by Jerico Lenk
“That’s right.” He stepped around and into a cluster of books left stacked all about, plopping down to sit cross-legged on the floor among the towers like the bastions of his own private castle. He looked over, brows raised, waiting for me to join him.
“This is delightful!” he cried as I sat down, too.
“Lord Kingsley—”
He flashed me a look, one colourless eye and the other dark blue. I was trying very hard not to stare at the colourless one, but I kept hearing the gossip again and again in my mind. Badge of honour … that family’s moral compass has been defective …
“Please,” he said with the usual dignity expected of a young nobleman, “call me Cain. I trust you with such informalities.”
“Cain,” I corrected myself with a quick smile.
An uncomfortable hush spun out between us. He knew I’d heard everything they’d said about him and his family. But he must have been aware they had a file somewhere; I guessed he’d be much more distraught if he’d only just found out.
More paramount than that … why would there be a file on a family, his family, locked in the archives of an order for occultist investigation?
I cleared my throat. “What they said about you in there … don’t worry, I know better than to trust parlour talk as right and true.”
Cain looked off elsewhere, moodily. There was something about him uniquely puckish and grim at once; the dark little freckle just off the corner of his right eye made him look all the more romantic. “I’m well-acquainted with the common division between outsiders when it comes to my family,” he said flatly. “Simply put, we’re either loved or deplored. But that’s all well, it’s always been that way. It just infuriates me when certain people degrade us and belittle us, and go so far as to claim criminal witchcraft. Here, of all places! In the Black Cross! Where myth unites with man! In the era of Spiritualism!” He broke off into a weak little scoff. “Anyway. Mr. Winchester … ”
“Please—Will.” I shrugged, smiling faintly as I echoed him, “I believe you can be trusted with such informalities?”
His eyes danced over to me, a glance through his lashes. “Will,” he repeated, returning the soft smile like our exchange of first names meant we shared some exquisite secret. “Don’t let their talk colour the Cross for you. The science of gossip is extraordinary. Why, I’m sure that’s not the first or the last time they’ll talk about me behind my back.”
“Perhaps you shouldn’t be friends with them, then.”
“Ha!” Cain laughed and heaved a short huff of a sigh to blow dark hair out of his mismatched eyes. “No,” he said, “they’re not my friends at all.”
It wasn’t hard to believe him a far better representation of the Black Cross than an overheard conversation. Perhaps there was some sort of secret we shared—being hated by those around you was one of those deep pains that couldn’t be commiserated until it was felt, after all. And we’d both felt it, I could see.
“Were you researching?” I asked as we wandered downstairs again, once Cain had deemed it safe to leave our hiding spot.
He glanced at a nearby mirror then looked at me over his shoulder, all wide, soulful eyes—like an owl’s, bottomless and full of secret knowledge. Even his colourless eye could still be so emotive, somehow, in its eerie and silent way.
“Oh, no,” he said. “I was just visiting my not-friends, you see. One of these days, though, I’m determined to get my hands on a key to the locked archives. I want to know what they’ve got written down about my family.”
“What is criminal witchcraft?” I prompted, and immediately bit my mouth shut because it felt too forward. Cain didn’t seem to think so. He shrugged limply.
“Using your gifts with the intent to harm, cause malice, or cheat the laws of the world,” he whispered distractedly, looking at the mirror again. Did he see something I didn’t? Another Black Cross ghost? I snuck a glance before he looked back. There was nothing.
“You want to know what happened to this monstrous eye of mine?” Cain’s voice was sly, just like his smirk. And yet it wasn’t empty of bitterness, either. “The one about which they all so love to chat?”
“Oh, it’s all right—it’s not troubling at all, just different—and I really don’t notice it, mostly. What I mean is, I don’t think any less of you for it. Not that I’d ever think less of you!”
I sighed. I had quite a way with words, didn’t I?
“It’s a diabolical mark,” Cain declared with a swell of pride.
I frowned, clueless.
He cocked his head back and laughed. The sound bounced around the room; two men across the center gallery from us, chatting as they donned their overcoats, sent a judgmental look or two.
