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‘Particularly after I heard how much the rates were going to increase for land affected by the old mine workings. But it’s not my problem anymore, is it?’

The Littleslades, having heard nothing, were still dancing beneath the tree as Mark put Lars into the back of the police car before returning with a key to unlock Clive’s handcuffs. The Littleslades, now gently reprimanded, waited by the police car.

Kelly, wondering what on earth was going on, walked over to the cliff edge just to see how far the Howling Gail’s former landlord had supposedly fallen. In the gathering darkness, it looked terrifying. A fall down there at night would almost certainly be fatal.

She stepped back from the edge.

As she did, she caught sight of a flashing light down in the village. She turned and saw others too, tiny flickers like distant fireflies.

She couldn’t help wondering what was happening.

Then Edward called to her.

Mark Bobbins, having retrieved the key from Lars, had just finished removing Clive’s cuffs, while the Littleslades waited back by the police car.

‘I don’t think I’ve got room for everyone,’ Mark said to Edward and Kelly. ‘Are you two all right to make your own way back down?’

Edward glanced at Kelly and smiled.

‘We’ll be fine,’ he said.

35

Confession Time

As it turned out, both Clive Dawkins and Edward needed to go to hospital for a check-up. Shortly after Kelly and Edward had arrived back at the Howling Gail on the quad bike, the pre-parade festivities having calmed down a little, they found an ambulance arriving outside. It had been ordered by the police to take Edward to hospital, while his father, who had travelled in the police car with Mark, Lars, and Mr and Mrs Littleslade, had already been taken down to Brentwell.

Kelly offered to come too, but Edward gave her hand a squeeze and told her not to worry. He would surely be back home again in an hour or two. He told her that, now they’d solved the mystery of his father’s disappearance, she should go and enjoy herself a little.

As she came into the inn, however, now changed back into her normal clothes, and with Larry, her constant companion, still nestled in her bag on top of the Littleslades’ wedding dress, she found a huge commotion in the main bar.

Ambrose was standing in the middle of a crowd of people, gesticulating wildly, waving a sheet of paper in one hand.

‘This is it,’ he was saying as Kelly entered. ‘Proof. I’ve found it at last. Gail Blakely’s ghost really is afoot in Briar Speckles. You all saw her. Here’s the picture to prove it. She came out tonight, maybe to salute us all from the hill by the Hanging Tree. Or maybe she just went to see where her husband had died.’

‘Let me see! Let me see!’ cried some of the other customers, straining forwards.

Kelly felt a sudden uncomfortable feeling as she peered over a couple of shoulders and saw a grainy picture, recently printed from a computer, showing the shadowy outline of the hill with the Hanging Tree standing on top of it. And there, right on the edge, was a woman in a wedding dress. The light illuminating the hill made her look almost translucent, and the gloom from where, Kelly guessed, the camera flashes had come made the picture look like so many classic ghost photographs, frustratingly indistinct, offering so much possibility, yet so little proof.

As Larry shifted in her bag, she couldn’t help but smile, enjoying the way Ambrose seemed to have taken centre stage, and the hushed, delighted, wondrous voices of the customers as they marvelled over the return of the village’s most famous daughter.

Kelly felt it was probably best to leave them to it, and so retreated upstairs to get a good night’s sleep.

Before she did so, however, she put a little water in the bath and placed a stool inside on which Larry could perch, leaving the toad to relax too.

The next morning, when she came down for breakfast on the day of the parade, there was an urgent fax from her boss at The Brentwell Daily, lamenting that she had forgotten to send over an article the night before.

She used the payphone in the hall to call him. But after he’d finished shouting, she managed to convince him that she had the best article of all on its way, one that would include an exclusive interview with the man who had been kidnapped just weeks before the Halloween parade.

She wasn’t sure how she would swing it, but she figured Edward probably owed her a favour. So, hopefully, he would be able to have a word with his father.

Afterwards, she called the Carnival of Horrors and found that Edward had got home from hospital late the previous night. He immediately invited her to visit him for coffee as soon as she had finished breakfast at the inn.

He offered to pick her up, but she wanted to walk up the street past all the parade preparations and take a few photographs for the newspaper.

When she reached the Carnival of Horrors half an hour later, she found Edward waiting with Old Ned, whom he had told about Larry’s heroic part in the previous day’s events. Old Ned was greatly pleased to see his favourite toad again, and Kelly was happy to take some photographs, which she promised to get published in the newspaper.

Then she was finally alone with Edward.