Pushing onward with her investigation, but now with Harold and Mr. The worst thing is, I think I know what she wants too. “I think I’ve worked out who the lady is and, if I’m right, she’s been coming to Malmouth for a very long time now and isn’t about to stop. Not wanting anyone else to suffer the same fate, she crossed the story out.
The diary reveals that after reading The Lady in the Waves, Primrose believed she was being followed, haunted by a vengeful ghost. Investigating, they hit pay dirt: Primrose’s diary. In fact, there are more books from that box still sitting in the back office. Lieberman knows the story of Primrose Penberthy, and he recalls that her book came to him in a donation box shortly after her disappearance.
Returning to Lieberman’s, she inquires of the shop owner if he knows anything about the missing girl or The Lady in the Waves. Hoping to read about some local ghosts and phantoms, Aveline purchases the book, only to discover later that its previous owner, Primrose Penberthy (who wrote her name on the inside cover) assiduously crossed out every line of the final chapter of the book, which was titled The Lady in the Waves.ĭisappointed yet intrigued, Aveline conducts a little research and finds that Primrose Penberthy was a Malmouth girl who disappeared in 1984 and was never found. And two, a copy of Ghosts and Phantoms of Dorset, Devon and Cornwall. One, a boy her own age named Harold, who is a bit surly but friendly enough. There she stumbles across two things of interest. It wore a black woollen hat on top of a garish ginger wig and had been dressed in charity-shop clothes – a tatty oversized jacket hung past its knees, underneath which were paint-splattered trousers.”Īs Malmouth isn’t exactly a happening place, Aveline eventually finds herself in the one shop in town she might enjoy: Lieberman’s Second-Hand Books. Its limbs were stiff because they’d been pulled from an old shop-dummy. “The figure’s head was made from a grubby white buoy, with eyes, nose and mouth scrawled on in blood-red paint. Local custom encourages residents to fashion eerily lifelike scarecrows which are displayed all over town. Lacking charm and warmth, however, isn’t quite enough for the residents of this seaside village. “The only living things to be seen were the rooks that sat hunched in the branches, hurling their angry curses across the empty countryside.”Ī cheery place, this Malmouth. Hickes has a gift for vivid description, as when detailing the drive between Bristol and Malmouth. The monsters were real.” – Phil HickesĪveline Jones has come to the English coast to stay with her Aunt Lilian in Malmouth, a tiny village in the tradition of Arthur Conan Doyle’s Dartmoor or MR James’s Burnstow.
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