Free Give the Devil His Due by Sulari Gentill

probably wouldn’t close down the entire waxworks.”
    â€œWe could drop in on the way home.”
    Rowland winced. “I can’t take Ernie to—”
    â€œOh yes you can!” Ernest interjected. “I’m seven!”
    Milton pulled on the goatee he was currently sporting. “We could just drive past and have a gander. Ernie won’t be out of our sights.”
    â€œI don’t know.” Rowland hesitated. “It seems a little macabre.”
    â€œIt’s a House of Horrors, Rowly. It’s supposed to be macabre.”
    â€œPlease Uncle Rowly. Please, please, please!”
    Rowland made a valiant attempt to resist Ernest’s pleas despite his own curiosity about the scene of White’s grisly end. Eventually, however, he was defeated by the fact that his nephew and the poet joined forces to make the case for Magdalene’s.
    â€œVery well, if it’s open we might stop in for a bit,” Rowland conceded. Ernest was, after all, completely unaware of the murder, so there was no danger that he would be unduly disturbed, and anything they could learn about Magdalene’s could well prove useful.
    They finished their drinks and a plate of chipped potatoes before catching the next ferry back to Circular Quay. From there it was barely ten minutes’ drive to Kings Cross and Magdalene’s House of the Macabre. The waxworks was open and, indeed, busy.
    They parked the Mercedes and joined the queue at the door which spilled out onto Macleay Street.
    â€œEternity.” Ernest read out the word inscribed in chalk on the concrete as they waited for the line to move. “It’s spelled wrong.”
    Rowland looked. Eternity had indeed been spelled with a “u” in place of the second “e”.
    â€œWhat’s it mean, Uncle Rowly?”
    â€œI’m not sure,” Rowland admitted. He’d seen the word chalked in the same copperplate hand, with the same spelling mistake, a couple of times on pavements in the city. He’d never given it a great deal of thought.
    The elderly cashier who took their money and passed out tickets from a narrow booth window at the hall’s entrance was, to Rowland’s mind, ideally suited to employment in an establishment like Magdalene’s. Her face was more crumpled than wrinkled, her hair a wild mane of frizzled grey. She wore a patch over one eye and glared at them with the other while she puffed on a chipped black pipe. Rowland noticed that Ernest’s eyes had widened already.
    They shuffled into the first exhibit room, which had been designed to resemble a crypt. Some of the sarcophagi were open to reveal wax corpses inside. One contained a mummy. Ghouls and vampires inhabited the shadows. On closer examination, Rowland could see that the statues consigned to the gloomy corners were damaged or unfinished in some way. Count Dracula was little more than a vampire scarecrow with a wax head. The cobwebs, while fitting, were real. Still, Ernest seemed impressed.
    The second hall housed a fearsome collection of historical figures: Genghis Khan, Napoleon Bonaparte, unnamed Vikings and a caveman. Skeletons hung from wires in the internal courtyard. Rowland stopped, surprised, as they happened upon a young woman sobbing inconsolably as she perched on the edge of a rocking chair.
    Rowland offered her his handkerchief, which she took though she didn’t stop crying.
    â€œShe’s an exhibit, Rowly,” Milton whispered as he hoisted Ernest onto his shoulders, so the boy could get a closer look at the tusked boar’s head mounted above the door.
    â€œOh, I see.” Rowland laughed, but did not attempt to retrieve his handkerchief. Instead, he observed the other visitors to Magdalene’s. Several families, as one would expect, quite a few young courting couples as well as a surprising number of single men. Nobody who looked like they might belong to a coven. The attendants, however, all