Darkwater House by Samuel King

Author:Samuel King [King, Samuel]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: LGBT Romance Fiction
Publisher: Totally Entwined Group
Published: 2020-07-20T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twelve

Despite barely sleeping all night and feeling like death warmed up, Toby spent the following morning researching the features he’d been commissioned to write. One was a piece on the rise of the gastro pub for a publication read by those working in the restaurant industry, the other a column on the demise of the gay pub for an LGBTI website he had contributed to a few times in the past. As he worked, he kept glancing out of the nearest window and sighing at the gorgeous view. He’d known from the minute he’d stepped into this room that it was too good to be true. He hadn’t foreseen just how bad it would all turn out—that Albert was a pervert and a con artist and that the house was haunted by his seemingly deranged mother.

Toby thought about what he’d said to Albert about being a journalist who was used to unearthing secrets. He’d made himself sound like some bigshot reporter, when the truth was that he mostly just wrote articles about pubs and restaurants, and they were usually only published in magazines hardly anyone read. There had been the one feature published by The Times—an article about the rise of veganism, just before it became such a massive trend—but that kind of success had never been repeated. Whatever his journalism credentials, however, he could still do some research into the Darkwater name. Sometimes a simple search online could unearth plenty.

He typed ‘Darkwater House’ into the search field, but the only results were for old properties in other parts of the country. Next, he typed in ‘Darkwater, Mrs.’ and ‘obituary’. Again, nothing that came up related to the Mrs. Darkwater that he was interested in. He tried ‘Mrs. Darkwater, Hampstead’. The fourth link down was to the archives of a local Hampstead newspaper. Toby clicked on it. The headline of the story was Local Woman Missing After Swimming in Hampstead Ponds. Toby scanned the text. That was her, Albert’s mother.

The story related how Miriam Darkwater had last been seen by her son Albert, heading to the women’s pond on Hampstead Heath. Despite being in her late seventies, Miriam was a regular at the pond, according to the story. When Miriam still hadn’t returned home by early evening, Albert had walked over to the pond himself and asked those leaving the area if they had seen his mother. When he couldn’t find her or any word of her, he reported her missing to the police. Toby clicked on a link to a later story, which reported that no body had been found in the pond, despite divers conducting a thorough search. Search teams had also scoured the heath, but no body had been discovered. The story was ten years old. Toby assumed that after the requisite seven years, Miriam Darkwater had been declared officially dead. But why hadn’t Albert mentioned that his mother had gone missing? He’d talked as if she had died of old age. He certainly hadn’t said anything to suggest a story of this nature.

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