The Sin Eater Read Online Free PDF Page A

many churches politely and unobtrusively marking the hours.
    Benedict Doyle’s house was fairly near to the tube and the streets here were not quite so busy. Nell, following Nina’s directions, enjoyed the short walk; she liked speculating about the people who lived or worked here, and who shopped at the smart-looking boutiques or ate in the restaurants. She was interested in meeting Nina’s cousin, whose parents had been killed when he was the same age as Beth had been when Brad died.
    Here was the road, and halfway along it was Holly Lodge. Clearly this had once been a fairly prosperous residential area, but only a few of the houses seemed to be still privately owned. Holly Lodge looked a bit forlorn, but Nina had said it had been empty for two years, so Nell supposed it was entitled to look forlorn. But as she went up the short driveway, she realized her skin was prickling with faint apprehension. This was absurd and also annoying. She had encountered more than one vaguely sinister old house in the course of her career, and if Holly Lodge seemed sinister it was only because most of the curtains were closed and the shrubbery at the front was overgrown, obscuring the downstairs windows.
    Nell pushed back a wayward holly branch and thought if Michael were here he would start to weave improbable stories about the place for Beth, and the two of them would egg each other on, and end up with a fantastical modern-day version of Sleeping Beauty. But as far as Nell was concerned, this was nothing more than a large Victorian house, which might yield some useful and profitable things for her shop.
    There was no response to her knock, but she was a bit early and Benedict Doyle might not have got here yet. Or he might be here working at the back of the house and not heard the door knocker. Nell made her way through an iron gate at the side and along a narrow path which had weeds growing through the cracks. She peered through the downstairs windows, then stepped back, shading her eyes to see the upper ones. Was there a movement up there? Yes. And he had seen her. Nell waved and he beckoned to her to come inside.
    â€˜Well, can you unlock the front door and let me in?’ called Nell, pleased to have found him, although feeling a bit ridiculous to be standing in the middle of a garden, shouting to someone she could barely see. ‘Or is there a door open somewhere?’
    He pointed downwards to the French windows. Nell gestured an acknowledgement, and tried the handle. It turned, the door swung open, and she stepped inside.
    Benedict had managed to keep Declan Doyle out of his mind for almost the entire journey from Reading. Instead, he concentrated on Christmas: on the parties he would be attending, and on an essay he had to write over the Christmas holiday on unusual and unpublicized crimes in the nineteenth century. If he could find some really quirky cases, and if he did try for a PhD later on, it might form the basis of his doctorate.
    He had allowed sufficient time to have a couple of hours on his own at Holly Lodge, and had bought a pack of sandwiches and a can of Coke at Paddington so he could have some lunch while doing some preliminary sorting out.
    It was midday when he reached the house. Over the years he had built up an image of it in his mind, until it resembled a cross between Sauron’s Mount Doom in
Lord of the Rings
and a
pied à terre
belonging to the Addams family. But standing outside now, he saw it was perfectly ordinary – perhaps a bit more decrepit than it had been twelve years earlier, but nothing that could not be cured by a few coats of paint and several sessions with a mower.
    As he unlocked the door he reminded himself that his mirror ghost was nothing more than an unusual experience during a tragic time in his childhood. A rogue image, half-seen in an old glass, created by any number of peculiar, but explicable, circumstances.
    As he stepped into the big hall, the house’s