The Last Serenade (Sybil Ingram Victorian Mysteries Book 2)

by Amanda DeWees

  For a moment I was crestfallen, but I was not stymied for long. “No one knows that I was unable to contact Fournier or that his spirit isn’t lingering here,” I said. “What if we pretend that you and I are just now planning to hold a séance in order to contact Fournier’s spirit and find out who killed him? That may concentrate their train of thought on the subject we’re interested in. If they are innocent, that should be clear. But if they are frightened of being found out, I should think you could read enough to tell us that we have found the guilty party. I would imagine that the thoughts of someone who thinks he is about to be named by the ghost of the man he murdered would be vivid indeed.”

  “It is a good plan,” she acknowledged. “Concentrating their minds on this purported séance of ours may bring their thoughts into sufficient focus for me to grasp. But,” she added sternly, causing the glad exclamation on my lips to die unspoken, “I am not entirely comfortable with invading these people’s privacy. That is the primary reason—apart from the difficulty—that I do so little reading outside the setting of a séance.”

  “Oh. I see.” So anxious was I to establish Roderick’s innocence that I had not stopped to think about the injustice of trespassing in people’s minds. Unable to hide my disappointment, I sought about for a way to persuade her. “Would you consider just reading their emotions, then, and not their exact thoughts? If you can read panic and guilt and fear in someone’s mind, we do not need to hear precisely what they are thinking. And you certainly don’t have to tell me anything beyond whether someone bears watching.”

  She considered that for an agonizingly long interval, while I barely refrained from throwing myself to my knees and shamelessly begging for her help. Finally she relented. “I think that would be agreeable to me,” she said, and I threw my arms around her in a grateful embrace that nearly dislodged her turban and made her laugh. “Temper your enthusiasm, ma chère. There is no guarantee that we shall succeed.”

  “I know that. But it means so much to me that you are willing to help. Can you meet me here again this evening?”

  “I have a few clients to see, but I can return here by six o’clock. By the way, how is Mr. Brooke spending the day?”

  “I’m afraid I don’t really know,” I admitted. “He said he had errands to run. I suspect he may be trying to take care of any business he has while he is still free, in case the Sûreté decides to take him into custody.”

  In truth, I had been slightly hurt that he had not been more explicit about his plans or even invited me along. But I trusted him to do what he felt was necessary, not just for his own welfare but for ours. And he knew that I would be occupied with the séance, so there was no reason he should have asked me to join him.

  All the same, if he were to be arrested soon, I would grieve for every moment not spent with him.

  Clarette, not surprisingly, picked up on the trend of my thoughts. I imagine they would have been obvious even to someone without psychic abilities. “Bon courage,” she said. “Take heart, Sybil.”

  “I’ll do my best,” I said.

  Roderick and I usually shared a carriage to the theater on nights that I was performing, but this evening he left word for me to go ahead without him and said he would meet me there. Consequently, I did not get a chance to speak to him until shortly before Clarette was to arrive. And I was determined to speak to him before she and I carried out our unconventional questioning, lest he feel that I had circumvented him as I had when I had held the first séance.

  When I found him in the orchestra pit I reported the lack of success of the séance and explained the new strategy to him.

  His brows drew together as I spoke. “It sounds like a dangerous plan,” he said. “One that might get you killed.”

  “No, it is quite safe! This way I’ll know exactly who may be a danger to me, and I can simply avoid being alone with that person.” With one fingertip I tried to smooth the furrows from his brow. “Don’t worry, dear heart.”

  “Oh, I shall not give up the right to worry, Sybil.”

  “That sounds as though you lack faith in me.”

  “You know that isn’t true,” he said softly, and kissed me. “Good luck.”

  I covered his mouth with my hand before he could say the unlucky words again. “You know better than to say that!” I admonished him.

  His lips quirked, tickling my palm, and I removed my hand. “Break a leg, then,” he said.

