This Side of Murder

by Anna Lee Huber

  But it was Walter who stepped forward to protest. “Helen, dear, do you really think that’s such a good idea?”

  “Oh, hush! It’ll be fun.” She spoke lightly, but there was an unmistakable bite underpinning her tone. When a maid appeared in the doorway, she ordered her to fetch her Ouija board.

  I reluctantly joined the others in the chairs forming our circle, uncomfortable with this entire scheme. It wasn’t that I actually believed we could summon someone from the dead. The notion was preposterous. But the very act of attempting to do so, all as a bit of a lark, seemed dreadfully wrong.

  Collectively, how many loved ones had we lost? How many friends, cousins, brothers, lovers, and husbands had perished in the war? How many of us nursed wounds that were too recent to have healed? And yet we were going to make a game of contacting one of them beyond the grave?

  My mouth filled with the acrid taste of revulsion. Had I not promised Max I would keep the others occupied while he telephoned his friend, I would have pled a headache and retired rather than endure this nonsense. From the faces of many of those present, I suspected some of them were considering the same thing.

  The servant returned with the Ouija board, and Helen set it up while she ordered the maid to lower the lights in the room to a dim glow and turn off the rag music blazing from the gramophone. “All the better to create the proper atmosphere,” she proclaimed.

  I crossed my arms over my chest against the chill silence that suddenly seemed to fill the room. Had I not known better, I would have believed there was something to this table-turning bit, but rationally I knew it was nothing but the loss of light and a draft from one of the windows. Though Nellie and Sam, on either side of me, seemed not to feel any difference in temperature.

  “This is ridiculous,” Sam grumbled under his breath, but Mabel hushed him where she sat on his other side.

  “Just play along,” she whispered. “She’ll tire of it soon enough.”

  Sam shifted uneasily in his seat, but fell quiet.

  “Now, everyone, breathe deeply,” Helen directed us as she herself inhaled and then closed her eyes. “We must be calm and focused. The spirits do not like distraction.” Her voice had taken on an airy tone that, far from relaxing me, set my teeth on edge.

  I had never visited a spiritualist myself, despite their rampant popularity in London, but I suspected Helen had. She seemed to almost be adopting another persona of otherworldly serenity, and there was definitely an air of showmanship to her actions.

  Lifting her hands as she filled her lungs with one last deep breath, she rested her fingers against the planchette. “Spirit, this is a safe place. Speak with us. Tell us your name.”

  The rain outside gusted against the windows, tightening my nerves, as Helen slowly began to move the pointer across the board.

  “J,” she intoned as the pointer stopped. Then it slid a fraction to the left. “I.”

  The air in my chest constricted, as my mind automatically began to sort through the possibilities. The only names I could think of that started with “JI” were Jim or Jimmy. Our Jimmy? But how did Helen know he was dead? I thought Walter hadn’t told her.

  Or was she not moving it on her own? Was Jimmy actually trying to speak to us? To tell us what had happened to him?

  It seemed an eternity before the planchette stopped on another letter.

  “N.”

  I blinked. N? Had she made a mistake? Perhaps she’d misread. After all, the N was next to the M.

  But then the planchette swung across the board.

  “G,” Helen continued reciting.

  So it wasn’t Jimmy.

  I shook myself.

  Of course it wasn’t Jimmy. What had I been thinking to even consider the possibility? It was fake. All of it. If Helen had revealed the spirit to be Jimmy, then all that would have meant was that she knew something about Jimmy’s death. But she hadn’t. Instead she called out three more letters.

  “L. E. S. Oh!” she gasped. “Are you that little boy who used to sell newspapers on the corner near my father’s house?”

  The planchette jerked upward to the left, pointing to the word yes.

  “Oh, poor dear. He got run over by a cart several years ago,” she explained, then frowned. “I wonder why he’s contacting us.”

  I barely restrained myself from rolling my eyes. Because you decided he would. Sam snorted, obviously having a similar thought.

