A Dangerous Collaboration

by DEANNA RAYBOURN

  “I might understand the attraction but not the compulsion to marry it,” I replied.

  “Oh, we should have been friends under other circumstances!” she exclaimed.

  “Can we not be friends now?” I asked.

  “Not so long as you suspect my son of murder,” she answered. She gathered Stoker in with a look. “I assure you both that I know his faults better than he does. I was cataloging them in his father’s character before he was born. You have never seen two men cut so closely from the same cloth. But their impracticality, their scenes and dramatics, are nothing more substantial than that bit of muslin in your hands. Caspian has made a hobby of throwing tantrums simply because he thinks it makes him interesting. He might have taken up hunting or the glockenspiel, but he does this instead. There is, beneath it all, not a malicious atom in his person.”

  I would not quarrel with a devoted mother’s assessment of her child. I tried a different tack instead. “Surely Malcolm would have helped if he had known there were difficulties with money,” I ventured.

  “Malcolm! Bless you, he was unable to help himself. When Rosamund disappeared, he fairly went out of his mind. The letters I sent went unanswered for months. By the time he was able to respond, I had already chosen. I did not wish to sell my body, so I sold my soul.”

  “That is when you became Madame Helena?” I asked.

  “There was an annuity that Lucian had secured for us from the Romilly estate, but he left debts as well, heavy ones. I have struggled to pay them. In the end, I thought it best to bring Caspian here to see his uncle, to remind Malcolm that he had a ready-made heir in his brother’s son.”

  “And perhaps to feel guilty enough about cutting Caspian out via his marriage that he might make him a separate allowance?” I ventured.

  She shrugged. “Why not? It was possible. If nothing else, it meant a few months of room and board I did not have to pay. So I wrote and Malcolm invited us for the summer. We stayed through the wedding and when Rosamund disappeared, it was clear there would be no additional money for us. Malcolm asked us to go. In London, it became apparent that we could not continue on as we had been. I considered every possible method by which I might assuage our financial difficulties. In desperation, I went to a medium and attempted to contact Lucian. I’ll admit I was influenced by the effects of the last of Lucian’s excellent wine cellar. But I had my wits about me. I knew the woman for a fraud within the first two minutes. I was never going to hear from Lucian, but as I left, it occurred to me that I had discovered an answer after all. I was more presentable and better spoken than that charlatan, and I had a better way with people. I needed only a few props and a new persona. Thus, Madame Helena was born,” she finished with a flourish.

  “Why have you come now?” Stoker asked.

  Her smile was mirthless. “Because I may have kept the wolf from the door but I can still hear him howling. With Rosamund gone, Malcolm’s only heir is Caspian. He needed reminding of that. If he wanted to invite me here to conjure her spirit, I was too happy to play along.”

  “You have never actually been witness to a ghost?” I asked.

  Her expression shuttered and her hand stilled on the cat. “Only once.”

  “Rosamund’s,” Stoker said gently.

  “I don’t know what happened. I began the séance as I always do, invoking the spirits. And then things began that I cannot explain.”

  “How did you manage the rapping?” I inquired.

  “Simple,” Stoker said. “She slipped her hand out of Caspian’s and knocked on the underside of the table.”

  Helen nodded. “Most people are too suspicious to permit such an easy trick, but I knew Malcolm would not think it peculiar if Caspian were seated next to me.”

  “And the candles? They were fixed to extinguish themselves?” I asked.

  “Yes. We have them timed perfectly so that I know just when to ask a question. The sudden guttering of the candle looks like an answer then. It is most effective under the right circumstances.”

  “You did not trouble to use the ectoplasm,” Stoker pointed out. “Or were you saving it for later?”

  Her smile was wry. “One of the guiding principles of my success: I do as little as I need to set the scene. Malcolm was only too ready to believe in Rosamund. It required nothing on my part but a little acting and the candles.”

  “And the music,” I reminded her.

  Her expression shuttered again. “That was not me.”

  “Come, now,” Stoker began.

  Her fingers tightened on the cat’s fur, earning her a growl of protest. She opened her hands, crooning an apology to the animal.

  “The music was the climax of your performance,” I said. “Surely that was arranged.”

  “It most certainly was not,” she snapped. “I have confessed to everything else. If I had managed to arrange that, I would say it.”

  “Then how was it done?” Stoker demanded.

  “How should I know?” she replied in some desperation. “I was as surprised as the rest of you when I heard it.”

  “But you immediately associated it with Rosamund?” I asked.

  “Yes. She was the only musical one in the family apart from Lucian. When he left for school, the music room was shut up and no one played. But Rosamund asked that Malcolm open it up again and he was only too happy to oblige her. She played for hours on end, maddening Baroque stuff. I used to go for walks just to get away from the sound of it,” she told us.

  “And when you heard the music you believed you had actually conjured her ghost?” Stoker did his best to keep the skepticism from his voice, I think, but I heard it, as did Helen.

  “I know you do not believe me,” she said, her voice dropping dully. “But how else can you explain it?”

