The Other Side of Midnight (8 page)

I didn’t stay for the rest; I’d had more than enough. I left my crawl space on silent feet, the tea biscuit a lump in my stomach. The itch was leaving my brain in a slow trickle, an uncanny feeling that left a throb in its wake. I went to my room and curled up on my bed, even though it was three o’clock in the afternoon and I was supposed to be doing my lessons. I fell asleep almost instantly.

I awoke to find the sun setting and my mother in my room. She lowered herself onto the edge of my bed, as slow and exhausted as a woman a decade older than her thirty years. She was already untying the scarf from her hair.

“That was you, wasn’t it?” she said to me without preamble.

I rolled to my side, facing her, and pulled my knees to my chest. I still had my shoes on, which was absolutely forbidden in bed, but my mother didn’t seem to notice. I said nothing.

She sighed, as if I’d spoken. “I felt something. Dear God, I’ve always thought . . . I’ve always wondered—” Her words seemed to
choke her and she dropped the scarf into her lap, her narrow shoulders drooping. “I never knew whether I would be happy or horrified if it was true.”

“That I’m like you?” I asked.

I wanted badly for her to turn to me, to run her palm and her warm fingers over my cheek, to gently kiss my temple as she did when she put me to bed at night. But she stayed staring at nothing, her back turned to me as if she’d forgotten me. I stared at the line of her shoulders, the thin bones of her arms in the sleeves of the black dress, the mass of red-gold hair that she’d gathered at the nape of her neck.

“You mustn’t tell your father,” she said at last. She ran her hand over the scarf in her lap, smoothing it against her legs. Then she squared her shoulders a little. “I’ll have to teach you. There are techniques you can learn. We can handle it at the end of your lessons, while your father is at work. You must not let on when he’s home—you must be normal. I expect you to practice and to follow my directions exactly. You will have to watch my sessions from behind the curtain. I expect you to be observant and obedient, and you must not be afraid.” She turned her head just enough to glance at me over her shoulder. “Do you understand?”

“Yes, Mother.”

“This will not be easy for you, so do not expect it to be. I admit I’ve anticipated this possibility, which is why I did not put you in school. Now I see I was right. A girl of your abilities cannot go to school.”

I blinked away tears. Who needed school, anyway? I didn’t want the company of other girls, who would probably be mean and stupid. “Yes, Mother.”

She looked away from me again, as if the sight of me, even from an angle, somehow pained her. “Once you begin to see the dead, Ellie, you must learn to maintain control. It is a doorway that has cracked ajar. The dead will take advantage of it; they cannot help it.
It is in their nature, especially if they are being called. But the dead are dead, and they cannot hurt you. Do you understand?”

“Yes, Mother,” I said.

She nodded and stood. “Do not put your shoes on the bed again,” she said, and left the room.

But I left my shoes where they were and stayed on the bed, listening to the clock ticking as twilight stole the light from the room. My mother loved me; I knew that without a doubt. It was because she loved me so much that she was concerned. It was because she loved me so much that she expected more of me. I could help her. She hadn’t been able to call that old woman; I had. Perhaps she was tired, but I was not. I had been born with her talent, and instead of going to school I would learn to use it. The thought both excited and horrified me.

The next day, we began our lessons.

I
sat in front of the vanity in my small bedroom, wearing my mother’s dress and tying her scarf into my hair. I wore my blond hair bobbed, one of the many things I’d horrified her with just before she died; I’d cut it to follow a fad, but discovered I loved the style. Still, it was difficult to wind the scarf through hair so short.

Y
ou must be normal.

I’d come home the day before to find my disapproving neighbor, Mrs. Weller, at my door with news that a Scotland Yard inspector had come looking for me and questioning my neighbors. “He was dressed respectably enough, I suppose,” Mrs. Weller had said, “but these policemen are low sorts. Not the kind of people we want in this neighborhood.”
She’d handed me a note left in her care for me and gone off home in a righteous huff.

The note sat on my vanity now, its dark, masculine handwriting mocking me:

PLEASE CONTACT INSPECTOR MERRIKEN, SCOTLAND YARD, AT YOUR MOST URGENT CONVENIENCE. REGARDS.

The clock ticked softly from its place on the wall, where it rested against my mother’s rose wallpaper. Outside my window, a bird sang in my small back garden. I looked at myself in the mirror. I was tired. I’d barely slept, and when I had, my dreams had been about mud and stark terror under a cold canopy of trees and a man named Fenton screaming beside me. It was possible that James Hawley would never speak to me again. Psychic mediums had only clients, not friends; displays like the one I’d shown James the day before drove people off—even psychical investigators. And so there I was, alone in my mother’s room, with only the police interested in my whereabouts.

You must be normal,
my mother had said.

I rose and left the bedroom, leaving the note behind on the vanity. My first appointment of the day was about to arrive. A girl has to make money, after all.

