The Durham Deception by Philip Gooden Read Free Book Online

for me. Will you travel up to Durham and see your Aunt Julia for yourselves? You were always her favourite, Helen, as I said. She would listen to you where she would turn a deaf ear to me. And Thomas, with his knowledge of the law, might be able to do something. Perhaps he could confront this dreadful Flask. Threaten him.’
    The very vagueness of what Mrs Scott was suggesting showed her desperation. Tom was not very enthusiastic, not so much because he didn’t sympathize with his mother-in-law – though he didn’t, greatly – but because he thought any intervention might well make things worse. Fortunately Helen said, ‘I do not know how easily Tom could free himself from work. I could go by myself, I suppose?’
    â€˜On no account, Helen,’ said her mother. ‘For all I know, Eustace Flask has a gang of ruffians and minions under his command despite his angelic countenance. No, you need a man with you.’
    Normally this would have been the kind of remark to get Helen packing her bags and catching the first train north but she seemed curiously prepared to accept her mother’s ban. It seemed that something had to be done, however, so Tom and Helen eventually agreed to consider a Durham visit. They might, said Mrs Scott, make a bit of a holiday out of it. In any case, Aunt Julia would be delighted to see her niece after so many years. And her new husband, of course.
    Mrs Scott’s mood brightened. She started on the cakes and urged the others to tuck in. She explained that she’d been thinking it might be good for Tom and Helen to get the measure of the enemy – those were the words she used, ‘the enemy’ – by attending a séance here in London before they travelled north. Tom noticed how what had been a possibility was now a fact: they were going to visit Durham. He listened as Helen’s mother talked about a medium who lived in Tullis Street, whose sister she and Julia had known many years ago. She had discovered that the man, Ernest Smight, held regular sessions every Sunday evening. Perhaps Tom and dear Helen might just look in on Tullis Street next week?
    This was how it came about that Tom received a message from his long-dead father and how an equally dead cat, run over in the Fulham Road, was resurrected as the spirit of Mrs Seldon’s first husband. And soon after that other things occurred which made the Durham visit even more of a certainty.

Death by Water
    It was a few days after the Sunday séance that Mr Ashley the senior clerk at Scott, Lye & Mackenzie told Tom that Mr David Mackenzie wished to see him. Ashley, the clerk, had been with the firm longer than anyone. As a mark of his status, he had a separate office which no one would have dreamed of entering without knocking first. Tom was told to go and see Ashley by another of the juniors, a pleasant chap called William Evers. This was how it worked at the firm. Someone told you to go and see Ashley, who in turn told you what you had to do next.
    Tom duly knocked and walked in without waiting for permission. By now he was on quite good terms with Ashley. Marrying the daughter of one of the founding partners had, perhaps surprisingly, not counted against him. Tom sensed that Ashley didn’t actively disapprove of him, which was probably as enthusiastic an endorsement as he was going to get.
    The senior clerk looked up from a pile of papers and folders. Gifted with a prodigious memory, he had a high forehead which was permanently creased. Tom thought of the interior of his head as an orderly storehouse with details from different years, different decades even, filed away on each level.
    â€˜Mr Mackenzie wishes to see you at your earliest convenience, Mr Ansell. Which we may translate as straightaway.’
    â€˜Do you know why?’
    There was a time when Tom wouldn’t have asked such a question and Ashley wouldn’t have deigned to answer it. Now he said, ‘I do know