Sorcerer on the Street

Case 8. Words Unspoken

"This is about Wells," I whispered, nudging the conversation forward as I realised that none of them seemed to know what to say.

"Yes," John picked up the hint. "We need to ask you a little about Mr Wells. I hope you can understand, Mrs Kendrick–"

"Ellen, please," she cut him off.

"I'm sorry, Ellen. But I hope you can understand that we want to be sure this man has your best interests at heart. He might be for real, or he might just be very convincing. And I hope that I can help you to know for sure, so you can set your daughter's mind at rest."

"Yes, of course," Mrs Kendrick answered, with a grin that seemed just slightly forced. I couldn't figure it out, but it seemed like she wasn't entirely focused on what John was saying. Something else was bothering her, and she was finding it hard to pay attention.

"So where do we start?" Sarah asked. "She got his number from a newspaper advertisement. Probably from one of those tabloids that talks about alien abductions."

"Oh no, dear," Mrs Kendrick corrected her almost immediately. "You should pay more attention to the details. I only read those papers because Robert used to laugh at them. It's a reminder of how happy life was, when we were all here together. No, I heard about Mr Wells from an advertisement in the TV Guide. I've probably still got it somewhere, if you want to see."

She pulled herself to her feet, and began slowly making her way across the lounge. She didn't move quickly, but she punctuated the exercise with observations about how age had slowed her down a lot more than it did her husband; and how she wished she could be young again.

"How long ago did you call him?" John asked, as she made her way over to a dresser beside the kitchen door. He glanced at Sarah, letting some confusion creep into his voice. "I thought you said it had been a year by now."

"Oh yes," Ellen said, nodding slowly. "Maybe a year and a half. We've had to move slowly, of course. It's so hard for Robert to get a message through from the other side, and Mr Wells has to be waiting and listening in just the right way. But we keep on getting closer, I dare to hope."

"You kept an old TV Guide?" Sarah asked, as her mother started to root through an assortment of odd papers in the drawer in front of her.

"Oh, no! That would be foolish. Though I might have clipped out the advertisement, perhaps. Just in case I forget the number. Did you know, she's bought me a fancy new telephone that can remember phone numbers for you, but I don't really trust those things. What if it breaks down, or if I press the wrong button? Anyway, I've got this here if you want to take a look."

She reached over from behind John, and pressed a piece of peach paper into his hand. It was folded into three, a tiny pamphlet, and had a small piece of text inside a box on each side. It also wasn't quite printed straight, so was unlikely to be the work of a professional typesetter.

"Would you rather know that your loved ones aren't really gone?" John read out slowly. "Are there words you never had the chance to say? Promises you still want to keep? Communication with the spirits who loved you most. Call Dr J. Wells today and set those worries to rest."

"Yes," Ellen nodded. She finally got back to her chair, and sat down. "It's not so neat as the ones they keep on pushing through the door offering to trim my roses, but I can respect a man who really says what he's offering. And I missed Robert so much. I knew that it was a gamble, you know? I could have been paying good money to some charlatan. But I had to know. Robert wouldn't have wanted me to keep on waiting, hoping..."

"Was your husband a religious man, Ellen?" John asked, cutting to the crux of the matter in a way that would never have occurred to me. "Did he believe in heaven, or in watching those who are left behind?"