The Smile of a Ghost (Merrily Watkins Mysteries Book 7)

Merrily is called to investigate a possible ghost sighting in her seventh fascinating adventureIn the affluent, historic town of Ludlow, a teenage boy dies in a fall from the castle ruins. Accident or suicide? No great mystery—so why does the boy's uncle, retired detective Andy Mumford, turn to diocesan exorcist Merrily Watkins? More people will die before Merrily, her own future uncertain, uncovers a dangerous obsession with suicide, death, and the afterlife hidden within these shadowed medieval streets.

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. Merrily Watkins faces her most challenging case yet in British author Rickman's unsettling seventh mystery to feature the Anglican priest and deliverance consultant to the diocese of Hereford (after 2004's The Prayer of the Night Shepherd). When the 14-year-old nephew of newly retired Det. Sgt. Andy Mumford falls from the ruined castle in the medieval town of Ludlow, the official inquest rules the boy's death a suicide. Suspecting foul play, Mumford seeks Merrily's aid. Two more deaths shatter the village, and Mumford, not yet at peace with his retirement, begins to investigate on his own. Rickman vividly depicts Ludlow's narrow streets and the sinister castle, but it's his masterly handling of the occult elements and their impact on the psychology of his sensitive and memorable characters that will keep readers mesmerized from start to finish. Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

