by Laura Briggs
Silence. Then a voice — Natalie Norridge's.
"I smell perfume," she said. Softly. "It's faint. But it's growing stronger. Is it ...Orléans?"
An expensive brand of French perfume which I had once spritzed in the air at a swanky New York department store, but didn't have even a prayer of buying. From the murmurs at the table — and the muffled snicker from at least one occupant — I knew it must be the favorite of someone in the earl's past.
"The key is in the left-hand drawer, Freddy. You always forget where it's kept." Natalie's voice had changed, subtly. "Can you not remember that the right-hand one is only for postcards and letters? Silly old goose, aren't we?"
"It's just like her," said Minerva the heiress, quietly. "Just like Olivia. It's uncanny."
"You were always forgetting where you kept the silver cupboard's spare key," Doctor Pitt was saying. "Is that what she means?"
"It could mean any number of things," said Kay, under her breath to her brother Phillip. "It's complete nonsense."
Someone else released a snort of contempt, and I thought it might be Budgy. In the faint moonlight coming through the open drapes, I could see the faces of the guests seated on the left-hand side of the table, where Bill was rolling his eyes in exasperation.
"You needn't hold onto my things forever, Freddy. It's quite all right to let them go," the medium continued. "Give Kay the finest pieces, and give the sentimental ones as you wish. Remember my letters — they've always made you feel closer to me."
"Please." Sarcasm in Bill's voice with this scornful remark, a little louder than the rest of the table's whisperings. His mother hushed him, and the earl, who had been gazing with complete attention at Natalie, now looked almost livid.
"She's going now," said Natalie. "Farther away. The scent of perfume is almost gone." She fell silent again, and the murmurs of conversation were those of either admiration or skepticism.
"Really, father," said Phillip, quietly. "I do think it might be time for bed."
" ...she said nothing that couldn't have been learned from a dozen people who knew my parents, at least ..." Kay was whispering to Minerva, far enough away from the earl that only I and maybe Doctor Pitt could hear her. It was obvious that she was tired of the apparent chicanery of the medium.
I had expected something a little more impressive, too. Reminding the earl where he kept the silver cupboard's keys seemed like a fairly pointless reason to return from the other side. But I noticed in the past while watching a televised psychic special that these innocuous — and easy to assume — details of life seemed to be very important to the spirit world.
"Olivia is gone now," said Natalie, softly. "But there is something else ... someone else is coming through...."
Another noise of boredom from the grandson, who no doubt imagined that 'young Will' was making an appearance to advise changes to the will — like leaving a small fortune to a certain spiritual medium. But Natalie's voice didn't change the way it had for the long-departed Olivia.
"I'm not quite sure what it means," she said, sounding puzzled. "'Prickles,'" she said.
Even the murmurs of puzzlement and interest didn't last for more than a few seconds, as if sensing something odd in the air. A long, dead silence lingered at the table until the earl spoke at last. "What did you say?" The tremor had returned to his voice.
"'Prickles,'" repeated the medium, softly. I noticed a visible trembling in the earl's hand as it lay upon the table.
"Father?" Phillip sounded concerned. "Father, what is wrong?" He touched the earl's arm, and the earl didn't seem to notice, staring transfixed at the medium.
"It can't be." Kay's low voice sounded like a moan.
Without warning, the windows blew open and a gust of night wind swept into the room. The candle sputtered and the room disappeared in darkness. Cries of panic and surprise followed until the light was switched on again by me at Mr. Trelawney's order.
That was the end of the first séance.
_________________
None of the earl's party were early risers except for the earl himself, his caregiver, and the medium, whom I spotted from my upstairs window at six A.M., practicing some sort of yoga or meditation while facing the ocean.
I pushed the linen cart through the long second floor hall during the cleaning hour, dutifully following Brigette's 'yellow line' chart for freshening rooms not occupied during the earl's stay, which armed me with a duster and a long-necked cobweb brush for reaching tricky spots in high corners. Plus, I was supposed to bring a fresh supply of towels to guests requesting them, including the earl, his daughter, and the paranormal investigator.
