Oxford Whispers (24 page)

Chapter
50

AIR PUSHED BACK into Madison’s nose, reached her lungs and softened their soreness. Unfamiliar voices filled a still-distant background. Her hands brushed against her own undamaged neck. Her skin was still warm and a regular beat pulsated through it.

Her fingertips climbed up to her chin. She wanted to touch her mouth but an unexpected barrier stopped her movement.

“Madison. Please tell me you’re fine.”

God bless Ollie. She had never been happier to hear his voice. She needed to see him, as a proof of life. Her life.

Her eyes opened wide. Above her, his glasses had slumped halfway down his nose. His lap supported he
r head. Shaky laughter escaped from his mouth and his body sagged.

“I thought you were dead too.”

Tell me about it …

Her lips articulated a reassuring word but the same obstacle swallowed it.

“Wait, wait. I’ll remove the oxygen mask.”

He did and real air rushed into her aching chest. With a slow motion, his hand slid behind her back, lifted her into a sitting posture. She was in her bedroom, but through the open door to the study, she could still see the corpse, lying in the same undisturbed position. Three men wearing uniforms circled around it in a controlled choreography.

“The police and the medics have arrived. She’s really dead.” Ollie shook his head and closed his eyes. “The medics are coming back with a stretcher. They’ll take you to the hospital.”

“I’m fine.”

“No, Maddie, you should go. You were unconscious for about five minutes. The officers checked you out. One got the oxygen mask as a precaution.”

“I don’t want to go to the hospital.”

Ollie laid a hand on her shoulder, rubbing it clumsily. “We
have to leave the place anyway. It’s a murder scene. They will want to ask questions, especially you. It’s your room.”

She could tell them who the murderer was. Of course the real killer was long dead and they wouldn’t believe her story in the slightest.

Poor Miss Lindsey, she had been at the wrong place, at the wrong time. Madison should be the one lying dead, not the censor. Staring down at her shaking hands on her laps, her shoulders bowed and Madison slumped forward.

The thickness in her throat intensified, not because of the pressure Peter had forced on it earlier. Grief made her throat ache, the memory of that newborn girl lying in her crib next to Sarah’s bed, next to her deathbed. How she wanted to hold the baby, to caress her soft, warm skin, to cuddle her against her breast. How she wanted to protect her daughter, to make sure she would never fall prey to this psychopath.

A vibration tickled the top of her thigh, halting the flow of memories. Still shaky, she extracted her cell from the pocket of her jeans and opened the text message.

Rupert. A glimpse of hope, of comfort warmed her chest but didn’t last.

TALKED TO ARCHIE IN LONDON. SARAH BURIED IN OXFORD 6/1651. ARCHIE HAPPY TO HELP. CALL HIM WHENEVER.

An empty giggle finished in a choke.

“What’s going on?”

Staring up from her cellphone into his eyes, she found Ollie questioning her through the glinting glasses. She shook her head. That was the only answer she could give.

Sarah’s remains had been in Oxford all along, close to Madison, right next to her.

This new knowledge caused rage to raise from the pit of her stomach, to her shoulders, her head and extend to the tips of her fingers. She looked down at her hands. They weren’t shaking anymore. They were clasped into tight fists.

Peter had killed her and taken away her child. Sarah had never known her daughter. That injustice must have condemned her soul to an endless quest through the centuries.

Madison wanted revenge for Sarah, but also for herself. He had played with her sanity.

Blood would be shed. Peter’s blood.

THE MOON SHONE throughout the winter night, a bright crescent over Oxford.

Peter, eyes anchored on the stars, tried to control the shivers shaking his body from head to toe.

Continuing this masquerade, with his body weakening, would not be possible for long. He could sense Sarah was coming into her powers. She would understand.

He would have to act soon.

Chapter
51

AFTER TOSSING AND turning in Ollie’s bed, Madison threw off the duvet, sat up and settled the soles of her feet on the thick carpet.

Poor Oliver. He had sacrificed his bed and rolled up in a sleeping bag on the floor. His generosity had been for nothing. Her rest had been shallow and filled with flashbacks from last night’s drama.

Madison had said a big, fat “
No
” to a trip to the hospital. Medical treatment wasn’t what she needed. She needed to act.

That’s why she had asked Ollie not to call Pippa. Madison didn’t want to go and sleep at her friend’s place. She had to stay close to the crime scene, close to where Miss Lindsey’s soul had departed. The proximity of death fueled Madison’s energy.

Closing her eyes, she forced down a deep breath and tried to squeeze the tension out of her shoulders. Her effort didn’t work and she threw her hands up in frustration. The buzzing of her cell made her spring out of bed. She grabbed the phone from the jeans on the floor.

A text message from Rupert. Her broken heart ba-da-boomed in her chest.

ON MY WAY TO MAGWAY NOW. LOOKING FOR YOUR CAVALIER.

