Wainthrop Hall,

Hampshire

Dear Paul,

You will no doubt have heard from the newspapers of the shocking news of the theft of Mark’s body from the graveyard at St John’s in Christchurch. I was called by Sebastian and rushed down here at top speed, to find the Inspector Nichols in his normal state of total bafflement. With me came some friends from my recent stay in America, and we resolved that, following our investigative success there (which I think I mentioned in my last letter), we would track down the latter day Burke and Hare.

Accordingly, the next morning we started to follow our noses. A trip to the local paper yielded a number of back stories from the previous three weeks detailing a total of eleven other opened graves, and a report that a further garve had been robbed that very night at Martin’ Beach, down the road. Accordingly, Declan drove us down to Martin’s Beach to check up on the scene of the most recent crime. There we also encountered the most officious and puffed-up little local sergeant who was convinced of his own preternatural ability as the living incarnation of Sherlock Holmes. Unfortunately Sergenat Tabler’s ability did prove to be somewhat above that of poor Thomas, who was backed into some absurd journalistic cover story with an alias as Tabernacle of the Standard. Suffice to say that the rest of the week was spend trying to keep Sergenat Tabler and Mr Tabernacle at a reasonable distance from each other.

Martin’s Beach provided few leads beyond an itinerant prowler whom we deemed suspicious but were unable to locate. We therefore started on an oft-interrupted tour of the various scenes of crime. The most interesting of these was Clarke’s Corner, a villiage that had been deserted for nigh on three hundred years, following what appeared to both us and all the consulted authorities to be a meteorite impact. Fancy that you could find a village within twenty miles of home that you had never heard of! Anyway, the village proved to be interesting in a general sense, with an aura of death and disaster that I have scarcely felt elsewhere, but we found no leads that would help us in this investigation. I feel however that it would repay a more detailed examination at some future point in time, possibly by some sort of chemical expert.

Moving onwards in the interests of narritive lucidity, we continued our field and library searches. Declan, Thomas and Bill took lodgings in the King’s Head, Martin’s Beach, in order to facilitate their nocturnal investigations and it was while we were talking to some fishermen in that very village that we were vouchsafed our very first sighting of the infamous prowler. We gave rapid chase and followed into the maze of alleyways behind the quay, where we lost sight. Having split up to try to corner it, Thomas made contact and was set upon by this deformed, decaying, one-armed creature, but was severly mauled and was unable to apprehend it. This however gave us our first confirmation that our worst fears were correct. The smell and sight of the creature seemed to indicate that the bodies were being used in some hideous necromantic rite of rebirth.

The second confirmation came that very night as I returned home. As I entered the hall, the phone was ringing and I picked it up and answered. The voice that replied shook me to my very soul. It was Mark, and he identified himself as such. I know that you will think that I was dreaming or in the same state as poor Estelle, but I swear it was so, and I think subsequent events have proved my senses correct. He had hardly time to utter a few words of identification before he ceased and was replaced by a muffled sound and then nothing. My senses in a total blur, I nonetheless had the presence of mind to connect to the operator and ask for the source of the call. She knew it had come from Martin’s Beach, but by the time I was through to the Martin’s Beach operator, she was unable to tell me from what property it had come, merely that it had been a residential property. I slept little that night, as you can imagine.

The next day Jonah drove me back to Martin’s Beach, where we made strenuous efforts to attempt to locate the source of the phone call. I met with the young lady who had been the operator the previous evening, but even after strenuous inquiries she was unable to remember the source of the call. Declan and Bill even dressed up as employees of the GPO in order to gain access to all the houses connected to the telephone system. Unfortunately this also led to no real breakthrough.

Faced with a lack of progress at Martin’s Beach, we followed Jonah’s suggestion and started to question some of the people associated with the other grave robberies and visit the scenes of crime. At most of these we were faced with distressed and hysterical relatives, and it was unfortunate that we chose to be methodical in our approach because it turned out to be the last call that we made that was the most interesting. Mr Fabry was the pharmacist and his wife had been taken the previous week. When we called upon his house we found him in a state considerably the worse for drink and both Jonah and myself were suspicious of his mental state. We communicated our thoughts to the others and since the house was secluded two of the others returned in order to investigate more throughly while the owner was at work. The back door proved to be no obstacle to our expert and they searched the ground floor, finding a door to the cellar. At this point we regrouped. Declan and myself kept station by the front door in case the owner returned, while Bill, Thomas and Jonah ventured into the cellar. Down there they found several rooms including a laboratory, a room with two mortuary slabs and a pile of coffin wood, and a room with furnaces and a strapped chair. In one room Bill encountered a small and violent creature which he beat to death – examination then showed it to be a rat that appeared to have been resurrected. In the laboratory we found notebooks that appeared to be an account of the experiments conducted, but before I could examine them, we were in a crisis. The others had continued to explore and had found a sub-cellar. Jonah had ventured down the stairs and had been grabbed by some reincarnated horror of random body parts that had dragged him into the cellar. The other two were shooting wildly, but their shots had little effect. Declan and I, having had more experience of such things, instantly resolved to use other weapons. Declan dashed to get some pertrol from the car, while I found a bottle of acid in the laboratory and poured it over the creature. By the time I returned again with some alcohol, I saw the horrific site of Jonah being torn limb from limb. Unable to help, we poured the alcohol and petrol in and consigned the beast to the flames of purification. As we left we called the police and fire service in the hope that they would be able to arrest the pharmacist for some offense in connection with the robberies.

Unfortunately they did not, but God’s justice was done, you will be glad to hear. Mr Fabry died that very night at the hand of an unknown assailant. We returned the night after to pick up some white powder from around the phone. The notes in the books we had obtained had identified these as the last remains of Mark, who had escaped and tried to warn us, but had been de-animated while on the phone. I have kept them, since there is no body to re-interr and have placed them in an urn in the library, since that was always his favourite room.

Not a word of this to Estelle, I beg you. She is still in a very delicate state and needs no new excitement.

Yours sincerely,

Your beloved neice,

Adele