The Vanishing of Lord Vale

by Chasity Bowlin

  The butler entered, his nose high and his back straight. “There is a Madame Zula to see you, Lady Vale. She informed me that she is expected.”

  Elizabeth noted the censure in Calvert’s voice. No doubt, this would all be delivered in a letter, posthaste, to Mr. Middlethorp.

  “Thank you, Calvert,” Lady Vale said, her voice never giving away her distaste for the man. “Madame Zula is here to be questioned regarding the attack on Miss Masters two nights ago in which dear Mr. Mason was injured. Please show her in and then have tea served here in the library. That will be all.”

  Elizabeth looked once more in Mr. Mason’s direction. At that precise moment, he was also looking at her. Their gazes locked and something flashed between them beyond simply their shared belief that Madame Zula was a fraud. There was an awareness, a frisson of, if she had to put a name to it, attraction. It was, in short, the exact moment of her downfall.

  Chapter Ten

  Madame Zula entered the library with the same degree of theatricality she utilized in the salons hosted in her home. Draped from head to toe in rich wine-colored satin, a matching turban perched upon her head, she looked like an exotic bird. She was not as young as she appeared at first glance. As she stepped into the room, the light from the window shone directly on her face and revealed faint lines that marked her far closer to Lady Vale’s age than to Miss Masters’. She paused as she neared Benedict, lifted one hand to her head as if she felt faint or weak, and turned toward Lady Vale. “It’s as I said it would be. He is returned to you.”

  Benedict didn’t roll his eyes, but the urge to do so was quite intense. “I am not returned anywhere, madame. I am here to recuperate and then continue the search for my sister. We have questions that pertain very much to the here and now rather than whatever metaphysical realm you are currently inhabiting.”

  Madame Zula laughed then. “My dear sir, Mr. Mason, I believe your name is… you and Miss Masters are quite peas in the pod it would seem. Neither of you is at all shy in expressing your somewhat ill-informed and certainly premature opinions of my abilities.”

  Benedict said nothing more on the matter, but waited for her to take her seat and finish the grand production that was her entrance. Given her age, it was likely that she was a retired actress. As most actresses supplemented their income by taking protectors, he had no doubt that she had learned the value of information over the years. She was simply acquiring it in a different fashion now. “My sister came to see you,” he began, after she finally took a seat, perching on the edge of the settee like she was royalty. “I want to know what was said to her and I want to know where she intended to go after leaving your establishment.”

  “As Mr. Mason is asking pertinent questions, I’ll ask you to go ahead and answer them,” Adler followed up. “But I’ve a few of my own when he’s done.”

  Madame Zula inclined her head in a regal manner. “Your sister, Mr. Mason, came to me to ask about her family… her true family, those to whom she was born and not those cruel individuals who reared her. But you are well aware of that, already, are you not?”

  Benedict nodded his response. She was cagey and far too clever. Anything he said would be twisted by her or used to supplement what she was telling them already.

  “You have grown taciturn rather suddenly, haven’t you?” Madame Zula asked. “But I understand your reluctance to speak… when you fear that I will twist and use your words to my own advantage. And I may. I’ll not deny that part of my gift is knowing how to read people, how to take what they’ve told me both with their words and their gestures. The body speaks, you know? It tells the truth even when our lips do not. For example, Miss Masters is quite concerned for you right now. But you are somewhat of an enigma to her. She keeps her face averted from you, but her eyes seek you constantly, and her body is turned toward you, perhaps because she fears you may require assistance?”

  “You’re changing the subject, Madame Zula,” Adler pointed out. “Miss Masters is not the subject of conversation at this time. Miss Mason is. You will answer the questions about Mr. Mason’s sister, if you please. What was the date when she came to see you?”

  The woman waved her gloved hand. Immediately, the manservant who had accompanied her bustled forward, retrieving a leather-bound book from inside his waistcoat. As he passed the book to her, their hands brushed in a manner that was not at all like servant and employer. Benedict glanced at Adler to see if he had noted it and was pleased to see that he had. The investigator was watching the pair with a speculative gleam in his narrowed eyes.

