The Spiritualist (23 page)

She turned her head on the pillow, obviously too tired to do more. “Evelyn.”

I hesitated. “They told me you wished to see me. Perhaps I should come back.”

“No, no,” she said. She fluttered her hand weakly at the chair. “I haven’t seen Michel yet this morning is all. He has my elixir.”

“Then I don’t want to delay him. You should call him; I can wait until later.”

“No, child, now’s when I wish to speak to you.” There was a touch of imperiousness in her tone, and obediently I sat down.

Dorothy sighed and looked at the ceiling. After a few moments, she closed her eyes. I waited for her to speak; when she didn’t, I thought she had fallen asleep. But just when I had decided it was definitely so, and began to rise, she said weakly, without opening her eyes, “Are you going to do it, child?”

The question could have had a hundred different meanings. I leaned forward in my chair. “Pardon?”

She looked at me then. “Are you going to let the circle develop you?”

I was very careful. “Is that what you want?”

“The decision isn’t mine.”

“I think it is,” I said. “You’ve got Michel already. I don’t wish to overstep. I… are you certain you’d care to see another medium in the circle?”

“I don’t have a choice, Evelyn. Neither do you. The spirits have chosen you. To have such a gift and do nothing with it, why, it would be a crime. The spirits have reasons for everything. I’d thought to speak to Michel about it today.”

“Michel?”

“I want him to tutor you, child.”

It was what I’d expected. But I had hoped for a little more time. Michel’s threat still resonated; my dream left me uneasy. It was best to play cautiously. “I doubt I’ll have much time for tutoring. I’ve the trial to prepare for.”

“Ben’s taking care of all that. What’ve you to do?”

“I don’t want to impose. Won’t it take away from Michel’s time with you?”

She sighed again. “Good God, Evelyn, I’m asleep half the time. What’s he to do all day? Read? It’s half the reason I brought you here, you know. I reckon he needs someone to talk to. A friend. Someone I can trust.”

Her last words caught me off guard. I thought of what I was trying to do and felt guilty. I owed her so much, after all. But Michel was taking advantage of her, he was stealing from her. If he was a murderer too, wouldn’t it be better if, in saving myself, I could save her as well?

Dorothy was talking again. “Without him, I would’ve swallowed laudanum long ago.” She looked at me. “So much pain. He’s eased it, you know. The spirits come through his hands. He’s a healing touch. It’s why I want to reward him. I’ve no sons left.

No one to carry on the Bennett legacy.”

“I don’t understand.”

“What am I to do with everything? Give it to some charity I don’t believe in when I owe so much to him?”

I stared at her, certain I’d misheard. “You mean to leave everything to him?”

“I do. I’m adopting him.”

“But… can you do that? He’s a grown man!”

“His parents are long dead.”

“But he—he’s… who is he? Where did he come from? What do you really know about him, Dorothy?”

“I know everything I need to know. And my sons have told me it’s right. They like him. They trust him.”

“Yes, but what if—what if you’ve been misled?” I stepped as warily as I could, though I wanted to say more.

She frowned. “You sound like Peter now.”

I was startled. “Peter knew of this?”

“Of course he did. He was my lawyer.”

“And he didn’t approve.”

“No, he did not.” She snapped out each word as if its taste offended her, and I realized she was still angry with him. “He made things very difficult.”

“He did? How?”

“I tell you, child, I loved that boy, but he tried my patience. He was ready enough to speak to his mother’s spirit when Michel brought her. And he didn’t hesitate to give my boy gifts himself, but he didn’t want me to adopt Michel, and he did everything he could to get me to stop it.”

I was stunned at how casually she revealed a motive for murder. As if Peter’s protestations added up to nothing, as if it had been only a simple disagreement. But a fortune was in the balance, and I understood—better than ever now, given my experience with Peter’s family—how fortunes changed everything. I’d had doubts about Michel being Peter’s murderer, but now those doubts wavered. This was not just Peter trying to convince Dorothy of Michel’s dishonesty, as Ben had said, but something much different. How Michel must have felt, sensing a fortune was about to fall into his hands, playing the game so very carefully, and then, suddenly, seeing a threat that could take it all away.

