The Spiritualist (30 page)

I hoped that during the confusion of my fainting spell, the notebook had been forgotten. I went to the table, and though I had doubted I’d find it, I saw its shadowed rectangle on the tablecloth, with the inkwell beside it, and an abandoned pen.

I stared at it incredulously—how easy this was. Too easy. I could not believe that Michel had forgotten it if it truly maligned him as he’d said. But I grabbed it, and in my haste, I knocked over the inkwell and the pen fell to the floor. Quickly I righted the bottle, breathing a sigh of relief that it had been capped, and set the notebook down again so I could recover the pen, which had rolled beneath the table. I knelt, then went down on my hands and knees, feeling along the carpet, crawling beneath the table while the tassels fringing the tablecloth caught in my hair. My fingers brushed against crumbs, and then I felt the pen—

RAP.

I started, jerking up so I banged my head against the bottom of the table. I bit my lip to keep from crying out in pain, and froze, apprehensive, waiting.

It seemed I waited forever.

“Is someone there?” I whispered, but all I heard was my own breathing in answer. I grabbed the pen and began to crawl out—

RAP.

I sat up again, careful this time not to hit my head. “Is someone there?” I asked again. And then, in a quavering voice that did not sound like mine: “Is there a spirit come to speak with me?”

Nothing.

I gathered myself in tighter, turning so I could peer out into the room from beneath the fringe. I put my hand down and leaned to look beyond the chair leg.

RAP.

This time, I felt the give beneath my hand, as if there were a spring in the floorboard. I lifted my hand, frowning, and then, deliberately and hard, I pressed down again.

RAP.

And again.

RAP RAP.

And I knew: this was one of Michel’s tricks, the lever he used to make the raps during the circle. I crawled from underneath the table. I wondered what else he had hidden in the walls and the floors. What other ways had he thought to delude decent people? To delude me?

I got to my feet, setting the pen back onto the table. Ben had been right—Michel was more than capable of creating some mechanism to shoot that gun during the first circle I’d attended. No doubt the “misfire” had happened exactly as Ben suspected. I glanced up into the corners of the ceiling, searching the shadows for some evidence of where such a mechanism might have been, though I guessed whatever trick he’d used had been removed long ago. It was too dark now to do much exploring, but it was clear this room should be the focus of my next search.

I grabbed up the notebook, unbuttoned the bodice of my dressing gown, and shoved the notebook beneath it, pressing it to my breasts as I left the parlor and started back to my room.

This time, I paused at the landing, listening for any steps, any movement at all on the third floor. When I knew it was quiet, I sped up the stairs on the balls of my feet, trying to make as little noise as possible. Then, once I made the hallway, I raced to my room, closing my eyes in relief as soon as I was inside.

I went to my bed and lit the candle on the bedside table. Then I pulled the notebook from my bodice and opened it.

The pages were blank except for the first few, and those held the writing I remembered, the hasty scrawl, words abbreviated, blotted out. In some places, the nib had torn through the paper.

I stared at the pages for a long time.
Liars lead you astray. Do not be tempted.
These words were more pointed than before, and frankly threatening. Whoever had written this grew angry with my incompetence. That was hardly a surprise; I was frustrated with myself. Surely that was an argument for the writing being simply a product of my own mind, my own disappointments made manifest, as it were. There was no divine knowledge here, was there? I remembered Michel’s words upon the stairs, his protest that the words had maligned him. They did seem to do so, and he had been truly angry with me tonight—I had not imagined that. If he’d engineered the spirit writing, surely he would not paint himself in such a compromising light? If he had caused it to be done, why not make himself the hero he had already convinced Dorothy he was?

But if he had not done it, then how had it been done?

T
he next morning one of Dorothy’s nurses came to tell me that Dorothy wished to see me.

My mind felt muddy and unsubtle after my sleepless night, but I followed Charley down the hall to Dorothy’s room. When I went inside, it was to find her sitting up, though the curtains were drawn and the gaslight low. She looked as pale and haggard as I felt.

“Child,” she said as I sat in the chair next to the bed. She reached limply across the coverlet, grabbing my fingers, squeezing feebly. “I’m afraid it’s not one of my best mornings.”

“I understand you passed a sleepless night.”

“Sometimes the pain is worse than others,” she said. “If not for Michel’s hands…”

I resisted the urge to pull away. “His hands?”

“I told you, child, he has the hands of a healer. If he ever left me, I don’t imagine I’d want to continue on.”

“I doubt he’ll leave. Not with the reward that’s waiting for him.”

She turned on the pillow, frowning at me. “Don’t you lecture me, Evelyn. I told you, if that’s what it takes to keep him, it’s little enough.”

“I wonder”—I took a deep breath—“I wonder if perhaps he’s worse for you than you think.”

“I don’t want—”

“The schedule he keeps you on for your cordial, for example.”

“Evelyn.”

I ignored the warning in her voice. “And though I’ve no doubt he’s very good with his ‘hands,’ as you say, I wonder if perhaps you don’t need him as much as he tells you you do. They say such… physical… habits can weaken our moral resolve. It can even lead to madness—”

She tore her hand from mine. “This isn’t why you’re here. I wanted to talk to you about the spirit writing.”

“It’s the spirit writing that makes me speak to you this way. Last night, I found—”

“I don’t care,” she said.

I stared at her. “What?”

“If he’s taking advantage of me, I say: go ahead. He makes me happy. I told you that already. I don’t want to talk about it anymore. I wanted you and Michel to be friends.” She leaned back heavily into the cushions, the thin gray braid of her hair trailing over her shoulder. “It disappoints me that you don’t like him as much as he seems to like you.”