“Your” Cavalier. Rupert had decided to get involved. Maybe a sign he was ready to forgive her?

Dialing his number, her nerves clawed at her insides. The phone’s screen informed her that he had already tried to call her the night before, after they had discovered Miss Lindsey’s body. Her phone had been on mute.

The ring echoed in her ear for a few seconds until the call was forwarded to his voicemail, and she hung up. “Come on, Rupert, get over how much you hate me,” she snarled in an attempt to release some of the tension.

There might be another way to look for the truth. From her computer. But she had to run to her bathroom to brush her teeth and get rid of the awful, acrid taste in her mouth first. It reminded her of dying, and that wasn’t a good memory at all.

She tiptoed around Ollie, entrenched in his sleeping bag, his arms spread out like those of a starfish. Opening the door, Madison froze. Bright, yellow crime-scene tape barred the entry to her bedroom on the other side of the corridor. Fear made her grab the doorknob and shut the door. She closed her eyes and swallowed hard.

“I told you not to go anywhere without me,” Ollie scolded, his voice still misted over with sleep.

Madison swiveled around and her heart melted at the sight of his messy hair and half-opened eyes. “I wanted to brush my teeth.”

“The police told you to be careful. We’re due at the station in less than an hour anyway.”

Shit
. She had forgotten about that.

“We need to do some research before then,” she said. “Can you switch on your laptop, please? I need to check something on the Internet.”

Ollie let out a long sigh. “Fine. But we must make the police appointment on time. This is serious business, Madison. What are you looking for anyway?”

“A graveyard.”

Her friend gave her a puzzled look. “You have enough morbid stuff going on as it is. We found a corpse in your bedroom, remember?”

He shook his head in resignation, extracted himself from the sleeping bag and booted up the laptop on his desk. “You’re so weird.”

Ignoring his complaints, Madison asked, “Where would a woman who died in 1651 in Oxford have been buried?”

Bitterness tainted her last words. How well McCain had played his role. He would have known all along where Sarah had lived and died. Because McCain must be Peter’s current, living host. Her only other suspect, poor Miss Lindsey, was lying in the morgue.

Jackson hadn’t flown to Geneva on the night of the burglary. He had had plenty of time to come to Christ Church between their argument at his place yesterday morning, and his visit to Rupert in the late afternoon. Miss Lindsey was in love with him, and she must have followed him into Madison’s bedroom.

“Was she noble?”

Ollie’s question brought her back to the present.

“No. She was a Puritan, and married one.” The thought of Sarah’s marriage to Peter raised bile from the pit of Madison’s stomach.

He had stopped typing into the research engine and shook his head. “It’s too broad. If she had been a noble girl, that would have been easier, but …”

Madison put her hands together in a begging clasp. “Please, Ollie. Let’s try. Her name was Sarah Perkins.”

Ollie checked his wristwatch, then ruffled his hair with his right hand. “We won’t have the answer you’re looking for by the time we have to leave. But we could use a shortcut …” He stopped mid-sentence, absorbed in internal debate.

Her hands twisted together, and her feet drummed against the floor. Madison had to restrain herself from grabbing Ollie’s shoulders and shaking the shortcut out of him.

He continued. “Wherever there’s a cemetery, there’s a church. At least in England.”

Madison nodded.

“Well, what’s the oldest church? Let me rephrase that. What’s the oldest religious building in Oxford with a decent-sized cemetery?”

She had no clue but poked her memory anyway. For no result. “I don’t know. St Michael of the Northgate?”

“The cemetery is too tiny. Come on, Madison.”

“Please, this isn’t quiz night. And we have to go to the police station. So, tell me.”

Undeterred, Ollie kept on throwing questions at her. “A church? Lots of very, very old graves? City center?”

At last, sparks connected in her brain. “St. Giles?”

“Spot on.”

Chapter
52

SHOWERED AND dressed in yesterday’s clothes, Madison had been about to rush out and inspect St. Giles’ churchyard, but Ollie refused to let her go on her own. He had tagged along and now they got off their bikes, leaning them against the church’s iron gate.

On the sidewalk he caught up with her fast-paced steps.

“The chance of finding the grave here is very remote,” he warned when they reached the freshly painted church gate.

“Yeah, yeah. You’ve already told me that.” She pushed the gate open. It didn’t squeak. It was, in fact, perfectly oiled. Her last time there had been with Rupert, on the night of their first date. Her heart squeezed. She breathed in the clean, cold air.

They entered the pathway to the graveyard, the gravel crunching beneath their feet. The frost had started melting in the morning light, removing some of the icy coldness from the scene. A robin’s song and the early sounds of the city inhabited the silence.

Madison had a flash of memory showing Sarah’s grave. The vision had haunted her since that day at Jackson’s, when they had called the spirits.