  “What day was it when we saw Miss Mason, Dylan?” Her tone was cool, completely unruffled.

  “It was precisely one week ago today, Madame Zula,” the servant answered.

  Madame Zula then opened the book and flipped back the prescribed number of days to her notes. “She had booked a private appointment at eight in the evening on the fourteenth. She stayed for three quarters of an hour and then left promptly at a quarter till… and it appears, as she was leaving, I had a vision about her.”

  “Yes, madame,” the manservant, Dylan, said. “You sent me out after her. It was too late, however. When I opened the door, the street was empty and there was no sign of her save for a ribbon that had fallen at the base of the steps.”

  Madame Zula opened her hand, and the man immediately produced a small pouch from the other side of his waistcoat. He did not touch the contents, but opened it and allowed the length of violet ribbon to fall into the woman’s outstretched hand.

  Benedict said nothing, but the sight of that ribbon broke his heart. He’d given it to her because the color perfectly matched her eyes. He’d promised to have a new gown made for her to match as soon as she returned from Bath. As he looked on, Madame Zula made a great show of removing her glove and placing the ribbon on her bare skin. Immediately, her eyes closed and when she spoke, her voice had dropped so that it sounded as if coming from a great distance away.

  “She is in a dark place, your sister. The walls are cold and damp. There is a man with her… he has not harmed her. Not yet. For now, he is simply a voice in the darkness, one that taunts and teases cruelly. They are saving her for something later, for a grand ritual it would seem.”

  “If you’ve finished your little jaunt into the spirit world,” Adler commented, unmoved by Madame Zula’s performance, “I’ll thank you to address the questions we’ve asked. How many times did Miss Mason come to your home in total?”

  Madame Zula drew herself up, shoulders back and chin tilted at a haughty angle. “She came to my establishment on only two separate occasions. The first was to schedule her appointment and the second was the night she disappeared.”

  “I see,” Adler nodded. “And how was it that Miss Mason came to be aware of you and your questionable talents?”

  Madame Zula blinked at him for a moment. Then a smile spread across her face. “Well, I couldn’t possibly say, sir.”

  “Is that typical? You have no concerns about how a client might have been referred to you? You don’t want to thank your existing clients for the recommendation or be certain that the person coming into your abode is not a thief or, worse perhaps, someone intent upon exposing you as a charlatan? I find that curious, Madame Zula,” Adler replied. “I have never taken on a client without at least posing the question of how they came to have my name.”

  Madame Zula waved her hand dismissively. “I am not limited by such pedestrian methods of garnering knowledge of the character and intentions of a person, Mr. Adler. I had a sense immediately that Miss Mason was most sincere in her quest for information through unorthodox means.”

  “Is that why you found it so inconvenient when I scheduled an appointment for myself that was, in fact, for Lady Vale?” Miss Masters interjected. “It clearly caught you by surprise.”

  Madame Zula’s smile tightened, taking on a hostile and almost feral appearance. “Miss Masters, I cannot be attuned to everything. It would be utterly exhausting. I’d like to poi
nt out that I have been all that is cooperative and helpful. If you wish to interrogate me as you would a criminal then by all means bring charges and have me arrested… oh, but you have no reason to, do you? You have nothing but ugly suspicions and conjecture.”

  “How many women have gone missing from outside your home, Madame Zula?” Adler inserted himself into the conversation again, drawing her ire in his direction instead. “Two abductions, one successful and one foiled, inside of a week… those are poor odds, Madame Zula. I’m sure it will take very little effort on my part to uncover the truth. It might be best if you simply tell us now.”

  Madame Zula did not answer the investigator but, instead, turned to Benedict with beseeching eyes, as if she were truly invested in the welfare and safe return of Mary. “If you want to find your sister before it is too late, before her life has been wrecked beyond repair, you will heed me!” Madame Zula snapped. “She is being held against her will. She was taken… as other girls have been. The others were younger, not of quality, but if you ask you will be able to find who they were easily enough. Maids, governesses, companions… they go missing and people make assumptions that they’ve run off with beaus or eloped with an unsuitable man. But your sister had no reason to run off. She never intends to marry and you are perfectly aware of why!”