I laughed. “I hardly think
like
is the proper word. I don’t think he’s interested in friendship so much as other things.”

She turned to me with a frown. “What other things?”

Her rheumy eyes were suddenly sharply focused, uncomfortably so. I realized I’d misstepped. My life now depended on her generosity; I could not afford to give her cause for jealousy.

Quickly, I said, “It doesn’t matter. It’s as you say, there’s no point in discussing him if we can’t agree. And you said you wanted to talk with me about the spirit writing.”

She relaxed somewhat, and then sighed, and I was relieved. “Yes. We read it last night, and we agreed: you could be a powerful medium, Evelyn. The spirits want to communicate with you, but the writing is a poor vehicle. Such mystery! At the next circle, you should attempt to allow them to speak through you as Michel does. He’s agreed to show you how it’s done. But perhaps it would be best if he tutored you within the circle rather than outside it. Or here, with me.”

The comment was lightly made, but I knew it was deliberately so. I had raised her suspicions. She preferred Michel and I not be alone together.

“The others believe Peter’s spirit hasn’t appeared to Michel because he’s waiting for you to gain the skill. Time goes so fast. Benjamin reminded us that your trial’s only five and a half weeks away. Best to speed things up, don’t you agree? For your sake, of course.”

Reluctantly I agreed. “I suppose it would be best.”

“I know I can trust you, child.”

I heard what she didn’t say. “Of course you can.”

I
LEFT
D
OROTHY’S
room feeling the weight of her expectation. I was aware now of having to walk a fine line—she cared nothing for whether or not Michel was a mountebank, but the particulars of my relationship with him mattered greatly to her. I had raised an alarm—I prayed I’d not lost too much of her trust.

I had taken to locking my door and keeping the key with me, though I knew it was worthless—the door had been locked the night Michel stole the key as well, and he had managed it easily. But it made me feel safer, especially now that I had the two note-books with the spirit writing in them. The one was my own secret, the other I preferred to keep in my possession. When I next saw him, I meant to tell Ben that I’d done the writing before, to show him the pages. There was a logical explanation for this. Ben and I could find it together. The hope was even more powerful than my wish to tell him of the lever I’d found beneath the table. I could hardly wait to see him.

I unlocked the door and stepped inside, closing it carefully behind me.

“There you are.”

I jumped.

Michel lounged upon my bed, playing with the hairpins I’d piled on the table beside, a solitary game of pick-up-sticks. He sat up, leaning against my pillow. “Ah, did I frighten you? Forgive me.”

“W-what are you doing here?”

“You searched my room. I’m only returning the favor.”

I tried to conceal how badly he’d disconcerted me. “The difference is that I’m not hiding anything.”

“Non?”
He pulled from behind him the two journals—the one from last night, and the one I’d hidden beneath my bed. “Look at this—a treasure trove.”

“You knew about that,” I managed. “You saw me do the writing last night.”

“
Oui
, the one. But the other…” He shook his finger at me,
tsking.
“ You’ve been keeping secrets from me,
chère
. I thought last night was the first time, but you’ve done this before.”

“Only once.”

“ ‘Only once,’ ” he mocked. “When was this? Before we decided to develop you?”

“Does it matter?”

He put his legs over the side of the bed, rising. “You see, I decided you were a bit of a charlatan yourself. You can see why I might’ve thought so, eh? You claim to have nightmares, we decide to develop you, and suddenly—
voilà!
—the spirits are writing through your hand. And not only that, they’re telling you someone is lying, and you think that someone is me. Perhaps you even go to Dorothy and tell her that.”

He stepped toward me. “And now I find that you’ve done this other writing on your own. You’ve told no one. You have it hidden away. Why is that? I ask myself. Could it be that she doesn’t trust it? Or maybe she’s afraid. But why would she be afraid? It falls into her plans to discredit me. Why not show it to everyone? Why not say: I know what this means; Michel is a liar. But she doesn’t do that. Why not?” He stopped just before me. “Why not? Why, because she thinks it’s real. That’s why she’s afraid. She thinks the spirits are really writing through her. Do I have it right,
chère
?”

I was stunned. “It wasn’t you?”

Michel frowned. “Do I look like a spirit?”

“But I thought—”

“You may steal from me all you like,
chère
,” he said. “Just give me something in return.”

Nervously, I said, “I have nothing. What could I possibly give you?”

“Work with me,” he said.

“I thought you said we didn’t need two mediums.”

“That was before I realized your talent.”

“My talent? But you can’t—you think this writing is real?”

“Isn’t it?”

Such simple words, but their implication was astonishing. I was dazed—both with an odd relief and a profound dismay. He thought it was real, which meant he’d had no hand in it, which meant one of two things: either I
was
going mad, or he was right, and it was real.

Or did it mean that?
Liars will lead you astray.
Wouldn’t he tempt me to believe it was real? Wouldn’t he try to either lead me into madness or try to win me to his side?

“Come,
chère
,” he whispered. “Think what we could do together, eh?”

I knew he had murdered my husband. I knew he was trying to use me. But I was afraid, and that fear made me vulnerable, and I knew he understood that too, and knew just how to turn it to his purpose.
Liars will lead you astray.

“No,” I said faintly. I half turned to take the doorknob. “If you would please leave me—”

He reached around me, wrapping his hand about my own, holding both the knob and me fast. “Evie, use your sense. Look at Dorothy—don’t you see how much better she is with me? She wanted to die, her life was a misery. Isn’t she happier now?”

“She’s in thrall to you,” I snapped. “That’s not happiness. It’s enslavement.”

“Who’re you to say? We each choose how we want to live. Look at yourself: were you happy with Peter? You had everything you could’ve wanted.”