The crooked, weathered headstones weren’t many. The brittle sound of her shoes on the ground scared a foraging squirrel away. Her body knew the way, even if she herself didn’t.

A grave covered with overgrown grass lay at her feet, the familiar name carved on its headstone, moss and mildew filling in the engraved letters. She knelt and wiped dead leaves from the grave, making a crinkling sound. The metallic tang of damp stone meshed with the salt of her tears.

At last. She had found Sarah.

Madison looked down at her own grave. A part of her was buried here, and had been for centuries. She leaned over and pressed her forehead against the cold stone. A warm glow expanded throughout her drumming chest and the rest of her body.

“She must mean a lot to you, this Sarah.”

Ollie had spoken in such a low tone that she almost missed his words. She got back on her feet and turned her face—covered with dirt by then—toward him.

“Yes, you could say that.”
A sister, a soulmate.

He took her hand. “I wonder who’s buried with her.” Ollie nodded toward the headstone behind Madison. “The stone is discolored and a lot of it is hidden beneath the undergrowth, but there’s a name above hers.”

He walked past her, and leaning against the headstone, started scratching at its surface.

Passive, Madison watched him, still digesting her discovery.

“Here we are.” Ollie stood back up, rubbing his hands against each other to get rid of the dirt. “In memory of Peter Perkins, who died …” The rest of the dedication was unreadable.

Madison wanted to pound her fists against the stone.

You sick bastard
.

Peter had murdered Sarah and his vicious mind had insulted his victim one more time by lying next to her for eternity.

Madison wanted to knock down the tainted gravestone with Peter’s memory etched on it. She wanted to dig up Sarah’s bones and rebury her in a separate ground. As far away as possible from him.

But Sarah needed more than that. She needed Peter’s spirit annihilated. For good. Forever. So did Madison.

THE FLOOR OF THE police station had seen better days. Madison could feel the threadbare carpet beneath the soles of her shoes.

She kept her gaze downcast, absorbed in contemplating the dirt from the graveyard
splattered all over her sneakers. Chief Inspector Crawley sat on the opposite side of a messy desk where a calendar, fi les, staplers and Post-it notes cohabited in professional harmony. His bald head glinted under the harsh ceiling lights.

“Did Miss Linds
ey often check the students’ rooms?” he asked.

Miss Lindsey loved spying and lurking. A real passion of hers.

Badmouthing the dead wasn’t a smart move, especially when the dead person had been murdered in your room.

Ollie stepped in and filled the silence by providing answers to the cop’s questions. Madison disconnected herself from her surroundings and replayed in her head the moment she had found the body, the instant Peter had strangled her, and the scene when she had knelt in front of Sarah’s grave. Peter’s grave.

Her satchel pressed against her chest like a shield, she fought the urge to stand up and scream. She hadn’t been the one who’d killed the censor, but she was responsible for the woman’s death all the same.

Since the first time she had seen the painting, her fears had controlled her actions. The fear of being viewed as a freak, the fear of losing her sanity, the fear of rejection and a terrible fear of loneliness.

All Madison had wanted was to belong, to fi t in.

But you can only belong to one place, and a humid corner of Louisiana already owned her. At least, for this lifetime.

If she hadn’t shrunk away from her heritage, poor Miss Lindsey would still be alive. Th
at was the cold, hard truth.

A woman had died because of Madison’s shallowness, because she was so goddamned immature, and too much of a coward to pick up the fight.

Crawley brought a paper cup full of the liquid to his thin lips. The caustic smell of bad coffee tickled her nostrils. Awareness fell down on Madison, and background noises started reaching her ears again: papers rustling, clicks on keyboards, file cabinets jerking open.

“Do you know why she was in your room?” The policeman pointed the question at her. Ollie couldn’t substitute anymore.

Madison managed to shake her head.

“Have you noticed anything missing?”

Another shake of the head.

“Miss LeBon, a few weeks ago you were burgled. Yesterday, a woman was murdered in your room. You don’t seem to understand how serious the situation is.”

“I do, inspector,” she mumbled in an attempt to sound polite.

“Have you been threatened?” The bald man continued with his questioning. “Has someone…”

Her cellphone rang throughout the police station, a “quiet” area. She rushed to grab the phone. Rupert had called her back. She really wanted to take the call, but Inspector Crawley’s accusatory eyes convinced her not to.

Once Madison had put her cell on mute, Crawley finished his sentence. “… someone around you changed their behavior?”

“No,” Madison answered, but she was lying. To kill any doubt in Crawley’s mind, she insisted, “I haven’t noticed anything suspicious.”

There was no point involving the authorities. They could put Jackson to jail, but Peter would still be free to go and invade someone else’s soul. Nobody would believe her story anyway. Jackson had zero motive.

Madison had to find a way to punish Peter for what he had done. Without making Jackson the latest of his victims.