The Last Four Hours

Chapter Originals

James Byrne buys a top-floor flat in a converted school for forty thousand under the asking price, because a woman died on the stairs and nobody else wants it. On the fourth night she speaks to him. Sylvie Marsh was a sign language interpreter. She has been dead nine weeks, she cannot leave the building, and she cannot remember the last four hours of her life. The only person who saw what happened is the deaf man in flat three — and the one woman in that building who could have interpreted for him is the one lying at the bottom of the stairs. So she teaches James to sign. And every answer he finds takes a little more of her with it.