The Death Chamber Read Online Free PDF Page A

difficult ones. But the other applicants were quite impossible.’ He mimed the lifting of a glass. ‘One drank, the other was clearly inept. And you can’t have either in a
prison of this nature, as you know, Sir Lewis.’
    ‘I think Kane will deal with Calvary’s inmates very well,’ said Lewis. ‘He’s serious about his work and he’s completely honest. They’ll see that and
they’ll respect it.’
    ‘Yes. Very well, I’ll back your decision,’ said Higneth. He paused, and then said, ‘It looks as if Kane will have a baptism of fire. You’ve read the newspapers, I
take it?’
    ‘The Knaresborough case? Neville Fremlin? Yes, certainly, I have. There doesn’t seem to be much doubt about his guilt.’
    ‘I don’t think there’s any doubt at all,’ said Higneth. ‘Five women killed for sure – two stabbed through the base of the skull and two probably strangled.
The fifth was too badly decomposed for them to establish how she died. The bodies were all buried in Becks Forest a few miles outside Knaresborough.’
    ‘And one other possible victim, wasn’t there?’ said Lewis.
    ‘Yes, except they haven’t found her body. They’re bringing Fremlin here tomorrow, so I shouldn’t wonder if the newspaper reporters don’t flock here as well. Still,
it’ll be over by this time next month.’
    Extract from
Talismans of the Mind
by C. R. Ingram.
    It’s undeniable that down the centuries, men and women have ceaselessly sought for reassurances to ward off the darknesses of death – charms, spells, formulae.
Sometimes the charms have been elaborate and ceremonious – Druidic rituals or the breaking of bread and wine before an altar – and sometimes they have been macabre, as in the theft of
the hand of a hanged murderer.
    Answers have been sought in strange places – a round table in a darkened room with a group of grief-stricken people groping for a hand-holding assurance that death is not the end. There
have even been men and women who have sought enlightenment within the death cells of the world’s prison-houses – the despair-soaked rooms where the remaining minutes of a life ticked
away like tiny hammer blows, all the way to the stroke of eight . . .

 
    CHAPTER THREE

    Thornbeck, when Georgina reached it, was one of those nice little market towns with which this part of England is sprinkled. It was tucked into the foothills of an unassuming
mountain which the local map disclosed as being Mount Torven. There was a clean-looking main street with bow-fronted shops and a couple of large chain stores specializing in walking boots and
camping and climbing equipment. There were also three white-fronted, bow-windowed pubs advertising bar food. None of it was aggressively touristy and at half past five in the afternoon the place
was modestly busy with people clambering onto buses or negotiating cars out of parking areas. After the lemming-like migration of London’s rush hour this was restful.
    Caradoc House was on the outskirts of this subdued activity. Georgina, following Vincent Meade’s directions, was not quite sure what she had expected of a place that had been built or
purchased with Walter’s bequest, and she had whiled away the drearier parts of the journey by considering the possibilities. In the event, it turned out to be a medium-sized grey-stone house
that might originally have belonged to a modestly prosperous businessman, and it was situated on a steep winding little street near to a rather attractive square. Mount Torven reared up behind it.
Even on the brightest of summer days the rooms at the back would not get very much light, but if you lived here you probably would not mind because the surroundings were so gorgeous. Georgina liked
the house. It faced straight onto the road, but she managed to park at the side, and then walked around to the front. A square brass plate proclaimed it as, ‘The registered headquarters of
the Caradoc Society, formed for the pursuit of