The Spiritualist (48 page)

He looked stunned. “You know?” Then, “Where did you go tonight?”

“To a little café on Chatham Street, where I met a charming boy by the name of Tommy Miller.”

Michel went to the decanters on the sideboard and splashed a large amount of brandy into a glass. It was a measure of his discomposure that he offered nothing to me but only took a great gulp before he said, “Perhaps you should explain.”

So I did. I told him of my visit to the newspaper office, and my discovery that Benjamin had been Adele’s husband, and that she’d been found murdered in the same way Peter had been. I told him of finding Cullen and of my conversation with Tommy, and when I was finished, Michel sat next to me, leaning his head against the hard carved edge of the back, gimbeling his drink in his hand.

“I never knew,” he said. “Her name was Rampling?”

“I’m disappointed at the spottiness of your research.”

“I didn’t research her. There was nothing I wanted from her but—” He broke off with a quick glance to me.

“Was it worth it, then?” I asked. “Knowing what you did to Benjamin? How much he hates you?”

“He doesn’t hate me for her. It’s Peter he hates me for.”

“How it must have rankled him. Losing his wife to you, and then Peter too.”

“And now you,” Michel said quietly. When I looked at him, he was staring down into his glass. “Does he know,
chère
?”

I shivered. “I don’t think so.”

“Because once he finds out, you’re in danger.”

“He used me,” I said bitterly. “All this time, I thought we were friends—more than that. I thought he was trying to help me. I thought he even—” The words were a lump in my throat; I could not say them.

“Perhaps he did you a favor, eh?” Michel took another sip; his gaze met mine over the edge of his glass. “You don’t belong in that life,
chère
. You know it. Rampling only provided the way to see it.”

“He must have put the cuff link in your room himself. During one of the circles, I suppose. It would have been easy enough to slip away. He’s been asking me to look for Peter’s gun.”

“Then suppose we find it.” Michel rose. He put his glass on a nearby table and offered his hand to help me to my feet, and together we went to his room.

Once we were there, he lit the gas and turned to survey the room critically. “He wouldn’t have had much time to hide it. And he would’ve been sure to put it where he thought you’d find it.”

I tried to look at the room through fresh eyes. The cuff link had been in the box on the desk, and I had searched the rest of the desk well for the key to the drawers.

“He was always saying how clever you were,” I remembered. “He would have hidden it where I wouldn’t have questioned that.”

“Somewhere clever. Somewhere quick. Somewhere you would find it. Not much to consider, eh?”

“Where would you have hidden a gun?” I asked him.

“That doesn’t signify. I wasn’t meant to find it,
chère
—you were. The question is: where would you look?”

“In the armoire,” I suggested. “Perhaps in a boot.”

“That I might wear?” He lifted a brow.
“Non.”

“Then in the drawer beneath.”

“Among my inexpressibles—
oui
, that is exactly where Rampling wants you, isn’t it?”

“I’ve been through the desk already. It isn’t there.”

“Or in the bed stand drawer,” he said dryly.

I glanced about the room. The mirror, the shaving strop, the basin. There was a side table upon which was a pile of books. No place there to hide a gun. On the back of the door hung Michel’s dressing gown and nothing else. The fireplace mantel was empty but for more books and a china urn. I went to it and picked it up, turning it over. Nothing but dust and a spider fell out.

“Ah, you insult me,
chère
,” Michel said, his voice deep with amusement. “How clever is that?”

The chairs before the fireplace were richly upholstered, but the cushions were not deep enough to slip a gun between. The drapes were opened and closed every day—a gun would have been quickly discovered. There was no place else. No place except the bed.

It was fashioned of richly carved rosewood, with decorative panels set into the headboard, inlaid with ivory to match the desk. I flushed at the sudden memory that came to me, of pressing my hands against them as Michel—

I shook the thought away and sat down upon the bed, running my fingers over the headboard. The inlaid pieces were firmly set, not drawers as I’d thought they might be, but as I sat, the mattress eased away from the headboard, leaving a space between them.

