Page 47 of The Peculiar Incident at Thistlewick House

Mallory fell asleep in his arms and he carried her carefully up the tiny stairs, slid her into what had once been the marital bed of Mr and Mrs Grimmer, and then climbed in next to her, moulding his body around hers.

He lay there in the dark, his heart aching for the young woman of all those years ago and everything she’d been through, until he, too drifted off.

* * *

A shaft of light falling across his face from the small window in the low-ceilinged room woke him up the following morning.

He wriggled to his elbows and could see that the fog had lifted in the night, much as the fog had lifted from his eyes when Mallory had collected the skull from the blanket chest.

Her skull.

He turned back to the sleeping woman beside him and gently swept back a loose strand of her dark hair, flecked with silver.

The revelations that had tumbled out the previous night were so incredible, he half believed he’d imagined them in those moments between his dreams and being awake. He’d been such a fool.

Mallory stirred and opened her eyes – confusion and, eventually, comprehension apparent across her face. ‘You stayed?’

‘There was nowhere else I wanted to be.’

Edward slid back under the rough blanket and she rolled over onto her side towards the window.

His knees slotted behind hers, his chest pressed against her back, and one arm rested over her thigh.

She reached for his hand and brought his fingers to her lips, kissing them softly, before returning them to her leg.

‘Do you not feel uncomfortable that I am one person trapped inside the body of another?’ she asked.

‘Many of us are one person trapped inside another,’ he replied.

‘Don’t you think, deep inside, the frail elderly lady is still the child eager to run across the meadow?

Or the man stuck in a mundane job with a family to support still holds on to the dreams of travel and adventure he had as a child? ’

‘Perhaps.’

A tatty blackbird flew to the windowsill outside and looked in at the pair of them as it hopped back and forth along the sill. Being watched by the creature made him think of Mallory’s experience.

‘Did you have a consciousness at any point between your death and waking up as Maude?’ he asked, curious to know if ghosts existed.

Had she floated about, after her bones had fallen from the cliffs, looking through the windows of the people in Thistlewick Tye?

Were there other spirits out there wanting to contact the living?

She was silent for a moment and then twisted her head back to look at him.

‘It’s difficult to explain but I remember a queer feeling, a tumbling, almost as though I was part of the mist rolling in from the sea.

But the passing of time and any awareness of my surroundings were hazy.

And then suddenly I found myself in this cottage, as though I was pulled to Maude’s body the moment she died. ’

‘How does this thing even work?’ he pondered. ‘Does the whole skeleton need to be exposed before the soul is set free? And then it waits for an empty vessel – the body of someone who’s passed away – to slide into?’

She shrugged. ‘Hazibub said the soul would be tied to the body, and the only part of the body that endures is the bones. I found my skull two days after I became Maude, when I wandered down to the beach, trying to work out how to feed myself. From its position near the copse above, and because of the bony deposits on the surface, I knew instantly it was me. I’d died with my feet to the sea, so it would have been the last thing to fall – ironically not after a storm, but a stretch of hot, dry weather.

The rest of me probably fell the previous winter because those bones had long been washed out to sea. ’

‘I presume, then, that no one rose up in Silas when he was pushed from the cliffs because another complete body hadn’t fallen?’ This had been his earlier hypothesis.

‘Possibly. I’d only found four skulls by that point, and there were four possessions; Maude, the baby, Emma and Noah. I’m certainly not aware I had any choice in who I took over, and wouldn’t have chosen this body… this life, if I had.’

‘Oh, I don’t know. Being Maude has served you well. She lived an isolated existence. You might have been discovered had you been thrust into different circumstances. Poor little Esfir was surrounded by people she didn’t know and too young to make sense of what’d happened to her.’

‘Oh, Edward.’ She rolled her body towards his.

‘I keep thinking how scared she must have been.’ He noticed the wobble of her lip and concertinaed brow.