  I only half listened as Helen asked “Jingles” a series of questions, much of my attention being fixed on the door over Sam’s shoulder, curious whether Max would be able to uncover anything from his friend tonight.

  When Helen had exhausted her questions, she thanked Jingles’s “spirit” and told him good-bye, before sitting back with a pleased smile. There seemed to be no cunning or duplicity in her expression. I couldn’t decide whether she actually believed she’d spoken to a spirit or she was simply that good of an actress.

  “Can I try next?” Gladys asked eagerly, her words slightly slurring.

  “Of course.” Helen shifted the board to her left and passed Gladys the wooden planchette.

  Gladys rested the signaling device reverently against the board. Her eyes darted around the circle as she lowered her voice to a sharp whisper. “Who should we summon now?”

  We all glanced at each other, no one seeming willing to put forth a suggestion.

  “It’s best to let the spirits come as they will,” Helen informed her friend. “I doubt we have the psychic ability among us to call forth a specific spirit.”

  Gladys’s mouth twisted. It was evident she didn’t like being told she lacked the talent for such a thing. But nonetheless, she obeyed. Her gaze swept around the circle one last time, resting momentarily on Nellie. Her lips curled into a swift smile before flattening into seriousness as she inhaled and lowered her gaze to the board.

  I flicked a glance at Nellie out of the corner of my eye, wondering what Gladys had seen when she was looking at her. As little as I liked Nellie, I didn’t wish to see her hurt. If Gladys had decided it would be great fun to conjure up someone close to Nellie—perhaps her brother or her father—I knew Nellie would be upset. Rightfully so.

  “Oh, spirit, speak to us,” Gladys chanted, imitating Helen’s voice. “Do you have a message for someone here tonight?”

  The planchette moved upward to hover over the word yes.

  “Whom is it for?”

  The pointer dropped to the number 4 and then shifted to the letter V before stopping.

  Everyone looked up at me, for I was the only one present with a name that began with the letter V. I struggled not to react, though a trickle of unease slid down my spine.

  Gladys paused dramatically, as if I should say something, but when I didn’t, she resumed her questioning. “Tell us your name. Who are you?”

  The planchette glided toward the S.

  My heartbeat quickened, and my breathing grew shallow.

  Then the I.

  I struggled to maintain my composure, forcing myself to wait to see where it would land next. After all, I had been wrong about the name of Helen’s “spirit.”

  But when the pointer landed on the letter D, I could remain silent no longer.

  “Stop it!” I shouted at Gladys, leaping to my feet. “Stop it now!”

  CHAPTER 13

  Gladys and several of the others stared up at me in shock.

  “That’s not funny! That’s not funny at all.” I whirled away, moving beyond the circle. That they should use Sidney in such a way for this stupid, childish game. It . . . it was unforgivable!

  “No, Verity,” Helen’s voice called after me frantically. “Please come back to the circle. We need to close it.”

  I turned back to face her. “Is this your idea of a joke?!” I didn’t care that I was yelling. I was beyond furious. My gaze swung to Gladys. “You have no right to toy with his memory in this way. No right!” Feeling that I was perilously close to tears, I spun away again.
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  “Poor form,” Walter’s voice trembled with anger.

  “For shame,” Mabel agreed.

  “You’re absolutely right, Verity,” Helen said. “But, please. Please, come back to the circle. Just for a minute. It must be closed properly or Sidney’s spirit will linger with us. He won’t be at rest.”

  I swung back to glare daggers at her. I was so incensed that I could not think straight. Words failed me. They bottled up behind my teeth with such force that I thought if I opened my mouth I might actually shriek.

  Such was the force of my stare that she startled back a step, her knees bumping into the settee behind her and causing her to sit.

  That she could even suggest such a thing! Sidney’s spirit wasn’t here. He was not with us. His body was somewhere in France, and his spirit, God willing, was in Heaven. It was the only comfort I had. To think that he could be called back here, into this foolishness . . .

  I spun around to flee the room, only to run smack into a man’s chest.

  I choked on a scream, pushing away from the form before me. But the man’s hands came up to grasp my upper arms and I fought harder.