  Those words cut Benedict to the bone, reminding him of his failures, reminding him of the things Mary had suffered that he had been spared. “You are a fraud!” The words were hollow, lacking his earlier conviction.

  “She is alive and if you heed me, you will find her. All of this is connected—all of it—to the night you disappeared, the night you were taken from Lady Vale as a small boy.” She turned toward Lady Vale then, her expression and speech imploring, “If you find the book, Lady Vale, you will find the man who has his sister. There is one villain behind it all.”

  “This is utter foolishness,” Adler insisted, tossing his hands up.

  “I concur,” Benedict said. “If you’ve nothing constructive to offer, Madame—”

  Lady Vale had sunk onto the settee beside Elizabeth at the mention of the book. Her face was pale and she appeared quite shaken. “The book?” She looked up, her gaze falling upon Benedict imploringly.

  “Yes,” Madame Zula said. “The one his abductors were looking for the night they came and stole your Benedict away. They wanted your husband’s book… the one where he kept all of the secrets he bartered. The information you need to identify the villain in both crimes, his abduction and now the abductions of these poor girls, it’s hidden there. I promise you.”

  “You are being intentionally provocative in an attempt to sway her to your side,” Benedict accused. “I’ve no doubt that an endorsement from someone of Lady Vale’s social cache would cement your position in society here quite well, Madame Zula.”

  “I’ve no need of her social support, Mr. Mason. People will always require answers that cannot be found through traditional methods… I speak nothing but the truth here, whether you choose to accept it or not,” Madame Zula insisted. “I can see things… and those things haunt me. Yes, I’ve learned how to support myself by using this ability that is both gift and curse. But I’d like to point out, Mr. Mason, that you used your own somewhat unorthodox skills in order to support yourself and your sister. Yes, I know about the gaming hell you run, I know that you won it in a card game and I know that there were many who questioned whether or not the game was won honestly!”

  Benedict’s eyes narrowed in quiet fury. “I won that game honestly. I’ll be happy to meet anyone who says differently on the field of honor.”

  “But you’re not a gentleman and so no one who is a peer or gentry would ever deign to challenge you,” Miss Masters said. “They would consider it beneath them.”

  That stopped him cold—in part, because it was true and, in part, because he needed to know if that was her opinion of him. “Is that how you see me, Miss Masters? Beneath your exalted status as a companion?”

  She blanched. “Not at all. I was merely pointing out that the rules of society, as they are, would make it unlikely for any gentleman to acknowledge you that way, not that they were justified in doing so! There is nothing exalted about my current station, Mr. Mason, as you well know.”

  Benedict turned back to Madame Zula. “Tell me something now that you could not have gleaned from gossip or that is more than just conjecture.”

  Madame Zula held out her hand to him. He accepted the challenge and placed his hand in hers. She turned it over, pressed her palm to his and closed her eyes. Her head dropped back and she sighed deeply. After a moment of low moans and whispered words that were completely unintelligible, she lifted her head again and gazed directly at him. “I know why you left the north.”

  “There are still traces of my upbringing in my speech. It would be easy enough for you to guess,” he dismissed.

  “Berwick. I know why you left Berwick, Mr. Mason. I know what you did,” she whispered, her voice too soft for anyone but him to hear.

  Benedict felt the blood drain from his face. The room swayed. Rather than see himself sprawled on the floor, he reached backward and found a chair. Lowering himself into it, he stared at her with dawning horror. He didn’t know if she was telling the truth. What he did know was that regardless of how she’d garnered the information, he’d called her bluff and lost. She had the power to destroy him entirely.

