Page 57 of The Peculiar Incident at Thistlewick House

Edward stepped back from the edge to a row of expectant faces. He shook his head in reply to the unasked question. No one spoke for a few moments.

‘It’s up to you, Reverend,’ Sarah said, displaying a surprising confidence.

‘But I strongly suggest you resign your living immediately and leave Thistlewick Tye. Dr Appleby has admitted to the murder of Mrs Shaw, and Lord Felthorpe is dead at the bottom of the cliffs. Because if you choose to ignore me, I hope you can come up with a satisfactory explanation as to why the elderly Mrs Cleyford would want to push such an upstanding member of the community to his death. I, for one, shall be demanding that the Bishop of Norwich investigate the missing circus from all those years ago and turn his eye to scrutinising the work of the Benevolent Committee, from its inception until the present day. If you don’t contact him by the end of the week, I may even suggest he pays particular attention to how harshly you deal with the children that are sent to you. ’

Edward gave her a silent cheer in his head.

‘But I had no idea—’

‘Then I shall write to the bishop this very afternoon. I’ve precious little else to fill my time now that my poor mother has passed.’

‘May I request,’ Edward said, ‘that whilst you mull over Miss Cleyford’s ultimatum, you kindly fetch Constable Lovett and tell him there’s been a terrible accident.

We’ll watch over the bodies until he arrives.

’ He wanted to discuss the implications of what they’d just witnessed, but not with the vicar present.

The Reverend Fallow nodded and mumbled words of agreement, still clutching the crucifix and holy water, and looking quite terrified as he scurried off.

The remaining four people stared at each other in disbelief – a reverential silence to acknowledge the horrors of what had just unfolded.

‘Are they both about to be possessed by members of the circus troupe?’ Sarah nodded to the cliffs, as soon as the vicar was out of earshot.

‘No bodies have fallen recently so I don’t believe there are any ousted spirits waiting to slip into Christian Felthorpe or your mother.

She can be at peace now,’ Edward said, and then turned to Hazibub.

‘But, if there are another handful of bodies waiting to fall, then we could be in for some troubled times. So far, the spirits have jumped into people of their own sex, but will this always be the case? It could prove quite distressing for your friends if it isn’t. ’

The snake charmer shook his head and let out a deep sigh.

‘I am now knowing that I did not think this through. It is much likely to be the very old who die next in Thistlewick and I am wondering what sort of second life that will be for strong men such as Harry and our most athletic Caley girls.’ He looked again at his liver-spotted hands.

‘It is not being much of a life for me.’

‘Undo the spell, Hazibub,’ Mallory begged.

‘Stop the rest of them rising – Harry, Cupid, Po Po, Zella and the others. It’s done now and, as much as it breaks my heart to think I won’t see them again, they should be allowed to rest in peace.

We have our revenge and the truth is out.

Edward is right. Put an end to this madness. ’

‘Of course,’ he replied, and placed his hands together, as if in prayer, and bowed his head to hers. ‘I will be setting about it this very evening, when I have gathered what I need.’

Edward shook his head slowly in disbelief.

‘That real magic should exist and can be performed by man. As if it wasn’t enough to discover that spirits really do exist. Everything I thought I knew has been turned on its head.’

Hazibub stepped towards him and placed a hand on Edward’s chest, leaving it there for several moments.

‘I am seeing that you are a good man, and one with an extraordinary future laying ahead of you. But that is not being for me to share. Time is short for me, but there are things I can show you, my son, that will be bedazzling you.’ He smiled and stepped away.

Edward felt his breath catch in his throat. No one had ever called him ‘son’ before, not even his own father.

‘Your ear’s bleeding again.’ Mallory tore a strip of cotton from her petticoats and approached him to dress his wound.

He looked at the three people standing with him on the gusty clifftop and thought of their kindness, finally understanding that real family need not be related to you.

The only benevolence he’d ever received had been from a place of duty, or because those concerned expected something in return – usually for him to contact the deceased.

He smiled inwardly at the irony as he bent down to plant a small kiss on the head of a woman who’d been dead for forty years.

‘I was not knowing that Katerina was from here,’ Hazibub said, staring out across the sea. ‘That it was the reason she brought us to this place.’

‘None of us did – not even Samson,’ Mallory said, tucking in the loose end of the makeshift bandage.

Edward slipped his arms about her. She was starting to shiver.

‘He laughed when Zella told him Christian wanted to marry her. Had he known the truth, his reaction would have been thunderous – not amused. Katerina had reinvented herself as this Russian fortune teller, with her draped scarves and kohl-lined eyes. I guess the villagers who’d known her as a young bride, were not looking for a middle-aged foreigner.

Perhaps only her husband would have recognised her when she turned up – and he wasn’t here when we first arrived. ’

‘I am blaming myself. I saw that something bad was coming but could not see clearly what.’ Hazibub shook his head.

‘You’re not responsible for the depraved actions of an obsessive zealot,’ Edward said, still simmering that the troupe, although not exactly snow-white, had been treated so badly.

‘Even Katerina felt guilty. It makes me angry that those who were committing the terrible crimes were doing so with a clear conscience, truly believing it was all for the greater good. Christian’s father had schooled him to continue his legacy, as two generations of Felthorpe men tried to create their own little utopia.

But without you and your transmigration spell, the five men at the heart of this would never have been uncovered. ’

‘Looking back, it explains Christian Felthorpe’s behaviour in the months following the disappearance of the circus,’ Sarah said.

‘I didn’t know about his love for the high-wire girl, but he shut himself away for the remainder of the winter, and there was never any further romance in his life.

How could he live with the knowledge that he’d shot his own mother and then ordered the annihilation of a whole group of people?

It also explains why the exceptionally young Jacob Palmer was made landlord of the Sailmaker’s, and Silas was given a small house in the village and his brother a job.

They were being paid for delivering the poisoned goods and for covering up the crime afterwards.

Who knows which other young men were involved in the burial of the bodies and distribution of the circus equipment?

’ She shook her head from side to side. ‘How can I have lived amongst such evil people all these years and not known? Perhaps I should have asked more questions and trusted my instincts.’ She looked quite forlorn.

‘You were a child,’ Edward said, gently. ‘And I’ve learned that we’re very much shaped by the adults who surround us when we’re young. It was natural you believed the things you were told by them.’

Hadn’t he always felt responsible for being born an albino? Logic told him it was not his fault, but a whole childhood of being blamed, and consequently rejected, had taken its toll. Perhaps it was time to celebrate his differences and recognise that the problem was entirely his father’s…

The sound of agitated voices drifted across the common. The vicar was returning with Constable Lovett and it was likely some difficult questions were about to be asked.

‘I must be leaving this village in the morning, as soon as I have performed the spell, and before the sins of old Dr Appleby are laid at my feet,’ Hazibub said, looking anxiously at the approaching men.

‘So soon? But what will I do without you?’ Mallory whispered, her bottom lip quivering. ‘There’ll be no one left from the circus. You’re my family.’

‘Ah,’ he said, taking her hand and gently kissing it. ‘But I was always seeing your happiness as clear as the brightest of days, even though I knew you would have to wait, and—’ he looked up at Edward and then briefly turned to Sarah ‘—I am very much thinking that you have found a new family now.’

As Edward contemplated Hazibub’s words, he wondered if the solitary life he’d craved for so long was really what he wanted. He’d never been part of a loving family, or even a caring community, but perhaps he’d been looking in the wrong places.