Death on the Lizard

by Robin Paige

  “About those letters?” Charles grinned.

  “Yes.” Bradford chuckled, in anticipation. “I imagine the lady will agree that a batch of letters is a small price to pay for freedom. Shouldn’t you?”

  “Most likely,” Charles said. “I wonder—what were you able to learn yesterday when you went to Porthcurno? What’s the purpose of that aerial over there?”

  “The purpose is spying, without a doubt,” Bradford said. “Eastern Telegraph—which owns the cables which come ashore in Porthcurno Bay—has built a shack and installed a wireless receiver. I talked to the operator, who told me that the messages are merely intercepted, printed, and filed. And that appears to be the end of it. Nobody has ever bothered to examine the printed tape of the transmissions.” He paused. “Which seems to me to eliminate Eastern as a possible suspect for the theft of the tuner. I shouldn’t think they’d go to the trouble, unless they were deeply interested, which appears not to be the case. Would you agree?”

  “I would,” Charles said. He considered. “Sounds as if Eastern has concluded that Marconi Wireless is not a competitive threat to its business.”

  “More fool they,” Bradford growled. He pulled on his cigarette. “What about your evening, Charles. How did it go, eh? What about Lodge? Why is the man at Penhallow? Do you think he’s after information?”

  “Oh, he’s after information,” Charles said with muted irony, “but not the sort one might expect. It appears that he came to conduct a psychic experiment, with our Lady Loveday as the medium. He was hoping she would be able to contact her daughter, and thus put to rest her feelings of guilt for the daughter’s death.”

  Bradford stared. “A medium! A medium?” And with that, he threw back his head and laughed, long and loud. “I heard that the fellow—for all his vaunted intellect—has an interest in that kind of spiritualist clap-trap. And if that’s truly what he has in mind for his visit here, I think we can count him out as a suspect.”

  “That’s truly his motive, as far as I can tell,” Charles said. “He was, of course, delighted to read Maskelyne’s letter in The Times.” He picked up his coffee cup. “I hope you were able to dissuade Marconi from answering. Lodge says he is anxious to follow the exchange.”

  “Not a chance,” Bradford said glumly. “He’s already written.” He regarded Charles curiously. “Did Lodge and Jenna succeed? In raising the dead, I mean. Not,” he added hastily, “to be irreverent about it.”

  “I seriously doubt it,” Charles said, “but I must confess that I left before the séance began. Spiritualism is not my cup of tea. I’m sure Kate and Patsy will tell us all about it.” He paused. “Since you’re going to Helston this afternoon, I wonder if you would be willing to do a spot of investigating for me.”

  “Investigating?” Bradford asked doubtfully, remembering the tedious drive he had taken the day before, which had turned up nothing.

  “Yes. We are in need of a few facts, and you can gather them for us. I should like you to locate a certain person— the town is small, and one or two inquiries will likely turn him up. Then ask him a question or two, perhaps three. And tell me the answers.”

  “And that’s it?”

  “That’s it.”

  “All right, I’ll do it. Who shall I be looking for?”

  When Charles told him, he was surprised. “I don’t quite see,” he began.

  “Neither do I,” Charles said. “But perhaps we both will, when you’ve done this bit.”

  Bradford shrugged. “I’m willing to take you at your word. What are you doing today?”

  “I’m planning a little welcoming party,” Charles said, and stood.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  Alice laughed. “There’s no use trying,” she said. “One can’t believe impossible things.”

  “I daresay you haven’t had much practice,” said the Queen. “When I was your age, I always did it half an hour a day. Why, sometimes, I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.”

  Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland

  Lewis Carroll

  Jenna Loveday woke up on Saturday morning with a slight headache, as if she had slept too hard and too long, and with only a vague recollection of what had happened at the séance the night before. But her spirits felt curiously light, and she got out of bed with the unaccountably happy thought that, somehow, something had changed—although what it might be, she certainly couldn’t say. Glancing out the window, today seemed brighter than yesterday, the sky a brilliant cerulean, the trees green and lush, the flowers in the garden glowing like gemstones. But surely she didn’t feel better—happier, more light-hearted, as if she had been freed of some terrible burden—just because the night’s rain had cleansed and freshened the world. Had she had a wonderful dream she couldn’t remember?

