The Isolated Séance by Jeri Westerson

Author:Jeri Westerson [Westerson, Jeri]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2023-03-02T16:00:00+00:00

FIFTEEN

Watson

‘We owe you no courtesy,’ said Ben. ‘You were, after all, trying to kill my friend and colleague.’

Badger held a chair thrust into her, chair legs surrounding her torso and pinning her to the wall, like a lion tamer keeping her from attacking. She spat at their feet.

‘Steady!’ cried Badger. ‘That’s a decent rug, that.’

‘Never mind,’ hissed Ben. What the hell were they going to do with her? And it was the middle of the night. Best to ask the questions they had intended to ask yesterday, he reckoned.

‘Josie Williams.’ He looked her over. At first, back in Battersea, he had thought she was young. Her body was slim and shapely enough, but this close to her – and under the scrutiny of the lamp’s light – he could well see the careworn creases at her eyes, the deep grooves on either side of her mouth, a bit of gray in her dark hair, the beginnings of a wrinkled neck. Her face was nut-brown like the rest of her Nomade brethren, though how much of that was sun and how much dirt was difficult to tell. ‘Were you the medium at Horace Quinn’s séance the night he was killed?’

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’ He had expected her to have some sort of Gypsy accent, but instead she sounded Irish. So, she was a Traveller pretending to be a Romany for the séance.

‘We know it was you,’ he lied, ‘so you might as well make a clean breast of it.’

She raised her chin and glared defiantly, saying not a word.

Watson took another tack. ‘Why were you trying to kill my friend?’

She turned her face away, lips tight together.

‘I done nothin’ to you,’ said Badger, rather sullenly, Ben thought.

With hands at his hips, Ben stared at her a good long time before he leaned right into her. ‘You sat directly in front of Horace Quinn at the séance. You were the only one to have a throwing knife just like you brung here to kill Badger with.’ And he shook it at her as he made the accusation. ‘So only you knew how to chuck it at him, and then you escaped by the window. The evidence is stacked against you. And if you don’t confess, the police will haul in Thomas Brent for the murder, and hang an innocent man.’

She jerked her head toward him, wearing the most horrified expression he’d ever seen. Before he could make another remark, they all froze at the sound of urgent pounding on their door.

‘This is the police! Open up!’

Ben’s first thought was to make a run for it. But he had to pull that back. He’d never had the police after him. The holy hell of a noise they’d all made in the struggle must have alerted Mrs Kelly, and she had likely gone in search of a constable.

They all broke at once from their immobility. Ben grabbed an overcoat and threw it on over his union suit. Badger scrambled across his bed to wrap himself in the coverlet.

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