  “Hold on. What’s this?”

  I inhaled a ragged breath at the realization that it was Max’s voice, and sank against his warm, solid frame.

  “Why are the lights so low?” he asked in confusion.

  One of the sconces on the wall suddenly flared brighter, and I realized Max had reached out to turn the gas up.

  “No!” Helen protested, but he ignored her, instead gazing down at me in concern.

  I felt ridiculous now that for even a moment I’d actually believed the form I’d collided with was Sidney’s spirit. Given all the theatrics and my own distress, I supposed it was inevitable that would be the first thing to cross my mind. But to have strained against Max that way . . .

  I couldn’t lift my eyes to meet his. Ripples of panic still coursed through me, making me tremble as I struggled to regain my composure.

  “Mabel,” Helen huffed.

  “Helen decided we needed to do a bit of table-turning,” Mabel explained in a mocking low voice, having come to stand just behind me. “And Gladys thought it would be jolly fun to summon Sidney.”

  Max’s hands tightened around my arms where he still gripped them, and I felt the intensity of his glower pulsing through him as he lifted it to look at the others.

  “I . . . I’m calm now,” I stammered, not wanting to rehash the whole thing. It had been bad enough to live it once, and now I was feeling faintly ashamed of my outburst. I had always prided myself on my self-possession, but rather than remaining composed and simply walking away, I had lashed out.

  “It wasn’t my idea,” Gladys protested almost pettishly.

  “Of course, it wasn’t,” Helen replied. “You can’t help which spirits choose to contact us.”

  It took everything within me not to stomp across the room and slap Helen for her gullibility. As if sensing it, Max’s hands rubbed up and down my arms to soothe me.

  But I wasn’t the only one who’d lost their patience with our hostess.

  “For goodness’ sake, Helen!” Mabel snapped, tossing in a curse word for emphasis. “Sidney’s spirit didn’t choose to contact us. Gladys was pretending.”

  “Is it true?” Helen gasped in outrage.

  “Nellie told me to do it,” Gladys said.

  I stiffened, finally turning in Max’s arms to look back at the rest of the group still clustered around the Ouija board.

  Nellie sat perfectly poised in her bergère chair, blinking at the others innocently. “I did no such thing.”

  “You tipped your head at her,” Gladys said.

  “Yes, but only because I thought Verity might like to speak to her dearly departed husband.” Her voice dripped with sarcasm. “I didn’t know you were going to fake it.”

  “But why? Why would you suggest such a thing?” Tom scolded his wife.

  Nellie’s eyes flashed. “I thought she might have some questions she’d like to ask him. Like where he went on his last leave instead of coming home to her.” Her gaze shifted to meet mine, sharp with malice.

  My face heated. So she had overheard my and Mabel’s conversation on the boat. And now she sought to throw it in my face in the most public way possible. Well, she’d succeeded.

  Rather than answer her as I would have liked, I turned and walked away. Perhaps that was exactly what she wanted, but I just couldn’t engage with her then. Her callous behavior stung too much. That I, at one time, had called her my friend seemed unbelievable.

  I should have expected nothing less from her. After all, she was the one who had never been able to accept the fact that Sidney had fallen in love with me over her. Rather than wish us well that last time I’d seen her a few days before my and Sidney’s wedding, she’d instead told me she hoped I got what I deserved—a cold bed and a cold womb when my husband never returned from France.

  That her cruel taunt had come true had only made things worse. But apparently that wasn’t enough for her. Nothing was ever enough for Nellie.

  I paused before the right staircase in the foyer, not yet ready to return to the ringing silence of my room, where I would only have my own thoughts for company. But where else could I go? Rain still tapped against the windows, and though it had slackened somewhat, combined with the wind it still made the terrace an imprudent choice. Perhaps the library, but I suspected all I would be able to think of there was Charlie.

  The sound of footsteps striding down the hall toward me brought my spinning thoughts to a standstill. Had they been the light patter of a female’s shoes, I would have fled up the stairs, but the heaviness of the tread alerted me that it was a man. I could easily guess which one.