  His being so subdued troubled me, but this was no time to inquire about it because the stage manager was approaching me. I knew he had come to tell me that Clarette had arrived, so I reluctantly parted from Roderick.

  This was an opportune time to question the other actors because most of the cast would have arrived but would not yet be absorbed in final preparations for tonight’s performance. As for the crew, upon reflection I had decided that few would have been likely to attract Fournier’s predations: he seemed to choose more wealthy or more publicly prominent victims. So after introducing Clarette to Albert, whose eyebrows rose conspicuously when I said the words “spirit medium,” I led her to the corridor where the dressing rooms were located.

  “Superstitious,” she said under her breath.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Your stage manager. He was taken aback when you mentioned the séance, but only because he sees it as tempting fate. He is concerned about what kind of ill luck it might bring to the theater.”

  “Goodness,” I said, impressed. “You are a very useful person to have around, Clarette.”

  When I rapped at the door of the dressing room that Gustave and Estelle shared, the latter bade us come in. She was sitting at the dressing table applying wrinkles around her eyes, while her husband, not yet in costume, sat reading a newspaper. I felt a twinge of disappointment that we would be unable to speak to Gustave alone, for I could hardly ask him about the woman who might be his mistress in front of his wife. Nevertheless, we might learn something useful all the same.

  “I’d like you to meet a friend of mine, and a celebrity in her own right,” I said. “This is La Clarté, the famous medium. Madame, may I present Estelle and Gustave Valion.”

  “A medium!” Gustave repeated. “Are you and Sybil collaborating?”

  “We are, as a matter of fact,” she said. “Sybil believes that we may be able to contact the spirit of Monsieur Fournier and learn the identity of his murderer.”

  Husband and wife exchanged a look that was not exactly enthusiastic. “Indeed?” Estelle said.

  “At the least, we may learn of other people whom Fournier was blackmailing,” I said, watching Gustave. “That could be very useful to the investigation and turn the inspector’s attention away from Roderick.”

  But although he looked troubled, he did not look furtive. “I hope that this time you won’t involve Madame Thiers,” he said. “I fear our last venture into that realm greatly distressed her.”

  “There was such a resemblance between the case of the man you—er—contacted and that of Helaine’s late husband,” Estelle explained. “Monsieur Thiers was not a member of the Commune at all, you see.”

  “He wasn’t?” I exclaimed.

  Gustave shook his head. “Someone accused him falsely, and he was executed on that basis. Knowing that, I’m sure you can understand why hearing you speak for a man in the same position was painful to her.”

  But was the spirit who had spoken through me merely in similar circumstances, or could he actually have been Helaine’s husband? That would make perfect sense, in fact. If Helaine’s grief was so strong that it created its own aura of depression that traveled with her, perhaps it had also worked in concert with my abilities to summon her husband up. No wonder she had fainted, hearing her husband speak from beyond the grave. That would explain why he had manifested at the theater, even though it had never been a place of execution.

  Distracted by my thoughts, I bade the Valions farewell and remained lost in thought until the psychic spoke.

&
nbsp; “Concerned, the both of them,” she said in a low voice. “Mostly worried about their friend, I believe. Neither seemed to feel any guilt or fear, just reluctance to stir the pot.”

  “Thank you,” I said in relief. I would have hated for the genial pair to be mixed up in murder. Not that I was any happier to think of any of my other colleagues embroiled in it, of course. The more suspects we could eliminate, the happier I would be... as long as I could prove that the killer was not Roderick.

  When we approached Philippe’s dressing room the sound of voices came to us: one feminine and petulant, one masculine and placating. The man’s voice, probably Philippe’s, was too low at first for us to understand the words. The response was louder—and the voice unmistakably Julia’s.

  “But you never take me anywhere exciting! Am I some old woman to be shut up behind doors, that you never escort me to any of the popular places?”

