Whispers of Warning

by Jessica Estevao

  Besides, I had that buzzing hum moving up and down my spine, reaching the base of my skull and cascading over my shoulders that I always felt when I was on the right track with a client. The feeling that let me know I was closing in on the truth. The thread meant something. I just needed to keep looking. The best thing I knew to do was to ask for help from the voice, as Mrs. Doyle had encouraged me to do. I had never had much success summoning support from the voice until I had come to Old Orchard. I had heard it often enough but it came unbidden and without warning. Any contact between us seemed to originate from the voice rather than from me. I was simply a passive receiver of unsolicited advice.

  Since arriving it felt as though the lines of communication between myself and my mysterious counselor had strengthened. Mr. MacPherson, the hotel dowser, believed the hotel sat at a crossroads of what he called a “thin space.” He claimed such places were found along lines all across the globe and that the one just below the hotel was amongst the strongest he had ever felt.

  According to Mr. MacPherson these places made metaphysical abilities more pronounced in those with a proclivity for them. My own experience had lent credence to his assertions. Over the weeks I had been at the Belden I had heard the voice more often than I had during the rest of my twenty years combined. Maybe it was the place but partly I attributed it to my willingness to believe that I could ask for help.

  I closed my eyes and tried to quiet my thoughts to focus only on the matter at hand. I pictured the manuscript and I thought about Sophronia’s death. I silently asked if the voice could show me where to look. Immediately I heard a response in my left ear.

  “Ask Ben.”

  Chapter Forty-eight

  It was such a simple thing I was disgusted with myself for not having thought of it before. I hurried down the front stairs and arrived in the lobby, where Ben hovered, silent as usual, behind the polished walnut reception desk. His white-blond hair swished across his forehead as he glanced up from a ledger he was updating.

  “Ben, did Sophronia give anything into your care to keep safe?” He looked at me with his unreadable expression, then nodded.

  “Would it be possible for you to show it to me? I think it may shed some light on what happened to her.” Ben laid down the ornate fountain pen used for signing in the guests and motioned for me to follow him into the porter’s room behind the desk. The room was supposedly available to all the hotel faculty and staff but everyone, myself included, thought of it as Ben’s exclusive domain. I had been there before but only for a moment and then only because I had been looking for Ben.

  I looked about the room and thought how at odds it was with its main occupant. Ben’s appearance was invariably immaculate: starched, straight, and spotless. The room was anything but tidy.

  Wooden bars on brass supports held hangers, some draped with forgotten coats and wraps, others hanging empty and forlorn. Shelves towered from floor to ceiling and threatened to send books, boxes, and wire baskets heaving with odds and ends toppling down upon our heads. Two threadbare velvet chairs whose insides were working their way to their outsides flanked a dainty enameled stove. Stacks of steamer trunks and other assorted pieces of luggage pressed against the back wall.

  Ben motioned for me to sit in one of the chairs and I winced as I lowered myself onto a rogue spring.

  Ben sorted through the quantity of luggage before finding what he was looking for. He selected a tapestry valise and carried it to me before seating himself in the chair next to mine.

  “This was Sophronia’s?” I asked. Ben nodded. “I think under the circumstances she would want someone to search it to see if it casts any light on her death.” Ben pointed at the handbag in a manner I took to mean he agreed. Or at least that he was not going to stop me. I held my breath as I depressed the clasp on the valise and felt the clasp spring open with a soft pop. I opened it as wide as it would stretch and peered inside.

  At first glance the valise seemed empty. My frustration mounted and I felt disappointed in the suggestion of the voice. Perhaps it had been too much to hope that the voice would always provide answers. As I hoisted the bag back off my lap and started to pass it to Ben it occurred to me that the bag seemed too heavy to be empty.

  I leaned forward in my chair, trying to better catch the overhead light and ran my finger along the interior seams. Most of the workmanship was high quality. The seams were straight and the stitches fine and lay close together. But as I looked at a single seam along the back of the lining another hand looked to have been at work. The line of stitching wobbled back and forth and the length of the stitches was still short but irregularly spaced.

  No one who had so little skill would have been hired to create this bag. As I held the bag under the light I felt my breath catch excitedly in my throat. Black thread had been used in the poorly executed seam rather than blue like the others.

  “Do you have any scissors?” I asked. He rose and made straight for a box tucked up high on one of the shelves. Reaching in without even looking into it he pulled out a small pair of brass embroidery scissors. With only a few snips the seam fell away and a long opening in the lining allowed me a peek behind it. I slipped my hand into the gap and poked around with my fingertips until I touched something that felt like paper.

  A thick, yellowed envelope lay tucked between the lining and the heavy tapestry of the bag’s exterior. I lifted the flap and slid out three photographs wrapped in a newspaper clipping. The less said about the photographs, the better. Suffice it to say they depicted Congressman Plaisted and a young woman wearing little else besides a smile. Her hair appeared dark except for a distinctive pale swath along the left side of her head. Although I think of myself as a woman of the world in many ways, I confess I was not prepared to see such things, especially not in the presence of another person and a man at that.