I knocked twice. "Maid service!" I called to the muffled voices on the other side of Kay's door. A muffled reply bid me to enter, so I opened the door and crossed into the beautiful 'Garden Suite,' named for its view of the hotel's landscaped gardens. On a rose chintz sofa, Kay's brother was reading the morning paper, while his sister was fumbling angrily through her bag of cosmetics at the dressing table, the two of them evidently meeting up for an outing somewhere.
"The towels you requested, Ma'am," I said, with a smile. She looked up, irritably.
"Leave them in the washroom cupboard, if you please." I could sense that I had interrupted an ongoing discussion between these two, so I scurried on to the bathroom with the fresh linens.
They resumed talking as soon as I was out of sight — but not as quietly as they intended.
"How could she have possibly known, though?" Kay was saying. "Father's never told it to anyone ... I wouldn't have remembered it myself, had it not been for the fact that Will had named it that ridiculous name. It's been nearly forty years ago. No one ever mentioned it that I can recall, except for Will — grisly of him, really." I detected a shudder in her voice. "Actual fondness for the memory of digging a grave for a dead fox cub he and father found in the wood — all because Will insisted it deserved a proper burial. But he was always touched by the oddest things."
"I can't remember ever hearing Father speak of it. Are you sure your memory hasn't played a joke?" Phillip asked. "Quite sure, Kay? We have to be sure if it's something that this woman can't possibly know."
"I've told you already — it's been forty years," said Kay. "I was only a little girl, and I don't believe you had been born yet. Why on earth would father tell such a morbid story to a woman he scarcely knows? It simply doesn't make sense."
"Though — 'Prickles'?"
"Oh, something about the poor dead thing's fur all matted in the dew so it looked like a hedgehog's quills. Silly, really. Will's mind was always the same, even when he was a child." Exasperation in her tone, mixed with a touch of sadness. "Always a silly, sentimental young fool."
The linen cupboard squeaked as I closed its doors. I heard silence in the next room, as if the two of them were afraid that sound carried between these two rooms better than they had estimated. I waited a moment or two to emerge, so I wouldn't look so guilty and they wouldn't look so uneasy. Phillip was busily folding back the pages of the Financial Times journal, while Kay was tying a scarf around her neck, both trying hard to pretend I wasn't there.
As soon as the suite door closed, I could hear their voices rise again, carrying on the debate of the odd fragment of the past which surfaced in the medium's word. I caught a fragment of an argument by Phillip that it was merely a shot in the dark — maybe the medium was talking about real hedgehogs, for example.
I returned to the laundry room for fresh towels after my cart ran out. The two Scandinavian maids who were usually chatting in there while the dryers turned were nowhere to be found as I gathered up an armload of folded towels, and uncovered the face of a figure sleeping behind them on the folding table.
I let out a yelp of surprise and dropped my armload. Riley bolted upright, scattering a pile of laundry at his elbow. "What?" he declared, anxious and sleepy all at once. "What's the matter?"
"Riley, what are you doing?" I said. "Are you — you're not sleeping
here at night, are you?"
The quick flash in the porter's eyes answered that question, before he made a pretense of scoffing. "Of course not," he said. "I was just having a nap. A bit of shut eye where Brigette won't find me." He scrambled off the table. "Why would I be staying here? What an idea." He tossed the towels back on the table without folding them.
"I thought maybe you couldn't go back to your place because of your problem," I said, emphasizing this last word. Riley's color vanished for a quick second.
"Look, you won't be telling Brigette about this, will you?" he asked. "I just don't want her to catch me lazing about and tell Mr. Trelawney."
"Of course I won't," I said. He looked relieved.
"There you are." Brigette had appeared in the doorway. "Riley, you're late — you're supposed to be delivering room service to the earl's suite since he doesn't feel well enough to come to breakfast. Moreover, there's a tray of coffee to be taken to the sculptor's suite. Come along now." She clapped her hands for emphasis while giving him her usual not-very-intimidating version of a scowl.