I had not truly understood. I had thought Michel no better than the flimflam men I’d known, but they would never have had such grand aspirations; picking a pocket, fooling a few customers with a patent medicine, selling counterfeit stock certificates—these were the extent of their ambitions, and I had not had imagination enough to look beyond what I knew. But this… Ben couldn’t have known how close Michel was to having everything, or he would have told me. An adoption that made Michel Dorothy’s legal heir!

Motive was everything, my father had always said. Now I had it. Now, the possibility that Michel had killed my husband loomed very large, and very real.

I tried to keep my voice even as I said to Dorothy, “Gifts are not the same thing as a generations-old fortune. I’m certain Peter only meant to protect you.”

“In the end he treated me like a confused old woman, just like everyone else does.” She gave me a frank look. “Are you going to be like them too, Evelyn?”

I chose my words carefully. “I only wonder if you should trust Michel so readily.”

“I trust him. And I’m surprised you disapprove, given your own circumstances.” Her words were sharp, her expression slyly astute. “You and Michel have plenty in common.”

The echo of Michel’s statement was too surprising to ignore. “Did he tell you that?”

“He doesn’t need to. It’s plain as day. Even the spirits think so. After all, they chose you, just as they chose him.”

There was a knock on the outside door; I heard Dorothy’s nurses scurry to answer it, and then one of them peeked around the screen to say, “Mr. Jourdain, ma’am.”

Dorothy sat up quickly, preening, adjusting the lace of her dressing jacket, straightening the ribbons of her cap. “Tell him to come in.”

The nurse disappeared. I heard voices, then his footsteps. Instinctively, I stiffened.

When he came around the screen he gave me a quick nod of acknowledgment before he went around the other side of the bed. Dorothy put out her arms to him and pulled him close, pressing her lips to his for a brief moment before she released him with a sigh.

“I’ve been waiting for you,” she said, a little querulously. “You’re late.”

“I saw
Madame
Atherton come in. I thought I would let the two of you speak alone.” He glanced at me. “Good morning,
Madame
. I trust you slept well?”

His pale eyes glittered. The motive, last night’s threat, my dream, the key… now I truly understood how precarious was my position. There was so much at stake for him—it was all I could do to sit there, to keep my composure, when all I wanted to do was run with this information to Benjamin. “I slept well enough, thank you.”

“Did you get my message?”

He knew just what to say. A frisson of fear brushed my skin, and I knew by his small half smile that he saw it. “I did,” I said quietly.

Dorothy said, “What message?”

“I wondered if she might dine with me this morning when we’re finished.” He bent to brush her cheek with his finger. The full force of his charm was directed at her, and I saw the reflection of it in her face, like the sun glancing off a diamond.

“It’s a kind invitation, but I’m afraid I can’t,” I said. “I—thought I would catch up on my correspondence.”

Dorothy told him, “I’ve told Evelyn I want you to tutor her. For her development, you know.”

“Ah.” Michel’s glance was unreadable. “She’s decided to heed the call, then?”

“Who better to teach her? When one looks at the affinities between you, it’s clear the spirits chose her for a reason.” She grasped his fingers, as if she could not bring him close enough. “And I’ve told Evelyn of my plans.”

“Oh? What plans’re those?”

“The adoption, my dear boy. What else?”

He smiled down at her. “What other secrets are you sharing,
ma chère
?”

Dorothy didn’t seem to hear the dangerous silkiness in his tone, but I did.

“I’ve told her how Peter objected.”

“It’s one thing to be good enough to call a spirit, and another to be good enough to hand a fortune, eh?” Michel said, looking at me as he spoke.

Suddenly I understood what Dorothy had meant when she said my circumstances and Michel’s were the same. The similarities
were
startling. I, like Michel, was a newcomer to the upper ten. My own reward was deemed too great by those who claimed to care about Peter, just as everyone close to Dorothy objected to the reward she planned for Michel.