  Brushing behind my ear the heavy locks of curling auburn hair that had fallen forward over my right eye in my haste to escape, I turned to look at Max. His steps faltered as our eyes met, but he continued coming until he stood before me, the space of a single person separating our bodies.

  He studied my face, searching for something that I was both helpless to either give or conceal. I felt almost as if I stood naked before him, and while it terrified me to reveal so much of myself, it was also somehow comforting that it should be him.

  “Do you wish to be alone?” he murmured.

  I shook my head, hesitantly at first and then with more certainty. “Not particularly.”

  His mouth creased into a humorless smile of commiseration. He reached for my hand. “Then come with me.”

  I allowed him to pull me down the corridor past Walter’s study and into a smaller antechamber. It looked like a cozy little parlor for two, naught but two chairs and a rectangular table holding a few decanters and glasses between them. The tiny hearth behind the chairs was not lit, but the room was warm enough without it. The drapes over its single window had been pulled tight. A single gas lamp provided enough light for me to read the gilded titles tucked into the bookcases along the opposite wall.

  I settled into one of the chairs and accepted the cut crystal glass of brandy Max poured for me. Sipping gingerly from its contents, I welcomed its warmth as it spread through my stomach and into my limbs. The not unpleasant scent of cigars and cheroots clung to the leather, mixing with the smell of gentlemen’s cologne.

  Max sat next to me, savoring his own brandy as he allowed me to gather my scattered thoughts. If I’d wished, I suspected we could have sat there all evening without his prying, such was the undemanding nature of his presence. I could have simply derived what ease I wished from his companionship and moved on without revealing a thing. But I found that the longer we sat there, the more I wanted to speak. To tell someone the thoughts that had occupied me for so long.

  “I thought it would be easy, you know.” I spoke softly, gazing into the warm amber depths of the brandy inside my glass. “I thought it would be a simple thing to send Sidney off to war. That I would miss him, but that in a matter of months he would return to me for good
—safe and whole. And then our lives could actually begin in truth.” I inhaled a ragged breath. “But as it turns out, I was rather hopelessly naïve.”

  “No more than most of the population of Britain,” Max replied.

  “My mother wanted me to return home with them to the Dales, but I couldn’t bear the thought of going back there as if nothing had happened. As if I wasn’t a married woman who had just sent her husband off to war.” My gaze lifted to drift over the finely wrought leather of the books on the shelves to my right. “So I moved into Sidney’s flat and waited there for him to return. Except I didn’t anticipate how long and lonely and intolerable that wait would be.

  “I needed something to fill my hours, so I began searching for work, a way to contribute to the war effort. I couldn’t just sit there twiddling my thumbs. And a friend of mine found me a position that was actually quite perfect, quite well-suited to my abilities.” I found I was too well-trained, too accustomed to hiding my association with the Secret Service to speak of it in anything but innuendo. “But even though I went to bed every night exhausted in mind and body, I still could not stop the worrying. The dread.”

  I set my cup down on the table between us, expecting Max to say something, but he didn’t. He just sat very still, waiting for me to finish.

  “And then . . .” I exhaled. “And then it was over. The telegram I’d so feared arrived, and Sidney was dead.” I was somewhat amazed by how calmly I could speak of it, almost as if I were outside myself, listening to someone else utter these words. “Of course, I was wild with grief, but I had work I had to be able to perform. I was needed elsewhere.” I swallowed. “So I got on with it, the best I could, just like everyone else. I did my job during the day and I drank to forget at night. Sometimes I went dancing. Sometimes I let my dance partners kiss me. Once, I even . . .” But I stopped myself in time, shaking my head, unwilling to say the words.

  “Did you ever try morphia?” There was no judgment in his voice, only restrained curiosity.

  I could only feel relieved that was what he’d suspected I was hesitant to admit and not the truth. “Once,” I admitted. “But it made me so ill, I never sampled it again. Or cocaine. I had a friend who was rather infatuated with morphia. I saw what it was doing to her, and I had no desire to become a morphineuse.”