"Duty calls, m'love. I reckon I'm off to war." Riley gave me a wink and flirtatious smile that made me wonder how any woman could be obsessed with him the way Mrs. Pendlegraft supposedly felt.
Nevertheless, I still felt a little sorry for him if he was spending his nights on a pile of unwashed bed linens. Since Riley wasn't confessing, I could think of only one person who might know if he was in deep trouble.
The walled-off and hedge-hidden yard where the hotel's car was parked tended to be the favorite spot of either porter when not called by duty. I found Gomez leaning over the open bonnet's engine compartment, a cigarette curling from his lips. The Rolls-Royce must be on the fritz again, for a spanner lay on the ground beside a sizeable puddle of oil.
"Put that out before you catch the blasted car on fire," snapped Norman. He was seated beneath one of the heavy lilac hedges, a large pair of shears beside him, and a cigarette of his own clamped between two lips. Little tufts of leaf and twig lay on the courtyard stone around him.
"Gomez, do you have a minute?" I asked.
"For you, I have a lifetime," he answered, with the seductive Latin smile that the Portuguese porter undoubtedly used to his advantage on multiple occasions ... like for better tips from smitten female guests. I sometimes imagined the two porters were in competition to be the hotel's biggest flirt.
"I've heard more convincing lines from the postman in the village's yearly passion play," grunted Norm. "Mind where that cigarette's ash has got to — put a spark near that grease and you'll light up the whole yard in a bonfire."
"Do you know best how to fix an engine?" Gomez asked, sarcastically. "Do I know best how to plant little crocus bulbs? Do you think the answer is the same to both questions?"
"You'll put a spanner in the whole works if you keep poking about with that hammer," replied Norman, who hauled himself to his feet again and back to work, clumping around to the side of the hedge which faced the back garden.
"What do you need?" Gomez withdrew his cigarette now and stubbed it out, then began wiping the grease from his elbows with a rag.
"To ask a question," I said. "Maybe it's none of my business, but I can't help it — and I'm involved now, since he dragged me into it, anyway." I had retrieved Riley from jail in secrecy, after all. "Is this Mrs. Pendlegraft's obsession going to cost Riley his job? He's acting like it will. Ever since she appeared, his behavior has been .... weird."
"Of course it has. She's a real problem. If he doesn't get away from her, Colonel Pendlegraft will probably blast Riley's head at close range. He's a serious psycho, the colonel."
"But Riley —" I stopped, because I realized this long speech, sans cigarette, from Gomez's lips had nary a trace of his usual accent. "What happened to your voice?" I asked. In the handful of times the porter and I had exchanged remarks over the past few weeks, its thickness had remained precisely at the level of a sultry Latin lover.
"What?" He shrugged on his porter jacket.
"Where's your accent?" The sexy Latin voice had been replaced by something more working class and conventionally ... English?
"The accent? It's not real, it's just for show. Good for the hotel's international image to have a real Portuguese porter. Good for the ladies, too." He flashed me the customary porter smile of charm around the Penmarrow. "They were short on continentals when I came on staff, and I filled the gap nicely."
"So you're not from there?" Not that I could fault him, since I was clearly pretending to be somebody I wasn't. What were the odds that more than one person on staff was keeping a secret about their true identity?
"No. Plymouth, love." He closed the car's bonnet. "Anyway, Riley's tried to give her the shove, but she won't leave it be. She says they're soulmates, or there's some sort of cosmic fire between them, or some such rot. He's not the first chap, though — gossip says there was one in London last winter, and it ended with some local lad fleeing an opera house and jumping on the night bus to Southampton to avoid getting his head cracked by the colonel's walking stick. Knob on the end's made of solid iron, I've heard."
"So the colonel thinks Riley's in love with his wife, too?"
"She talks as if they're a couple in love. Her husband will be imagining it's London all over again." Gomez tossed the greasy rag into the toolbox open beside the car.