*   *   *

A
fter seeing two clients—a lost wedding ring and the inevitable lost dog, respectively—I wrote a note to Fitzroy Todd, asking to see him.
It’s urgent. You know what it’s about.
By teatime I had a reply by messenger, along with a second note by post. Fitzroy was agreeable to see me at seven o’clock, if I wanted to come by the house where he was cadging off of his parents. The second note was from James Hawley. It said only:
Gild Theatre, Streatham, nine o’clock. Do not forget.

I stood by my front window, reading the note more times than its brief message warranted. I lowered the paper and watched Mr. Bagwell, my elderly neighbor, walk his collie, Pickwick, down the street. Both man and dog made slow progress, their legs equally arthritic, though the dog had slightly more spring to his step than his master. The collie turned his head and looked adoringly up at the man as they walked, his long, beautiful fur rippling as he moved.

A man on a bicycle came into sight, headed for my door. It wasn’t my next client, who was due in half an hour. The man wore a uniform and cap; another messenger, then. He saw me in the window as he dismounted and tipped his cap at me. I walked to the front door and opened it.

“Miss Winter?” the fellow asked.

“Yes.”

“Special message, miss.” He handed me an envelope.

I opened it and read:

You are making appointments, not investigating. Was the fee insufficient? Please advise of progress. Messenger will await reply.

Please report any new developments by telephoning Hampstead 1207. Messages left at that exchange will reach me.

—G. Sutter.

I frowned. Hampstead 1207. The exchange didn’t mean that George Sutter—whoever he worked for—was physically in Hampstead; it only meant he had someone answering the telephone for him there. I glanced up at the messenger, who only shrugged. I’d get no information from that particular source. Incensed, I took up a pencil and wrote across the bottom of the note:

Does MI5 have nothing better to do than to watch people’s houses?

—E. Winter.

I folded the note and gave the envelope back to the messenger. After he left, I lit a cigarette, something I never did during the day, trying to calm my nerves. How had anyone watched my house without
my noticing? Through the front window, Mr. Bagwell returned home from his walk, Pickwick following on his leash. By the time the cigarette was ash, I was reasonably calm again.

I walked to the telephone I’d had installed in the front hall. I took up the receiver, dialed the first exchange, and began to cancel appointments.

*   *   *

F
itzroy Todd’s parental home, in Belgravia, was a narrow terraced town house of pale Georgian stone bordered by a wrought-iron fence. A maid admitted me into an elegant front hall, took my hat, and informed me that Mr. Todd was upstairs.

There seemed to be no one else home, and my heels made no noise on the thick carpeting of the corridor. “Up here,” came a masculine voice. I ascended all the way to the upper floor, where I found Fitzroy standing in a tastefully decorated but utterly messy dressing room.

He stood before a mirror, in trousers, braces, and a white shirt, carefully combing back his dark hair. He swiveled in one easy movement and saw me in the doorway. “Ellie!” he exclaimed, taking my hands and kissing me on the cheek. “You look too ravishing. Your hair—my God, that color! I could write poetry. Come in; it’s just an old dressing room. No need to be a prude.” He smelled of cigarettes and cologne.

“It’s nice to see you, too, Fitz,” I said, making my way over the shirts and ties left in piles on the floor. There was a chair beneath a stack of jackets, and I gingerly moved them and made myself a seat.

“You don’t mind, do you?” Fitz gestured around the room. “I know it’s a screaming disaster. I need to get ready for supper with Niles and a few other fellows before we go to the club, and your note said it was urgent. Mum and Dad aren’t home anyway, not that they’d mind.”

“No, I suppose not.” Fitz’s wardrobe stood open, revealing a tumbled spill of expensive clothing. A painting on the wall featured a seminude woman bending over a well to fill a bucket of water, her
breasts visible through the thin cloth of her dress. Through the doorway I glimpsed his bedroom, the bed rumpled, a glass and bottle on the night table. The air smelled oddly musty, like a stranger’s body. I didn’t want to admit I’d never exactly been inside a man’s private rooms before; Fitz would only laugh at me. He’d been Gloria’s lover, and I wondered whether she had ever been here.

He returned to a gilt-framed mirror to straighten his collar. “You’re here about Gloria, of course,” he said. “I’m ripped to pieces about it, Ellie. Just gutted. You can’t imagine.”

I watched him study his handsome dark-eyed face in the mirror. “What happened?” I asked him. “I mean, you were there. What in the world happened?”

“Damned if I know.” He looked over his dressing table and ran his finger over a selection of ties. Many women thought Fitzroy Todd extremely attractive; he was invited to parties everywhere and was often pictured in the gossip columns, usually with a few beautiful women at his side. What the newspapers didn’t cover was that he usually ended such nights being poured, incoherent with gin, into taxicabs by those same callous hangers-on. He was well-bred and almost as tall as James Hawley, though not as muscled. As he selected a tie I looked at his hands and wondered whether they were strong enough to knock a woman out, stab her, and carry her to the lip of a pond.

“Just start from the beginning,” I said to him.

“I already told the police everything,” Fitz said, looking steadily down at the ties and not at me. “I truly did. They had me for hours, you know. It was horrid.” He glanced at me in the mirror. “Not that I wouldn’t have gone through worse for Gloria’s sake, of course. I hope they catch the bastard, and soon.”

