneath.

The two friends were in a crowded bar in the Yorkshire coastal town of Whitby. It was a Wednesday towards the end of October and the famous Whitby Goth Weekend was steadily building up to its finale. The bar was full of people dressed in the same goth and steampunk fashion: garish blacks, reds, purples and whites; spiders, black capes, top hats, plague doctor beaks, goggles and curly moustaches. Loud music from Bauhaus was rocking the building.

‘Oh look, they’re here!’ Maggie pointed to a group of people making their way through the crowd. Ben, in black leathers and steampunk goggles, laughed when he saw Louise and Maggie’s costumes, but was surprised to see Louise.

‘I thought you weren’t coming to this,’ he said.

‘I managed to get away from work earlier than I thought,’ Louise replied, smiling at him. ‘I just got here and threw my costume on. I’ve contacted the escape room; they’re happy with an extra person.’

‘Fine,’ replied Ben, smiling back. He came closer to her. ‘It’s really good to see you.’

‘I feel the same. I didn’t want to miss it.’

The other two members of the party, Dominic and Andrea, were sullen and quiet. They were in a rather stormy relationship and had had a furious and rather embarrassing row in front of the others the previous night. They had almost pulled out of today’s event but in the end seemed to have entered the spirit.

Andrea was dressed as a bride of Dracula in a ghostly and ragged white wedding dress spattered with blood. She had bright-red lipstick and a cobweb-like shawl, which contained very lifelike black spiders. Dominic was dressed and made up as a magnificent Count Dracula complete with black cape and red make-up round his eyes. They both seemed to warm up when the party was all together. They had a drink and started to join in the banter. The enthusiasm in the bar was infectious, and Dominic offered to get the second round in.

‘No time for another drink! We’re going to be late,’ shouted Ben above the deafening music. He had organised the day’s event. ‘It starts at two.’ He led the way out of the bar into the narrow rain-soaked street.

‘Shit!’ shrieked Andrea. ‘My make-up’s going to run! Quick!’ She started to run down the street, splashing through the puddles in her black Doc Martens.

‘It’ll look even better with streaks in,’ said Dominic. He opened up his cape. ‘Anyway, come under here.’

‘No thanks. I don’t want to be bitten by your fangs,’ Andrea replied, laughing, but Dominic didn’t appear to see the joke.

‘Suit yourself then!’ he shouted aggressively, and hung at the back of the group, apparently in a sulk.

The group of friends were in Whitby for a few nights. Two of them would be arriving later due to work commitments. The group had booked an Airbnb in the town and had come prepared for a weekend of partying, dressing up and general fun. The next thrill was an adventure at an escape room, which, like everything else in the town at the moment, had a gothic theme. It was called Dracula’s Lair.

As the lively group progressed down the street and across the harbour bridge to the older east side of the town, gusts of wind blew the rain at a steep angle over the yachts and boats in the harbour. On a day like this, one glance at the dark sky, the heaving grey sea and the stark ruins of the abbey above the town was enough to explain why Bram Stoker had used Whitby as the setting for Count Dracula’s arrival in England in his famous novel. There had been a similar storm the day that Dracula arrived by boat, albeit one that had been intensified by the vampire’s supernatural powers.

Looking at the sky, you could almost believe that Dracula was about to return, thought Louise