The Smile of a GhostBy Phil RickmanAtlantic Books LtdCopyright © 2005 Phil RickmanAll rights reserved.ISBN: 978-0-85789-015-3ContentsMumford, PART ONE: Robbie, 1. Into the Loop, 2. Vice-rage, 3. Pebbles, 4. Routine Pastoral, 5. Saturday Sun, 6. On the Slippery Slope, 7. I'll Be Waiting, 8. Imbalance, 9. The Bishop's Tale, 10. Leave God Out of It, 11. Nightshades, 12. Esoteric, PART TWO: Jemmie, 13. Extreme, 14. Black Poppies, 15. Ghost-Walk, 16. Kindred Spirit, 17. Outcast, 18. Departure Lounge, 19. The Joy of Death, 20. Old Ludlow, 21. Tradition, 22. Stepmother, 23. Duality, PART THREE: Bell, 24. Ancient Incense, 25. His Element, 26. The Mix, 27. Carrying a Light, 28. Tonguing the Yew, 29. All the Big Words, 30. Victim, 31. Smoke, 32. Media Studies, 33. Lift Shaft into Heaven, Mumford, 34. Old Stock, 35. A Resort for the Dead, 36. The Legend, 37. Like in the Belfry, 38. Like Hello!, 39. Raw Madness, Mumford, 40. Heavier Than You Know, PART FOUR: Sam, 41. Big Bump, Mumford, 42. Like Heat, 43. Nobody but God, 44. Lab Rat, 45. Marion, 46. Gridiron, 47. Point of Transition, 48. Running Through the Town, 49. An Intimate Eternity, 50. Dead Person Watching, CHAPTER 1Into the Loop'No – please – I want to understand this,' Siân said. 'You're telling us that you yourself have seen one.'Her pewter hair hung like a warlord's helmet. She'd found her way to the head of the table, and she was sitting there in judgement. Her expression was like, Say it ... say that word again.The word that Merrily was realizing should be avoided.'I once had an experience, that's the only way I can describe it,' she said. 'A series of experiences, if you like, that I couldn't rationally explain.'In the vault-like vicarage kitchen, beeswax candles burned low in their saucers, and the empty ashtray mocked her. She'd been trying to tell herself she'd guessed it was likely to turn out this bad, but the truth was, no, not in her worst dreams.'And so I went to the Church for advice, and the Church wasn't exactly helpful. Felt I was being treated like some kind of hysterical loony.'Siân's grey eyes blinked once, like the steel shutters on the little windows of a police cell. Merrily stared into them. Sorry – I meant, like some kind of emotionally dysfunctional person with advanced learning difficulties.'And where exactly did you have this ... series of experiences, Merrily?''Here. At the vicarage. Upstairs. Just after we moved in, a couple of years ago.''This is rather a big house,' Nigel Saltash said.'Huge – certainly compared with anything I'd lived in before.''Just you and your daughter?'Saltash tilted his head fractionally, as though he needed this slight motion to activate his enormous brain. It also turned his smile on. He had an all-purpose smile: questioning, explaining, sympathizing, patronizing. For many years, he'd been a psychiatrist; some things didn't change.'Just the two of us, yes,' Merrily said. 'Me and Jane. Like now.''So, if I were to humbly suggest – and you could say I'm simply playing devil's advocate, if you like – that you were feeling terribly insecure at the time ... a stranger in the village, not yet fully licensed or formally installed as vicar ... and you'd been thrown into this enormous, ancient, echoing ... rather spooky old house ...''Plus, I was not that many years widowed. And we had very little money. Also like now.''And have the experiences stopped now?'In the candle-glow, Nigel Saltash's face was taut and tanned from skiing somewhere. His light grey hair was cropped tight and fitted flush into his beard. He was long and lithe and living proof that seventy was the new fifty.'Yes, it was all over very quickly,' Merrily said. 'Once we'd got certain things sorted out.''You're playing into my rationalist's hands, Mrs Watkins. Deliberately, perhaps?''Well, I suppose I'm making the point that someone like you can turn anyone's circumstances to your professional advantage.''But am I necessarily wrong?'Merrily shrugged. 'I'm always going to say "I know what I saw," and you're always going to say "But you didn't really see it at all." ''And that way, surely, we arrive at something approximating to the truth,' Siân Callaghan-Clarke said.'Do we?''Nine times out of ten, yes.''Anyway,' Merrily said, 'that was the main reason why, when I was offered the post of exorcist – Deliverance Consultant – I would have found it hard to say no.''I still cannot believe you've been allowed to go on for so long ... alone.' Siân was shaking her head. 'The danger you've been in ...''Sorry?'One of the candles sputtered out, and Merrily ran a forefinger nervously around the rim of her dog collar.She'd been naive; she'd misread the signs.Huw Owen had told her at the start what she'd be up against. If women priests were seen as soft plaster patching up the already crumbling walls of the Church, a woman exorcist —Might as well just paint a great big bull's-eye between your tits, Huw had said memorably.A month or two ago, when the Bishop, Bernie Dunmore, had said, I'm afraid that, once again, I've been asked what you're doing about establishing a Deliverance advisory panel, she'd shrugged it off.Realizing that, OK, sooner or later there was going to have to be a support group within the diocese, but it had to involve the right people, didn't it? People who were sympathetic, who didn't have an agenda, political or otherwise.Only, the ones she'd thought of as the right people hadn't wanted to know – Simon St John, vicar of Knight's Frome, backing away in mock terror when she'd asked him, making the sign of the cross with both hands. But the point was, she knew that he would always be there for her, like the wise old owls outside the diocese, Huw Owen and Llewellyn Jeavons. It just wasn't official; some of these people didn't do official.Whereas people like Siân Callaghan-Clarke and Nigel Saltash didn't do anything else.Saltash was a good friend of the Dean, and giving his professional services free – no better reason for the Dean to take him to meet the Bishop and the Bishop to introduce him to Merrily. In any modern Deliverance circle, a qualified psychiatrist was now fundamental. A free one was a godsend.Thank you, God. Thank you so much.'You mean I'm in spiritual danger?' Merrily said. 