  I flicked Stoker a warning glance and spoke before he could reply. “Is that why you bought the charm from Mother Nance?”

  She nodded, lifting her wrist to show the length of colored cord knotted there. Dangling from it was a slim silver medallion with a worn inscription of some sort. “It’s a coin, salvaged from a Spanish shipwreck on the beach.”

  “Rather unlucky for the fellow who wore it last,” Stoker ventured. “Spanish sailors have never fared well in these waters.”

  “It is better than nothing,” she returned, lifting her chin.

  “Why did you try to leave the island today?” I asked.

  “Because of her,” Helen said. “If she walks, who is to say whom she will visit? What harm she will do? She died in the prime of her life on her wedding day. She must be angry, so terribly angry.” Her voice faded to a rough whisper, thick with fear.

  Stoker’s pity seemed to stir then. He put a consoling hand to her arm. “I am certain you have nothing to be afraid of.”

  She gave him a grateful look, and I chose then to speak. “I am not so certain,” I began slowly.

  She blinked, panic returning to her. “What do you mean?”

  “If Rosamund is returning, if her spirit is uneasy, it must mean that she has unfinished business. She wants something—revenge? To make us aware of how she died? A proper burial? Or to punish those who did not protect her in life?”

  I stepped towards Helen with each question, coming so near that I could see the pupils of her eyes dilate in terror.

  “Mertensia,” she said, bursting out with the name. “She would want Mertensia. I heard them quarreling the night before the wedding. In the garden. It was terrible! I thought Mertensia would kill her—” She broke off suddenly, two spots of color burning in the dead white of her face.

  I stepped back, giving her a consoling smile. “There. I’m certain Stoker is right and you have nothing to be afraid of. All the same,” I added, “I would not leave this room after dark if I were you.”

  CHAPTER

  17

  “That was
a trifle mean,” Stoker observed as we made our way from the family wing. “Even for you.”

  I bristled at his accusing me once more of small-spirited behavior. “I was not mean. And if I were, she deserved it. I seem to recall you carping endlessly about her fleecing the grief-stricken.”

  “Oh, I object to her occupation on principle, but there is something pitiable about her nonetheless.”

  I quickened my pace. “The sentimentality of the male sex never ceases to astonish me,” I muttered.

  “What’s that?”

  “Nothing,” I returned. “Except that for a man who has suffered as much as you at the hands of women, I should have thought by now you would be immune to feminine wiles.”

  “Wiles! If you think that Helen Romilly possesses one wile—”

  We were still arguing when we reached the stillroom. I had hopes of bearding Mertensia in her den. She was not there, but the pan gently steaming on the hob intimated a return shortly.

  We occupied the time investigating our surroundings, and the stillroom offered much to see. The room was fitted with shelves from stone floor to beamed ceiling, spanning the length of the walls. Each shelf held an array of glass jars, some clear, some amber, some green, and every jar was filled with something interesting. There were potions and decoctions, creams and salves, elixirs and balms. From the beams hung clusters of drying herbs, and in the corner stood a copper distillation device and next to it a large sink. A worktable had been placed in the center of the room, its surface scrubbed clean, and behind it a bookshelf had been hung and stacked with herbals, physic books, pharmacopeia, and florilegia. Another set of shelves held an assortment of equipment, glass beakers, pans, spoons, measuring devices.

  “I’ll be damned,” Stoker said in a low voice. “This is nothing like my nanny’s stillroom.”

  “I should have thought the Templeton-Vanes grand enough to have a stillroom maid,” I remarked as I thumbed my way through the books. I was still annoyed with him but curious in spite of myself.

  “We did, but that was Nanny’s first post starting in the house and she guarded our stillroom like a dragon. And if she had seen this one, she would have raised holy hell with my father until he had equipped hers better.”

  “What sort of things did your nanny brew up?”

  “Toothache remedies and jams,” he said promptly as he studied the shelves of herbal mixtures. “Nothing to touch this. My God, she has a preparation of foxglove here!”

  I glanced over to where he stood enraptured with Mertensia’s collection. “For treating heart ailments?”

  “Or poisoning people,” he returned. “Everything on this shelf could kill a man—or woman—in sufficient doses.” He began reading off the labels, each penned in Mertensia’s tidy hand. “Peppermint syrup for digestion, lettuce juice for headache, fig syrup for constipation. Those are the harmless ones. But this shelf”—he returned to the foxglove preparation on the top shelf—“this lot is altogether different.” He paused, moving closer to the bottles as he extracted one. “Mertensia does more than dabble in digestive tisanes,” he said as he lifted the bottle to the light.

  I plucked a book from the shelf. It was thick and bound in dark green cloth stamped with a golden mermaid. I flipped through the pages, realizing that it was a sort of receipt book, recording her various preparations with notations and scribbling as she perfected each. Within the leaves were loose pieces of paper, laundry lists and notes from Mrs. Trengrouse, doubtless thrust aside to be forgot in the fever to brew a new batch of potions. I skimmed them, stopping when I came to a sheet of cheap paper headed with the name of a barely respectable hotel for ladies in London. There was no salutation and the text picked up in the middle of a paragraph. Clearly the first page had been lost, but I recognized that flamboyant hand immediately.