“I’m lying,” he said. “Fever, when I was small. I like to say it’s my little monocle into the après-monde.”
“Après-monde?” I whispered.
“The afterworld,” Cain whispered back, fixing me with that haunting owl-like gaze. Monocle into the …
“You have a talent, too, then?” I said before I could consider the question’s politeness or lack thereof. I wanted to know so badly how many others in the Cross were not just dedicated scholars, but … “You’re also in tune with the—um, dead?”
Cain nodded slowly, peering at me through his lashes.
“Well,” I changed the subject again hurriedly, “if you manage to get a key, I would gladly explore the locked files with you.”
Using your gifts with the intent to …
“If I manage to get a key, you’ll be the first to know,” Cain promised with a perfectly infectious smile.
From the windows, I watched him disappear into the dormitories across the way. I didn’t know what to think or feel. Cain Kingsley, of the great Kingsley family, was far more like me than I could have ever possibly imagined. It was odd, to feel unworthy but special at the same time.
More than that, I had the feeling we’d become friends easily, and that was a comfort. I needed a friend.
Open Spectral File No. MCDXCV, Reported apparitions and small other disturbances, Owners troubled, To be investigated Monday, 29 September, by Lead Inspector Clement (Psychosensitive), Inspector Quinn (Police Escort), Medium in Training Dubois, Scouting Inspectors Kingsley and Winchester (Clairvoyants), and two Assistants.
“But her—” Cain spat as I slipped out the Cross’s main door, just after nine o’clock in the evening. He and Clement already waited against the balustrade. His lip curled as though the words tasted bad, his hands shoved deep in the pockets of his coat.
“Do you really believe I had a thing to do with it?” Clement gestured impatiently, which, with his hands in his pockets, too, was more a vehement flap of the elbows.
“God, I despise Miss Jessica!”
“Well, Kingsley, if you could kindly put that aside for the night and remind us all of your nobleman’s charm … ”
“If you could kindly put aside your despicable need for female attention.”
“I won’t promise anything.”
“And neither shall I!”
“Good evening,” I said timidly from the stoop.
Cain leapt at the opportunity. “Will, you remember Miss Jessica from the lounge the other day! The most querulous, contemptuous, pretentious girl—”
Clement cleared his throat and nodded his head hard, alerting us to the fact that Miss Jessica herself was approaching from the dormitories.
“Good evening, men!” she called with a girlish wave. She was tall and thin and seemed too beautiful to be as querulous and contemptuous as Cain claimed, except that I’d already personally witnessed her relentless disdain. Through the gap of her fashionable cloak, with the glinting silver chain at the throat, I glimpsed a regal vivandière-style top cut to perfectly accentuate her frame.
Miss Jessica strolled to a stop beside us with a rosy smile that might have been amiable if not for her foxlike gaze. “Well,” she chirped, tossing silky blonde hair over one shoulder. “Apologies
. My uncle has no perception of time once he’s set on conversation. Here I thought I’d bear the shame of tardiness alone, and you’d all be waiting, but it seems we’re still missing … ” She counted with a dance of the gloved finger. “Three? Let’s hope punctuality does not play too pivotal a role in the night’s work, then.”
Cain threw a savage look Clement’s way. Clement’s mouth hung gently open like he thought he had something to say, but he merely squinted at Miss Jessica in mild disbelief before glancing at me. As if I had anything to offer him.
“Oh!” He snapped his attention away to where Quinn rounded the corner from Park Crest. “Here’s Quinn now, too! How are you, my lovable brute?”
***
Overgrown shrubbery and sweeping cork oaks clustered about the graveled drive of Triviat Manor, walling out the jagged outline of the city. It was refreshing. As we made our arrival, a small girl peeked down from an upstairs window, watching.
“Hello, hello, good evening! Oh, you can’t know the relief I feel to finally have you here. But where is my head?” Lord Triviat shook each of our hands as his valet hurried to our aid. But we had little luggage to attend to, just our cases of equipment, and so the man seemed a little lost as Lord Triviat made the rounds of introduction.
