The Spiritualist (47 page)

Cullen stepped forward threateningly.

The man glanced up. “I know you, don’t I?”

I said, “I’m looking for Tommy Miller. Is he here?”

The man shrugged. The gown he wore slipped from an angular shoulder. Then his eyes narrowed. “You his sister? You look just like him.”

“Yes,” I said. “I mean, no, I’m not his sister. But he’s the one I’m looking for.”

“He ain’t here. He’s next door. Could be with a customer. You might have to wait.”

I was relieved when we were outside again.

“You might want to let me ask the questions, ma’am,” Cullen said as we went next door. It was a café, and like the Neapolitan Club, it had boarded windows that looked dark and abandoned. But Cullen opened the door, and we were immediately assailed with the heavy, greasy aroma of fried fish, the sour hop of lager. The place was full; I saw a few curious glances, but most of these men were embroiled in their conversations and their food, and those glances slid away again.

Cullen made his way to the bar at the back, and I followed him. The bartender there wore the tightest trousers I’d ever seen. He glanced up as Cullen approached; I saw his gaze move over the driver assessingly, and then his brow rose as he saw me coming behind.

“What can I do for you?” he asked.

Cullen leaned on the bar. “We’re looking for Tommy Miller. They sent us here from next door.”

“Oh yeah? Who’s looking for him?”

I stepped forward. “His sister. Do you know where we can find him?”

“I got a good idea. Only my guess is you don’t want to find him just now.”

“I need to find him. It’s important.”

He hesitated. He must have seen the desperation in my face, because finally, he jerked his head toward the narrow stairs behind the bar. “He’s up there. But he’s with someone.”

“I just need to talk to him for a moment,” I told him.

“You in trouble, sister?”

“Nothing Tommy can’t solve,” I said.

He said, “Go on up. Second door on the left.”

I didn’t wait for him to change his mind. I started over to the alcove behind the bar. Cullen put his hand on my arm, slowing me, and when I turned to look at him, he said, “You’d best let me go first, ma’am,” and pushed past me to lead the way up the narrow, badly painted stairs.

They opened onto a hall not much wider than they were. It was dingy, and the plaster was peeling, and there was no light but that from a flickering gaslight at the far end, its globe so thick with soot that it seemed the flame was gasping for breath. The floor was warping, the hallway lined with doors that were all sagging, all seemingly squeezed into their swollen frames.

“Second on the left,” I said, following Cullen to the door. He rapped sharply.

Silence. Then scurrying. Then, “Who is it?”

I opened my mouth to speak, but before I could, Cullen said, “Looking for Tommy Miller.”

“Who wants him?”

“A friend. They sent me up from downstairs.”

There was a curse, and then I heard the sound of staggering footsteps. The door was pulled open, and we were staring into the bland, downy bearded face of a young man wearing only a ragged dressing gown. His eyes were bleary and reddened. He frowned when he saw Cullen, and then more so when he saw me.

“Who’re you?”

“Are you Tommy?” I asked.

He turned to look over his shoulder. “You expectin’ someone, Tom?” and I pushed my way past him. The room was tiny and dim, lit only by a small oil lamp. The single window had been covered by a threadbare blanket. There was a mattress on the floor—other than that, there was no other furniture in the room. Sitting on the mattress, shirtless, with his trousers undone, was a young man, and I stopped, struck by how much he looked like me. He was small for a man, and slight. His hair was dark and long, and his skin was smooth as a woman’s, his mouth wide and mobile. And as I drew closer, I saw his eyes, like mine, were a mottled green that no doubt changed color depending on what he wore. He was lolling against the wall, and he held a bottle in his hand, and he peered at me as if I were an apparition he couldn’t quite make out. The sweetly spicy, medicinal scent of laudanum was unmistakable.

The man at the door giggled and nearly fell as Cullen came into the room behind me. “Oh, me, they’ve sent you a girl, Tommy. How long’s it been since you tried that?”

“I ain’t never tried it,” Tommy said. He squinted at me again and tried to rise, gave up, fell back again to the wall. “Do I know you?”

“No,” I said. I ignored the other fellow and glanced over my shoulder at Cullen, who closed the door. Then I stepped up to the mattress. “But you knew my husband. Peter Atherton.”

The bottle fell from his hands. I saw something come into his eyes—fear, knowledge,
something
—and he struggled to sit up-right. His voice became sullen. “Peter? I ain’t seen ‘im. Not for weeks. What d’you want to talk to me about ‘im for?”

