The Sin Eater

Table of Contents

Recent Titles by Sarah Rayne

Title Page

Copyright

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter Twenty-Seven

TOWER OF SILENCE

A DARK DIVIDING

ROOTS OF EVIL

SPIDER LIGHT

THE DEATH CHAMBER

GHOST SONG

HOUSE OF THE LOST

WHAT LIES BENEATH

PROPERTY OF A LADY *

THE SIN EATER *

* available from Severn House

This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author's and publisher's rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

First world edition published 2012

in Great Britain and in the USA by

SEVERN HOUSE PUBLISHERS LTD of

9–15 High Street, Sutton, Surrey, England, SM1 1DF.

Copyright © 2012 by Sarah Rayne.

All rights reserved.

The moral right of the author has been asserted.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

Rayne, Sarah.

The sin eater.

1. Occult fiction.

I. Title

823.9'2-dc23

ISBN-13: 978-1-78010-270-2 (Epub)

ISBN-13: 978-0-7278-8162-5 (cased)

ISBN-13: 978-1-84751-425-7 (trade paper)

Except where actual historical events and characters are being described for the storyline of this novel, all situations in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to living persons is purely coincidental.

This ebook produced by

Palimpsest Book Production Limited,

Falkirk, Stirlingshire, Scotland.

B
enedict Doyle had always known that if he ever entered the house that had belonged to his great-grandfather, the ghost that had shadowed most of his own life would be waiting for him. If it had been possible to avoid coming to the house today, he would have done so – in fact he would have travelled to the other side of the planet if he could have managed it.

But the visit could no more be avoided than tomorrow's sunrise. In a couple of weeks he would be twenty-one, and Holly Lodge, that tall, frowning old place, would become his.

‘You'll have to go through all the stuff that's in there,' his cousin Nina had said, with her customary bossiness. ‘I shouldn't think you'll want much of it yourself, although my mother used to say there were some quite nice things in the house.'

It was all very well for Nina, whose life had been entirely ordinary, and who, if she ever encountered a ghost, would most likely breezily tell it to sod off.

Still, Nina was right about the house's contents needing to be sorted out before it was sold. The solicitors, who had administered the trust fund left by Benedict's parents, had let Holly Lodge to a series of tenants over the years, but it had been empty for the last two years. They assumed Benedict would want to sell it, rather than live in it. Would they be right?

‘Yes,' said Benedict, who would not have lived in Holly Lodge if he had been homeless and starving. He said he would sort out the contents and sell the furniture, and agreed that the house must not stand empty through another winter. Yes, he would see to it. No, he was not putting it off, but he was busy at the moment. This was his third year at Reading and there were exams looming, revision – his finals were next year. You did not acquire a decent degree in law and criminology by sitting around doing nothing. He would go up to London at half-term, or perhaps Christmas . . .

Inevitably it was Nina who pushed him into it. If nothing else, he should have the contents valued by an antique dealer, she said. As it happened, she knew someone who might help. Nina always knew someone who might help – she was constantly offering people to all her friends, from doctors and acupuncturists, to marvellous little boutiques who sold designer clothes at a fraction of the cost. Benedict thought he might have guessed in the present situation she would offer him an antique dealer.

‘Her name's Nell West,' Nina said. ‘She lived in London until her husband died, but she's based in Oxford now. I expect she'd travel to London for what's practically a house clearance though. She won't rip you off, either. I'll phone her, shall I?'

‘Well, all right.' It was already the beginning of December and Benedict knew he would have to face up to entering the house. ‘Make it just before Christmas. Say the eighteenth.'

It was to be hoped Nina's antique dealer contact would not turn out to be one of her butterfly-minded friends, playing at running a business. A young widow might be anything from a mournful workaholic to an extravagant dragonfly, squandering insurance money and trailing strings of lovers.

At first 18th December was far enough away not to matter, but as it got nearer Benedict was aware of an increasing nervousness. He woke on the morning of the 18th to find his stomach churning with apprehension.

London was a seething mass of Christmas shoppers. Benedict eyed them and wished his day could be as normal as theirs. He would far rather grapple with Oxford Street in the Christmas rush than enter an empty old house where God knew what might be waiting for him.

