“So Delores was her sister?” I ask as Lois slips back out of the room. Larry nods.
“They’re not close, there was a big age gap. I think Aunt Delores was nearly twenty by the time my mum came along. Their mum remarried after the war when Delores’ father was killed in action. New marriage, new baby. I was always the one who looked after Aunt Delores as she got older. She was really good to me when I was a kid, tried to give me the stability my mum couldn’t, or rather wouldn’t.” Sighing deeply, she stares into her mud-coloured tea as she absently stirs it. “I can’t imagine Mum will cut her cruise short, she’s too selfish for that. She’s never bothered with her sister before; I doubt she’ll start now.”
“Danny and I will help you, whatever you need.” I reach out and lay my hand on hers comfortingly,
“Thanks.” She squeezes my hand and manages another small smile even as an errant tear runs down her cheek and she quickly wipes it away. “So what happens now?”
“She’ll need to have a post-mortem to confirm my suspicions,” I say gently.
“And will you be doing that?”
I shake my head. “Probably not. She’ll be transferred to a local mortuary.”
“What if I want you to do it?” she asks. “It’s just that…” She swallows hard. “She’s so tiny and… and I know you’ll be kind, that you’ll give her her dignity.”
“I don’t know,” I tell her honestly. “I can see if Danny can pull some strings and get her transferred to Hackney, but I can’t make any promises.”
“Thank you.” She snuffles as she reaches for a tissue from a nearby box and accidentally knocks a sealed pot of milk onto the floor, but as she bends down and reaches for it, my eyes widen at the familiar-looking little old lady hovering behind her.
Mrs Delores Abernathy looks no different in death than she had in life with her strange tea-cosy hat, buttoned-up cardigan, and pleated skirt. She’s still clutching her handbag in front of her chest, both frail hands wrapped around the leather handle, as she hums absently to herself.
I can feel the frown tugging at my lips as I study her. She seems lost in her own world, exactly as she had before. Once she was free of her physical body and the disease which had kept her trapped in the prison of her mind, I would have expected her to be more coherent, but she seems just as lost and confused.
A death cycle, I muse silently, just like Dusty. After her murder, the drag artist Dusty Le Frey had been trapped, frozen as she had been at the point of death. Which is why for the first few months she always appeared to me in the gold dress she’d died in, wearing a blood-stained wig, ruined makeup, and only one shoe.
Evangeline Crawshanks, the old lady who haunts the Whitechapel Occult Books & Curiosities shop, had said it was because she was locked in a death cycle, unable to move forward until her murder had been solved. No, I think suddenly. It wasn’t her murder that needed to be solved, it was her unfinished business with her father that had been stopping her from moving on.
Shit. I stare back at the old lady, who once again disappears from view as Larry sits up and places the disposable milk pot back on the table. How the hell am I supposed to figure out what Delores’ unfinished business is when she is still suffering from the ghost version of Alzheimer’s?
Damn it, where’s Dusty when I need her?
“I just can’t believe this is happening,” Larry says miserably. “Do you really think someone murdered Aunt Delores?”
I open my mouth to say I don’t know what. On the one hand, I wish I could give her the peace of telling her Delores just slipped away from natural causes and went skipping off into the light. On the other, I’m staring at the proof that Delores had been shuffled off the mortal coil before her expiry date.
Before I can confirm one way or the other, Larry lets out a distraught sob and shoves her mug of tea out of the way, folding her arms on the table as she buries her face in them and cries. I watch as Delores shuffles up behind her, patting her niece awkwardly even though Larry can’t feel it and is completely unaware of her presence.
It’s sort of sweet in a weird, surreal kind of way, right up until the moment the tissue box flies off the table and slaps Larry in the side of the head. I snatch it up quickly with a grimace just as Larry looks up at me with swollen, tear-stained eyes.
“Tissue?” I hold up the box with an awkward smile.
She plucks a tissue from the box and holds it up to her face, closing her eyes to blow her nose, and just as she does the tea pot levitates off the table and floats toward her cup.
With a mortifying squeak, I reach out and grab it as Larry opens her eyes.
“Um, refill?” I jiggle the teapot in one hand while still grasping the tissues in the other one.
“Uh, no thanks.” She frowns, reaching down to pick up her phone and glance at the blank screen once again.
“STOP IT!” I mouth silently at Delores, smiling at Larry innocently as she turns her attention back to me.
“Still no response from your mum?” I ask, setting the tissues and the teapot down.
“No, I…”
“Whoa… ah.” I leap out of my chair as I see Delores amble toward Larry, holding the board game she liked to play with her every time she visited. I grab it quickly before Larry can see it levitating seemingly by itself across the room, shoving it behind my back as I grab Larry’s arm and pull her up from the table.
“You know what we should do?” I tell her in a rush, turning her toward the door as I slip the board game onto the table behind us. “We should go see Danny… Yes, that's exactly what we should do. It’s been a long night, and you should probably get some rest. So we’ll check in with Danny and then we’ll get someone to give you a lift home.”