  I returned the photographs to the envelope with trembling fingers and turned my attention determinedly on the newspaper clipping. The paper was brittle and I unfolded it carefully, quite sure of what I would find. It was as Mr. Lydale had said. The article reported that a young woman had been found dead in a local pond wearing a man’s coat, the pockets of which had been weighted down with rocks. I lifted the valise once more determined to alert Officer Yancey to what I had found. It might be enough to convince him to arrest Congressman Plaisted.

  But as I hoisted the piece of luggage something occurred to me. Surely something that weighed as little as three photographs could not account for the heft of the valise. Upon closer inspection I noticed another row of childish stitches at the bottom of the case. I pricked the seam apart to reveal two stacks of pages wedged in end to end. I widened the seam opening and tugged the pages through, taking care not to disarrange the order of them.

  There in front of me was Sophronia’s missing manuscript. It was neatly typed with a profusion of corrections and notations covering the pages. And just like that, I knew how and why Sophronia had died.

  Chapter Forty-nine

  If he were completely honest he would admit that Miss Proulx looked positively radiant. The sun glinted through gaps in the leafy canopy of Fern Park. It bounced off the shiny metal of her bicycle handlebars and the tendrils of her dark glossy hair that had escaped from her hairpins.

  When she telephoned the police station the urgent tone of her voice made him abandon his sandwich on his desk, grab his own bicycle from the rack on the side of the building, and pedal as fast as he could to this secluded spot in the woods.

  Miss Proulx plucked two paper sacks and a sturdy box from the basket fixed to the front of her cycle. She rattled the bag at him teasingly, then sat on a flat, moss-covered bit of ground to the side of the path. He stood over her, his pulse still racing. Surely she had not lured him to an impromptu picnic by feigning a distress call. She simply wasn’t the sort.

  “I hurried over here pell-mell because I thought you were in trouble, Miss Proulx,” h
e said. “You can’t have called me out here for a meal.” Her smile widened and she stifled an unladylike snort of laughter with a small, gloved hand.

  “I hardly think this qualifies as a meal. However, I do appreciate your confidence in my commonsense.” She pulled off her right glove and dipped her hand into one of the paper sacks. “I took my life in my hands to snitch these for you from Mrs. Doyle’s kitchen. The least you could do would be to sit down and eat the evidence while I tell you about the inroads I’ve made into the investigation.”

  Yancey wished he had the fortitude to resist the scent of cinnamon wafting toward him from her hand but even if he had had the energy to lie about his hunger, the rumbling of his stomach would have betrayed him.

  “Is that a pinwheel biscuit?”

  “See for yourself,” she said, patting a mounded hump of moss beside her. Miss Proulx waited until he had foolishly filled his mouth with a satisfying bite of fluffy pastry and spiced currants before she spoke again.

  “I lured you here to show this to you far away from prying eyes.” She lifted the lid on the box. “I called you as soon as I discovered this in the hotel bell room. It was tucked inside a valise left there by Sophronia.” Yancey swallowed and lowered himself onto the ground near, but not too near, Miss Proulx.

  The box held a sheaf of papers. The top sheet was typewritten.

  SPIRITED REVELATIONS:

  CORRUPTION, GREED, AND THE QUEST FOR POWER AS REVEALED THROUGH CHANNELING

  by Sophronia Foster Eldridge

  “It made for some interesting reading,” she said, patting the box. “Sophronia was disheartened by the lack of progress the suffrage movement had made in the last twenty years. She wrote an exposé on the corruption of those in power to show why the system is broken, just as she said she had. There are plenty of people named in here who must be delighted that she is dead.” Yancey licked the sugar from his fingers then lifted the stack of papers from the box.

  “Any place I should start?” he asked.

  “I’ve listed the pages I believe are most connected to her death on the inside of the box lid,” Miss Proulx said. Yancey settled in to read, glad the bulk of the manuscript was typed rather than written in the same hand that marred the pages with comments and suggestions. He turned to the relevant pages and read through them quickly.

  The manuscript was clear, unflinching, and easily explained why anyone whose name appeared therein would have been tempted to kill Sophronia rather than to suffer the consequences of their actions. Even as an officer of the law, he found some of the claims quite shocking.

  “There are enough accusations made here to cause any number of people to murder her but is there any proof?” Yancey asked. He felt Miss Proulx stiffen beside him.

  “There are a few things that concretely support the accusations Sophronia made. I must tell you, some of it is disturbing and distasteful.”

  “Murder is always both of those things, Miss Proulx.” She looked for a moment at the second paper sack placed on the ground beside her. He noticed she kept her eyes on her lap as she handed it to him. He looked inside the bag and removed an envelope. Flicking open the flap he peered inside. It was not the first time he had seen those sorts of photographs but he felt clammy with embarrassment to be seen holding them in front of a lady. Still, something had to be said.

  “These could certainly be considered proof.” Yancey removed a book and a piece of paper from the bag as well. He opened the book and looked to where Miss Proulx indicated with her finger.

  “Now take a look at the paper,” she said, pointing at the crumpled sheet. Yancey spread it out and gave it a careful read-through.