  —why I am so terribly desperate. I cannot describe to you the awfulness of this place. There are beetles in the beds and blackflies in the bath, and oh, Mertensia! How much better I could bear it all if you were here. Remember what jolly times we had at school? A few short months, but the happiest I have ever known because of your friendship. The lumpy porridge and lumpier beds were nothing at all when I could listen to your stories of St. Maddern’s! Mermaids and giants and piskies—I remember them all, just as you told me. How I envied you, my dear, having such a place to call your own. I used to think that nothing in the world could possibly be as wonderful as seeing it for myself, if only to know that splendor like that exists somewhere in the world. I should not tell you this, sweet Mertensia, but I am afraid and a little sad to think of what the future holds. I need not imagine; I know it as clearly as if it were a picture someone painted and hung upon the wall. I shall grow old as a governess, each year thinner and sadder as I hurry to do the bidding of others. Never a home of my own, never a husband or children or a single square inch of land that belongs to me. Nothing of mine except a shelf of books and a handful of handkerchiefs. What a desolate thought! I know I must go to my fate, as Andromeda to the Kraken, ready to be chained upon the rock and wait for my doom. But there is no heroic Perseus to wing to my rescue. I must break my own chains, Mertensia. Will you help me? For the sake of our friendship, I recall to you the promise you made—

  The letter stopped there, the following pages not to be found. “This is fascinating,” I breathed. I read the letter to Stoker as he poked about the bottles upon the shelf.

  “A genteel bit of extortion,” he said when I had finished. I thrust the page back into the book and replaced it where I had found it.

  “I feel rather sorry for her. She was clearly dreading her next post in India. Her prospects were grim.”

  “Not as grim as this,” he told me as he scrutinized a bottle plucked from the shelf.

  “What’s that?” I asked.

  “Henbane,” he told me. “Used to treat rheumatics or breathing troubles, but even a drop too much is fatal. There’s any number of deadly things here—jimsonweed, nicotiana, poppy—each with medicinal properties as well as toxic. She has taken great care to mark them as dangerous.” He gestured towards the row of bottles. Beware the sister, Mother Nance had cautioned. I went to the bottles and inspected them.

  On each, Mertensia had listed the ingredients beside a tiny black skull, inked in lines so fine they might have been silken threads laid upon the label. I pursed my lips in a soundless whistle. “So, not just the odd broken bone or spot of indigestion for Mertensia,” I murmured. “She has administered life and death to the people of this island.”

  “Nothing so sinister as that,” Mertensia said as she moved into the room on noiseless feet. She was carrying a basket of wood and Stoker hastened to take it from her. “Thank you. Another small log to keep the stove hot, I think,” she told him. He did her bidding, stirring up the fire with a poker before placing the wood atop. She wore a pinafore over her clothes, a long affair that reached from shoulders to hem, and her sleeves were rolled back, her hair tucked haphazardly into a snood.

  “I made up the foxglove for Mother Nance. Her heart gives her trouble from time to time, and I ensured the preparation was approved by her doctor on the mainland. The others have their uses as well,” she told me as she went to pluck a dried assortment of herbs from the bundles tied to the beams overhead. “More arnica, for your bruising,” she added with a glance at Stoker. “And for Tiberius’. The pair of you have managed to use up my entire store cupboard of the stuff.”

  She smiled a little when she said it, but she could not sustain it. “You are worried about Malcolm,” Stoker suggested.

  “It isn’t like him to be so irresponsible,” she said, collecting the rest of her ingredients. “Trenny said I should keep busy. No doubt he will turn up by sundown as Tiberius says and have a good laugh at us all for being so worried.” Her tone was light but her eyes were shadowed.

  “We have searched the castle and found no sign of him,” I told her.
“But we have uncovered evidence that Helen is a fraud as a medium.”

  She snorted. “I could have told you that. She spent an entire summer here without even a hint that she might have sensitivities. Then as soon as she left here, she set herself up as Madame Helena. It’s a grotesque joke.” She broke the dried arnica into smaller bits, dropping them into a shallow stone mortar. She took up a pestle of the same material and began to grind the brittle leaves slowly.

  “Helen said she had to provide for herself and for Caspian,” I told her.

  “She has a small annuity from St. Maddern’s that Malcolm arranged after Lucian’s death. If she needed more, Helen had only to ask and Malcolm would have given them a home,” she retorted. “Lucian’s widow and child would never have been turned out in the cold.”

  “Perhaps,” I mused. “But it seems a hard thing to one’s pride to have to come cap in hand to one’s relations to ask for money. I seem to have overheard Malcolm refusing Caspian a request for a loan only yesterday. The discussion grew quite heated.”

  Mertensia’s hand stilled for a moment, but she went on, doggedly. “I do not know anything about that.”

  “Then perhaps you would like to tell us about your quarrel with Rosamund the night before she disappeared,” I said sweetly.