The Spiritualist (25 page)

I heard something in his words, some faint promise, and when I looked at him, his expression was so sincere and sympathetic that I realized our relationship had changed in the last days—perhaps it had started even before then, during those weeks of Peter’s all-consuming grief and distraction, when it fell to Ben and me to fill the silences during our companionable suppers for three, when the two of us had challenged each other so ruthlessly during our chess games after.

I could love him
, I thought. Benjamin Rampling would make a good husband, and one more appropriate for me than Peter had been. With him, I could have a stable, solid existence like that of my parents. I wished suddenly that I had met Benjamin before Peter.

But then I realized that Benjamin would not have considered me then—and would not in the future if the Athertons had their way. Even should I be acquitted, there was the matter of Peter’s will. Men like Benjamin Rampling could not both support a wife and move in the circles he required to make a living. He must marry a woman with an allowance of her own. I would have been a woman like that, had all gone as I expected, with the Athertons providing the allowance they’d promised. Without it, my fate would be no better than Judith Duncan’s, making hats or tatting lace until my fingers were stiff with rheumatism—or worse: living penniless in a city as unforgiving as this one. The uncertainty of living as a woman without prospects, without money, was terrifying. To always be alone, to know that despair might lead one to a life of degradation and shame, where each day one only wished for the strength to end it—

“Evelyn?”

Benjamin’s voice brought me to myself. I realized he was peering at me with concern. I looked past him, to the police watchman who now stood across the street.

“It will all work out,” I whispered, as much for myself as for him.

T
he task Benjamin had set for me loomed impossibly. To go through Dorothy’s private effects meant gaining access to her room when she or her nurses weren’t there—such a rare occurrence I could not imagine how I might accomplish it. And though there was no such impediment to any search of Michel’s room, there was my own reticence to master.

The pressure of Ben’s expectation pressed heavily, and I dreamed of Peter every night now. The little sleep I managed was haunted by visions of him, eyeless and dripping wet, touching me with that chill hand.
Don’t believe him, Evie. You must not believe him.
I knew who he meant, and I knew I could not afford to be idle. But I could not bring myself to search Michel’s room. I was afraid to try.

Then, three days after my meeting with Ben, I woke at three-thirty, terrified, from my dream of Peter. As always, I could not go back to sleep, but this time I did not just lie in bed, staring at the ceiling. I drew on my dressing gown and lit a candle and went to the fireplace, where I started a fire and sat in a chair before it, afraid to move beyond the nimbus of its glow, the comforting flames. But the minutes dragged and the thought that I might sit there and stare at every passing minute until I went mad seemed so possible that I decided I must find something to read. I thought to go to the library, but I didn’t want to leave the safety of my room. Instead, I went to the desk. The mess I’d created had long since been cleaned up by Kitty. Everything was back in its proper drawer, the pen nibs, the papers, the gold-chased penknife. The decanter with its liqueur glowed green and tempting, and I remembered how it had relaxed me, and poured myself a glass. Then I took one of the notebooks and the nubbin of a pencil from a drawer, though I wasn’t sure what I meant to do with it. Write down my thoughts, perhaps, or draw—something to pass the time. I took the drink and the notebook back to the chair before the fire, and as I sipped the comforting liqueur, I flipped through the pages.

There were scrawlings within, the beginnings of a letter to someone named Percy, what looked like the times for the train. I finished the drink and set the glass aside, reading without interest until I came to the first blank page, and then I paused, staring down at the white paper that glowed dimly in the firelight. The blankness seemed to mock me, as if the paper itself existed solely to be infinite, and had only disdain for the limits my writing would impose upon it, the littleness of my efforts, the very humanness of them. I could not possibly write words profound enough to do justice to it, just as I could never understand the world beyond my own, the one Peter’s spirit now supposedly inhabited. Whether it was heaven or hell or one of spiritualism’s spheres didn’t matter. One could sit in church every Sunday or a circle every Tuesday and Thursday and ask God—or the spirits—for guidance, but in the end it was like viewing something through a cloudy glass—every attempt to see more clearly only narrowed one’s vision, until what was understood was only a moment in a vast and unknowable universe, in which the only absolute was how much was unknown.

I started at a sound, and looked down to find the pencil had fallen from my fingers to the floor. I was so tired, and I felt a bit woozy as well—no doubt due to the liqueur. Perhaps it was better to put the notebook aside, to try again for sleep. I picked up the pencil and glanced down to close the notebook—

—and saw words upon the page.

I bent closer, puzzled. The words were pale, as if written with a dull pencil, but pressed into the page so hard it dented the paper. But there had been no words there, pale or otherwise. I had turned to a blank page. Or had I? I was exhausted, after all, and the light was dim. There must have been words there already that I hadn’t seen. I slapped the book shut and rose to take it back to the desk, glancing at the clock as I did so.

It read five o’clock.

Impossible. It couldn’t be five o’clock. I had got the notebook at about three-forty. I’d been sitting here no more than ten minutes, if that. I looked again, thinking I must have made a mistake, but no, the hands were clear, there was no mistake. Where had the hour and twenty minutes gone?

My skin prickled; I felt suddenly as if I were being watched, and I spun around, staring hard into the shadows about my bed. I saw nothing, but the dread that came upon me was inescapable. I was clutching the pencil, and this time I dropped it purposefully and kicked it away. It rolled across the floor until it caught against the leg of the desk. And then it was as if something outside of me took my hand; I felt an urge I couldn’t deny, directing me to open the notebook I still held. The leaves separated neatly, opening exactly to where I’d last been, to the pale but heavily penciled words.