  Philippe’s answer was patient. “Julia, we’ve discussed this before. The popular haunts are too expensive for what a jeune premier makes. I cannot afford to take you dancing and feed you champagne and pheasant every night.”

  I was curious to hear Julia’s answer, but Clarette knocked on the door, forestalling a reply. There was a brief silence, then Philippe’s voice called, “Qui est-ce? Who is it?”

  “Sybil and a friend,” I answered.

  There was a pause, then a brief whispered exchange. When Philippe opened the door, he was fully dressed except for his suit coat, but his hair was slightly rumpled. Clarette caught my eye and winked. Perhaps the argument had begun as an assignation. “Please come in, ladies,” he said when I had introduced the psychic.

  I cast a furtive glance around the room as I explained the reason for our presence. Julia must have been concealed behind the folding screen restoring her clothes to their proper condition, for when I mentioned the séance I thought I saw the screen vibrate as if it had been jarred.

  Philippe looked merely surprised at the idea of contacting Fournier’s ghost, and I remembered Roderick’s certainty that the young man was innocent. To judge by what we had overheard just now, it did seem that he was no longer so smitten with Julia that he would obey her every wish.

  “I suppose it is worth trying,” he said genially. “Personally, I have faith that the authorities will eventually find the guilty party.”

  “Eventually is entirely too long,” I retorted. “Roderick is now their chief suspect, as you may know, and that is an untenable state of affairs.”

  There was a rustle of fabric and the tap of high heels, and Julia emerged from behind the folding screen.

  “How droll!” she said. “So that is why the inspector was speaking to him at intermission last night.”

  Any thought of gauging her or Philippe’s reaction fled my mind as my anger blazed up. “It is the very opposite of droll,” I snapped. “Aren’t you at all concerned about the fact that Roderick is under suspicion for murder?”

  “Not particularly,” she said, in a voice that was nearly a yawn. “I did not ask him to kill Fournier.”

  I stared at her in disbelief. “Yes, you did. More than once.”

  She shrugged and pretended to examine a loose thread on her red taffeta sleeve. “Doubtless we remember things differently. In any case, he is a grown man and makes his own decisions.” Then she looked up and gave me a smile. “But this is a matter for the court to settle, n’est-ce pas?”

  I am not certain what I might have done next had Clarette not taken a firm grasp of my elbow and sent a clear thought into my head: Do not let her get the better of you. With that excellent advice in my thoughts, I tried to compose myself.

  Besides, there was something I wanted to know, for Roderick’s sake, and I could not let the opportunity pass.

  “Will you answer one question for me?” I said. “Why did your husband accept Roderick’s challenge, if your marriage had in effect ended years before?”

  She heaved an enormous sigh. I was clearly trying her patience. “How should I know?”

  “You were married, Julia; you knew him better than anyone. Please, just tell me. I think you owe me that much.” When she did not respond, I said, “It had to have been more than just his honor as a Frenchman, surely.”

  I think she would have liked to keep the knowledge to herself just to spite me. But for whatever reason—and perhaps the presence of the psychic had something to do with it—she said slowly, “I believe he was tired of life. His letters were melancholy. Weary.” She mustered a little shrug, but it lacked her usual vivacity. “He claimed that my leaving him had robbed his life of all pleasure, but he was much the same when we were together.” Then she seemed to come to herself. “Now, that is quite enough of your nosy questions, I think.”

  Clarette took the cue. “We’ll let the two of you continue preparing for the performance tonight. Sybil, shall we?”

  No sooner had we stepped out into the corridor than the door shut behind us, so promptly that it bumped my bustle. But I was too preoccupied with what Julia had told me to be nettled. If what she had said was true, it seemed to me that it relieved Roderick of a great deal of the responsibility for Leclerc’s death. It sounded as though he had almost wished to die.

  “I’m glad you managed to compose yourself,” Clarette remarked, breaking into my thoughts. “It pleases her when she causes you to lose your temper.”

  “What else did you learn?”

