He shook his head with a dismissive smirk, then crossed the room to one of his amber-suspended insects. He held it up to the light, illuminating a milky exoskeleton. ‘Woefully unoriginal, quite frankly. But to each their own. I simply think it a waste.’ He laid the unusual arthropod back down, then turned to me. ‘Tell me, do you have any grand writing ambitions of your own?’
Irritated at his condescension, I snipped, ‘Maybe.’
‘Then it would do you well to study the golden thread – if you have any hope of weaving one of your own, that is.’ A soft, knowing smile; a silky gaze, like a spider casting a web. ‘You’re a talented girl, Charlotte. Don’t fritter it away on the same lazily trodden path as everyone else.’ He took a slight step forward, leaning intently on the back of a chair. ‘Your mind is more pliable, more open than most. Let me take it to the next level.’
For a shameless split second, I felt myself being carried away on the tide of flattery, the idea that I might be exceptional heady and intoxicating as incense.
But I knew what he was doing. I knew that the unease creeping up and down my limbs like black rot was trying to protect me.
‘I actually was interested in what you had to say about Sister Maria,’ I said, pushing through the discomfort. ‘Do you have any theories as to how she died?’
He gave me a pleasured, victorious look, as though he’d known exactly what I was about to ask. ‘Theories? Many. Answers? None.’
‘What are your theories?’
A slithery expression. ‘Enter into my mentorship and perhaps I’ll tell you.’
I fixed a neutral expression on my face. ‘I’ll think about it.’ I turned to leave, then hesitated and turned back. He was studying me as though I was a museum exhibit. ‘One more question. Do you believe in demonic possession?’
He gave a sharp bark of laughter, gesturing to the arcane paraphernalia scattered around his classroom. ‘What do you think?’
I chewed the inside of my cheek. ‘And what do you think makes people particularly susceptible to it? As victims, I mean.’
His eyes locked on to mine. ‘I believe I already told you the answer to that.’
It took me a beat to figure out what he meant.
Your mind is more pliable, more open than most.
I’d been a willing vessel from the start. I’d literally thought the words, ‘What if it was my imagination that could open this long-sealed door? And if that key let the terror walk right into my own life, so be it.’
Hell, I’d practically invited Sister Maria to a tea party.
As I left Sanderson’s too-warm classroom, the sickly feeling of mould and decay still clung to me, and I didn’t think it had anything to do with the long-dead nun. Sanderson was more unsettling than I could’ve ever imagined, and not because of the sheep skulls and Baphomet figurines. It was in his lecherous gaze, the cloying way he spoke to me.
Had I been a I fool to dismiss Peter Frame’s theory about a professor grooming students? Sanderson taught both Dawn Middlemiss and Fiona Taylor before their deaths. Perhaps he had ensnared them too with satin-soft flattery, like a silkworm. But what of Sam Bowey and Janie Kirsopp? Or was this just an almighty leap?
Walking down the grand hallway in the convent, something came back to me – something so obvious and so significant that I kicked myself for not remembering earlier.
I’d seen Sanderson in the Grandstand on the night of Poppy’s death.
Withinminutesof Poppy’s death.
It was four in the morning, and he was staring into the dying fire with something amber-coloured in a crystal tumbler.
Why was he awake then? Why had he looked so macabre?
I waited for a hot pulse in the ruby, a writhing of the roots,somethingto show me I was on the right lines, but nothing ever came. Sister Maria had many opinions, but on the subject of Professor Sanderson, she was silent.
*
One afternoon in late November, the sun hung low and languid in the sky, burnishing the deciduous woods a dying bronze; the last gasp of autumn before the choke of winter took hold. I was in a critical practice seminar thinking of Janie Kirsopp when I suddenly remembered where I’d seen T.A. Renner’s name before.
I couldn’t say for certain why the lightning bolt struck then. Nothing Professor Mellor was saying related to the author or the ritual in any way. It was more like my brain had been rifling through my memory in the background, searching through the dusty boxes in the archives of my mind to find the source. It was in one of those dusty box files I knew I’d seen the word Renner.
The newspaper archives.
I didn’t know in what context, but I could suddenly picture his name in that very specific serif font beloved by local newspapers the world over.
As soon as my seminar was over, I caught the next shuttle bus into town – grimacing through the tightening lasso and the starry vision – and faced off against the disgruntled gentleman on the archive’s front desk once again.
It took around an hour to find the piece containing his name. At first I scanned all the coverage of the murders, assuming that’s where I’d seen it, but it was actually a very small column near the back of the paper that I’d barely registered at the time:Local historian reviews the latest books about nineteenth-century Northumberland.
Renner’s italicised bio at the end of each column read:
T.A. Renner has an MRes in Nineteenth-Century Literature, and self-published his own work of non-fiction, Soul Purification Rituals in Nineteenth-Century Convents, in 1982. Fantasy Prints on West Street printed the work, and copies are available to purchase from the author directly. Please write to: T.A. Renner, Kittiwake Keep, Little Marmouth, Northumberland and enclose a cheque for £2 plus postage.
My heart raced. Not only did I have an identity for our mystery writer – I had an address.
And it was not one mile from Carvell.