'As a woman in a male tradition?'Now Siân was staring at her, leaning back in her chair like Merrily must be deliberately winding her up. Siân's mother was a New Labour baroness; she wore her feminist credentials like defiant tattoos. Within five years she'd either be a bishop or out of the Church. Spiritual danger, political danger – all the same to her.'I meant, like, the first exorcist having been Jesus himself,' Merrily said lamely.She let the silence hang, recalling the reported mutterings of her predecessor, Thomas Dobbs, as he'd prowled the cathedral cloisters trying to engineer her resignation. At the time, she'd been probably the first – certainly the youngest – woman diocesan exorcist in Britain, operating under the customized title Deliverance Consultant. Appointed, it later became evident, largely because the former Bishop of Hereford had wanted to get into her cassock. Siân Callaghan-Clarke, already a well-placed minister in the diocese, would have heard the rumours and stored them away.Payback time for bimbo priest?Martin Longbeach carefully relit the candle with a taper. Martin, tubby and camp, wore an alb and an outsize pectoral cross and was known to covet the south Herefordshire parish of Hoarwithy because of its exotic Italianate church. It had been his idea that they should light candles tonight, to 'aid concentration'.'By danger,' Siân said, 'I meant the danger of being compromised and exploited ... and of having to make instant decisions that you're perhaps not ...'... qualified to make, experienced enough to handle.Siân left this unsaid. Merrily sat in the candlelight, images of the past couple of years encircling her like pale smoke – fears, anxieties, faltering hopes, tentative joys. And also the most bewildering and stimulating years of her life.There was a stillness in the air. Was this it? Intimations of the end, on a cool April night?Siân Callaghan-Clarke clasped her long hands and leaned over them across the table.'Tonight we've tried to go over what we understand by the term "Deliverance", and the multiplicity of conditions we're expected to examine – from perceived ghosts and poltergeists, to perceived curses, possession and so-called psychic attack. We've considered the cases Merrily has to deal with, day to day: the deluded, the disturbed, the fantastical, the pathological liars —''Not forgetting those in need of prayer and non-judgemental understanding. And the ones afflicted by what seemed to be genuine ... intrusion,' Merrily said.'Seemed to be.' Nigel Saltash smiled.'Seemed to me to be. A conclusion not lightly reached.''The point is,' Siân said, 'that deciding who is deluded and who – however remote that possibility might be – is, ahm, genuinely afflicted ... has been Merrily's sole responsibility. An impossible situation for just one person, who also has a parish to run.''I've not been without back-up. Huw Owen's always on the end of a phone.'Merrily felt the outline of the unopened packet of Silk Cut in a pocket of her denim skirt. The other back-up.'Ah yes,' Siân said, looking over her half-glasses. 'Huw Owen.''I'm sorry,' Saltash said. 'Who is Huw Owen?''Nigel, I'm not sure you'll want to know.'Siân's eyes were still and neutral. Merrily was furious but bit down on it. She really, really needed a cigarette. They were all looking at her.'Huw was my primary tutor. Me and a bunch of others. He runs training courses for the Deliverance Ministry in a former Nonconformist chapel in a remote part of the Brecon Beacons.''Where nobody can hear you scream,' Siân said. 'My understanding is that Huw Owen, while living the life of a fourth-century hermit, has himself been in such a precarious psychiatric state for so long that —'Merrily felt herself arch like a cat. 'That's ridic —''— that not only can he no longer be relied upon to remain au fait with current thinking —''And fucking defamatory!' Merrily said.In the silence, the phone rang in the scullery, which she used as her office.Siân looked up, said mildly. 'You want to get that?''I'll ... let the machine take it.' Merrily glanced at the scullery door, which was ajar. 'If it's not urgent ...'They all sat there uncomfortably as the machine in the office played Merrily's outgoing message through the open door, Nigel Saltash giving her a look that was professionally wry and sympathetic.It was Saltash who'd introduced Siân, who'd worked with him when she was standing in as a hospital chaplain. She said she'd been wary of Deliverance work up to now, but if Nigel was going to be involved ...Siân, in turn, had brought in Martin Longbeach, once her curate, who was clearly a placid and malleable guy. And, no doubt, guaranteed not to fancy Merrily.This was a nightmare.There was a bleep from the answering machine and a cough.'Mrs Watkins. Mumford. Andy Mumford. I'll ... call you later, if that's all right with you.'The line went dead, the machine rewound, Merrily nodded.'I can call him back.''Would that have been Sergeant Mumford?' Siân asked. 