Peter James - A Twist of the Knife

She saw Jenny glance at the portrait, as if it was making her increasingly uncomfortable. ‘Well, the thing is — the thing that is so sad — is that she loved this house so much. But she had no sympathy from the mortgage company, nor their bank. Her husband hadn’t got any life insurance — well, he had, but he’d stopped payments apparently some months before because things weren’t going too well at work for him. She did her best to try to get a job, to earn enough to keep up with the mortgage payments, but who wants a middle-aged woman with one leg? The building society were in the process of foreclosing. She should have let them — they had some equity in the house, and she could have bought a little flat with it — but, poor thing, she couldn’t see through that. So she hung herself in their bedroom.’

The story is best told from Francis Wells’ perspective from now on.

I was approached by the Reverend Michael Carsey, a vicar of the Church of the Good Shepherd, and parish priest for the area of Hove 4 in the city of Brighton and Hove. He had been contacted by two of his parishioners, Paul and Meg Ryerson, with a story that he found convincing, but was uncertain how to deal with the situation. He suggested I should talk to them myself.

I visited their very pleasant house, and found them to be very down-to-earth people, both from Anglican backgrounds, but lapsed. The wife, Meg, was more of a believer than her husband, Paul — but that’s not to say he was a sceptic; in my view he was more of an agnostic.

I listened to their story, about the apparition of the one-legged woman, and the subsequent verification of her identity from a neighbour. I studied the portrait myself and compared it to photographs I was subsequently able to obtain of the deceased, Alwyn Hughes, and there was little doubt, in my own mind, that the two were the same person.

I decided that, perhaps owing to the manner of her death — suicide — the spirit of Alwyn Hughes was earthbound, which in layman’s terms means that the spirit was unaware the body was gone and was manifesting in familiar territory in an attempt to find it.

Whilst nothing of a specifically malevolent nature was occurring, the sightings of Alwyn Hughes were clearly deeply distressing to both Paul and Meg Ryerson, and affecting their quality of life. After interviewing them in depth I became further convinced that they genuinely believed what they had seen.

Neither of them had suffered any bereavement of a family member or friend within the past two years, and they were both, in my opinion, of sound mind, intelligent and rational people.

The tragic story they told me of the past occupants of their property checked out, with the death of Mrs Alwyn Hughes registered, following the inquest and the Coroner’s verdict, as suicide whilst the balance of her mind was disturbed.

I decided that the appropriate, if exceptional, action to be taken in the first instance should be a requiem mass, held in the room in the home where the sightings of the apparition had taken place.

On 3 June, I attended the Ryersons’ home, accompanied by a young curate, an extremely rational young man who had begun his career as an engineer and who, I knew from many conversations with him, had a problem, as I did myself at that time, with the conventional image of the Biblical God. So, if you like, we were two sceptics turning up to help two equally sceptical, but very scared and confused people. However, I had decided on a highly conventional approach. We were to hold a full requiem mass, essentially a full, high-Anglican funeral service, in an attempt to lay the unrested spirit to rest.

We set out on a table all the requisites for a full communion, and began the service, with Paul and Meg Ryerson standing in front of us. Part of the way through, as I had broken the bread and given them both the host and was about to offer the communion wine, suddenly each of them went sheet white and I saw them staring past me at something.

I turned around, and to my utter astonishment I saw a woman standing on one leg, on crutches, right behind me. She gave me a quizzical smile, as if uncertain what to do.

Totally spontaneously, I said to her, ‘You can go now.’

She smiled at me. Then, as if in a movie, she slowly dissolved, until she had vanished completely. I turned back around to face the Ryersons.

‘Incredible!’ Meg said.

‘That is unbelievable!’ her husband said.

‘What did you both see?’ I asked them.

Each of them, fighting to get it out first, described exactly what I had seen.

I was invited to their home, for a very boozy dinner, a year later. It looked, and felt, like a totally different house. It wasn’t just the complete décor makeover it had had. It was imbued with a positive energy that had been totally lacking, or suppressed, previously.

I often think back to that night I saw the one-legged lady, Alwyn Hughes. Had she been a product of my imagination? I think not. But if not, then what, in this rational world of ours, had I seen? A ghost?

Yes, I truly think so.

It was finally Tuesday. Tuesdays were always a special day of the week for Larry Goodman, and this one seemed to have taken an extra-long time to arrive. He was excited, like a big kid, his tummy full of butterflies. Not long now! He shaved more closely than normal, applied an extra amount of his Bulgari cologne that the lady of his life particularly liked, dressed carefully, and ate a quick breakfast.

At 7 a.m. he kissed his wife goodbye. Elaine, who was breastfeeding their baby son, Max. She told him to have a great day at the office. He assured her he would, and left their swanky Staten Island home with a broad smile on his face. It was a beautiful, warm, cloudless morning, which made his mood even better, if that was possible. Oh yes, he would have a great day all right — well, a great morning at any rate!

Forty minutes later he alighted from the ferry onto Manhattan, took the subway up to 57th street, and walked the short distance to the midtown Holiday Inn. His secretary would cover for him, as she did every Tuesday and Friday morning at this same time, telling anyone who was looking for him that he had a breakfast meeting out with a client.

Bang on cue, his cell pinged with a text, just as he entered the foyer.

2130 xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

He cast a nervous eye around, but all he saw was a cluster of Japanese tourists, a group of elderly ladies, and a young couple standing at the front desk wearing huge backpacks. This was not a place where players from Wall Street hung out, nor high-powered attorneys.

He texted back:

Get naked xxxxxxxx

He rode the elevator up towards the twenty-first floor, feeling horny — and happy — as hell. Another text pinged:

I am. Hurry or I’ll have to start without you xxxxxxxxxxx

He grinned. Marcie had the dirtiest mind he’d ever known. And the most stunning body. And the most beautiful face. And the silkiest long, wavy, flaxen hair. And she smelled amazing.

They always met here, in this anonymous barn of a hotel where neither of them was likely to bump into anyone they knew. Marcie didn’t have to lie to her husband about where she was; he was so wrapped up in himself these days, she had told Larry, that he rarely bothered to ask her how her day had been, and even less what she had done.

But with Elaine it was different. Elaine quizzed Larry about every detail of every day, and all the more so since she was now home alone with just Max to occupy her. She called him every few hours, asking him where he was, how his meetings were going, telling him about Max — who had recently started to crawl. Luckily, Erin, his secretary, was a rock.