  A smile tugged at the corners of her lips. “Julia is extremely easy to read. Her mind is unusually focused because all of her thoughts are directed toward a single topic.”

  “Herself.”

  She nodded. “Exactement. She was not at all frightened by the prospect of identifying Fournier’s killer. But that is not necessarily conclusive.”

  “I see what you mean,” I said. “She might have directed someone to kill him and doesn’t feel any compunction about it—or any fear of being connected to the murder.”

  “But if someone did commit the crime at her behest, I do not think it was Philippe. He was a bit startled at the idea of the séance and more than a little skeptical, but it held no personal element for him. Nor did I sense that he was so enamored of Julia that he would lie on her behalf.”

  I sighed. “Well, that is a relief, at least.”

  Likewise it was a relief when our visit to Marianne brought no revelation of guilt. The young woman seemed only marginally interested in the entire topic, the psychic told me afterward, and certainly did not feel threatened—either on her own behalf or on anyone else’s, which seemed to confirm Philippe’s lack of involvement, at least as far as she knew. Because of the revelation that a rapier was the murder weapon, I knew that the inspector considered it impossible for her to have committed the murder herself, but it made me more confident in my conclusion to have additional reason to rule her out.

  Next was Helaine, and I felt a dart of guilty discomfort that we were so cavalierly invading this lady’s privacy when she was still in so much pain. Besides, like Marianne, she could not have wielded a rapier, but as with the younger woman I intended not to overlook any opportunity to gather evidence.

  Clarette confirmed after we left her dressing room that Helaine’s thoughts had not turned to self-preservation at the mention of the séance.

  “She did feel some apprehension,” she said, “but I gathered that the last séance was a traumatic experience for her.”

  “It certainly was. The spirit who came through may have been her own husband. At the very least he put her in mind of her husband so strongly that she fainted.”

  Clarette looked pensive. “That could certainly explain her reaction... such as it was. There was so much sadness in her that there was little room for any other emotion.”

  “That poor, poor lady. I wonder how she is able to go onstage every night and perform.”

  “It helps her, I suspect, to have something to do,” she said. “For at least a few hours of the day, she has something to concentrate on besides grief.
Now, who else are we talking to? I confess I am rather enjoying this business of playing detective.”

  Playing hardly carried enough weight to represent this all too serious undertaking, but I did not correct her. “Mr. Ivey,” I said. “We must definitely speak to him.” Despite our revealing conversation and my greater insight into that gentleman’s travails, I needed more information before I could know whether he could be eliminated from suspicion.

  Unfortunately, Kenton was not to be found. His office was empty, there was no answer when we knocked at his dressing-room door, and even though we made a thorough search backstage, we could not find him. Hortense said that he had told the stage manager that he had to leave to run an errand and would be back in time for curtain. This was disappointing, although at least our brief conversation enabled Clarette to rule out a connection between Hortense and the murderer.

  “Ma chère, I regret that I cannot stay any longer,” the psychic said when it came time to open the auditorium to the audience. “I have a seating scheduled for tonight.”

  “Thank you so much for your help,” I said. “You’ve been very kind, and I appreciate it more than I can say.”

  “Not at all.” She kissed me on both cheeks, then added in a low voice, “Remember what I said before: you and your fiancé should remove yourselves from Julia’s vicinity. She is not to be trusted.”

  “Believe me,” I said with feeling, “we don’t trust her at all.”

  After Clarette departed, even though I needed to dress, I found my way backstage to the very edge of the proscenium and waved to get Roderick’s attention. He came to the edge of the pit, and I knelt down so that we were almost on a level.

  “What success?” he asked.

  “I’ve found nothing to incriminate anyone,” I said, “which is both a relief and a frustration. I can tell you more later tonight.”

  “Good, good.”

  I wasn’t certain from his faraway gaze that he had even been listening to me. He seemed so preoccupied. Certainly, being suspected of murder could do that to a man. But this felt like something else.