I hesitated. The space between was just big enough, wasn’t it? I reached into it, feeling along the planks of the bed stand beneath, along the edge of the mattress and just under the head-board, feeling for something that didn’t belong there.

He must have just let it fall. There’d been no attempt to shove it beneath the mattress, to conceal it well. Had I not known, I would have thought Michel ingenious for choosing such a hiding spot—no one would have found this gun without having been in the bed—

And there the slyness of what Benjamin had done struck me.

I pulled the gun loose. Peter’s gun, certainly. I had seen it enough to know. A small, short nose. A burled handle with his initials in gold.
PMA
. Peter Martin Atherton. I dropped it onto the coverlet, where it shone in the gaslight.

“Did you say he knew nothing about us?” Michel asked.

I looked up at him. “He must have suspected.”

“And when you found the gun, he would’ve known for certain.”

“He warned that you would seduce me.”

“What did you tell him?”

“I told him you’d tried. It seemed best not to lie. It wasn’t in your nature not to.”

His smile was wry. “I don’t seduce everyone, you know.”

“It was what he told me. I believed him. I believed everything he said about you. It never occurred to me to think differently. And you must admit you did nothing to convince me otherwise.”

He sat beside me and brushed a loose hair from my face. “I was overcome. And bedeviled. From the first moment.”

I glanced at the gun. “What should we do with it?”

“Contact the police,” he said. “Your watchman’s outside. I can call him—”

I grabbed his arm to keep him from rising. “No. What would we tell him? That we found Peter’s gun in your room? That we have the cuff link that was on him when he died? Who will they believe? You and me? Or Ben, when he says he knows nothing about it?”

He was quiet for a moment. Then thoughtfully, he said, “
Oui—
of course. There’s a better way. Don’t you know it?”

And suddenly, I did. “The circle.”

Michel smiled. “The circle.”

T
HAT NIGHT
, I lay in his arms while we went over our plans.

“You can imagine her life,” he told me, stroking my arm as he talked. “It was very like yours. It’s why her spirit has an affinity for you. Her husband was distant; she was unhappy. She put her energies into her child, and when the boy died, she had nothing. She took to berating Rampling—she had a vicious tongue, that one, eh? He didn’t satisfy her, and she let him know it.
Mon dieu
, how she must’ve tormented him before she left.”

“So she ran off and fell into spiritualism—or mediumship, anyway. And then she met you.”

“She was dead from that moment.”

“Don’t joke. It was true.”

“I’m not joking,” he said softly.

“She left her things because she was certain you would call her back.”

“She returned to Rampling.”

“Where else was she to go? She had nothing. I think…” I hesitated, sorting it in my mind for a moment before I went on. “I think she thought to make you jealous by returning to her husband. But she was in love with you, and she felt nothing but contempt for him, and she couldn’t pretend otherwise.”

“She was never good at pretending.”

“And then he killed her. It’s such a sad story. If she tormented him so, why couldn’t he just let her go?”

His fingers drew lazy circles over my skin. “Ah, who knows? Perhaps it hurt his pride to lose her to another man.”

“He knew you,” I said, remembering how adamant Ben had been that Michel was a charlatan. “He’d told me you’d been run out of New Orleans. That you seduced a maid into pretending to be a spirit.”

“Not run out. Though it seemed best to leave.”

“And the maid?”

“One does what one must, eh? She was satisfied well enough.”

“Is there anyone who hasn’t found you irresistible?”

“Ah,
chère
, don’t let it trouble you,” he whispered against my ear. “It only matters to me that you do. One can’t always regret the past, eh? It’s a waste of time. Best to move forward.”

“Ben said to me once that he regretted a great many things,” I said, and my chest felt heavy—both sad and angry—at the memory. “He said he regretted that he waited so long to find his heart’s desire. I thought he’d meant me. But he meant Peter. How desperate he must have felt when he thought he was losing him. And to you, of all people, the same man who stole his wife!”

