Stephen Irwin - The Dead Path

Pritam said nothing, but watched his guests. Suzette broke the silence.

“We think the murders are connected,” she said.

Pritam’s eyes narrowed. “Which ones?”

“All of them,” replied Nicholas.

Pritam stopped moving in his chair.

“Connected? Over a hundred and twenty years?”

“Or more.” Nicholas nodded. “Maybe a hundred and fifty years.”

“We should go,” said Suzette.

Nicholas shook his head at his sister.

Pritam frowned. Since he’d arrived in Tallong, he’d found it a pretty, hospitable, slightly dull suburb. But now a suggestion that these murders were not a string of chance happenings, but were somehow linked… Maybe a few days ago, he’d have laughed this off. But his aching skull and the dark mood he’d felt since his evening alone in the church had punched down his sense of humor.

Pritam nodded and stared at the floor, deep in thought. The ticking of the mantel clock seemed suddenly loud. “I urge you to be very careful answering this next question,” he said. “Are you also suggesting a connection between all these murders and this church?”

He realized he was gripping the arms of his chair tightly. He looked up at his guests; they’d both noticed the same thing.

“No,” said Nicholas slowly. “To her.” He nodded at the leftmost photograph. It showed Reverend de Witt smiling beside dour Eleanor Bretherton as she laid the church’s foundation stone.

Pritam felt his headache returning like a flash tide and he closed his eyes at the pain.

“Pritam?” asked Nicholas.

“I’m sorry,” he said, standing. “This is all a bit fantastical for me this evening. Perhaps…” He indicated the door.

“Jesus, hear us out,” said Nicholas.

Pritam blanched at the blasphemy.

“Let’s go,” said Suzette firmly, taking her brother’s arm. “Maybe another time, Reverend.”

Nicholas shook her grip off.

“Look, if you just let us check through your records-”

Pritam found his voice rising, riding the unwelcome wave of the headache, and was powerless to stop it. “Nicholas, you are suggesting cult murders, you’re suggesting some cover-up. It is insulting to my congregation, it’s insulting to Reverend Hird, and it’s insulting to me.”

“I don’t give a fart about him or your congregation,” said Nicholas. He jabbed a finger at the photograph of Eleanor Bretherton. “It’s her!”

Suzette yanked Nicholas out of his chair and dragged him to the door.

“We’re sorry,” she said.

“I’m not sorry,” snapped Nicholas, eyes locked on Pritam. “Maybe there is some cover-up!”

Suzette threw open the door and dragged Nicholas out into the drizzle, hissing unheard words at her brother.

“No, it’s a fucking joke,” he snapped.

“Good night,” said Pritam, eyes hard.

“Sorry,” said Suzette, closing the door.

Nicholas seemed to think of something, and again slipped out of her grip and stuck his foot between the door and the jamb.

“Please, Nicholas…” began Pritam, walking wearily to the door.

“One last question and I’ll go.”

Pritam hesitated a moment, then waved his hand-fine.

“Get Hird to look at the photograph of Bretherton. Ask him if he remembers a seamstress named Mrs. Quill. Quill, like feather. Will you do that?”

Pritam watched Nicholas for a long moment.

“You should consider getting some grief counseling, Nicholas.”

Nicholas let out a bark of a laugh and withdrew his foot.

Pritam shut the door with a loud, solid click. Outside, retreating footsteps and the surf-like hush of rain. Already, his headache seemed to be withdrawing.

He went to the nearest window and eased aside the heavy tapestry curtains. Across the rain-shiny street, brother and sister hurried to their car. He heard their doors close, then the car start and take off. Soon, the only noise was his breathing, the tocking of the clock, the soft clicking of the bar heater element.

Pritam took a deep breath and walked over to the photograph of the Right Reverend de Witt and Eleanor Bretherton laying the foundation stone. The photograph had disturbed him since he first laid eyes on it. He’d always assumed it was because the church, now so solid and real, was merely a slab in the photograph; looking at the old image was like seeing an autopsy picture of a close acquaintance lying naked and too exposed. But now, fixing on the severe gaze that Eleanor Bretherton sent back through the glass and a hundred and thirty years, Pritam realized he might have been wrong. The reason the photograph was disturbing was her.

He berated himself. Nicholas Close had undergone trauma. I should have been more sympathetic, he thought. Tomorrow, clear of this awful headache, he’d call the man and apologize. But as for child murders… there was no way he would upset John Hird with talk of cult killings.

He switched off the outside light.

S uzette sat in a silent simmer the entire drive back from the church. Nicholas pulled up in front of Katharine’s house at 68 Lambeth Street. Rain pattered on the roof.

“You are your own worst enemy, you do know that,” she said.

He nodded. “Cate used to say that.”

Suzette blinked. He hadn’t said it for sympathy; it was true. Cate had often chastized him for acting before he thought things through. But the mention of Cate turned down Suzette’s thermostat just a little.

“She was right. What did she ever see in a twit like you?”

He shrugged. It was a mystery he’d never be able to solve.

Suzette opened her door. “Coming in to see Mum?” she asked.

He begged off. His mother’s forced pleasantness so soon after the defensive hostility of Pritam Anand would give him the bends. He agreed to meet Suzette the next morning for a decent breakfast at the cafe near the railway station and make a plan for visiting Plow amp; Vine Health Foods. He waved and watched her hurry across the front yard and through the form of Gavin Boye. The sight made his stomach tighten. He looked quickly away and drove off.

By the time he’d parked outside his flat on Bymar Street, the rain had dropped to a steady drizzle. He was halfway up the concrete stairs when he decided he didn’t want to go inside. His feet were anxious to move. He shoved his hands deeper into his pockets and walked back down the stairs and onto the street.

The rain finally petered out and a wind had invited itself to shift the air, turning it cold and nudging the black tops of trees. Nicholas was angry with himself. It could have gone so much better with Pritam. Suzette was right. And now he’d alienated a person who felt like a man who could be trusted. Nicholas couldn’t blame the reverend. Spoken aloud, his theory on the murders was a fabulist’s: the stuff of nineteenth-century fairy tales where endings weren’t happy and evil was as powerful as good.

How had everything gone so wrong so fast? Four months ago, he and Cate had had a life to be envied. Was that the problem? That they’d had the gall to be truly happy? Had they offended the gods by flaunting their pleasure with their simple plans and simple love? One motorcycle trip. One ladder. One phone call. Halloween child. Samhain child.

Church. Green Man. Walpole Park. A face wreathed in leaves.

One fall down cement stairs and a day world becomes a night world. The dead walk unmollified, doomed to mark time while some cosmic starter gun fires, reloads, and fires again and again.

They saw him, the dead. And they knew he could see them; they watched him. As some respite from their own morbid television rerun performances, perhaps they looked to Nicholas for help. But he couldn’t help them. Nor could they teach him.