All Things Undying by Marcia Talley Page A

photograph, in particular, kept ending up face down on the mantel. Susan said it was their dead son trying to get their attention. He’d committed suicide. Or so they thought,’ she added mysteriously.
    â€˜And?’ I prodded.
    Alison shot a quick glance over her shoulder. ‘Turns out he wasn’t alone when he passed.’
    â€˜So that Parker woman said,’ muttered Alison’s father.
    â€˜So she said.’
    Stephen Bailey loosened his seatbelt and swiveled in his seat so he could face me. ‘You can see why I’m coming along on this little excursion, can’t you? Jon aids and abets her in all this nonsense. Someone has to grab Alison’s ankles and pull her back down to earth when she goes off like this.’
    Alison’s eyes caught mine in the rear-view mirror. ‘How sweet to see he’s still looking after me.’
    â€˜Devon might be starring in another segment of Dead Reckoning , Mr Bailey, if Cathy Yates has her way.’
    â€˜That American?’ Bailey snorted, apparently forgetting that I was an American too.
    â€˜As you know from when you talked to her, Mr Bailey, Ken Small’s book got Cathy all fired up. So she delivered a copy to Susan’s flat the other day, with Post-it notes stuck in all the relevant places. Cathy hopes Susan will be able to locate that farmer’s field where Small said the bodies had been buried in a ruined air-raid shelter.’
    â€˜Good luck to them, then,’ grumbled Alison’s father. ‘There were thirty thousand acres of farmland in the area that was evacuated in ’forty-four. She can’t tramp over all thirty thousand with that daft cow and her camera crew.’
    â€˜I imagine she’ll start at the Sherman tank and seek direction from any spirits she finds hanging around there,’ I said sweetly.
    Bailey turned to face me, nose twitching. ‘Not you, too!’
    â€˜The jury’s still out, Mr Bailey. I like to keep an open mind.’
    â€˜Drop me off at the nearest pub,’ he harrumphed. ‘That’s where they’ve got spirits I can relate to.’
    When we reached Paignton, we tucked the Prius snugly away in Artillery Lane, had a quick bite at a little Chinese restaurant, then walked back to the Palace Theatre, a lovingly restored red and white brick structure overlooking an elliptical park.
    â€˜And here I thought we were so early,’ Alison observed as we trudged up the hill. ‘People are already queuing!’
    â€˜I think they’re Susan’s groupies,’ I said when we got a little closer.
    And so they were. A man dressed like a missionary in dark pants and a white short-sleeved shirt stood on an upturned milk crate next to a red pillarbox, holding a Bible out in front of him. Sparse strands of yellowish-gray hair were combed over his pink skull, and sideburns crawled along his cheeks. His eyes flashed with the zeal of the book of Revelation, from which he appeared to be reading, raining fire and brimstone down on all who dared enter the theater doors.
    The other members of his team carried picket signs that, on closer inspection, proved to be constructed of two pieces of foam board taped around a dowel. One was the quote from Deuteronomy I recognized from Alison’s video, carried by a young man this time, while False Prophets Shall Bring in Damnable Heresies. Peter 2:1 was being waved back and forth like a windshield wiper by a woman who was probably the young man’s mother, considering the similarity of their profiles.
    Next to her, a dark-haired young woman wearing a red headband and an ankle-length flowered dress held aloft a sign that said Exodus 22:18 in black gothic letters.
    â€˜Are we supposed to know what that means?’ Alison wondered. ‘John three:sixteen I know. The twenty-third Psalm, ditto. Exodus twenty-two:eighteen doesn’t exactly roll trippingly off the tongue.’
    â€˜I’m usually good with