I cannot begin to capture aptly enough in words the sheer terror, dread and remorse that overwhelmed me upon finding a woman lying dead in my bed, for it was half-remembered chaos.

Then came the screaming, shouting, heavy footsteps, and, "Calm down, Mr Redding! Speak plain, lad!"

As I explained everything to Mr Rawlings in one continuous deluge of distracted, disorganised monologue, he remained straight-faced throughout, suspicious even, that I was now associated with two deaths in three days. Mrs Rawlings, who at first suffered a period of anger ("This should never have happened under my roof! Good Lord, Joseph! What have you done?") was by then more far more concerned of my own state of undress than the important, immediate matters.

While his wife dealt with the police a second time in the way only a domineering landlady can do, Tom Rawlings took me aside into their kitchen so that I would not see as a detective investigated my room and the body.

There the conversation did not flow easily, as my landlord was a man of quiet disposition and only spoke with meaning. As a gentleman now the wrong side of fifty – or right, as my seniors might argue – his sentences were thrift and his meaning precise, though despite his apparent loss for words there existed something careful in his choice of them. A poet or letter-writer in his youth perhaps, though, unsurprising to me, he never spoke of it. At times we had discussed the menial things, particularly our favoured artist, Irvine Sommer, though we had never had reason to exchange conversation on a personal level. He knew I planned to marry the daughter of Alphonse de Veyra, but beyond that I was as much a mystery to the man who had let me into his home as he was to me.

It is why that morning, one that had already been so outrageous in its nature, became so much more unsettling when Mr Rawlings approached the subject of my private life. I leaned against the counter dressed in pantaloons with my shirt hung about my neck, but I did not then care much for modesty or warmth in that moment. I rocked on my heels while Tom Rawlings stood nearby, studying me as if I were already a criminal.

"There is something going on with you, isn't there?" he said after a while.

My landlord was the last person in Glasten I'd have imagined would ask me such a thing, and yet he did. It gave me reason for pause before I straightened myself and glanced his way. Part of me wished I had not, for his eyes were as sharp as a quick death. "It would seem that way," I replied, and took a shaking sip of the black coffee he had poured me.

"It seems to me no coincidence that you found that nurse's body days before my housemaid's." He said the words with such prosecution it was as though I spoke with the All Knowing himself. "I excused your rent this week on the basis that you promptly recover from your shock, but I will not excuse these sins you bring into my household. Adultery, narcotics ... And as for Charlotte ... God damn it, boy! I can hardly bear to say the dratted word. I like you, Redding. You are a model tenant, quiet and well-to-do, but I am beginning to lose faith in my judgement."

Somewhat angered, I yanked the shirt from around my neck and dressed, unable to suffer his confrontation without so much as the dignity of the clothing on my back. "Sir, surely you would not consider releasing me from my agreement? It's the middle of winter. I ... I have nowhere to go! No money to my name ... I –"

The man quieted me with his palm. "I will not see you out on the street at a time like this, no. Mark this as my suggestion for you to move on, Mr Redding, and in the meantime, you will do well not to seduce any more members of staff."

"Sir, if you will. I did not know Charlotte was her name. I'm truly sorry it ever came to this."

His expression mellowed a mere fraction and he indicated to the cup of coffee. "I am too," he said. "Eat something, Joseph, and then please wash your face before the police come to question you."

He left me then, and of his suggestion I thought not much more of it. It was not until I considered that a cold towel on my face might help wake me from this nightmare that I saw the relevance of his comment. The mirror in the water closet on the ground floor was old and speckled black, and so I did not at first see the flecks of mud around my neck and jaw. Upon raising my hand to examine what it could be that marked my skin, I saw too the crescents of dirt caked beneath my fingernails. I did not remember coming into contact with any grime lately, but then, I do not remember how I arrived home or how the housemaid came to die in my bed.