  Whatever had changed while she slept, she was glad, and as she dressed in a white shirtwaist and dark skirt and tied her hair back with a blue ribbon, she thought happily ahead to the day. Since Sir Oliver would be leaving tomorrow, today would be a good day to go sightseeing. They could drive across the Lizard to the west, to Mullion and Mount’s Bay, a trip Sir Oliver might enjoy. They could have a late luncheon at the Poldhu Hotel, and—she smiled at the thought— perhaps he might visit the Marconi station.

  Dressed, she went down to the breakfast room, where she found Kate Sheridan alone at the table, Patsy and Sir Oliver having already eaten and gone off together for a morning walk.

  “I hope you’re feeling well this morning,” Kate said, with evident concern. She poured a cup of coffee for Jenna.

  “Just toast and juice,” Jenna said to the maid. “Thank you,” she said to Kate. “I’m feeling very well, actually. Better than I’ve felt in a long time.”

  “I’m so glad.” Smiling, Kate glanced out the window. “It looks to be a beautiful day, doesn’t it? The prettiest since we came.”

  “Yes,” Jenna replied, mindful of the maid’s presence. One always had to be so careful what one said in front of the servants. “I thought we might go to Mullion today, for some sightseeing.” When the girl had brought her toast and juice and left the room, Jenna lowered her voice. “Now you must tell me, Kate. What happened last night? Was Sir Oliver very terribly disappointed? Was it an awful waste of time?”

  Kate looked at her in some surprise. “You don’t remember?”

  The orange juice tasted very good, Jenna thought, and the toast was done exactly the way she liked it. She added marmalade before she spoke.

  “No,” she said with a little smile, “not a thing. I vaguely recall drawing circles on a piece of paper—more to please Sir Oliver than out of any other urgency, I’m afraid. And then—” She laughed. “The next thing I remember is your helping me off to bed. To tell the truth, I think that last glass of wine I drank at dinner was too much for me. I was already feeling a little giddy before we began, and wondering whether we should go forward with it. I hope I didn’t disgrace myself, or embarrass the rest of you.”

  “No to both,” Kate said quickly. “In fact, Sir Oliver is mightily pleased with what happened. He considers the evening a great success.”

  “A success!” Jenna looked up, surprised. “You mean, I actually wrote something?”

  Kate nodded. “Pages and pages.”

  “I don’t believe it,” Jenna scoffed. “I’m sure I would remember something like that!”

  “Do believe it,” Kate said. “It’s true.”

  Jenna stared at her. “Well, then, where are the pages?” she demanded. “I want to see them. Does Sir Oliver have them with him?”

  “No,” Kate said. She nodded toward the sideboard. “He left them there, in that envelope. But are you sure you want—”

  “Of course I’m sure,” Jenna said firmly. She pushed back her chair, went to the sideboard, and took up a large manila envelope. Back at the table, she poured another cup of coffee, opened the envelope, and pulled out a sheaf of papers.

  “All this?” she asked in surpri
se. “I can’t have written all this and not recall a word of it! Why, there must be more than a dozen sheets here.”

  “All that,” Kate said. “Sir Oliver has numbered them, as you can see.”

  “Well, these,” Jenna said decidedly, flipping through the sheets of paper, “are nothing but scribbling, my pencil going in circles. And this—”

  She stopped. She was looking at a page where the words “mother dear” were written over and over, first in her normal hand and then in a round, childish script which was not her own. And then a full page of “sorry I am sorry” and on the next page, “not your fault.” She felt the skin on her arms prickle.

  “I wrote this?” she asked in astonishment.

  “Yes,” Kate said simply.

  Jenna looked at the page. “Do you believe . . .” She stopped, swallowed, and began again, but she could barely muster a whisper. “You were there, Kate. What did you think . . . did it seem to you that those were Harriet’s words?”

  Kate was silent, and Jenna felt both awkward and penitent. She shouldn’t have put her on the spot in that way. She put her hand on Kate’s arm.