‘She was just a child. Not even four. And suddenly she wakes up as Mrs Shaw.

How frightened she must have been to look in the mirror and see the face of someone else – to be surrounded by strangers and not able to explain herself.

‘It was a shock for Samson, too. He was drifting about in Noah’s body for several days until he found his way to your cottage.’

‘He stumbled across me by accident, but I already suspected the younger Garrod brother had been possessed because you talked to me about his strange behaviour just after Silas died. I asked him outright, because a drunk has nothing to lose by speaking nonsense, and he readily admitted his true identity. But, more shockingly, he told me that it was Silas who’d turned up to the camp with the contaminated gifts of food and wine. ’

Silas Garrod had delivered the poison… Now things were beginning to make sense.

‘The troupe assumed he’d either been sent by Master Felthorpe, because he’d stuck up for us, or that his speech in the tent had forced the villagers to examine their consciences and they were trying to make amends,’ Mallory continued.

‘We were preparing to move on the following day, so they were grateful for it, but within the hour it was obvious they’d been poisoned.

He spared me the details, but I’d seen the bodies… ’

‘I agree that it’s unlikely Silas was acting alone.’ Edward was convinced Jacob Palmer was also part of this.

‘Samson said he was the only visitor that night, but I know others were involved. More than one person returned to bury the dead and dispose of our belongings. But, of course, Samson knew nothing about this until I told him, much as I had no idea that Silas had delivered the food, because I was with Sarah. Nobody liked us back then; to my mind, any of the villagers could have been part of it – even the vicar.’

Edward shook his head in disbelief. ‘And there was me thinking Silas Garrod was an innocent man, murdered by an evil spirit. I certainly got that the wrong way round. Samson must have been incandescent to find himself on the common with the man responsible for killing everyone he cared about. One minute he was choking and coughing up blood, the next the perpetrator was standing right in front of him – albeit looking considerably older.’

‘I know what he did was wrong but there is a part of me that understands completely,’ she said. Edward understood Mr Ballard’s actions, too.

‘So why did he speak in a foreign language on the common?’

Mallory smiled. ‘He picked up the odd word from Katerina – mainly curse words, using them so his girls didn’t know he was swearing.

I’ll wager if he woke up in the body of a stranger and then found himself facing the man who’d killed his family, he’d absolutely curse.

’ She gave a small smile, clearly remembering the circus owner fondly.

‘And when you saw him at my cottage, you’d just told him you were a spiritualist so he was panicking.

He was convinced you’d expose him and he’d swing for his crime.

How could he ever explain the truth to a judge?

So, he planned to walk to Great Yarmouth and sail abroad; that part was true.

I gave him what little money I’d saved, and the watch chain I’d snatched from you on the beach – it was his, anyway… ’

Of course, Edward realised, she hadn’t been selling the items found with the bones.

They were the personal possessions of those she cared about.

She’d have kept them safe. The gold chain would fetch Samson a bit of money and he was glad for it.

It was unlikely that those burying the dead back then had time to thoroughly search the bodies.

Plus, it was dark, and it wouldn’t have occurred to them that the land would fall into the sea and reveal their shocking crime – not in their lifetimes, at least.

Now he understood why Samson hadn’t attacked him on the common – his violence had only been aimed at the person who had done him wrong.

But Edward also knew that this whole affair didn’t end with Silas’s death.

He’d been wrong to suspect that the spirits were the force of evil when clearly someone from the village was behind all this wickedness.

‘Silas surely didn’t administer that fatal dose of morphine to Emma?

’ Edward frowned. ‘To my knowledge he’s never set foot in Barnabas’s home, unless he climbed in through a window.

And a three-year-old wasn’t capable of assembling the syringe and injecting herself, or even being aware that the morphia would kill her, which probably means someone at Thistlewick House wanted her dead.

We know that Esfir was the intended victim, not Mrs Shaw, because it’s now obvious this all centres around the unjust murders of your friends.