I scrubbed the dirt from my face and fingernails with such vigour it was difficult not to feel as if I truly was washing away the evidence of my involvement. Perhaps I was. At that time, I did not know. And quite rightly, Tom Rawlings had every reason to suspect me, and his prying did not seem so wildly out of character. Even the most taciturn of men might ask why I looked as if I had been ploughing the fields around Glasten the night his housemaid died. I could not explain it, even to myself ... But if there was one man who could, it was Corgaine.

I stood over the tiny basin, watching with a sinking feeling as the water from the faucets spiralled down into the pipes. I could not help but feel for myself the same fate, as if washed away towards some unfathomable hole for which there was no escape. The presence of gaps in my memory was not foreign to me, but I can say with certainty they never occurred at random. It had started with the night at the hospital ... Yet surely I could not have been so drugged that I did not remember how I came to be smeared in dirt, or what happened to the girl in my room.

I could not bring myself to consult Corgaine; it would only mean serving ever more reason for him to look down on me the way he so often did, and my pride is a fickle thing. With what had become of our history he might be the last remaining man on Earth I would turn to for help, for the last time I had done so I had come into living a life of lies. I decided it there, stood over that gentle stream of silver, that I would not incriminate myself any more than I already had done.

Though, in some infinitesimal, distorted way, I was also relieved. I hated myself for so much as entertaining the thought that I might actually feel consoled that somebody's daughter, sister, perhaps she was even a young mother, had expired. It was almost unspeakable that through the loss of a life my own would benefit. But still I could not help it, for it spelt the end of her suggestive looks, and she would never again run her fingers so unwelcomed across the back of my neck. I shivered as I had done in that same moment, almost as if her ghostly fingertips wanted nothing more than to remind me of what I might have done. I had not even known her name until that day.

I was many things, but a mindless killer I was not.

A frantic knocking jerked me from my state of reflection. To begin with I did not recognise the owner of the voice that startled me so; yelling my name in a hoarse, damnable tenor quite unlike anything I had heard from a human throat.

"Redding!" Frederic blared. His voice brimmed with the telltales of panic and a throat infection. "Redding! Are you in there?"

Following a final scan of my listless visage with its dark, dead-eyed gaze seemingly staring straight through me, I made certain no trace remained of the unexplained dirt that had found its way there. I could not begin to imagine the upheaval I might yet endure should a deeply perceptive brain like Frederic Emory's come to the same verdict as Tom Rawlings.

When at last I saw his face, Frederic did not quite look like himself. His hair – a drab, ashen shade of blonde normally kept neat within its parting – seemed to have been replaced with a filthy handful of old straw. There was a grey tinged puffiness beneath his eyes that accentuated the stark, red vessels around his irises. The skin of his lips and nostrils was dry, flushed pink and raw from the repeated need of his handkerchief, and I spied a worrisome hollowness in his cheeks that aged him some half a decade. It seemed that Corgaine had told the truth of the boy being taken ill, but I had no idea that I would barely recognise him for it.

"I came as soon as I found out," he said, eager to grab me by the shoulder. In the year I'd been acquainted with Frederic I had not experienced any meaningful physical contact with him, so for him to reach for my shirt sleeve so fiercely disturbed me more than his wraith-like appearance alone. "Are you quite all right?" he asked when I failed to form a reply. "I wanted to see you sooner, but as you can see, I was ..."

It was beyond the power of my composure to register any more of his explanation than that. No more could I silence the urge to scream the fears breeding like pathogens in my mind. "Corgaine," I said across him, far more aloof than the roiling anger and disgust inside should otherwise allow. I spied the slight waver of Frederic's lower lip as I sounded out the man's name. "Corgaine is up to something."

"I know," came his rattled reply. "I had hoped it would not come to this, so I convinced myself I shouldn't worry you much more than I already have done. But it's why I came to speak with you so urgently, Redding. I was wrong about the vicche. I was so ... terribly wrong."

As a Halloween exclusive I'll also be publishing The Cellist - a spin off of The Sinister Fate of Joseph Redding and a preview into the second arc of this upcoming series. Visit my profile to add it your library!