  “Where did you find this?”

  “Millie found it in the formal parlor at the Belden. It was in a wastepaper basket.”

  “Did you find the money?” Yancey asked.

  “I checked behind the fan in the library but there was nothing there,” Miss Proulx said. “Between Sophronia’s accusations against the congressman, her finger pointing at the illegal alcohol business Mr. Jellison was running, and her allegations that Osmond Cheswick was actually the man relentlessly pursuing her at the Hay Feverists convention, we are spoilt for choice concerning suspects.”

  “But there is no definitive proof as to who was responsible for her murder. We are no closer to an arrest than we were before you found this. I can’t take this to Hurley until I have real proof.”

  “You can’t mean to ignore this,” Miss Proulx said. It was not a question but rather a statement. He was surprised at the swelling in his chest at the notion she had confidence that he would do what was right despite the difficulties involved.

  “I won’t just drop it but I will need to know who to arrest before I tip my hand and let him know that despite his order not to I have been pursuing the investigation. It also won’t help the case that the victim claims she wrote the manuscript based on information she received from the dead.”

  “I would like to remind you that this could be considered information received from the dead.” Miss Proulx gestured to the manuscript in Yancey’s hands.

  “It’s hardly the same thing, as well you know.”

  “Would you believe me if I told you I only thought to look in the hotel bell room because of guidance from a spirit?”

  “I would find it easier to believe in your abilities as an intrepid investigator than as a passive channel through which another entity’s wisdom flows.” For a moment, Yancey enjoyed watching as Miss Proulx’s lips parted in surprise and for the first time since he had met her she looked like she could think of nothing whatsoever to say. She turned her full attention to her gloves and set about deliberately tugging them neatly back onto her small hands. He decided to take pity on her. “Of course, this has now gone entirely beyond the abilities of even the most supernaturally aided amateur investigator. I can see why you would be eager to turn the entire matter over to the professionals.”

  “You misunderstand me completely.” With a cunning look in her sparkling brown eyes Miss Proulx gave her left glove a decisive tug. “You said yourself that this evidence does not single out the perpetrator. Fortunately for you I have an idea as to how we can force the killer’s hand.”

  “What exactly is it that you propose?” Yancey asked.

  “Another crime.”

  “What did you have in mind?”

  “I think it will be an easy thing to get the killer to make an attempt on my life.” Miss Proulx jumped to her feet with a most unladylike show of athleticism. “That is, if I can persuade Mr. Lydale to appear with me at dinner at the Belden this evening. Although I am quite sure he will be more than willing to assist in whatever way that he is able.” Yancey felt a fresh wave of irritation at his friend Thomas.

  “You wish to recruit Thomas for the solution to the crime rather than to involve me?” he asked.

  “Certainly not instead of you. There is much to do. I am counting on you to help me with a bit of forgery and postal fraud.” Miss Proulx flashed him a broad smile.

  “Forgery and fraud? How can those help?” Officer Yancey asked.

  “I need you to forge a note to the Plaisteds, supposedly from Mr. Fredericks, inviting them to dine at the Belden this evening as his special guests. I think a gentleman’s handwriting would be more convincing than my own.”

  “Why would you want to do that?”

  “I’ll tell you about it on the way back to town.”

  Chapter Fifty

  Even though the Belden was not the largest hotel on the beach it still required considerable planning on the part of the staff to keep things running as smoothly as they did. Mrs. Doyle was ferociously organized and a stickler for routine. Without a doubt she would have a list of Honoria’s seating assignments for the entire week at the ready. With only a couple hours until dinner I knew just where to find her.

  The kitchen sm
elled of roasting meat and potatoes. On the worktable in the center of the room Mrs. Doyle was spooning a thick yellow-colored custard over cubes of cake and plump berries already layered into a trifle dish. I felt my stomach squeeze at the sight. Luncheon had gone on without me and I had not partaken of much in the way of breakfast, either. I told myself now was not the time to think of such things. There would be plenty of time for eating when the killer was caught even if trifle was one of my favorite foods in the world.

  “You look excited, child.” Mrs. Doyle looked up from her work and fixed me with one of her legendary scowls. I stood still and let her evaluate my aura, hoping she would determine a predinner scoop of dessert would fix whatever was wrong with me. “Have an apple.” She reached behind her and plucked a small red fruit from a bowl. I polished it on my sleeve and took a bite. It wasn’t trifle but it pressed out the pleats in my stomach just as satisfyingly.

  “I have good reason to be. I believe by the end of the night I will know what happened to Sophronia,” I said. “But I need to seat guests at specific tables at this evening’s meal.”

  “Still playing the detective, are you? Does Honoria know what you’re up to?” She squinted at me some more and I knew better than to lie.

  “I haven’t wanted to trouble her with what I have been doing. You know how distressed she has been on account of her dream.”

  “So you’ve been investigating Sophronia’s death without Honoria’s knowledge?”

  “She would have tried to stop me from doing so and I promised Yancey I would help him.” I thought I detected a tiny twitch at the corner of Mrs. Doyle’s mouth.