He had not been sure he would remember the way from the tube station and he had been more than half prepared to find himself lost and have to ask for directions. But when it came to it, he recognized the landmarks from twelve years ago – the clusters of shops, the scattering of restaurants, the jumble of house styles, interspersed here and there with single modern office buildings. But he thought that in the main this part of London, which was a kind of satellite suburb of Highbury, would not have looked much different in his great-grandfather's day.

Here was the road now – a polite-looking street, with large dwellings, some fronting on to the pavement, others standing behind hedges. Most of them looked as if they had been divided into flats and some had brass plates indicating they were doctors' or dentists' surgeries. Holly Lodge was halfway along – one of the few private residences left. The gardens were unkempt and the holly hedge that gave it its name was thick and spiky.

Benedict stood looking at the house for a long time, telling himself it had been empty for nearly two years, and that any old, empty house would look gloomy and forbidding on a grey December day. Twelve years ago he had believed in ghosts; these days he did not. There would not be anything waiting for him inside the house.

But there was. He knew it the minute he stepped inside.

Benedict's parents had died shortly after his eighth birthday, in a car crash which had also killed his grandfather who had been travelling with them.

Even now, he could remember the cold sick feeling that had engulfed him when Aunt Lyn, tears streaming down her face, told him what had happened. He had not really understood why his parents had been driving through an icy blizzard that day – he had supposed there was some important grown-up thing they had to do. Aunt Lyn, angrily dashing away tears, had said it was irresponsible of them to go haring across London in the middle of a fierce snowstorm with the roads like ice rinks and visibility virtually nil, and it was as well that Benedict, poor little scrap, had some family left who would take care of him. He would, of course, come to live with her and his cousin Nina.

Benedict had been too sick and numb with grief to care where he lived. He had not known his grandfather very well, so that part was not too bad, but the loss of his parents was devastating. He had to pack his clothes and go to Aunt Lyn's house. Aunt Lyn was kind and comforting, but she was not Benedict's mother and her house was not his house. He had stayed with her sometimes, because Aunt Lyn and Nina were supposed to be the lively ones of the family and Benedict's mother said he was apt to be too quiet and something called introverted. It would do him good, said his mother, to stay with Lyn and be with Nina who was always so sparky, and see if he could imbibe some of that spark.

‘He won't,' said Benedict's father, who was quiet himself and liked Benedict the way he was. ‘He'll retreat from the world into his books.'

‘The way you retreat from the world sometimes,' said Benedict's mother. Benedict, who had been only a quarter listening to this exchange but who had been getting slightly worried in case his parents were going to have one of their very rare rows, heard the smile in his mother's voice and relaxed and went back into the book he was reading, which was
Alice Through the Looking Glass
and which he could read properly by himself now. It was just about the best book in the whole world.

After the crash he could not believe he would never hear his mother teasing his father like that again, nor could he believe he would never see the familiar faraway look on his father's face which his mother called retreating, but the rest of the family said was useless daydreaming.

That first night Aunt Lyn gave him the bedroom he always had, and Benedict closed the door and sat on the bed, refusing to go downstairs or join Aunt Lyn and Nina for a meal. He did not want to talk to anyone and he did not want to see anyone. He said this very politely, but he kept the door closed for the next two days, only going out to the bathroom. Aunt Lyn carried up meals on trays and did not seem to mind that he did not speak to her. Benedict had brought
Alice Through the Looking Glass
with him and he read it all the way through, then turned to the first page and read it all over again.

The funeral was four days later. Aunt Lyn came up to the bedroom to tell him about it, tapping on the door before coming in. It would be at the local church, she said, but Benedict need not go if he did not want to. Nina, who was fourteen, came up later to say if he had any sense he would stay in the house. Funerals were utterly gross. There would be coffins and stuff like that, and everyone would cry. She was going, said Nina importantly, because everyone else was and there was a grown-up party afterwards.

‘It's not a party,' said Aunt Lyn in exasperation. ‘I keep telling you it's not a party.'

‘I don't care what it is, it's at a big house I've never been to, and there'll be food and I can wear black and that's seriously gothic.' Nina was into being gothic at the time.

Benedict did not want to go to a party that would have his parents in coffins and at which people would be seriously gothic, but the night before the funeral his grandmother, who was his mother's mother, came to the house in floods of tears and said he must go, because he was the one scrap of her beloved daughter she had left, and only his presence at her side would get her through the terrible ordeal.

‘That's unanswerable,' said Aunt Lyn to Benedict afterwards. ‘I think you'll have to go. I'm really sorry about it. But it'll only be about an hour.'