Lord Triviat was tall and broad, and if not for his state of excitable relief, he might have been formidable-looking with his mascara-curled mustache and the silver streaks in his ink-black hair. He acquainted us with his sister Lady Drucilla and his mother; his mother, he said, who was hunched over a walking stick with a crystal horse’s head and looked fit to crumble into a heap of dusty skin at any moment, had owned the house with his father. When his father fell in the second Anglo-Burmese war, he’d inherited it all.
“Is your wife inside with your daughter, then?” I asked. All at once down the line of us, each of my teammates pinned me with a pointed look as though I’d done something unspeakable.
Lord Triviat’s mouth gave a little twitch and his eyes shone brightly as they roamed me head to toe. Smiling uneasily, I shrank back.
“Mr. Triviat, apologies … ” Clement began, but Lord Triviat shook his head kindly to halt him. He cleared his throat.
“There are no children here and my wife moved to stay with her sister two years ago,” he divulged. “She couldn’t bear the house any longer after our … daughter died.”
Clement snatched me by the back of the coat as we all moved to follow inside.
“Listen, I’m sorry,” I said preemptively, looking around at Clement with wide eyes. “I read the case file, and it did mention the death of his daughter, but apparently it wasn’t as thorough as to note there were no other children—”
“You are a scouting inspector!” he fired back. “Lead inspectors and police escorts do the interviews. Are you a lead inspector or police escort?”
I hardened, peering up at him without lifting my chin. “No.”
“Then keep your pretty mouth shut, fool!”
Lord Triviat led us up the front steps and into the manor through doors of blond wood. Giltwood Corinthian columns welcomed us inside, stretching to a rose-red ceiling with detailed medallions and chandeliers.
“The entry hall,” Lord Triviat began the tour, “is not the favourite place to be alone, particularly at night. The maids say doors open and close on their own. My sister hears walking, someone following her. She says she sees ‘things’ on the upper balcony when there is no one there at all. Not even the domestics, she insists. I’ve stayed awake through the night on more than one occasion, suspecting an intruder. But there never is. It’s just … peculiar, I suppose.”
He led on through the billiards room, and a drawing room, and a dark and solemn back hall to a set of servants’ stairs. With thick wooden steps with alternating spindles along the handrail, the ceiling very low and close, they twisted sharply up and up and up, seeming as if they’d reach to the heavens if we so endeavoured to climb. Lord Triviat’s face was hard and pale as he stood with one hand on the banister and offered us a thin, pensive smile.
“This,” he said, “is where my daughter Della tumbled to her death in the year 1887. I believe I provided as much information when I filed my report to your offices.” His eyes flickered to me, just briefly. “She was naught to six. Once … well, I profess I am a wise man, and a sane man, and a moral man, but once or twice I thought I saw her here. Now, I am sure it was a father’s grief but Drucilla insisted I tell you. Drucilla also insists it is my daughter who tugs at her dress and touches her hand. That shadows peek at her from above here, crawl down from the upper flight and sit on the bottom step to watch her pass.”
The girl I’d seen in the upper window, the girl in a stark white dress with her dark curls, peeping down at us … she had not looked as young as Della was when she’d died. But who could she be, then?
I didn’t say anything about it yet. Maybe a little vindictively, after Clement’s censure earlier.
“The windows in the attic open of their own accord,” Lord Triviat disclosed with a wearied sigh. “The pressing matter is that the windows are old, and the only way they stay open at all is if one is to hold them. It frightens the domestics half to death, but again I say, the windows are old.”
“All in all, it is a beautiful house,” Clement said. “Have any other tragic deaths occurred on the premises, that you may know of?”
By this time, after Lord Triviat insisted we relocate to the downstairs drawing room for cigarettes and coffee, his mother was falling asleep in the chair near the mantle. The drawing room opened onto the foggy lawn, small, scrolled columns flanking the French windows. Standing with his back to the wide glass and lighting a bejeweled pipe, Lord Triviat’s silhouette was a bit eerie.