Michel kissed my shoulder. “He should’ve asked me. I would’ve told him there was nothing to fear.”

“That night, at the circle, the shooting—Peter was right—he was right to be afraid for you. He knew Ben had fired the shot, that it was meant for you.”

Michel sighed. “I suspected then it had something to do with Peter. I told the police myself when I spoke to them.”

“Did you? They said nothing of that to me.” My eyes grew blurry; I turned my face so he wouldn’t see. “Dear God, what a fool I’ve been. I never suspected any of this. Not any of it. They hid it so well.”

“They had to live in the world, just as you once told me you did.”

“What about you?” I asked. “What secrets are you keeping from me? Is there nothing else for me to know? Are you hiding something?”

He gathered me into his arms and teased, “
Non.
How could I? It’d be like hiding from my own soul, eh?”

I laughed through my tears. “You are such a liar.”

He sobered quickly. His arms tightened around me, and his eyes glittered. “I’m not lying about this, Evie. Not about this. We must do this perfectly on Tuesday night. No mistakes. I won’t be without you. You know this?”

“Yes,” I whispered against his lips. “I know it.”

He pulled me close, and I felt her there, Adele, wanting him still, waiting for me to surrender, to let her in.
No
, I told her, and I felt her fury as I controlled her, as I kept her out, as I loved him.
He belongs to me now.

W
E PLANNED IT
until I felt it had happened already. I knew every moment as it must unfold. I was amazed at the things he understood, the tricks he used, and once they were in my head I was astounded that anyone in the circle believed him, even for a moment. The ways were so transparent, so easy. I suppose what made them work so well was his confidence that they would.

H
e watched carefully as I prepared, as I undressed to my chemise and pulled on Adele’s filmy dressing gown, tying the peach-colored ribbons over my breasts.

“There won’t be a man there tonight who won’t want you,” he said approvingly as he took down my dark hair and spread it about my shoulders. “
Mon dieu
, Evie, look at you—when this is over you must never wear black again.”

“I’m nervous,” I said.

“Don’t worry. You must believe it will work,
chère
. If you believe, they will.”

“I don’t know if I can face him.”

“He wants to destroy me. He cares nothing if he destroys you too.” “I know. But to pretend I still trust him—”

“If you love me, you’ll pretend.” He turned me to face the mirror. “Look. See what I see.”

I was startled at the sight of myself. The woman who stared back at me from the mirror was not the woman I’d been—the woman who haunted the candlelit mirrors at Rose Reid’s ball, pale faced and desperate to belong; the woman who had allowed her husband to ignore her; the woman who believed she’d been lacking in her marriage. In her place was someone dangerous. Someone provocative. Without the armor of corset and crinolines, my body was revealed, my curves my own, not forced into a shape by boning. Whatever the game might be, the woman in the mirror was ready to play it, and to use whatever she must to win. Here, wearing another woman’s gown, I was more myself than I had ever been.

“Do you doubt you can do this?” Michel whispered.

“No,” I said. “I don’t doubt it.”

I suppose, in the end, that was the only thing I needed to remember.

I stayed in my room while the others arrived. That was part of it, he explained, because things would be different tonight, and everyone must be off their guard. The easiest way to do that was to provide the unexpected. He went down to greet them, and to help Dorothy to the second-floor parlor, and I paced my room, trying to relax. So much was at stake. If this did not work—

But it must work. I went to the window, pulling aside the drapes just enough to see out to the Avenue. There he was, the police watchman, in his usual place.

The clock struck eight. It was time.

I dropped the drape back into place and glanced once more at the mirror, feeling once again for the reassuring heaviness in my pocket—my own insurance, though I hoped I would have no need of it. I was calm as I left my room and went down the stairs. I heard them in the parlor, talking among themselves, chattering away, as if this was any other circle, and I felt a little stab of anticipation as I hesitated outside the door.

Then I stepped inside.

Michel glanced up. He was speaking with Jacob Colville and Dudley, and when he saw me his eyes lit with admiration, his lips curved in subtle encouragement.