I knelt on the mattress. The movement sent the smell of musty, mildewed straw and sweat and musk into my nostrils. “Because he saw you the night he died,” I said softly. Tommy’s eyes widened; I had his attention. “And I think you know something of what happened to him.”

Tommy swallowed. “Look, lady, I don’t know why you come ‘ere, but I got nothin’ to say.” He reached blindly for the laudanum. “I didn’t see ‘im.”

“I think you did.”

Tommy looked frightened.

I heard the other boy. “Hey. Hey! What’re you—”

Cullen caught his arm, holding him in place. “Quiet, boy.”

Tommy looked at Cullen and his friend and seemed to blanch. Then he looked back at me. “Listen, I didn’t… I didn’t kill Peter. I swear I didn’t! It was the other one. The one ‘e came for—”

“What other one?” I asked.

“You think ‘e even looked at me twice once ‘e ‘ad ‘im? We got into a fight, ‘ey—but it weren’t nothin’! I swear I didn’t kill ‘im!”

I leaned closer. The smell of laudanum that came from his breath was almost dizzying. “Think, Tommy. Tell me what happened. What night was it?”

He grappled for the bottle. I grabbed it first and held it away. “Tell me. What night?”

“Right before the storm. It was cold. I remember that.”

“You were at the club?”

“Yeah. I mean, no. Peter was supposed to meet me there, but ‘e never showed up, so I came over ‘ere to get somethin’ to eat and a drop.” He pushed his hand through his greasy hair. “I was gettin’ mad, you know? ‘E was supposed to be there.”

“What happened?”

“After a bit, ‘e showed up. But ‘e didn’t want me. ‘E was lookin’ for his new love.”

“He wasn’t that new,” said the other boy.

“’E was goin’ to leave ‘im too.”

“Not to come back to you, though.”

I glanced over my shoulder at Cullen, who gripped the boy’s arm tighter and said, “Quiet, you.”

I looked back at Tommy. “Who was Peter going to leave?”

“Benny. They was arguin’ about some new fella. Petey was in love.” Tommy snorted. “Left me for Benny, so I knew ‘e’d leave ‘im too when ‘e found somethin’ new. Told Ben that too, but ‘e didn’t want to ‘ear it, you know?”

Benny. The same name Willie Chesney, his
assistant
, had used for him.

“Benny,” I said hoarsely. “Benjamin Rampling?”

“Was that ‘is name?”

“Dark hair? Bearded?”

“Yeah. ‘E was Petey’s law partner. So ‘e said. I never believed ‘im none.”

A wave of nausea swept me. “Who were they arguing over?”

“Don’t know. Never saw ‘im. Someone Petey was seein’ at one of ‘is fancy ‘ouses. ‘E was moony for ‘im. Some spirit rapper.” Tommy laughed drunkenly. “’E believed that shit, you know?”

“What happened?”

“Ben was downstairs, whinin’ about another fight they ‘ad about that rapper. I was ‘appy they was fightin’—I thought maybe when Pete came down I’d get lucky. But ‘e was madder ‘an ‘ell when ‘e found Ben, and ‘e didn’t want me at all. I could just fuck myself and get lost.”

“He was a bastard, Tommy,” said the other boy.

Tommy looked at him as if he’d forgotten he was there. Then his green eyes filled with tears, which he dashed away angrily with the back of his hand. “Give me that bottle, will ya?”

I held it away. “What happened, Tommy?”

He seemed to melt against the wall. His eyes closed and his shoulders sagged; he fell to one arm. “The fight got rough. Matt told ‘em to leave. ‘E don’t allow that shit. But then they was out in the street fightin’, and I followed ‘em. I thought maybe Benny’d go off pissed and I’d be there, you know. But Benny was mad as I’ve ever seen ‘im. ‘E kept sayin’: ‘You was supposed to ‘elp me ruin ‘im, not fall in love with ‘im!’ and grabbin’ Pete’s arm, and Petey kept jerkin’ away and sayin’ at least he never tried to kill nobody, an’ ‘e was goin’ to the coppers.”

I was gripping the laudanum bottle so tightly that my knuckles were white. “Then what?”