  “You don’t have to answer,” she said. “It’s not a fair question. I have no right to—”

  “Of course it’s a fair question,” Kate said, regarding her with a steady gaze. “I’m just not sure how to answer. It did seem to me, honestly, that you would not have written as you did—you yourself, I mean. It was clear that you were in the grip of something other than your ordinary self. Whether the messages came from within or without, though, I could not be sure.” She smiled a little. “Sir Oliver is very sure, though. He’s convinced that these words came from Harriet, communicating through you.”

  Jenna sat very still, trying to settle her breathing as she struggled to make sense of her jumbled feelings. Trickery was impossible, since she herself had done this, and she was no trickster. It had to be true. She had to believe it. But again, if it were true, where did it come from? Within herself, or from another source?

  She looked again at the pages in her hand. “If this truly came from Harriet,” she said wonderingly, “it must mean that she has forgiven me.”

  “Yes,” Kate said. “I should think it does.”

  Jenna looked up, meeting Kate’s compassionate gaze. “And if it came from within me, it means that I have forgiven myself.”

  “That, too,” Kate said, and smiled. “And to tell the truth, one may be just as important as the other.”

  Jenna’s vision blurred, and she closed her eyes, feeling the swirl of emotions within her, the sadness and loss and grief she had felt ever since Harriet’s death. But the swirl was not a storm, and she was not seized by the overwhelming helplessness which always accompanied the sadness, the grief—the helplessness which usually presaged one of her hallucinatory moments. Had the séance, whatever else it accomplished, put an end to those moments? Had it settled the ghosts, put the past to rest?

  Well, there was no way to know the answer to that, except to go forward into the future. Perhaps, if she were truly able to forgive herself, there might even be a future for herself and Niels—if he loved her enough to settle at Penhallow. Of course, they could go off on yachting trips as often as he liked, and perhaps spend part of the year in Norway, where he came from. He hadn’t told her much about himself, and she hadn’t asked. Now, perhaps, things could be different between them. They could start over, as if nothing had happened. They—

  She opened her eyes. There was no blurring. Everything seemed clear and extraordinarily bright.

  “Thank you,” she murmured, although she was not clear to whom she spoke. She felt that she had been given a great gift, and she was grateful.

  Kate gestured at the papers. “There’s more, Jenna. Perhaps you’ll know what it means.”

  “More? Oh, yes,” Jenna said, recalling herself to the pages in her hand. There were other sheets, and she began to glance through them. She stopped, staring blankly at the page.

  “ ‘Ain’t fair’?” she asked. “I wrote this?” She raised her eyes from the page, frightened, feeling cold at the pit of her stomach. She began to shiver. “Where did it . . . who wrote this, for God’s sake, Kate? It’s not in my hand—or in . . . in Harriet’s, either.”

  “You wrote it,” Kate said. “I watched you. But it was different. It wasn’t the same as the earlier pages. It was another sort of energy altogether. I wasn’t the only one to notice, Jenna. We all did.”

  “But . . . but Bavaria? I have no idea what that means. I’ve never . . .” She swallowed, feeling the gooseflesh rise on her arms.

  Kate pointed to the bottom of the page. “There’s one more word, dear.”

  Beware.

  “ ‘Beware’?” Jenna’s eyes widened. “Beware of what? Who should beware? And these other words, these cursings. Who in the world—”

  “Damn his bloody eyes.” And then, as Jenna read the words on the page, she heard in her ears the echo of a voice speaking them: a man’s voice, rough, uncultured. But more than just the words, she felt his anger, his fear, his—

  “Jenna?” Kate asked.

  Her fingers were cold, so cold, but the paper on which she had written the words felt hot, scorching. Damn his bloody eyes. She could hear her voice whispering the words, but it was thin and faint and came as if from a distance, and the voice in her ears was louder and harsher, filled with a knifelike fear and hatred.

  Damn him god damn him to hell.

  She could hardly breathe now, as if something was cinched tight around her middle, squeezing the breath out of her. She heard someone breathing in choking gasps and knew it was she. The room was growing dimmer, filling with a dark, chilly fog, wisps and tendrils twisting around her. His bloody eyes, god damn him . . . She could feel the eyes on her, bright and hard, peering through her, searching, searing her soul. bloody eyes damn his eyes damn . . .