I moved closer to the fire, to the candle, and brought the book to the light to see. The penmanship was terrible, the words difficult to make out:

I stared at the words in bewilderment. I had no idea what they meant. But it seemed clear that they were meant for me. And what seemed clearer still was that I had written them. It was not my handwriting, but it was. I recognized the
t
, the little flourish I always put on the
s
. My handwriting, but I remembered nothing of writing it. Reluctantly, I thought of the newspaper articles I’d read, of invisible and mysterious hands guiding one who wrote, of obscure messages meant to show the way to God. I knew what the circle would call this: a message from the spirits.

I didn’t believe that, but neither did I know how I could have been made to do this thing, and that frightened me. I thought of my mother, who had spent the last months of her life staring into space, drawn into herself by her addiction to laudanum. Her habituation had been painful to witness. She had tried to dispense with it many times, but to no avail. I remembered my father sitting over her in bed as she shook, feeble and sweating, screaming for relief. Finally, he had determined she was happier with the laudanum than without, and I supposed that was true, though I often found myself wondering what happiness she saw as she stared numbly into space, watching a world beyond the one I knew, one that had shaped itself into some fascinating story for her alone.

I had wondered if it was the laudanum that caused her growing madness, or the other way around. Had the medicine been the cause—or the cure? She had claimed to hear otherworldly voices since I was small; how often had I been made to suffer some wretched and foul poultice because of her belief that it would banish the “bad spirits” she saw lingering about me? I’d been afraid of the things she heard and the nightmares that were as vivid as my own, and so I was relieved when her laudanum dosage began to dull them both—but the relief it offered from ennui and night-mares had come at too great a price. I’d hoped that by denying my nightmares, they would go away. I had refused to admit that perhaps I’d inherited her propensity, and I’d been relieved that at least voices did not speak to or through me.

At least, they never had before.

The thought that her madness might be in me was terrifying. There must be a logical reason for this, a rational cause. There had to be some trick in it. I sank into the chair before the fire and stared into the flames and tried to determine the ways. I couldn’t deny it was my handwriting. How had Michel manipulated me? Was he a mesmerist, could he put me in a trance and make me do this? And if he had, when? Had he drugged me? Had he put something in my food or drink—

I looked at the decanter on the desk, glowing with an almost sinister incandescence in the faint light. I rose and went to it, pulling off the stopper, leaning down to breathe deeply of it. I knew the scent of laudanum very well, and I smelled nothing of it here. Only a clean scent, rather grassy, a little bitter, very smooth.

I put the stopper back into place with a trembling hand and went back to the chair, staring down at the notebook I’d abandoned on the floor. I grabbed it up and closed it. I did not want to look at it again, and until I understood what it meant, or how it had happened, I would say nothing.

I put the notebook beneath my bed, where I thought no one would find it, and then I settled myself in bed and looked to the window, waiting for the dawn.

By the time Kitty came to dress me, I was well and truly afraid. I’d never anticipated that Michel might have the power to do such things to me. Ben was right; I must escape this house as quickly as I could. I was determined to do what I could to clear my name today.

While Kitty did my hair, I said, “The house is so quiet this morning. Where is Mr. Jourdain?”

With quick ease, she twisted my hair into a chignon. “I don’t know where he is just now, ma’am. But it’s nearly eleven, and he usually goes to see Miz Bennett around this time.”

“Does he?”

“Oh yes. And don’t the rest of ‘em just love him for it too. That Agnes never stops talking about it.” Her voice rose in imitation. “ ‘The way he takes care of Miz Bennett—why, he’s such a gentleman! We mayn’t ever fear for her with him around!’ ”

I couldn’t help smiling at her mockery. I glanced at the clock. It was eleven now, and I found myself tensing, waiting for the sound of his boot steps along the hallway.

Kitty finished my hair, and while she straightened up the dressing table, I rose, going as nonchalantly as I could to the door. Again, I looked at the clock. Ten minutes after eleven. Surely he would go there now. I listened, and then I heard the opening of his door, and, before I had time to talk myself out of it, I opened my own, stepping back as I saw him, putting my hand to my heart in feigned surprise.

He stopped. “
Madame
Atherton. Good morning.”

“To you as well, Mr. Jourdain. Do you go to breakfast?”

“Is that an invitation?”

I cursed myself inwardly. “Well, I—I’m afraid—”

“As it happens, I’ve already eaten,” he said smoothly. “I was going to Dorothy.”

I tried to hide my relief. “I would hate to disrupt her schedule.”

“Perhaps you’d care to join me for tea this afternoon? I’ve some things to discuss with you.”

“Of course,” I said, though the moment I said the words I began thinking of excuses.

“Later then,” he said. I watched him go to Dorothy’s room, the quick knock, the entry without invitation, the quiet closing of the door. He did not look back at me.

I took a deep breath and closed my own door behind me, and then I crossed the hall to his. The knob turned smoothly in my hands, and my mouth went dry with nervousness. I had expected the door to be locked, but it was open, and I had no choice but to enter before someone spotted me. With a final look down the hall, I slipped inside.

Where the guest room I inhabited was feminine with its delicate furniture, its blues and whites, his was its masculine counterpart. The dark green drapes were open to let in the overcast light of late morning, which glimmered darkly over the polished rose-wood furniture. The evidence of his inhabitance was everywhere—a frock coat on the back of the chair, a tangle of ribands on the bedside table, a shaving strop hung next to a small mirror over the washbasin. The room smelled of him—sweat and something else, an herbal scent that I realized I associated with him, though I’d barely been aware of it.