Silencing the Dead Will Harker (free ebooks for android TXT) 📖

her fingerprints in its soft flesh, its presence alone confirmed my suspicions. I had already made up my mind about the crime Miss Rowell had committed on the night of the murder. Now, picking up the little wax poppet she’d left for Darrel Everwood, I knew for certain.

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

I threw the doll onto the table and Miss Rowell spun around, a hand flying to her throat.

“Don’t worry,” I told her. “I’m not one of your ghosts. But I think you know that.”

It was the first time I’d stepped inside Purley Rectory. With its Gothic flourishes and chaotic architectural design, the exterior enhanced its haunted reputation. Even its stained-red brickwork gave the idea of a living thing, organic, malevolent, and tumorous. But beyond the threshold, this spell was broken. A draughty, dank, sorrowful place, fussy as a grandmother’s parlour with every surface covered in knockoff knickknacks. I doubted any reputable ghost would care to haunt it.

I was certain that the success of Purley as a supernatural attraction was down entirely to the formidable Miss Rowell. Her energy, her commitment, her sacrifice was the living heart of this place. And what a sacrifice it had been. She looked at me now, a shadow of her old pride and defiance still clinging to her.

“What do you mean by this intrusion?” she snapped. “The house won’t be open to the public until—”

“Not for many, many hours,” I agreed. “No ghost tours for you to guide at this time of the morning, eh, Miss Rowell?”

We were standing in what I assumed was Purley’s main sitting room. Maroon brocade curtains hung in the window while the floor was covered in a Persian rug so faded it was difficult to make out any of the original pattern. Cheap China dogs and imitation Dresden shepherdesses watched us with painted eyes from the mantelpiece. A tasselled lamp stood in one corner, casting a greasy shimmer over the dark lacquer of a worn-out writing bureau. Yet, some of the cheapness may have had a purpose.

Moving to the fireplace, I ran my hand under the mantel until, catching a hidden switch, I sent a shepherdess leaping to her destruction. Miss Rowell immediately went to her knees and started gathering up the broken pieces.

“What do you use on the front garden?” I asked.

She kept her face turned away. “A mixture of bleach, vinegar, and rock salt. After all these years, the soil’s saturated in it. Nothing ever grows. The china and crockery I get as job lot off the internet.”

“You’ve got similar tricks set up all over the house?”

“Not as many as you might think,” she said, straightening up and disposing of the shattered shepherdess in a wastepaper basket. “The punters, as you would call them, do half the work for me. They wander around claiming they feel cold spots and pressing their ear to the walls saying they hear voices. I just add a little set dressing.”

“Set dressing?” The phrase brought me up short. I shook my head. “I’m assuming Lord Denver knows about all this?”

“He may, he may not. He bought Purley almost twenty years ago and I’m the only person in his employ who has ever worked here. Those things like the secret switch on the mantelpiece, I discovered when I arrived. It seems that the rectory has had a long and very undignified history of paranormal fraud.”

“A history you’re a part of,” I said.

“To my shame.”

“It must be very hard for someone who values honesty so much to sacrifice her principles every day. You’d been happy up in Lincolnshire, working for Lord Denver at his ancestral estate?” She nodded, her lips forming a wistful smile. “A hardworking, proud, and efficient housekeeper in charge of such a prestigious property. But there was a problem, wasn’t there? Your husband.”

“Lord Denver had always trusted me implicitly,” she said. “But he was no pushover. He knew what kind of man I’d married. Steven Manders was never given so much as the key to the tool shed. I don’t mean to sound arrogant, Mr Jericho, but it was a testament to the value his lordship placed in me that he even allowed Steven on the property. However, it was a mistake he’d come to regret.

“One night, Steven came home from the pub with one of the grooms who worked in the stables. They’d both spent the day drinking and plotting. This man had a friend in London, he said, who could fence easily identifiable goods. He and Steven had their eye on a painting and a tiara in Lord Denver’s collection, but they needed my help to get access to the house. When I refused to hand over my keys, they beat me so badly I was in hospital for a month.”

She stated it as a plain matter of fact, not a trace of self-pity in her voice.

“His lordship was kind enough to visit me after I’d regained consciousness. He said that no one held me responsible for what had happened and that my job was secure. But I couldn’t face the family. Not after I’d failed them. They’d reposed their trust in me and the consequences had been disastrous.”

I thought back to that sneering, cutglass voice on the phone to my dad. How Denver had called Miss Rowell his ‘loyal dog.’

“You were beaten and abused,” I said. “No one would describe that as a failure.”

“I knew what he was before I married him,” Miss Rowell said sharply. “And I still brought him onto the estate that it was my duty to protect. His crime was made possible by my weakness.”

“And so you decided to serve his sentence?”

“My sentence,” she corrected.

“You’re very hard on yourself, Miss Rowell.”

“It’s because most people aren’t hard enough on themselves that the world is in the state it is. In any case, Lord Denver had recently bought this place and needed someone to run it, perhaps even see if it could turn a profit. It was a descent in terms of status but