Death in the West Wind by Deryn Lake Page A

don’t treat me like a child. I know what I saw. There were ghastly white things inside that coach and the driver’s head lay beside him, his neck bleeding from the cut.” The Apothecary looked perplexed. “There has to be a logical explanation.”
    “There is,” said Emilia shortly. “We have just seen a phantom coach driven by a headless coachman.”
    And despite the fact that he was longing to deny it, John was forced silently to agree with her
    The landlord of The Ship, Matthew Salter, who had started life as a fisherman but who had saved money and become an inn-keeper, nodded knowingly. “They often come out when there’s been a violent death,” he informed his audience.
    “They?”
    “The people from Wildtor Grange.”
    “What exactly are we talking about?” asked John, feeling himself growing increasingly irritable with fatigue.
    “The apparition you saw on the moorland. It’s a well-known sight round these parts.” The Apothecary, whose old disbelief was returning now that he was safely indoors, didn’t know whether to scoff or to listen, but one glance at the avid faces of his wife and his coachman persuaded him to keep his mouth firmly closed. “Go on,” he said.
    “The Grange is in ruins now but about thirty years ago it was occupied by a family called Thorne. They were a strange, bad bunch. Five sons there were, a drunken crowd of young rascals, and the father no better than he should be. Old Sir Gilbert, he was, the sire of nearly all the bastards in the county. Anyway, the story goes that the men so mistreated Lady Thorne, his wife and their mother, that she was driven off her head and from then on they kept her captive in a suite of rooms in the East Wing.”
    Emilia’s eyes were wide and her lips slightly parted, while Tom was surreptiously crossing himself. Inwardly, John sighed.
    “Anyway, one night she got out and set off alone into the darkness, wearing naught but her nightrail, her feet bare. Old Sir Gilbert called his sons and his coachman and went off in pursuit of her, and they finally glimpsed her crossing the wooden bridge that used to go over the river Otter. He bore down on her with great haste but what he hadn’t realised was that she had stolen an old fowling piece before she left the house. Be that as it may, she fired at the coachman and the force of the blast took his head clean off his body. Driverless, the horses charged the bridge but the weight was too great and the coach descended into the water and all its occupants drowned.”
    “Tell me, why do their ghosts wear such extraordinary clothes?” John asked pointedly.
    The landlord looked wise. “That’s because the lads were Angels.”
    “Angels?”
    “A street gang that terrorises the inhabitants of Exeter. It was in existence then and it still is now. They base themselves on the
    London Mohocks and their mischief is cruel. Old Thorne’s sons were members of the pack and that accounts for them wearing the rig, beekeepers” hats and greatcoats.”
    “And what happened to poor Lady Thorne?” Emilia asked. “Did she drown too?”
    “No, bless you, Mam. She returned to the Grange and lived in great style till she died of drink in hopeless debt. The house was ruinous by the time she went so no relative would take it on. After that it just fell into disrepair. She haunts the ruins.”
    “That family seems to have a monopoly on ghostly visitations,” John remarked drily, but nobody was listening to him.
    “May I ask a question, Sir?” Tom looked at his employer and the Apothecary nodded.
    “Why does sudden death stir up the ghosts?”
    Salter shook his head. “I don’t know. Perhaps because their own was so abrupt. Anyway, you’ve seen the phantom coach and the headless driver as many have done before you, though very few outsiders mark you.”
    “How often do these hauntings occur?” asked John, his mind going off at a tangent.
    Once again the landlord looked doubtful. “Most people refuse to go