  And then, suddenly and breathtakingly and terrifyingly, Jenna was seeing through those eyes. She was watching a scene being played out before her, no farther away than arm’s length. She was balancing on the brink of a steep cliff, the midnight ocean black beyond, the surf booming against the rocks, the moon silver and cold as ice, and the man in front of her was falling backward, pitching over, arms flailing, as if in slow motion, and as she heard the scream, the long, anguished cry, she knew that she was watching a man die, and that she had pushed him off the cliff. But not she herself. It was the person, the man through whose eyes she was seeing, the man whose hands were now raised in front of her, whose hands she was seeing.

  And with an incredulous, frozen horror, she knew whose eyes they were, whose eyes—damn his eyes damn—and whose hands. She knew, because she saw the fingers, saw the—

  “Jenna?” Kate’s voice pulled her out of it, recalled her from the cliff, and back to the room. “Jenna?” Kate was standing beside her, her hand on Jenna’s arm, her voice urgent. “Jenna, say something to me, Jenna. Are you all right?”

  Jenna grasped the edge of the table, trying to speak. The room was turning around her, the chair was tilting, and she too was tumbling, like the man, the doomed man who had gone over the cliff. “No!” she moaned dizzily. Her head dropped back and she felt herself half-fainting into a gray, bottomless fog.

  “Jenna!” Kate spoke in a commanding voice, and slapped her cheek lightly. She wet a napkin in a glass of water and patted Jenna’s forehead. “What’s happened, Jenna? What did you see? You’re as white as paper!”

  “I’m . . . terrified,” Jenna whispered, with an unsteady candor, as the room stopped spinning around her, the chair stopped tilting. “But I’m all right.”

  “Have a sip of coffee,” Kate said, and pressed the cup against her lips.

  Jenna drank, glad for the hot liquid, and grateful for the firm chair under her and the four walls around her, for Kate’s sturdy, practical presence. Her mind was whirling, the thoughts and feelings swirling and turning. She heard a loud, thudding noise, wondered what it was, and
realized that it was the pounding of her heart.

  “Tell me, dear” Kate said, pulling her chair closer. “Tell me what you saw. You were reading the words on the paper and . . .”

  Jenna gripped Kate’s hand and spoke through numb lips. “I was reading the words on the paper, and suddenly I saw . . . I saw a man . . . a man murdered.”

  The words. The words she had written but had not written. The words which had come through her pencil onto the paper, the words of the murdered man. And reading those words just now, she had been drawn back into the dead man’s last moment of life, his last fearful breaths, before—

  “Murdered!” Kate was staring at her. “How? Who?”

  “I don’t know who,” Jenna said helplessly. “A man. He fell—he was pushed off a cliff. I saw . . . Oh, God, Kate, I saw the hands that pushed him!” She took a deep breath and let it out, and with her breath, the words, the awful words: “I know who did it.”

  “You know? How do you know?”

  “Because he wore a . . . ring,” Jenna said miserably. She shook her head. “Please, don’t ask me about it now. I don’t think I can bear to tell you.” She stood, felt herself swaying, and put her hands flat on the table to steady herself. “Just . . . come with me, Kate.”

  Kate stood too, and put a steadying arm around Jenna’s shoulders. “But you’re not well, my dear. Come upstairs with me and lie down. You can’t go out in this state.”

  “But I have to!” Jenna cried frantically. “I must go now!” Sobbing, she pulled away from the comfort of Kate’s arm. “And you must come with me, Kate. Please. Oh, please! Just . . . come.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  I am two fools, I know, for loving, and for saying so.

  “The Triple Fool,” 1633

  John Donne

  Andrew Kirk-Smythe had risen before dawn to breakfast with Charles Sheridan. After Charles had driven off to Mullion, Andrew went down to the Helford quay, where he climbed aboard the hired sloop, checked the rigging and sails, and cast off. The sea was calm, with a fair wind blowing from the south, rippling the water in a fine, friendly way. It was a perfect day for sailing, and as he tacked down the Helford River and into the fresher breeze around Nare Point, he found himself whistling cheerfully. The foam rushed under the lee-bow, the salt spray splashed on his fingers and misted his face, and the sun as it rose warmed his back and sparked from the tops of the great blue waves.