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

when suddenly there was a commotion outside and the door crashed open. Maggie came in looking highly agitated followed closely by the others.

‘Louise, it’s him again. Dominic! He’s texted me this time. And look what he says!’

Louise grabbed the phone and read:

Meet you by the church near the abbey 11.30 tonight. I’ll explain all. Dom

‘He wants to meet you?! What the hell?!’

‘I’m not going by myself,’ said Maggie. ‘I still think he’s mad. He might attack me.’

Jack looked at the message. ‘What does he mean, “explain all”? What is there to explain?’

‘Why he did it? Maybe he was forced to somehow,’ replied Louise.

‘What does he expect us to do?’ asked Ben. ‘He must know that you’d tell us about the text. It sounds like a plea for help.’

‘I don’t know,’ replied Louise, looking very thoughtful. ‘But surely we have to respond. Whatever’s going on, I’m sure he’s in a very bad way.’ She looked at her watch. ‘Let’s go, now. It’s nearly time.’

‘Hold on,’ said Jack. ‘Maggie’s right. He could be dangerous. You all saw what he did. I’m taking this stick.’ He picked up a heavy walking stick, which was by the coat stand in the hall.

‘You’re right,’ said Ben. ‘Well, I’m taking a knife.’ He went to the kitchen and came back with a small but sharp knife.

‘Oh no, not a knife again,’ wailed Maggie. ‘For God’s sake be careful with it!’

‘Look, it’s just a precaution, okay? I don’t think for a moment he’ll be any danger to us, but we can’t risk it after what happened.’

‘Ben, you can’t take that, it could just make things worse,’ said Louise. ‘It’s illegal to carry a knife.’

‘Is that what your dad would say?’ asked Ben with an edge of contempt in his voice.

‘Yes, but it’s true,’ insisted Louise.

‘Okay,’ replied Ben, raising his hands in a sign of defeat as he took the knife back to the kitchen.

‘We should just make it over there by half eleven,’ continued Louise as she put her coat on and the group left the house. She thought about telling her dad but decided against it. He would definitely tell her not to go, but this was important. If Dominic needed them, they couldn’t let him down.

Two

There was a bright, full moon with heavy black driving clouds, which threw the whole scene into a fleeting diorama of light and shade as they sailed across.

From Mina Murray’s Journal in Dracula

The streets around the harbour were still noisy as revellers, many in goth costumes, left the closing pubs. A figure wearing a mask, steampunk goggles and the sinister beak of a seventeenth-century plague doctor stumbled into Louise and then fell onto the pavement. It was pulled up onto its feet by two grinning skeletons in black costumes painted with white bones.

‘Get up, you drunken sod!’ laughed one of them.

As they progressed down Church Street, it became quieter and, when they reached the famous 199 steps up to St Mary’s Church and the ruined abbey, there was no one ahead on the steep climb up the hill.

‘Where is he going to be, do you think?’ asked Maggie as she looked nervously up towards the abbey over which a purple searchlight raked the sky. This was another way in which the town created an atmosphere for the Goth Weekend.

‘Who knows?’ replied Jack, gripping his stick. ‘No doubt he’ll see us coming up from wherever he’s hiding. There’s a scene in Dracula, isn’t there? Where he’s seen with a victim near this church?’

‘Stop it!’ said Maggie. ‘You’re freaking me out even more.’

They reached the top of the steps and saw the dark mass of the church with its wide, squat tower ahead to their left. The churchyard was full of gravestones and monuments. It all felt very sinister in the darkness.

‘Oh God! Where is he?’ whispered Maggie. They all looked around keenly in every direction. There was no sign of anybody.

‘Let’s go round the church; stay together,’ whispered Ben.

They explored the dark path by the church entrance and then moved slowly around towards the graveyard.

Suddenly Louise exclaimed in a loud stage whisper: ‘Over there! Look! Someone’s sitting on a gravestone; right in the corner.’ The others looked over to where she was pointing. It was difficult to pick out in the gloom, but there was a figure dressed in black sitting with its back to them. It was very still.

‘Shit! Is that him?’ said Ben. He called out. ‘Dom? Is that you? It’s us. We’re here.’

The figure stood up and turned towards them. It was too far off for them to make out any features, but the face was white and apparently made up like Dracula. As they watched, an arm came up slowly and waved at them, but then the figure turned and walked rapidly towards a gate out of the graveyard and quickly disappeared from view.

‘Dom! Is that you? Wait!’ shouted Jack and he ran across the graveyard in pursuit of the strange figure. The others went over to where it had been sitting.

‘That was creepy as hell,’ said Maggie. ‘The way his arm came up. I don’t like this at all. Oh God, what’s that?’

There were things lying on the gravestone. Louise picked them up as Jack returned out of breath.

‘I couldn’t see anyone,’ Jack said. ‘There are paths off into the fields. He could have gone anywhere. What have you got there?’

‘This is Dominic’s watch; I recognise it. So it was him. And this’ – Louise was holding something round with a papery skin; a piece of vegetation – ‘looks like garlic.’

‘Garlic! He really has gone mad.’

‘Maybe, but he could also be sending us a message. He’s telling us that it is really him by leaving his watch. And this’ – she held it up – ‘is what is used to deter vampires, isn’t it?’

Jack shrugged his shoulders. ‘Yes. But I don’t get it. What have vampires got to do with Andrea’s death and Dom’s disappearance? And why couldn’t he