But Peter had known exactly what I was when he married me. Michel Jourdain was a liar who had set out to cheat her.

Yet didn’t the Athertons think the same of me?

“You and me, we’ve much in common.”

Dorothy gazed at Michel in adoration, and I felt uncomfortably like an intruder. Michel brushed aside a loose hair that had fallen from Dorothy’s cap, cupping her cheek in his hand as he did so, and she leaned her face into his palm. Without looking at me, he said, “I’m afraid
Madame
Atherton’s time is up,
ma chère
. You need your elixir.”

She didn’t turn; it was as if she were loath to lose his touch. “Good-bye, child. It’s time for my rest.”

She had to say no more; I was anxious to leave. But as I went past the screen, and to the door, I saw a movement from the corner of my eye, and I glanced back to see that Michel was taking off his frock coat, loosening his necktie. I saw how Dorothy watched him, how hungry was her gaze.

Shocked by the intimacy of his movements, I fled.

I
was in the midst of composing a note to Ben, telling him what I’d discovered, when there was a knock at my door. I jumped—I had left Dorothy’s room only moments before, and so it didn’t make sense that it could be Michel, but still I panicked at the thought.

Then Kitty called, “Ma’am?” and pushed open the door, and I sighed in relief.

“What is it, Kitty?”

“Mr. Rampling’s waiting in the parlor for you, ma’am.”

He’d said nothing last night of calling again today. But it seemed prescient of him to visit now, when I most wanted to see him, and I crumpled up the note I’d penned and threw it in the fire, and then I hurried past Kitty and downstairs to the parlor.

He was standing at the window, and when I came into the room, he turned with a smile and said, “Forgive me for arriving unannounced.”

“I’m just so thankful you’re here,” I told him, though it seemed not enough; what I wanted to say was how much I depended upon him, how much seeing him reassured me.

“I meant to come earlier, but they discovered a murder over on Bond Street. A doctor in a rooming house, stabbed to death.”

“How terrible.”

“It’s had the fortunate effect of distracting the city from Peter—and you, I might add. But it did delay the appointment I had with the prosecutor.”

His expression was so somber that I felt again the anxiety his presence had eased. “You’ve news?”

He nodded shortly. “There are some developments we must discuss.”

“I’ve something to tell you as well.”

“Oh?” His eyes brightened, and then he looked past me to the parlor door. “Then we should talk more privately, I think. Perhaps… would you care to walk with me? The sun has disappeared, I fear, but there’s no snow as yet.”

I nodded. “Let me get my cloak.”

I told Lambert I was going for a short stroll, and then Benjamin and I stepped out into the cold winter day. The sky was overcast, and Fifth Avenue looked bleak and barren, the trees colorless and stark. The snow that had covered the narrow lawn this morning was already melting to reveal the mud and brown grass beneath. What remained was gray with the soot from coal smoke and dust. In the street it had been turned to muddy slush by carriage wheels and the hooves of tired and dirty horses, splashed into icy brown piles that mounded against the walks.

“You’ll note our escort,” Ben said to me quietly, glancing across the street as he took my hand and tucked it into the crook of his arm to help me down the steps. I followed his glance to the police watchman, who straightened to attention, and then turned to follow as we reached the flagstone walk.

Ben released me, and I felt a little disappointment and a wish that he had kept me close. I pushed my gloved hands farther into the black wool muff I carried—though it was not as cold as it had been, our breath still raised clouds of steam on the air, and the light breeze chafed at my exposed cheeks and nose.

It was too cold and dreary for promenading, and the sidewalks were nearly empty. There were no men about now, in the middle of a business day, and what women there were hurried quickly to their destinations. I supposed most of my friends were ensconced in warm places—huddled in their parlors taking tea or drinking weak lemonade and cocoa in the cavernous cacophony that was Taylor’s Restaurant during its ladies’ luncheons. I felt a wistful regret at the thought that I was no longer welcome among them.

“Keep your voice down,” Ben advised as we passed the house and moved farther down Fifth Avenue, “I’ve no idea how well your watchman can hear us. Now tell me: what have you discovered?”