The Angel of Highgate by Vaughn Entwistle

Author:Vaughn Entwistle [Entwistle, Vaughn]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Thrillers, Crime, Mystery & Detective
ISBN: 9781783295357
Google: EUNDCgAAQBAJ
Amazon: 1783295341
Goodreads: 25430536
Publisher: Titan
Published: 2015-11-30T11:00:00+00:00

21

THE HIGHGATE ANGEL

Once again, Thraxton sat atop the uncomplaining Emily Fitzsimmons. A lantern borrowed from the sexton hissed quietly on the grave slab next to him. Its shifting glow threw Thraxton’s eerily stretched shadow thirty feet across the ground, where it broke its back over a row of nearby gravestones. Thraxton looked up into the face of a nearby angel. As the lantern light ebbed and shifted, it gave a mock animation to the statue, which seemed to stir restlessly on its pedestal. Although he was wrapped in a heavy woolen cloak, the stone slab radiated cold through his buttocks and the backs of his legs, and he shivered and pulled the cloak tighter about his shoulders.

In the nearby trees, skeletal and bare, a horned owl dropped from its perch and flapped silent and ghostly through the branch tops until it disappeared. Then a moth flitted from the darkness and swooped in spin-dizzy circles about the lantern. Thraxton reached out and snatched it from the air. Although he tried to hold it fast, the moth wriggled between his fingers, skittered across the back of his hand and fluttered straight up into the night. When Thraxton dropped his gaze from the dark sky, a small figure stood in front of him.

He exclaimed, startled. The figure laughed and pushed back a deep cowl revealing features that by now were etched into Thraxton’s being.

Aurelia.

“Strewth! You are as quiet as dust!”

Aurelia smiled, but her eyes were guarded. “I did not know if you would come.”

He leaned forward, an elbow resting on his knee as he looked up into her face, which glowed luminous in the lantern light.

“Dear God. Could you have doubted it?”

Again she smiled, but something about the intensity of his gaze unnerved her and she lowered her eyes. She wore a white flower pinned to her dress—a Night Angel—and now she touched a hand to it. “My mother is waiting for her flower.”

With the softly hissing lantern swinging at his side, Thraxton allowed Aurelia to take his hand and lead him through the jumble of headstones to the darkly wooded spot where the grave of Florence Greenley lay. During the day the spot was deeply shaded. Now, hidden from the wan glow of an orange crescent moon, the grave was pooled in impenetrable darkness. Even with the lantern light, Thraxton stumbled on the uneven ground and wondered at Aurelia’s ability to see in the dark.

“Hello, Mother,” Aurelia said upon reaching the simple headstone. “I have come as I promised and brought this kind gentleman to meet you.”

She looked up at Thraxton and smiled. “My mother says hello.”

Thraxton’s mouth dropped open. He was at a loss. “Ah, er, hello… Mrs. Greenley.”

Aurelia unpinned the flower and her silk dress rustled as she knelt to place the single bloom in the stone urn. Still kneeling, she pressed a hand against the headstone and bowed her head. When she rose a moment later and turned to Thraxton, her eyes held a liquid gleam.

“My mother says you are a kind man.

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