"Why can't Riley just explain things to him?" I asked. "The colonel must think it's a little odd that his wife keeps falling madly in love with a man in every city or village where they live."
"Because it's a deadly amore," said Gomez, slipping into his false accent again. "Some things cannot be argued." He smiled, ruefully. "Poor Riley must simply find a good place to hide and hope the colonel wants to winter in Monte Carlo. What else can he do?"
That didn't sound super helpful in Riley's case. Not if his only choices were laying low like a criminal or being the victim of homicidal jealousy.
He was nowhere in sight when I returned to the hotel, but Brigette's annoyed expression told me that his disappearance hadn't gone unnoticed. Her pink highlighter was making zigzag marks through a line on her schedule. Molly was chatting with her as she balanced a coffee tray in her arms.
" — and it was so real. You could hear it in the earl's voice, how surprised he was. You should have been there," she told Brigette, excitedly. "The air was positively charged with supernatural energy."
It had felt a little like that — in fact, I had almost thought I smelled the perfume Orléans in the air for a few seconds as Olivia's message was delivered, although I was pretty sure it was only the mingled scents of the various perfumes worn by the earl's female guests. Something about the medium's voice had created an atmosphere in which sensing the unseen in a physical manner didn't seem all that impossible.
"I don't believe in ghosts," said Brigette. "Not really. I've seen the programs on telly that explain how they use special effects to create those manifestations. All the nonsense from my Gran's old ghost stories is made from dry ice and mirrors."
"But this was real, Brigette. I'm quite sure of it," insisted Molly. "Marj—Maisie was there, and she saw it, too. Didn't you, Maisie?" She glanced at me. "And so did Mr. Trelawney, and I don't think anybody could fool him."
"Honestly, I'd have to admit that the earl and his daughter seemed a little shaken by the medium's words just before the séance ended," I answered. "I don't think they knew how to explain that particular message without ... well ... supernatural help."
"I noticed that, too," said Molly, quickly.
"Sometimes the only explanation is one we can't humanly understand," said another voice. The three of us jumped — the medium was standing in the foyer, a book in hand and the wires to her smart phone's earbuds draped around her neck. Instead of last night's white silk gown, she was wearing a modern and sensible outfit of athletic wear, with a yoga mat tucked under one arm.
Molly blushed. Brigette's cheery business smile returned. "Good morni
ng, Miss Norridge," she said. "Would you like some tea or coffee this morning?"
"No, thank you," said the medium. "I prefer to drink my own special blend after my morning meditation. I'm rather a devotee at the moment to Eastern practices, as you can see."
She turned to Molly. "You may ask about last night's spiritual crossing, if you like," she said. "I'm really not shy about discussing my methods of communication. Having a spiritual 'sense' that others notice makes it difficult to avoid, really."
"Then those messages last night — those were really from friends and relatives of the earl's?" said Molly. "You really were in touch with the — the other side?"
"We are all in the sphere of spiritual communication on a daily basis," said Natalie. "Most people simply don't sense the psychic messages that are around them, whereas I've attuned myself to receive those vibrations. Everyone is surrounded by an aura, for example, that contains information of who they are — the essence of their true self."
By that logic, the psychic should have pinpointed me as a secret novelist, among other things. I shivered a tiny bit, although Natalie hadn't given me any knowing looks to suggest she knew my secrets.
"Do auras come in colors?" asked Molly.
Natalie laughed. "It's not quite like that," she answered. "It's more the psychic sense of who you are." Here, she closed her eyes. "I sense ... written words ... from what I see emanating from you," she said. "And passion. Those two things are tied together for you."
Molly's eyes widened. "How did you know?" she said. "It's my crosswords — she knows about them!" she said to Brigette, with amazement.
"Really?" said Brigette. "That's what you read in her aura?" she said to the medium. "Crossword puzzles?"
Quite possibly she read it from the presence of the maid's crossword book, tucked more often in her maid's apron pocket than hotel guidelines allowed ... although I couldn't rule out the possibility that psychic auras contained clues about our hobbies as well.