  *

  Elizabeth watched him and knew the exact moment that Madame Zula uttered some truth that altered his stance regarding her. Whether he believed in her abilities or not, she had clearly said something that irrevocably altered the dynamic between them. Whatever else he was hiding from them, his response to the mystic was completely genuine. Gone were the confidence and the hint of swagger that, even near death, he could not keep at bay. “Madame Zula, what is this book and where can we find it?”

  Madame Zula sat back, all hints of mysticism gone, and her accent once again taking on the curious hint of Cornwall. “I believe, Miss Masters, that you will find it in London… but not in the home that Lord Vale once occupied. I imagine it would be at a place where he felt equally comfortable.”

  “The home he kept for his mistresses,” Lady Vale surmised. “He was there far more frequently. It would make sense. I will write to Branson and have him go there. Perhaps he can locate it.”

  Elizabeth frowned. “The house is unoccupied then?”

  “Branson is a single man with no attachments and no wife to question him. He’s no need to utilize that house.” Lady Vale’s reply was clipped and while her tone wasn’t sharp, precisely, it clearly indicated that she found the subject matter distasteful. “It has been unoccupied since before my husband’s death. His last mistress was a woman with a home of her own… or her husband’s, I suppose I should say. They did not bother attempting discretion throughout the course of their affair, even at its disgraceful end.”

  Elizabeth sighed. “So what should we do now?”

  Adler rose. “I’ll go and speak to some members of the watch. If the body was discovered, we may have some information to work with. If they came back and removed it, and if they were smart, they would have, then we’re very much back to our starting point. I’ll bid you good day, Miss Masters, Mr. Mason, and you Lady Vale.”

  Elizabeth watched Mr. Adler leave and noted how cool he’d been to Mr. Mason. Whether it was because he had little belief in Lady Vale’s assertion that Mr. Mason was her long lost son or because he was simply erring on the side of caution, she could not say. Regardless, she found herself unaccountably curious as to what it was that Madame Zula had whispered to him. Clearly, whatever she’d said had set him back on his heels. She would find out, Elizabeth vowed, even if it meant bearding the lion in his den so to speak.

  A soft knock at the door interrupted them and a footman entered with the tea tray.

  “I am too overset, Miss Masters. Will you pour?” Lady Vale asked.

  Taking a deep breath to steady her
own nerves, Elizabeth replied, “Certainly, my lady.” Once the tea was poured, the pot and cups bobbled only once or twice, Elizabeth seated herself once more and surveyed Madame Zula cautiously.

  “You said other young women had gone missing. Were these other young women also abducted or vanished outside your home?”

  Madame Zula arched one eyebrow. “Are you accusing me of something, Miss Masters?”

  “No, Madame Zula. But your stock in trade is knowing what others cannot. It would stand to reason that you would know, then, what is going on right outside your front door,” Elizabeth pointed out. She kept her tone intentionally light and non-accusatory despite the inflammatory nature of her words.

  “I deal primarily with the dead, Miss Masters, not the missing. If someone from the other side wishes to guide me or offer insight, I gladly take it,” the woman answered flatly. “I see many things. It is often difficult to understand their significance until it is too late to do anything about them. I have been all that is cooperative in assisting you here, and I shall continue to be. But I will not be accused of anything so villainous as having a hand in the abduction of young women.”

  Elizabeth inclined her head in both acknowledgement and a less than sincere apology. “Certainly, Madame Zula. I meant no offense. I was only seeking clarification of your earlier statements. How many women total have vanished?”

  “I am sure I don’t know,” the woman said. “So many things are hidden, Miss Masters, even from one who sees with more than just the eyes.”

  “You were forewarned by those spirits you mentioned about Miss Mason’s abduction… but too late to intervene on her behalf. And when those men attempted to abduct me, did you receive a similar warning?” Elizabeth continued.

  “This interrogation has grown wearisome, Miss Masters.” Madame Zula rose. “I must return home. I have an appointment this evening that I must prepare for. Remember what I told you the other night, Miss Masters. It is up to you to find the courage to change your fate and seize the future that is yours by right of destiny. Do not let fear and the censure of others sway you from it.”