'From Hereford CID?''I think he's about to retire, actually. May already have ...''You've had some interesting dealings with the police, haven't you? I was talking the other day to Sergeant Mumford's superior – DCI Howe?''Oh? Yeah, our paths have ... crossed.''So she tells me. I get on very well with her.'Figured. If glacial Annie had opted for the Church rather than a fast-track police career, Canon Callaghan-Clarke would have been her ideal spiritual director.'I'll make some more tea,' Merrily said. Nobody had referred again to Huw Owen. Nobody had reacted to her outburst.'No, I think we should say goodnight at this point.' Siân folded her document case, took off her glasses. 'Given ourselves quite a lot to consider.''Yes.''I think we've all accepted that, having inherited a basically medieval structure, our task is to turn it into something practical, efficient and geared to the demands of the twenty-first century. To formulate a set of parameters, so that changes in, say, personnel will not damage the efficacy of the essential Deliverance module.'Merrily gripped the cigarette packet on her thigh. Deliverance module?Siân stood up.'I think the main decision we've made is that, to ease the very obvious pressure on Merrily, all of us should immediately be brought into the loop – the Deliverance e-mail loop, that is. And that each and every new case should be submitted for observations before any action is taken. Correct?''It makes sense,' Martin Longbeach said. 'We might not always be able to make a contribution, but it's a question of sharing.''I'll ... tell Sophie at the Bishop's office,' Merrily said.'And in my case,' Nigel Saltash said, 'in these formative days, I do think it might be rather a good idea for me to tag along and observe some of the people you're dealing with, Merrily. I mean, purely from an educational point of view?''Sorry?''I want to learn. See how you operate. Had more time on my hands since we sold half the land. Always thought I could settle down, in retirement, as a farmer, but I'm afraid that once a shrink ... Would that be in order? I want to understand how you see Deliverance.'Merrily took a big breath. 'Nigel, how I see Deliverance ... I'm supposed to be a priest, right? I have to operate on the basis of there being a spiritual element – that we've got used to calling God – in everything. So I actually believe that things can happen on more than one level.''Indeed,' Martin Longbeach said. 'The holistic approach is essential. All aspects of life are interconnected.''And the fact that there are certain things that I'm never going to be able to explain scientifically or psychologically ... that doesn't bother me one way or the other. And I think we should be there to say to the people affected: no, you're not necessarily going mad —''But if you are' – Nigel Saltash smiled hugely – 'we can also help you with that.'Merrily sighed. 'As I tried to say, when I was having problems the Church looked at me sideways and raised its eyebrows pityingly. I don't want anybody out there to feel I'm writing them off as disturbed or deluded.''And I'd absolutely hate to cramp your style, Merrily,' Saltash said.Merrily stood up. Her legs felt weak.'We'll see what we can work out.''Of course we will,' Saltash said.Dear God.CHAPTER 2Vice-rageLol had A bunch of new-home cards. He'd put them in the deep sill of the window overlooking the bathroom-sized garden and the orchard beyond. Jane began to read them, holding the first one up to the hurricane lamp hanging from the central beam.'Alison, eh? Wooooh!'The card had a pencil sketch of horses on the front. Alison Kinnersley, who bred them, had lived with Lol for a while before taking up with James Bull-Davies, whose family had once run this village before they ran out of money. Two years ago, even a struggling squire with holes in his farmhouse roof had been a better bargain than Lol.But now Lol had Mum and a career back on course, and the village more than accepted him, and even Alison was being generous.It's definitely the right thing to do, she'd written. You can't hide it for ever. Even James thinks that now, and I don't need to tell you how conservative James is.'Wow,' Jane said, 'if it goes on like this, they'll be inviting you to run for the Parish Council.'Lol looked down from the stepladder, the overloaded paint-roller in his hand dribbling burnt orange onto the flagstones. Jane had chosen the ceiling colour; it looked wrong now, but she was never going to admit that. Lol just looked uncomfortable. He had orange smudges down the front of his Gomer Parry Plant Hire sweatshirt, tiny spots on his round, brass-rimmed glasses.'Then again,' Jane said, 'maybe not.'There was a card from the Prossers at the Eight till Late and one from Gomer Parry and Danny Thomas – Welcome back, boy – with a sheep on the front driving a JCB.Finally, one from Alice Meek. God bless you in your new home, Mr Robinson. Big letters full of stroke victim's shake. Alice was only alive because of Lol, and the village knew it, and that was why he was so welcome here now.And, of course, it was making him wary. Lol didn't wear medals. Finding the old girl half-frozen over a grave in the churchyard, carrying her into the vicarage, and all the heavy stuff that had happened afterwards ... he didn't even like to talk about any of that. It could easily have ended so differently.The verdict at the inquest on the guy who'd wanted Alice dead had been Accidental Death – totally correct – although most of what had happened had not come out, the villagers closing ranks around Lol. No longer an outsider, even if it wasn't publicly acknowledged that he was Mum's ... whatever. (Continues...)Excerpted from The Smile of a Ghost by Phil Rickman. Copyright © 2005 Phil Rickman. Excerpted by permission of Atlantic Books Ltd. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

About the Author

Phil Rickman is a British author of supernatural and mystery novels.

Reviews

News