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Authors: Elly Griffiths
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their dead. Beware the living and the dead. Beware the living dead. We who were living are now dying.
You have disappointed me, Detective Inspector. I have shared my wisdom with you and still you are no nearer to me or to Lucy. You are, after all, a man bound to the earth and to The Mundane. I had hoped for better things of you.
Tomorrow is the Feast of All Saints. Will you find St Lucy there in all the holy pantheon? Or is she, too, bound to the earth?
In sadness.
25th November 1998
Dear Detective Inspector Nelson,
It is now a year since Lucy Downey vanished. The world has turned full circle and what have you to show for it? Truly you have feet of clay.
A curse on the man who puts his trust in man, who relies on the things of flesh, whose heart turns from the Lord. He is like dry scrub in the wastelands, if good comes, he has no eyes for it.
In sadness.
December 1998
Dear Detective Inspector Nelson,
I nearly did not write to wish you compliments of the season but then I thought that you would miss me.
But, in truth, I am deeply disappointed in you.
A girl, a young girl, an innocent soul, vanishes but you do not read the signs. A seer, a shaman, offers you the hand of friendship and you decline it. Look into your own heart, Detective Inspector. Truly it must be a dark place, full of bitterness and regret.
Yet Lucy is in light. That I promise you.
In sadness.
The last letter is dated January 2007:
Dear Detective Inspector Nelson,
Had you forgotten me? But with each New Year I think of you. Are you any nearer to the right path? Or have your feet strayed into the way of despair and lamentation?
I saw your picture in the paper last week. What sadness and loneliness is etched in those lines! Even though you have betrayed me, still I ache with pity for you.
You have daughters. Do you watch them? Do you keep them close at all times?
I hope so for the night is full of voices and my ways are very dark. Perhaps I will call to you again one day?
In peace.
What did Nelson think, wonders Ruth, when he read that open threat to his own children? Her own hair is standing on end and she is nervously checking the curtains for signs of lurking bodies. How did Nelson feel about receiving these letters, over months and years, with their implication that he and the writer are in some way bound together, accomplices, even friends?
Ruth looks at the date on the last letter. Ten months later Scarlet Henderson vanishes. Is this man responsible? Is he even responsible for Lucy Downey? There is nothing concrete in these letters, only a web of allusion, quotation and superstition. She shakes her head, trying to clear it.
She recognises the Bible and Shakespeare, of course, but she wishes she had Shoria for some of the other references.
She is sure there is some T.S. Eliot in there somewhere.
What interests her more are the Norse allusions: Odin, the Tree of all Knowledge, the water spirits. And, even more than that, the signs of some archaeological knowledge. No layman, surely, would use the word ‘cursuses’. She lies in bed, rereading, wondering …
It is a long time before she sleeps that night, and, when she does she dreams of drowned girls, of the water spirits and of the ghost lights leading to the bodies of the dead.
CHAPTER 6
‘So what do you think? Is he a nutter?’
Ruth is once again sitting in Nelson’s shabby office, drinking coffee. Only this time she brought the coffee herself, from Starbucks.
‘Starbucks eh?’ Nelson had said suspiciously.
‘Yes. It’s the closest. I don’t normally go to Starbucks but…’
‘Why not?’
‘Oh, you know,’ she shrugged, ‘too global, too American.’
‘I’m all for America myself,’ said Nelson, still looking doubtfully at the froth on his cappuccino. ‘We went to Disneyland Florida a few years ago. It was champion.’
Ruth, for whom the idea of Disney World is sheer unexpurgated hell, says nothing.
Now Nelson puts down his
You have disappointed me, Detective Inspector. I have shared my wisdom with you and still you are no nearer to me or to Lucy. You are, after all, a man bound to the earth and to The Mundane. I had hoped for better things of you.
Tomorrow is the Feast of All Saints. Will you find St Lucy there in all the holy pantheon? Or is she, too, bound to the earth?
In sadness.
25th November 1998
Dear Detective Inspector Nelson,
It is now a year since Lucy Downey vanished. The world has turned full circle and what have you to show for it? Truly you have feet of clay.
A curse on the man who puts his trust in man, who relies on the things of flesh, whose heart turns from the Lord. He is like dry scrub in the wastelands, if good comes, he has no eyes for it.
In sadness.
December 1998
Dear Detective Inspector Nelson,
I nearly did not write to wish you compliments of the season but then I thought that you would miss me.
But, in truth, I am deeply disappointed in you.
A girl, a young girl, an innocent soul, vanishes but you do not read the signs. A seer, a shaman, offers you the hand of friendship and you decline it. Look into your own heart, Detective Inspector. Truly it must be a dark place, full of bitterness and regret.
Yet Lucy is in light. That I promise you.
In sadness.
The last letter is dated January 2007:
Dear Detective Inspector Nelson,
Had you forgotten me? But with each New Year I think of you. Are you any nearer to the right path? Or have your feet strayed into the way of despair and lamentation?
I saw your picture in the paper last week. What sadness and loneliness is etched in those lines! Even though you have betrayed me, still I ache with pity for you.
You have daughters. Do you watch them? Do you keep them close at all times?
I hope so for the night is full of voices and my ways are very dark. Perhaps I will call to you again one day?
In peace.
What did Nelson think, wonders Ruth, when he read that open threat to his own children? Her own hair is standing on end and she is nervously checking the curtains for signs of lurking bodies. How did Nelson feel about receiving these letters, over months and years, with their implication that he and the writer are in some way bound together, accomplices, even friends?
Ruth looks at the date on the last letter. Ten months later Scarlet Henderson vanishes. Is this man responsible? Is he even responsible for Lucy Downey? There is nothing concrete in these letters, only a web of allusion, quotation and superstition. She shakes her head, trying to clear it.
She recognises the Bible and Shakespeare, of course, but she wishes she had Shoria for some of the other references.
She is sure there is some T.S. Eliot in there somewhere.
What interests her more are the Norse allusions: Odin, the Tree of all Knowledge, the water spirits. And, even more than that, the signs of some archaeological knowledge. No layman, surely, would use the word ‘cursuses’. She lies in bed, rereading, wondering …
It is a long time before she sleeps that night, and, when she does she dreams of drowned girls, of the water spirits and of the ghost lights leading to the bodies of the dead.
CHAPTER 6
‘So what do you think? Is he a nutter?’
Ruth is once again sitting in Nelson’s shabby office, drinking coffee. Only this time she brought the coffee herself, from Starbucks.
‘Starbucks eh?’ Nelson had said suspiciously.
‘Yes. It’s the closest. I don’t normally go to Starbucks but…’
‘Why not?’
‘Oh, you know,’ she shrugged, ‘too global, too American.’
‘I’m all for America myself,’ said Nelson, still looking doubtfully at the froth on his cappuccino. ‘We went to Disneyland Florida a few years ago. It was champion.’
Ruth, for whom the idea of Disney World is sheer unexpurgated hell, says nothing.
Now Nelson puts down his
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