“Drucilla is my baby sister, you see,” he replied forthwith. “We had a second sister, Deborah, who took to typhoid fever, quarantined up in the atrium. Other than that, and of course my darling Della, ‘tragic’ deaths, you ask? I cannot be certain. The house has been my family’s for a long time, after all.”
“Have you contacted Mr. Henry Sidgwick at the SPR, Mr. Triviat?” Clement asked, putting out his cigarette in a gold dish with cherub faces at the corners.
“I am not interested,” Lord Triviat said thickly, “in séances or news acclaim.”
Clement nodded. He smiled, charming and compassionate. He said, “And what, sir, if you don’t mind my asking, is the goal for which you hope of our inspecting your home?”
Lord Triviat returned the smile. But he looked cold suddenly, puffing on his pipe. Cold and full of bitterness. Behind him, his sister Lady Drucilla stared hopelessly out the glass doors at the dark rolling lawn.
“All I wish,” he declared, “is for this thing to be gone, if there is even a thing here at all.”
We stood to shake hands. I doubted he realised he did it—or perhaps he did—but Lord Triviat’s eyes kept wandering back to me. I pretended I couldn’t tell; I felt strangely guilty for having shaken him so deeply by asking about the girl in the window. Always, always feeling guilty for scaring others.
Finally, the Triviats departed with their servants to stay at Claridge’s while we inspected the big house. In the drawing room, we unpacked the small equipment trunks.
“This Franklin meter is broken,” Clement complained with a huff as he tossed the instrument aside. “Look at it. The gauge is loose. It couldn’t read a lightning bolt if it struck it right at the tip.”
“It uses electricity, then?” I asked politely.
Clement met my eyes over his shoulder, one brow not quite cocked but lifted in disdain. “Yes, Winchester. Named after the American Benjamin Franklin, a working meter gauges ambient charge, of which the association to spiritual occurrences, proposed by Black Cross Spectral Department Research Inspector Lyman, was officially adopted as working theory last year. He even won a lovely little plaque. I feel as though I already mentioned such, but I can’t remember.”
Blushing furiously, I looked away with
a tight frown. Well, I would have settled for a simple explanation, without the facetious flair.
“You may call me Will,” I reminded in a tiny voice. “And I don’t think you told me about this tool in particular.”
Clement frowned at me a moment, then looked away.
The team—and by team, I mean everyone else talking over the heads of myself, O’Brien, and Assistant Young—decided the claims of apparitions and phantom touches were typical of something intelligent. The dead daughter, perhaps.
I kept my mouth shut, brows raised. Yes, Lord Triviat’s poor daughter—but what about his sister Deborah? If it wasn’t Della I’d seen in the upstairs window, it had to have been Deborah. She’d died at no older than thirteen, perhaps, by the way she’d looked. But nobody asked.
“We have the bells and a pendulum,” Miss Jessica said, sounding quite bored already and disregarding the way Cain ignored her.
Clement tossed her the pendulum, a crudely-cut crystal of some sort nestled into silver filigree, on a chain much like a rosary’s. Not like the stone around Clement’s throat … which he’d apparently removed at some point earlier.
“All right, then,” he said. “Quinn, let’s rig the toys in the nursery with bells. That way if they move, we’ll know. Oh, and the attic windows.”
“Clever,” Quinn grunted.
Set-up and invalidation took the better part of two hours and handfuls of notes regarding play of light and sound carriage; the manor was so large and the shadows already seemed so alive. Then, slowly but surely, O’Brien and Young doused nearly every light, and the silence that followed was like a tomb.
“We’ll press on in this fashion,” Clement decreed, standing with his hands on his hips in the middle of the wide vestibule. “Quinn, you and I shall take Young and see if we might provoke anything in the attic. Kingsley, try the nursery … ”
He stopped, turning only his face to the left, where a broad, ornate threshold led off into the neighbouring room. The lamplight danced on the planes of his face, softening him to his real age again, especially with his eyes so wide and intent. Looking for something.