The mention of Zella and the waggons, even if the little girl’s name itself meant nothing, would have been enough for someone to make a connection to the circus. ’

Mrs Drayton was the only member of his cousin’s staff who was old enough to have been alive in 1855.

She’d been working for her family’s grocery business back then, so had dealings with the travellers when they’d stayed on the common.

Barnabas hadn’t moved to the village until ten years ago, and the current Dr Appleby could only have been a small child.

‘But Silas was dead by the time Carl was poisoned and I was shot at.’ He thought back to his conversation with the landlord.

‘Jacob became increasingly nervous when I questioned him about the missing troupe yesterday. He wasn’t running the Sailmaker’s back then.

Like many of the men from the village, he worked for Lord Felthorpe, and was undoubtedly part of that gang who chased Harry into the camp. ’

‘Yes, I recognised both of them from my fleeting visits to the village as Maude. And yet even Samson didn’t know why anyone would want them dead.

Just a silly feud that got out of hand, I guess.

All I know is that when I returned from saying goodbye to Miss Cleyford, everyone at the camp had been murdered. ’

Edward took a moment to realise the significance of the name.

‘Miss Cleyford is Sarah – the young girl you befriended?’ She nodded.

‘Ah, I had no cause to be told her Christian name, but it makes perfect sense. She kept the handbill you gave her. And she defended travellers to her mother when I visited. Does she know who you really are?’

Mallory shook her head. ‘She was a child. And I made her do such a terrible thing. I’ve often wondered whether I was wrong to ask for her help and can’t forgive myself.’

‘You had no one else,’ he pointed out, kindly, and then made another connection. ‘You’re the one who has been giving her the gifts all these years, aren’t you?’

‘It was the only way I could thank her. I got quite the shock when I realised that the fifty-year-old woman I’d occasionally seen about the village was the young girl who’d been so kind to me.

It’s sad that she never married and did, indeed, end up leading the dull life she was afraid lay ahead of her. ’

‘She’s nursing old Dr Appleby at the moment – he’s seriously ill with this wave of influenza that’s sweeping through Thistlewick Tye. With all that terrible rain the night before last, I was worried more bones would fall.’

‘They did,’ she confirmed. ‘I was out yesterday morning trying to recover them, but with the fog and a high tide washing much of the soil away, I doubt I got them all.’

This was concerning. How many more souls were floating about, imminently to wreak havoc?

‘Barnabas told me yesterday the doctor didn’t expect his father to last much longer. I was on my way there when the weather disorientated me and I was shot at. We need to go to the Appleby house as soon as possible, in case one of your friends has found themselves in his worn-out body.’

She snorted. ‘No one’s going to let the village drunk in to see a dying man.’

‘Sarah will, because we’ll tell her everything.’

Mallory shook her head. ‘I can’t face her. She won’t remember me and, even if she does, she’s not going to believe I’m who I say I am.’

‘I think you’re wrong,’ he said, gently.

‘The handbill from Samson’s Circus of Astonishing Spectacles is one of her most treasured possessions, along with the embroidered sentiment that you gave her.

It’s been framed behind glass and hangs, pride of place, on the wall above the fireplace.

You worry that you’ve caused her lifelong suffering by asking for her help all those years ago, but children are more resilient than you think.

That friendship meant a great deal to her, however brief it was, and the joy that you’ll bring when she learns you walk this earth once more will be immeasurable. ’

Mallory shook her head but didn’t argue further, and instead reached up to the bandage around his head. ‘How’s the wound?’

‘Sore.’

She shuffled up the bed, grabbing a handful of blanket to preserve her modesty, and stared at him for a considerable amount of time.

‘An inch or two to the left and you’d be dead,’ she finally said. ‘If someone’s tried to kill you twice, they’ll try again, and I can’t bear for someone else I care about to be taken from me. So yes, I’ll come with you to see Sarah, and let’s root out the evil that lurks in this village.’