I tugged off my hat and ran a hand over my hair. “Fitz, for God’s sake. It’s me. I’m not the police. Don’t give me that line.”

He sighed. “Very well. I met a couple named Dubbs at a party about a year ago. We hit it off—they’re decent sorts, though they’re a
bit older. They’re fascinated by spiritualism. Their only son died in the war, and they never got over it.” Fitz selected a tie and looped it under the collar of his shirt. He himself had been just a few years too young to fight. “Frankly, they were a bit of a bore, but they were persistent. They wanted Gloria to do a séance, and they wanted me to arrange it.”

“Where did Ramona come in?” I asked.

“Who? Oh, the showgirl. God only knows. All I know is that she must have smelled money, because she latched onto the Dubbses like an unwanted puppy. She was a nuisance, and it was difficult enough to pull this off without going through that hideous dragon Davies.”

“Davies told you no?”

“Of course. Gloria’s dance card was full, and she was taking a higher sort of client, or so I heard. Do you like this jacket?” He lifted a black evening jacket off the back of the door and slid it over his shoulders. “Lesley and Roberts, Hanover Square.”

“Fitz.”

He sighed. “That blond hair, those perfect cheekbones, and those legs, yet you’re all work and no play. You should come drink with me and some of the fellows. We love blonds. You used to be fun, you know.”

“Fitz, Gloria is
dead.
”

Fitz turned from the mirror and gave me the full force of his gaze. He was a man who gambled, borrowed money, did no work, and took on absolutely no responsibility, but he had a vital, low-life sort of charm. He used it now to look soulful, but the effect only made me feel uncomfortable and suspicious. “I’m well aware of that, Ellie. I loved her, you know. But we’ve all seen so much death. I think Gloria wouldn’t want us to sit around like a group of old dowagers. I think she’d want us to get out and enjoy life any way we can.”

“Just tell me what happened.”

“Very well.” Fitz patted around for cuff links. “I had been trying to get to Gloria for weeks. The Dubbses wanted to contact their son, Davey,
and I
do
have a soul, you know. They were simply convinced Gloria was the only one who could help them. Then one night I ran into Gloria herself at the Gargoyle Club and I got to her myself to plead my case.”

“What was she doing at the Gargoyle?” I asked.

He shrugged. “Drinking, of course. We all were. I told her about the Dubbses, and eventually she agreed. She wanted the Dubbses to come to her flat like the others, but the Dubbses wanted to do the séance at their home, and I convinced her to do it.”

“Why did she agree?” I asked, shifting in my uncomfortable chair, the touch of one of Fitz’s shirts on my ankle. “It was completely against her policy.”

For the first time, he looked a little uneasy. “Well, I don’t know. We’re old friends. She simply said yes.”

“No, she didn’t,” I replied. “Tell me the truth.”

He scratched his chin, uncomfortable. “All right. I didn’t tell the police this part, but I’ll tell you, Ellie, because you’re a straight one and you’ll figure it out anyway. Frankly, the Dubbses were offering a bucket of money for Gloria to come to them, and if I arranged it I would get a slice of it.”

I stared at him for a long moment, shocked despite myself. “You arranged access to Gloria for pay?”

“Not exactly. No, no. God, no.” He looked away. “There was a lot of money on the table, Ellie. A lot.”

“But Gloria didn’t need money,” I said.

“Is that what Davies told you?” He shrugged. “Interesting. But Gloria didn’t tell Davies everything, Ellie. Especially about money. In fact, Gloria didn’t trust Davies very far.”

I had never heard this. “Fitz, what on earth are you talking about?”

“I don’t know everything, but when Gloria and I were together, she mentioned some . . . irregularities. Problems with money not being where it should be. Gloria suspected Davies, though she never had enough evidence to come out and say it.”

“You’re making no sense,” I said. Why I felt the need to defend the odious Davies, I had no idea. “Gloria was Davies’s employer. She could have just sacked her. Why would she keep on someone she suspected of swindling? Not just for a short time, but for years?”

Fitz smiled down at me. He was fully dressed now, in clothes worth more than many people earned in a year, with more discarded on the floor like rags. “Ellie,” he said, “you’re a decent girl and I like you, but you can be awfully naive. Davies isn’t exactly stable. Far from it, in fact. She has a temper that would put the fear of God into you, and Gloria was her entire life.”

“What are you saying?”

“Gloria was a little afraid of Davies. Of what she might do if she was ever dismissed. Davies knows a lot of secrets, and if she felt wronged, she wouldn’t be past making up a few more out of whole cloth. She could have done a lot of damage if Gloria ever cut her loose. So Gloria kept her on, where she could be controlled.”

I stared up at him, wondering whether it was true, wondering what else I had missed. “‘Keep your friends close, but your enemies closer,’” I said.

“Exactly. Gloria was no fool. And more to the point, Gloria did need money. For what, I don’t know. She didn’t confide in me anymore.” His voice grew almost bitter, and for a second his eyes were hard. “But I’ll tell you, when I told her the number the Dubbses were offering, she agreed. It was the money, Ellie. That’s what swayed her.”