“Petey went runnin’ off. Ben chased ‘im. Looked to get nasty, and I’d lost my taste for it. I never liked Benny much. ‘Ad a temper, that one, and I didn’t want to get in the middle of it. I figured if Petey wanted me, ‘e knew where I was. But ‘e didn’t come back.” Tommy’s voice went soft and plaintive. “I loved ‘im, you know? I would’ve taken ‘im back.” His voice broke. “I would’ve.”

I sat back on my heels. “Did you tell the police any of this?”

He shook his head. “Nah. Who would believe me? ‘E was an Atherton, for Christ’s sake. But if I ‘ad to guess, it was Benny who did ‘im. I’d lay money on it. ‘E was jealous as I’d ever seen ‘im. You want to find the one who killed Peter, lady, you find ‘im.”

I
understood now what Dorothy had known about Peter’s life, the secret he had kept from me, from all of society. I understood why she had not dared to voice it, even to me. Such things were not talked about. They were barely acknowledged to be true. Peter’s life had been a counterfeit, and I was part of it—I was the illusion.

It made me sad to think he had not trusted me with his secret, that he had allowed me to believe I was the one at fault in our marriage, but that sadness was overshadowed by the truth of his death, by the impossible news that Benjamin Rampling had been my husband’s lover. And I knew now that Benjamin had killed both Peter and Adele, and that I had played into his hands. I felt sick at the extent of his betrayal, at how naive I’d been to trust him so completely. I had thought he’d made such a valiant sacrifice in choosing to defend me against the murder charge, and now I wondered: what had he meant to accomplish? Had he meant only to keep the investigation from turning to him? Had he meant truly to save me? Or was it all a lie—were all his machinations intended only to serve his vengeance against Michel? I could not believe he would have let me hang, but what had he said to me once? That I trusted too easily. I thought he’d been referring to Irene Cushing then, but now I realized he could have been talking about himself. Nothing had been as I’d thought it was.

Now it all came down to the fact that I must somehow find a way to use this information to save myself, and I knew I couldn’t simply go to the police. It would have been one thing if Peter had talked to them, as Tommy claimed he’d intended to do. They would have listened to him. But they would not believe me, and even if they did, they would never proceed with such scandalous information—not when it involved such a prestigious Knicker-bocker. I would be ignored and scorned. I was a nobody. I was on my own once again.

“I’m falling in love with you, Evie.”

Or perhaps I was not on my own anymore.

When Cullen dropped me at the Bennett door, I told him, “Thank you. I may need you again, you know, to talk to the police on my behalf.”

“I know, ma’am,” he said. “Kitty knows how to find me.”

He waited there on the walk to see me inside safely. When I reached the front door, it opened before I touched the handle. Lambert stepped back to let me come inside.

“We’ve been looking for you, ma’am,” he said.

Standing behind him in the hallway was Michel.

I had never seen him look so angry. As Lambert closed the door behind me, Michel said tightly, “Might I see you in the parlor,
Madame
?”

Lambert took my cloak and my hat. Slowly, I pulled off my gloves and handed them to him. I felt the rise of Michel’s temper as I tarried, but he kept it in check, waiting stiffly as I preceded him into the parlor. Once we were inside, he closed the door.

He waited barely a moment before he exploded, “Where the hell have you been? I’ve been looking for you for hours.”

The evening caught up with me at last. I sank onto the settee. “I was out.”

“Another errand? Who was that man in the yard?”

“It was Cullen.”

“Cullen?”

“Peter’s driver.”

The confusion on his face was comical. “Peter’s driver? You’re sneaking out to meet a driver?”

“You mustn’t be so jealous if we’re to work together. I dislike men with tempers.”

“Then perhaps you shouldn’t provoke them,” he said, and then he froze as he comprehended my words. “What’s going on, Evie?”

I hesitated. I had no idea where to begin. Finally I just plunged in. “Were you my husband’s lover?”

“What?” He stared at me in shock, and then he laughed. When I didn’t laugh with him, he said, “
Non
—Evie, how can you even think it?”

“Did you know he was… that he liked…”

I felt him measuring his words. “I didn’t know for sure. I suspected.”

“I think he was in love with you.”

“Ah.” He looked wary. “Perhaps. I preferred to think of it as gratitude.”

“Do you remember that cuff link in your room? The opal you said you didn’t recognize?”

“What of it?”

“It was Peter’s.”

“Peter’s?”

“And I imagine somewhere in your room we’ll find his gun as well.”

“
Mon dieu
, how many times must I say it before you believe me? I didn’t kill your wretched husband—”

“I know.”